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June 24, 2021 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the latest episode of Radio Renaissance.
I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance, and today is June 24th, Anno Domini 2021, and with me is my indispensable co-host.
It's always a pleasure and honor to be with you.
On this occasion, we'd like to start with some listener questions.
These came a bit out of the blue, and I'm not quite sure how to reply to some of them, but let's start with the first.
The first is, what living person do you most admire?
And I confess, this is a hard question to answer.
There are not many living people that I admire.
If we go back in history, my answer is easy.
There are plenty of people that I admire.
But living today?
I mean, that's a real head-scratcher.
And I must say that I finally came up, after a certain amount of thinking about this, with a foreigner.
And that is Viktor Orban, who is the President, Prime Minister, I can't remember what his actual title is, of Hungary.
Who has been very good about trying to keep Hungary Hungarian.
He has had to suffer an enormous amount of pressure from the Western Europeans to let in Muslims and Africans and all sorts of people that he does not want.
And he has held up brilliantly.
I think he is a great example to the rest of the world, and it makes me yearn for the time when white people in America could actually live under a government that has their interests at heart.
So, he's the one who gets my vote.
Now, Mr. Kersey, who gets your vote as a living person whom you admire?
I've been thinking about this a lot, and I will say Pappy Cannon. Well, no, that's a good example. That's a
good example. You know, I was trying to think of someone who's really made a
Major influence upon upon the country or and upon the world And I think back to Death of the West.
I think back to a lot of the books that he's done.
State of Emergency.
The book he's done on Nixon was quite good.
His book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, is a phenomenal book.
Yes, it's a remarkable work of history.
He's not a professional historian, but he covered that period really quite brilliantly.
You know, I wish I'd thought of him as well.
Yeah, I've had the pleasure of meeting him many times.
I actually went to the 2002, this is where I first met Sam Francis, I went to the 2002 American Cause debate in DC about the Iraq War and it was Pat Buchanan, I can't remember who he was up against, I think the CNN guy, Something Novak was on the opposing side and Pat, well, afterwards we went to a reception and Pat couldn't have been more cordial.
He walked up and it was just an absolute treasure to spend that time.
I'm glad you thought of him.
He personally is an admirable person.
Not only his political positions and the courage he's taken in the face of terrific opposition and criticism.
And I had a remarkable experience with him.
I was on a program, I guess it was, uh, was it Fire?
No, it wasn't Firing Line.
Crossfire, I believe it was.
He was one of the co-hosts with a liberal, and they would have a guest on, and they would fire at him from both directions.
Well, afterwards, Patrick Buchanan and I went out to dinner, but on the way out of the studio, he stopped and talked to practically everybody that worked in the building.
Hey, how's the kid?
You know, is his broken leg doing okay?
I mean, these are secretaries.
These are just ordinary people.
And I thought, wow, a man with a real common touch had a real genuine interest in these people who were just essentially nobodies.
He's the big star.
He's on TV all the time.
But he had a real rapport with just the ordinary folks who worked in that building.
I thought that was admirable.
And you think about the influence he's had.
Who's the most important person right now on the right?
Yeah.
That's right.
That would be Tucker Carlson.
And I remember he came out and they were on a show together and he said, listen, I should
have listened to Pat on the Iraq war.
I apologize.
It's very rare when someone will admit most people will come ensconced and they'll put
their feet down.
And even if they're wrong, they'll never admit it.
And I think that he has had such a profound impact on so many people, but that line, because
he's assumed that spot that Pat, you know, you think about all the people who've tried
to cancel Tucker and he just kind of laughs at them.
They tried to cancel Pat, and Pat did lose his show, of course.
Yes, he did.
He keeps fighting, and he must be well into his 70s now, and he keeps riding, he keeps fighting.
No, I'm glad you thought of him.
He really is a great fellow, and I've met his wife as well, and I don't think there's ever been a hint of any kind of scandal, any kind of lining his own pockets, none of that with Pat Buchanan.
He's 82 years old, I didn't know that.
He's 82?
Yeah.
God bless you, Pat.
Yes, yes.
Well, I'm very glad you thought of him.
I wish I'd thought of him, but you did very well to do so.
Now, we'll go through these other questions more quickly.
Who is your favorite president of the United States, living or dead?
Well, I mean, George Washington is everybody's favorite and also mine, but I have to put in a good word for President Polk.
Polk, he came in, he promised to be only a one-term president and he fulfilled that promise and he accomplished the three things that he set out to do.
He figured out the problem, he solved the problem of the border in the northwest part of the United States with Britain.
We could have gone to war about that, but he prevented war.
And he also established a tariff to get some revenue in the country.
That was one of his other goals.
And of course, the third goal is the most important, I believe.
He wanted to get the southwestern part of what became the United States from Mexico.
He accomplished all three of those goals.
And after he did so, he left after one term.
I think he was really one of our great presidents.
Polker Jackson.
Yeah, Polker Andrew Jackson.
Jackson was a good man too, yes.
And then, now this is one, this is one I cannot answer.
What are some of your favorite coming-of-age films?
Well, I don't like any coming-of-age films.
A young boy meets a young girl and a young boy becomes a young adult.
I don't know.
I don't care for that stuff.
I've seen very few of them.
Maybe you have some.
Is this sort of like a rom-com?
Is it coming of age?
I'll tell you the one that I would recommend everyone go out there and watch.
If you've got a girlfriend, you want to watch a good movie.
It's a wholesome movie.
It's one of the It might be the whitest movie I've ever seen.
It's called Wimbledon, and it's about an aging tennis star who's going to retire, and he sparks a relationship with the hot new player.
That sounds like a coming of old age.
Well, no, because he finally fulfills his potential because he has this dalliance with this beautiful girl played by Kirsten Dunst.
And it ends beautifully, and I think it is a coming of age.
So it's the coming of her age.
Well, as a tennis player, he's in his early 30s, so it's still coming of age because he spent his entire career trying to build to this moment at Wimbledon.
Okay.
No, these stories, I think they're sort of voyeuristic.
I'm sort of a prude in my own way, I suppose.
This coming-of-age stuff, don't care for.
Okay.
So, now, we're going to get on to another set of listener comments, but before that, because they apply to the whole question of traffic accidents, we got into that an episode or two ago, because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, ...has estimated that there were 38,608 people killed in crashes nationwide last year, and that 7,494 of them were black.
Now, that works out to blacks being 62.3% more likely to die in a crash than whites.
more likely to die in a crash than whites.
Yes, 60.
That's more than one and a half times.
And the disparity appears to have worsened during the coronavirus pandemic.
And last year, according to NHTSA, things were especially grim.
The number of miles driven decreased because many people stayed home, yet the traffic death toll rose by 7%.
Now, the theory is that there were fewer people driving on the highways and so people drove faster.
I don't know.
None of it makes that much sense to me.
And the number of black people who were killed increased by 23%.
Well, a new study released by the Governor's Highway Safety Association Highlights some of these disparities, and it discovered that between 2015 and 2019 in each different kind of traffic accident, whether someone is thrown to the vehicle or whether someone is run over, blacks are killed at higher rates than whites, no matter what the type of accident, and black pedestrians are killed at twice the white rate.
Now, This is the punchline.
Charles Brown, a professor at Rutgers University School of Planning and Public Policy says, we've all been socialized to believe that black death is due to black behavior, when instead we know infrastructure influences behavior.
Of course!
The problem is infrastructure.
Well, gosh, what is it about the infrastructure that makes black people shoot each other?
That's something I'd like to know.
In any case, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said last year's traffic fatality rates and the racial disparities reflected in them are unacceptable.
He's not going to accept them.
I don't accept them either because... Well, the data are the data.
Here's a theory for you.
After the racial reckoning of late May 2020, I think a lot of these black individuals thought that they were above the law.
They could drive as fast as they want to.
Cops were probably a little worried about pulling them over.
Drive recklessly?
Because you know what?
George Floyd?
That's our birthright now.
We can do whatever we want to.
I guess.
What is it?
Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse?
Wasn't that George Floyd's motto?
That might have been James Dean.
I don't know.
Yes, that was James Dean.
Well, the fact is, here are some additional statistics.
This is the sort of stuff you find out in paragraph 24.
Hispanics and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islands were killed at rates slightly lower than whites.
They must live in super snazzy infrastructure.
That's all I can possibly think.
While Asians had significantly lower death rates.
Now, what do you know?
Now, as we know, it has nothing to do with how anybody behaves, whether they'd like to drive safely or drive dangerously.
It's all infrastructure.
So, boy, those lucky Asians.
What wonderful infrastructure they may have.
But American Indians and Alaska Natives were killed at much higher rates, twice the rate of blacks.
Now, their infrastructure must really be bad, and I suspect that a defect in their infrastructure takes the form of many, many bottles of Thunderbird wine.
But, be that as it may, our listener comment says this.
We had mentioned some of these disparities in a previous episode, and I had mockingly asked, how will the lefties figure out that racism plays a part in these?
And he has the answers!
He says, come on, it's obvious.
Racist ambulance drivers let black people die.
Of course.
Rather than getting their hands tainted with black blood.
I hadn't thought of that.
Then racist ER workers slow walk their treatment of blacks.
Furthermore, yes, there are fewer hospitals in the black part of town, so they don't get there on time and they die.
Hospital deserts.
Yeah, there you go.
Hospital deserts.
Hospital deserts.
So, I guess he's right.
You know, racism is the part of it.
Now, what he says is, and I thought this was interesting, he says, I'd like to see the gross numbers of accidents by rates when compared to the survival rates.
In other words, that's an interesting question.
Are there any differences?
Is there anything to suggest that the treatment that a black person scraped up off the asphalt is going to get is better or worse?
I think that's kind of interesting.
I bet, though, that insofar as black people are liable to live in cities, they're probably closer to hospitals.
Whereas all these white people out in rural areas, if you know you're miles and miles from a hospital, it's gonna take an ambulance long to get to.
You're on a two-lane road, that's always, I think we talked about it one time, just that fear when you're driving on a two-lane road and, you know, someone could be driving at you and they could nod off, not have any good night's rest.
Sure could.
Green right into you.
That's a terrifying thought when I'm driving.
Yes, sure could.
Also, he says, there are interesting data at the Governor's Highway Safety Association website.
That's the one, in fact, we were citing earlier.
He says, the biggest lessons to derive from the statistics, never drive near an Indian reservation.
Because, as I noted earlier, the Indian death rates in traffic crashes are twice even that of blacks.
So, watch out.
Also, as we noted this earlier, people joke about bad Asian drivers, but they're actually safe.
Much safer than the rest of us.
And then, this is quite interesting, about 2.5% of black traffic deaths involve police pursuit.
Isn't that interesting?
That is.
Yes.
And that rate is about four times the rate for whites.
A black person is four times more likely to die as a result of police pursuit than a white person.
Well, obviously, police need to pursue more white people.
That's the only solution.
They need to target them like the FBI is targeting all these January 6th protesters across the country.
That's right.
Now, our well-informed listener concludes with this question.
A mystery to me is why the traffic death rates for whites is somewhat higher than for blacks during the daytime, but much higher for blacks at night than for whites.
Now, I have a theory.
He says, what's the difference here?
Why is it that the white death rate is higher in the daytime, but the black death rate is much higher at night?
Well, I think it's because they're up partying until 3 a.m., which you can do if you don't work, and baby mama's on welfare, so they're asleep in the daytime.
That's my only theory.
But, so, we very much appreciate this kind of commentary, and at this point, I'd like to move to this whole question of how Evanston celebrates the American experience.
Well, do you know what is located in Evanston?
Oh, some hall of fame.
Is that not the case?
Northwestern University.
Oh, Northwestern.
All right.
Yes, yes.
Okay.
Well, university towns are notoriously goofy.
Some of them are.
There are a few that are okay.
Well, the 4th of July Parade has been cancelled.
But Juneteenth and Pride Parades... No, they're totally on.
Pride Parade?
Pride Parade.
There's only one kind of pride, right?
Anyway.
Yeah, anyway.
So the city of Evanston, Illinois is under fire this week after an email blast was sent out, and it notified residents that the 4th of July Parade has been cancelled.
Said there's going to be a virtual event.
So I guess virtual fireworks?
But the Juneteenth and Pride parades are still on.
I guess June is Pride month?
Is it?
I can't remember.
It seems to me like every day is Pride Day to me.
Exactly, you know.
So the city hosted a Juneteenth parade last Saturday, and celebrations began at 11 a.m.
with a parade led by Grand Marshals Cheryl Judas and Jason Powell.
I don't know who they are, but again next week, actually this weekend, the city is going to host a Pride Parade on June 27th.
Uh, including a parade, an all-day celebration, and a memorial candle lighting ceremony.
For Pride Day.
I guess victims of AIDS, perhaps.
Quote, the Evanston 4th of July Association has decided to cancel its fun run, parade, band performance, and lakefront fireworks show for Independence Day.
Uh, join the association instead for a safe, creative, virtual celebration.
So, here's the reason why.
What do you think the reason is?
Budgetary?
Or COVID?
COVID-19 was cited as a reason for cancellation.
Based on concern for public health due to the unpredictability of the pandemic's impact, vaccination rates, and in cooperation with local authorities, thus the reason for canceling.
But I guess black people and homosexuals never get AIDS no matter how close they snuggle up.
COVID doesn't impact them.
Fascinating here is that 75% of the city's residents are fully vaccinated.
They've had less than three cases per day.
over the past two months in Evanston and 86% of the city has had at least their first dose
of the vaccine, putting them 22% above the national average in both categories. However,
however, it's still because of COVID that they're going to cancel July 4th, but pride uncancelable.
Oh, oh.
Pride cannot be suppressed.
Juneteenth, don't you dare.
Don't you dare cancel Juneteenth.
Well, as you know, Juneteenth is known as Independence Day.
You know, that's the official, that's one of the official names of the holiday, Juneteenth Independence Celebration.
I'm aware.
So, who needs July 4th, that musty old white man holiday?
We got our own Independence Day.
Juneteenth got off, as we know, to a bit of a bang, as we could say.
In North Carolina, an EMS worker was shot while working a Juneteenth rally in Raleigh.
The man was reportedly responding to a child who was in need of medical assistance when somebody walked up to him and went, bang, bang, bang.
He was just walking back to the ambulance when shots rang out.
You know, that's what always happens.
Shots rang out.
You know, these mysterious bullets begin to fly.
Nobody knows where they came from.
Now, in Flint, Michigan, an officer was working at a traffic point for the celebration when a car pulled up and opened fire, probably protesting inferior infrastructure in black neighborhoods, causing the officer to return fire and strike the subject, a 19-year-old female who As the news writer put it, did eventually succumb to her injuries.
Now that's pretty good, you know, if you're directing traffic, somebody opens fire on you, and you have to return fire.
I don't know what the circumstances was, maybe he's wearing a bulletproof vest, but that looks like pretty quick action, good thinking police work.
So that was Flint, Michigan.
Then a celebration, this is more the way these newspaper accounts are written.
In Long Branch, New Jersey, a celebration gave way to rioting.
It just gave way.
It's like the cable was just not strong enough and the cable shredded and the celebration gave way to rioting.
Hundreds of people took to the streets in June's Juneteenth celebration that quickly turned violent.
Police and riot gear had to be dispatched in order to quell the unrest.
Well, and in Oakland, California, about 1,000 people were celebrating the Juneteenth holiday when a shooting occurred.
Bullets struck six victims.
Ah, those mysterious bullets.
They just came flying in and struck six victims between the ages of 16 and 17, and a 22-year-old who was shot died at the hospital.
Well, you left out the best part.
Oh, what did I leave out?
About the shooting, I think it was Lake Merritt near Oakland.
The ambulance that came, the EMT that came to get the individual, the individuals that were shot, they had scores upon scores of the Juneteenth revelers twerking.
Oh, oh.
The video went viral.
Tarver Carlson talked about it.
I think this is one of those videos that's like, ah, well, this is a spontaneous example of freedom, the ringing out.
Twerking out.
Twerking out.
Well, as I say, Juneteenth got off with a bang.
And yes, that's right.
Well, they're showing their respect for the victims that way.
They're showing Black Lives Matter.
Yes, yes, yes, indeed.
Well, we may have talked about this last year, but I did want to point out that
Juneteenth was a cause for bringing up a shooting that last year in Charlotte,
when, uh, nine people were shot and three died at a Juneteenth event.
Like I said, in Charlotte, this is before the national holiday.
Exactly.
So this is, this is 2020.
This is right after the George Floyd stuff.
There were a plethora of witnesses.
More than 180 rounds were fired.
Casings were found.
So do the math.
Nine divided by 180 and you can find out.
Bad shooting.
Yeah.
But the point is, even a year later, this is the headline.
No arrest made one year later after deadly shooting at Juneteenth party.
There just must not have been any witnesses.
No.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
How many hundred people were there?
No witnesses?
There were a couple hundred people there.
No witnesses.
No one will come forward.
Well, they're just shy.
Well, you know, Juneteenth is celebrated also in a particularly memorable way.
A new statue of George Floyd is now on display in Brooklyn.
It was unveiled on Juneteenth, the very day the six-foot sculpture was unveiled.
It's just a head, actually, sitting on a pedestal.
It's a pretty impressive thing.
This head is six feet tall.
And George Floyd's brother, Terrence Floyd, was on hand for the unveiling, and he spoke about the importance of the day in keeping his brother's memory alive.
The statue will remain at the Flatbush Junction in Brooklyn for several weeks before moving to Union Square in Manhattan.
Wow, I guess it's going to take up permanent residency in Union Square in Manhattan.
Now, Saturday's unveiling comes just a few days after Newark debuted its own statue of George Floyd on Wednesday outside of City Hall.
Now, I'm unaware of whether George Floyd ever set foot in Newark or in Flatbush, but they're celebrating him nonetheless because he is a world historical figure.
Mayor Ross Baraka unveiled the 700-pound bronze statue.
That's why they call him Big Floyd, I guess, which was donated this week to the city of New York.
It will remain outside City Hall for at least a year.
I wonder where it's going to go after that.
Smithsonian?
I don't know.
Maybe it'll take the place of Abe Lincoln's statue in the mall.
Ah, there's a good chance of that.
But he's sitting on a bench, and you can go up there and, you know, pat his thigh and say how much you admire him.
Boy, yes.
I saw photographs of people, you know, they were just hovered all around him, admiring him.
Well, it's very avuncular.
I know you don't eat at McDonald's, but at a lot of McDonald's they have a Ronald McDonald statue when you walk in, and kids take pictures of him.
He has his arm out, and that's the exact way, it's almost the exact Yes, girls could sit next to him and pretend to be his girlfriend.
Yeah, well, maybe the statue will... I heard that the statue, if you push a certain spot on his body, it'll say, I can't breathe.
I heard that.
Unsubstantiated rumor.
Well, I suspect that rumor will continue to be unsubstantiated, but you never know.
Remember that weird thing they put in Rockefeller Center?
That apparently will talk to you.
It does?
Yeah!
No, come on.
Oh, it's got recorded voices from famous African-Americans.
And you say something like, I don't know, what's good about America?
And some voice will miraculously and oracularly say, nothing, my friend.
Yeah, it talks to you.
So you could be right.
You could be right about the George Floyd statue.
You know, it's going to say, I can't breathe.
Or maybe it says, Mama.
Now, about Mayor Ross Baraka, I thought that name sounded familiar.
He is the son of poet and activist Amiri Baraka.
Do you remember him?
He was a real classic.
He was named Leroy Baraka.
Oh gosh, I've forgotten his name now, and it wasn't Leroy Jones.
It'll come to me in a moment, but he decided that he was really Amiri Baraka.
He died in 2014.
He's worth remembering, but he was a very confused guy.
His first marriage was to Hedy Cohen, who was Jewish, but after Malcolm X was assassinated, he said he found himself thinking, as a black man married to a white woman, I began to feel estranged from her.
What the connection is, I do not know.
I guess you thought Jews had assassinated Malcolm X. He says, how could someone be married to the enemy?
So he dumped her and left her with their two biracial daughters.
Look up his original name, will you?
Because it's embarrassing for me not to think of it.
I have a feeling I'm going to have one of these brain failures and not come up with it.
Well, he developed quite an animosity for Jews.
Well, maybe Hedy Cohen was some sort of shrew that produced this animosity.
But he called for dagger poems to stab the slimy bellies of the over-Jews.
And to crack steel knuckles in a Jew lady's mouth.
And here's an example of his poetry.
Smile, Jew.
Dance, Jew.
Tell me you love me, Jew.
I've got something for you.
I got the extermination blues, Jew boys.
I got the Hitler syndrome figured.
So come for the rent, Jew boys.
One day, Jew boys, we all, even my wig-wearing mama, gonna put it on you all at once.
And wig-wearing mama.
Do you have a wig-wearing mama?
I don't have a wig-wearing mama, a weave-wearing mama, or a... That's where you went wrong.
You didn't have a wig-wearing mama.
I can tell you, though, that you just quoted Leroy Jones.
Leroy Jones.
Who, as you said, changed his name to Amiri Baraka.
It was Leroy Jones.
I mean, that just seems like such... Okay.
Leroy Jones.
Leroy Jones is spelled L-E, capital R-O-I.
That's right.
In French, it would be Le Roi, meaning the king.
In any case, here's some of his non-fiction.
Most American white men are trained to be fags.
For this reason, it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank.
The average au fait, you remember the term au fait?
I've heard it before.
Remind me what it is.
That just means a white person.
Okay.
Yeah, they used to call us au faits.
I can't remember why exactly.
I think that's some way of saying fag.
But the average Ofe thinks of the black man as potentially raping every white lady in sight, which is true in the sense that the black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has.
And the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly and viciously popped.
Pretty nice stuff.
And this is the Poet Laureate, right?
Well, later on, yes.
You're spoiling the plot.
He became Poet Laureate of New Jersey.
Now, here's an example of his poetry.
You can't steal nothing from a white man.
He's already stolen.
He owes you everything you want, even his life.
All the stores will open if you say the magic words.
Mr. Kersey, do you know what the magic words are?
What's the magic words?
I bet you don't know what the magic words are.
They are... Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up!
The stores will all open.
So this guy was BLM before his time.
He was the precursor.
Yes, yes.
He was the godfather.
He was le roi before its time.
Now, Barack was a visiting professor at Columbia University.
And he then became a full professor at Stony Brook.
And he took on an indefinite visiting appointment at Rutgers University in the English Department.
He's a real New Jersey boy.
He was Poet Laureate of New Jersey from 2002 to 2003, but people began to read what he actually wrote and make a stink and they called for him to step down, but he refused.
And the position of Poet Laureate, there is no means to disappoint someone.
And so what the state ended up doing was they abolished the position of Poet Laureate.
That was the only way they could dislodge the felon.
And he's had colorful children as well.
In 2003, Barack's daughter, Shani, aged 31, and her lesbian partner, Raishan Holmes, were murdered.
In the home of Shani's sister, Wanda Wilson Pasha, by Pasha's ex-husband, James Coleman.
So, all very tragic.
But, so his son is now the mayor.
And all of you who do not know about Amiri Baraka, you should just remember, this guy was a famous and important precursor for what we're seeing today.
So, one more fun fact for you.
The mayor of Jackson, his dad, the black mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, his dad was one of these black nationalists who wanted to create a black nation out of the South.
I can't remember his name.
It's also Lumbaka or whatever the name of the mayor of Jackson is.
I can't remember his name.
Lumbamba or something silly.
I love talking about Jax because I know at some point there's going to be an amazing write-up on The Great Replacement and Jaxon.
And I just read an article where they're having problems having people answer 9-1-1 calls.
And they're trying to say, well, it's a system.
It's the problem.
But imagine being in the biggest city in Mississippi and your house has been burglared or someone's just been shot.
You call 9-1-1.
Nobody answers the phone.
Nobody even answers the phone.
Nobody answers the phone.
I see.
Welcome to Wakanda, baby.
That's reassuring, that's reassuring.
Well, so his son, yes, mayor of, mayor of Newark, who unveiled the statue.
One thing to his credit, he has introduced a program to deal with crime and gang violence.
It's called the Ras Baraka Blueprint to Reduce Crime and Violence in Newark, and it includes,
this is the piece de resistance, Project Chill.
Project Chill is going to stop those bullets from flying.
Project Chill.
Project Chill.
How is it going to stop the bullets?
Is it going to somehow, once it's fired, all of a sudden there's a ray gun that shoots
it and it chills the bullet in midair?
It's going to freeze it to death.
I don't know.
I don't know, but Project Chill is going to do the trick.
Now moving on to Chicago, Lori Lightfoot.
Good old Lori.
Last week she claimed that at almost every single point in our city's history, racism has taken a devastating toll on the health and well-being of our residents of color, and particularly those who are black.
Racism is just tearing at their hearts.
Well, Lightfoot's claim that racism, this health crisis, she explains that's why that black people tend to live nine years shorter than non-black people.
Okay.
She's got it figured out.
Racism is the health hazard.
Well, so apparently it's racism that's killing black Chicago people at a young age, especially when they shoot each other, but Chicago alderman Raymond Lopez.
Raymond Lopez.
He's not buying this.
He says, I think it's a foil to avoid having to deal with gangs and other issues.
200 plus murders in the city of Chicago.
None of them was committed because of racism.
I can tell you last week's gang shooting had nothing to do with racism.
Boy, so he's a Hispanic alderman.
When will a black alderman take that view?
I guess when pigs have wings, they care more about blaming white people than doing anything to save black lives.
But at least this Hispanic guy is telling it like it is.
Now, speak to me of Minneapolis.
Well, Minneapolis.
Trying to think of which way we're going to do this.
We know now that in Minneapolis, gunshot victims in Minneapolis up 90% from last year.
90%!
According to the most, yeah, so basically what we had a situation where, yeah, you had that just wimpy mayor.
I still think that one of the defining moments of this century, Mr. Taylor, was the burning of the 3rd Precinct.
And you think at that moment, the monopoly on violence was gone nationwide.
The police, you look at the violence that has occurred, what Steve Saylor rightly notes is the racial reckoning, just the massive increase in non-fatal and fatal shootings in all these cities.
The city you used to live in just recorded its 100th homicide in Louisville.
They're on pace for, I think they're up like 250%, just some egregious number.
Who can tolerate this?
That looks like Whitey can tolerate just about anything, doesn't it?
Well, it's not Whitey, but the point is, it's how can we be told that black lives matter?
How can you put up a statue of George Floyd?
Mind you, I did find the AP article that noted he was the one who put the gun in the pregnant woman's belly.
Well, but was she pregnant?
She was.
I was able to find an AP story.
Okay, so that has been definitively established.
Yes.
All right, she was pregnant.
So he was threatening two people at once?
Yes.
So according to the most, and we know that the city leaders, they voted to defund the police.
Officials are going back on their pledge.
It's getting so bad now, they'd have to hire more police.
And now we know that they wanted to radically reimagine public safety, you know, because they say that more affordable housing, health initiatives, and other services supporting communities of color, where most of these shots rang out from, Or what's needed, not more cops.
Well, better infrastructure.
Exactly, infrastructure.
So, the number of people shot citywide went up nearly 90% compared with the first half of last year, while homicides jumped from 22 to 40 in that same period.
The year has seen some violent crime arrests drop by about a third.
But still, the gunshots, again, police are just like, what are we supposed to do when we don't want to be, you know, chauvined?
Well, you know, Joe Biden's got the solution just yesterday.
Didn't he come out and say he's going to solve the problem?
He's going to make sure that all those gun dealers who are selling illegal weapons, they are going to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Correct.
That's going to solve the problem.
Correct.
He's going to ban assault rifles.
The aspect of this that nobody ever talks about is that you know because Mr. Kersey, you're a very knowledgeable guy, but more people die in the United States because they've been kicked to death or beaten to death with fists than actually killed with rifles of any kind, much less assault.
But he's going to ban them and oh boy, the death toll is going to plummet.
So we know that The mayor of Minneapolis and the head of the... what's Ellison?
I'm sorry.
Ellison is one of the city council members.
What they want to do is propose an initiative that's going to have unarmed community safety specialists patrol the hardest-hit neighborhoods.
That's going to work really well.
Good luck.
So we know that they're on track for one of the deadliest years.
They went from 48 homicides in 2019 to 84 in 2020.
So they're on pace to break 2020's record.
So what's actually happening?
What are they doing on the ground to try and get these kids off the streets and get them to stop shooting one another?
Well, City Leagues have a great idea.
I have a brilliant idea.
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted to spend $300,000 out of a $1.7 million budget surplus this summer.
Surplus?
Yeah, they got a surplus to bolster its street reach and teen teamwork programs.
The board has voted to eliminate fees At the North Commons Waterpark for 2020.
That way, these kids who would be out maybe committing crime, doing a carjacking.
There's been a carjacking one per day in Minneapolis this year.
Oh, so instead of shooting each other, they can be doing cannonballs into the pool.
Well, they can do cannonballs.
Maybe slide down some water slides.
Maybe learn to do a swan dive or a backflip.
Yeah.
That'll do it.
It'll cool their heads and cool their tempers.
Park Board Commissioner Londell French.
Proposed both resolutions and said, quote, we're in a crisis.
We're in an emergency.
And I don't think this board is taking it seriously.
And now you want to sit here and talk about how we cannot spend this money and how it might be inappropriate right now.
Spend the money.
The rising violence is primarily happening in the city's north side.
I did look this up and the north side is The, uh, well, the most monochromatically non-white area of the area of the Minneapolis.
So he said this quote, we got people out here dying, babies drowning, and 300,000 isn't anything in the grand scheme of things.
And 38,000 to let kids go swimming in our pools, nothing.
And this is why our country is where it's at right now, because the money goes to the people who already got the money.
Stop it right now.
Wow, okay.
Well, that'll solve the problem.
That'll solve the problem for sure.
Well, Marie Antoinette said let them eat cake.
Well, so he's saying let them go swimming.
Well, I'm not sure if he maybe misassociated the drowning.
There have been a number of murders of little kids in Minneapolis this year.
I think maybe he was hoping that they won't get shot at the pool.
So hopefully we won't read in a couple weeks about a mass shooting at the North Commons Water Park.
Well, Baltimore is likewise fitting the bill.
Fox News headline, 57 dead in 50 days as violence continues to ravage Baltimore.
57 in 50.
That's more than one per day.
And on April 30th, the city hit the grim milestone of 100 deaths.
And then now, just 50 days later, have 57 more people have died.
For example, a mass shooting on Wednesday in broad daylight left five injured and one person dead.
What's causing this?
Now, they apparently asked someone by the name of Reverend Al Hathaway.
Reverend Al Hathaway, I haven't looked him up, but I suspect he's one of our African American fellow citizens.
He says this, The violence is out of control because we are in a cycle of reaction, retribution, people are angry, people are upset, and our systems are not working.
So I think he nailed it.
I think he nailed it.
He's got it figured out.
Oh, okay.
I somehow guessed that.
Now, former Deputy Police Commissioner Jason Johnson says the relentless violence is caused by the heat.
The heat?
The heat.
And it will get worse as the days get hotter.
So they've got it figured out.
They've got it figured out.
So good luck, good luck, Reverend Al, and good luck, former Deputy Police Commissioner Jason Johnson.
But, yep, Baltimore didn't leap in its murder rate and shootings rate last year when everybody else was leaping, but it seems to be preparing to leap this year.
So do you think on a hot day that a Baltimore meteorologist should warn people that shots could be raining out because temperatures are approaching 100?
The way it should work is this.
Uh, every day over 90 or 95 degrees.
Okay.
Wear your bulletproof vest when you go out, folks.
That's gonna be the word, you know?
Hey, guys, it's gonna be 75.
You don't need to wear the bulletproof vest.
That's right, that's right.
Just, you know, maybe a chance of rain, maybe bring your umbrella, but you can leave the bulletproof vest at home.
Always keep your wits about you, but when it gets really hot, mmm, wear that vest.
Well, for a change of pace, we have a story from Bloomberg News, which used to be a serious news source, but listen to this.
I am reading verbatim from a columnist, a Bloomberg columnist named Kathy O'Neill.
She says, After yet another spring in which millions of American kids endured the anxiety of discovering whether their chosen colleges had accepted them, pundits are yet again lamenting the absurdity and social ills of the application process.
Why should a cabal of admissions officers hold so much sway over high school students' self-esteem and access to the elite?
Allow me to offer a radical solution.
Fire the functionaries and use random selection instead.
There you go.
Lottery admissions at highly selective universities.
Never mind standardized tests.
If you show interest, your name goes into a big hat.
There could be a weak notion of who's qualified.
Say, high school degree and a minimum grade point average.
Maybe a 2.0?
Beyond that, selection would be provably random.
The simple qualification standard would take the pressure off students to conform to the prevailing definition of the ideal candidate.
And you know what she says they're going to do when the pressure is off?
No, what's that?
Listen to this.
This is from Bloomberg columnist Cathy O'Neill.
They'd be free to be kids again, smoking pot and getting laid.
Okay!
That's what's up.
Yeah, shove the books, you know.
You can be kids again.
Kids are supposed to smoke pot and get laid.
Then, best of all... Best of all?
What's better than smoking pot and getting laid?
Better than that is random selection would immediately boost the diversity.
Colleges wouldn't have to worry about fighting claims of racial discrimination.
No more soft criteria, no more biased tests, just blind chance.
Blind chance?
Now, this is apparently a serious college.
At first I thought, no, this lady is pulling both my legs at once, but no.
And apparently she's a mathematician.
She's pulling every appendage you have at the moment.
I guess so, my nose in particular.
She is a mathematician who has worked as a professor and a hedge fund analyst, and she is the author of Weapons of Math Destruction, but she's got it all figured out.
You said weapons of math?
Math.
Math, okay.
Yes, sorry.
Yes, my pronunciation was indistinct.
Now, this is really quite a story, too.
I just heard about this today.
But the Washington Post, did you know that it's got a new video series called The New Normal?
It started in 2020.
It's some kind of video coffee clatch.
And here are some of the episodes.
Resources to understand America's long history of injustice and inequality.
Anti-racism.
You may be doing it wrong, and here's why.
That's a great after school special for your kids to watch.
Then here, how and why to discuss Juneteenth with your children.
And then, the time for token acts of solidarity is over.
I think that's another way of saying, pay up Whitey.
That's actually a terrifying title.
Then here, it's not my job to absolve your white guilt.
You go, you go, and you just marinate in white guilt.
I ain't gonna do the sign across over you.
Now the latest is, I've not seen any of these, I confess.
But the latest is called, What is White Racial Identity and Why is it Important?
So, Nicole Ellis.
She is the host.
She's one of these chirpy, young, black females who knows all about racism and all about white people and all about what's wrong with us.
And she's the one who explains how you could be doing your anti-racism all wrong.
What's the right way to do anti-racism?
Good question.
She'll tell you.
Okay.
I'm sure she'll tell you.
Now, in this episode, she introduces Rezmaa Menakem.
Now, that, for all I know, that was his birth name, but he's one of our African American fellow citizens who offers courses in somatic abolitionism.
This is a man, by the way, with the name of Rez Ma'a, and I was so curious about somatic abolitionism that I looked it up on his website.
He says, it is a living, embodied, anti-racism practice and culture building that requires Listen up, folks.
It requires endurance, agility, resource cultivation, stamina, and discernment.
I think I'm going to be incapable of somatic abolitionism if it requires all that.
What about dexterity?
No.
Endurance and agility, resource cultivation, stamina, and discernment.
Okay.
Yeah, you don't have to be dexterous.
But this guy says these things can be built up day by day through reps.
It's like curls or sit-ups.
You have to build your anti-racist muscle, I guess.
I guess that's it.
These communal life and invitational reps will temper and condition your body, your mind, and your soul to hold the charge of race.
Now, it's never been my ambition to hold the charge of race, but if it is, then somatic abolitionism is all for you.
Well, on this program, this is again sponsored by the Washington Post, he explains that racism, racialism, white body supremacy is not episodic, it is structural.
And then Chirpy Nicole, she has a suggestion for white people.
They should form groups only for whites, self-segregate into what she calls accountability groups.
Okay.
Yeah, and you know, it would be just too much of a burden to blacks to come tell them how bad they are.
So they've got to figure out on their own how bad they are and tell each other how bad they are.
Now, this fellow, Rez Ma'ah, the somatic abolitionist, he says, an anti-racist culture does not exist among white people.
White people need to start getting together specifically around race.
And these whites-only accountability groups should go on for one, two, three, four, or even five years.
Five years, that's right.
It should be an indeterminate amount of time.
It should be for life.
But you've got a lot to account for, Mr. Kurz.
You have an awful lot to account for in these accountability groups.
I think you get a life sentence.
Well, and so Ellis goes on to say, hey, this sounds like a great idea.
And they go on to say that segregating by race is only the first step.
Now, these accountability groups are only the first step.
Now, what do you reckon the next step is?
Do we all get in a circle and shoot ourselves?
I'm guessing, you know, that's only the first step.
Now, where do we go from there?
Now, remember, remember, they call this, this whole Coffee Clatch video program is called The New Normal.
That's terrifying.
I think I'm going to stick with the old abnormal.
I think that at the end of the session, when they invite you to have a sip of the Kool-Aid, definitely want to pour that one out.
Because that's how you truly atone for your whiteness.
I'm too old and I'm too abnormal to go for this stuff, I guess.
Well, now this is an interesting article in Political Magazine.
But you know, before we talk about that, you had a story for us about the media that's going to solve all the problems of contemporary America simply by stopping crime reporting.
You know, I'm actually going to ask that you make sure that I get the correct enunciation, because this is a word I never hear.
The Poynter Institute?
Is that... Poynter?
I'm guessing Poynter.
P-O-Y-N-T-E-R.
That would be Poynter, I guess.
Okay, okay.
That's what I thought.
It's one of those, you never really hear that...
So, the head of the International Fact-Checking Network, which operates PolitiFact, is calling on local news outlets to stop covering local crime stories to avoid connecting, quote, black and brown communities, end quote, to crime.
From Pointer, it's time for journalism to break the cycle of crime reporting.
They write this, quote, arrests for misdemeanors disproportionately Affect people of color.
Systemic racism compounds the injustice as reviews have shown that prosecutors are more likely to exclude black jurors from trials.
The crime in court exists because it constantly churns out stories.
Much of that content is directly related to public safety.
Journalists can be smarter about who we cover and the follow-up stories we provide.
I think they're already doing it.
They're doing a damn good job of it so far.
Kelly McBride, who chairs the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, a pointer said, quote, local news reports have amplified narratives that connect black and brown communities to crime.
As a result, we have fostered systemic racism through our crime coverage, end quote.
So basically what we see here is, hey, you know, local news, If it bleeds, it leads.
People love those type of stories.
Not anymore.
I guess if it bleeds, it leads to stereotyping.
It leads to pattern recognition.
Yeah.
In other words, the facts are inconvenient, so let's just smother them.
Let's just conveniently get rid of them.
But as I say, it seems they're doing an awfully good job of that as it is.
Well, you can still find a lot of this stuff.
You'd be surprised what you can search when you go to news.google.com and type in black gun crime.
Seriously, just go to news.google.com and type in African American gun crime or black gun crime and you'll see stories like you just said.
The local news will cover it.
Some shooting at a funeral because the person that they're celebrating in life, their life, there's some beef and some brothers drove up and just started firing indiscriminately into the crowd.
This happened far more than you can imagine.
And as you said, You can imagine anything.
Yes, I can imagine anything.
Sometimes I'd rather not.
But somebody had a clever line the other day.
If a white person kills somebody, blame the white person.
If a black person kills somebody, blame the gun.
Blame the white person.
Don't blame the gun.
You're right.
In any case, yeah, that's even better.
If a black person kills somebody, blame some white person somewhere.
Now, this is an interesting article in Politico about people leaving politics.
Apparently, mayors in particular are just giving up on being mayors.
Now, I will read from it.
COVID-19 changed the calculus for mayors mulling re-election, but the public health crisis was only a fraction of a much larger equation.
The associated economic downturn cut city budgets, leading to months of fiscal headaches before federal aid helped ease the problem.
George Floyd's killing last May sparked protests that grew into a national reckoning on racism and policing that's still going on, and all of this turned an awry, already fiery presidential election into an inferno.
Many city leaders did not want to stick around to stamp out the flames.
They are going for the door.
Not unlike the current exodus from Congress, mayors across the country are stepping down en masse after years and even decades of public service.
Their reasons range from personal to professional, but many share common threads spun from a year of unparalleled tumult and a recognition that what might be best for their city's future might not be what they envisioned for their own.
It's time to pass the baton, says Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, when she announced she wouldn't seek a second term.
A surprising move from one of the Democratic Party's biggest rising stars.
So, Keisha is on her way out.
She said the last year had drained her.
Well, I imagine it was a pretty tough time.
Now, there's also Michelle de la Isla.
The Democratic Mayor of Topeka, Kansas.
She felt emotions twice over as her city's leader and as a congressional candidate running a campaign.
She says it was ugly.
And four months after losing her bid for Congress, Topeka's first Latina and single mother mayor.
Now, is she a lesbian to boot, just to add to her exoticism?
She announced she would not seek a second term.
Some mayors, like New York's Bill de Blasio, are term-limited out.
Others, like Boston Mayor-turned-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, have moved on.
But what is raising eyebrows is the number of mayors citing burnout and political exhaustion as they say bye-bye.
It's a phenomenon showing up more among Democrats.
Now, why would that be?
Well, they account for nearly two-thirds of America's mayors.
Many spent the last year feuding over police reform or battling Republican governors over COVID restrictions.
Some big names—Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Washington's Mayor Muriel Browser—have yet to announce.
I think Lori likes her job.
I think you're right.
Yeah, she's loving the fact that she can, you know, put out that decree that she's only going to be interviewed by journalists of color.
That's right.
White aid need not apply.
That's right.
Pushing white people around.
Ooh, she is having a high old time.
I think she's actually married to a white woman though.
Ah, you know, maybe you're right.
White men.
It's precious white men.
There you go.
Now, Brooks Rainwater of the National League of City Cities, we've never seen statistics so high on this kind of movement within the city workforce.
Nearly a fifth of the mayors in Massachusetts are on their way out or already left.
Somerville, Massachusetts, Mayor Joseph Kurtatone announced back on Friday he was going to end his nearly two-decade run as mayor.
Former Columbus, Ohio, Mayor Michael Coleman steered his city through multiple financial crises during 16 years, but he described the past year as unlike any other I've seen, and out he's going.
What city was this?
Columbus, Ohio?
This was Columbus, Ohio.
And then, The crown and the jewel, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan.
Oh boy, poor Jenny.
Last year she proposed slashing the police budget by 5% or $20 million, but protesters and some city councilors wanted a 50% cut.
They really want to defund them, defund the pigs.
And demonstrators, including a city councilor, marched on her neighborhood last summer after figuring out her address, which had been hidden for years.
Oh, those Antifa, they're pretty good at doxxing people, even the mayor of the city.
And Durkheim and her family were again receiving death threats.
Messages like, Guillotine Jenny were written on her street.
Jesus!
Yeah, I've never had that on my street.
I've had some things chalked on my street, but never Guillotine Taylor.
Anyway, she is a lady, and she is openly gay, but that has not shielded her from all of the slings and arrows, and she's calling it quits.
So, back to the Topeka mayor, De La Isla, Latina, and female.
The pressure we're getting from the public is something I have never seen before.
So, and some of them, like De La Isla, say they are done with politics for good.
Maybe things would have been better if the newspapers had taken the Poynter Institute's advice and not written about crime.
But the poor dears are out the door.
Do you ever sit back and think about the past year?
I mean, I know last year you wrote a really good piece, uh, Why Have We Gone Mad.
Was that the subject?
Probably.
But have you, have you actually sat back and reflected on the past year?
The past year has astounded me.
It has absolutely astounded me.
There has been this gradual, fairly gradual decline with a bump here and there.
But ever since George Floyd, there has been just a consuming madness in this country that I never expected.
It is the most extraordinary thing.
And one example of just the extraordinary sorts of things that are being said.
Don, is it pronounced?
I don't watch enough television to know.
Is it Don Lemon or Don Lamon?
Don Lemon.
We can call him Don Lamon.
I think if I were he, you know, that's sort of like Leroy Jones, Don Lamon.
Okay, Don Lemon.
Lemon seems like an odd name.
I don't think I'd want to be a lemon all my life.
In any case, he was in a Washington Post magazine Sunday feature, you know, the big spread on the cover, that was all about his career, his new book, and his life as a gay black news anchor.
And this is what he has to say.
I don't know if America sees black people, and especially black gay men, as fully human.
We're living in two different realities as black and white people.
We know as black people what was lurking beneath the surface.
I still believe that Trump was the necessary wake-up call for America to realize just how racist it is.
Now, here's a ghost at the top of the heap.
Boy, oh boy.
He is a CNN anchor.
Washington Post Magazine.
He's right on the cover.
And I'm sure it's an adoring thing about how wonderful he is.
And here he's saying, I don't know if America sees black people, especially black gay men, as fully human.
This is the sort of thing that they all seem to believe.
Now, he said something quite interesting and there's a certain truth to it.
He also wondered whether it's possible for people raised in America not to be racist because he says whiteness is like the factory reset on your cell phone.
I think that's a pretty good analogy.
It is, in a sense, it is spiritually and historically the factory reset.
Yes, America is default white.
Yes.
But for him to think that somehow Whites are ganging up on people like him?
Oh boy, the fantasies never end, do they?
Well, we don't have much time.
I think we're going to have to call it a close here.
Thank you, as usual, Mr. Kersey, for your indispensable assistance here, and we will look forward to speaking with our audience once again.
Do you have any final words?
I was thinking about Juneteenth and something you and I wrote in 2019, and it's just about how You know, forget Independence Day.
The true date that we should celebrate is the date of the signing by George Washington of the Naturalization Act of 1790.
And you talk about that factory reset to whiteness?
Yes.
That's the first act of the first Congress.
Well, it wasn't the very first act.
It was the first Congress, but it wasn't the first act.
But it was one of the first things they had to figure out.
What's this country going to be all about?
White people of good character.
Anyway, thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen.
And thank you, Mr. Kersey.
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