Life in Black and White

Does endorsement of the rioting in Charlotte in response to a police shooting, without any of the usual plausible-enough elements of police misconduct--suspect was not "unarmed", cop is black, etc-- represent a Rubicon crossed for supporters of the Black Lives movement? Is it now that any shooting of a black suspect must prompt rioting? Have the white enablers of it all thought it through? Chilling to think that, at least for the brighter among them, they must have.

Black Lives' problem is the outrages have become like lines of coke with diminishing effect. And no one--black or white--is willing to take away the mirror. So we arrive at Charlotte, where none of the notes of narrative plausibility, such as they are, are present yet the anger and violence, if anything, greater.

The movement is deliberately grown with each new provocation of what constitutes its grassroots--and in an age of astroturf and Soros, the riotous mobs that keep showing up give it legitimacy as a popular black movement, despite the manipulation, which looks to be mostly effected by the social media of a small group of frankly not very impressive activists. The violence and numbers of protesters and the unanimous support among respectable blacks give the movement undeniable popular legitimacy. The anger is there, Soros et al just provide the lacking gumption.

But the fraud nearly inverts the reality; it isn't that black lives are less valued within white culture, but that life is less valued in black culture. From this--and it doesn't matter if it's cultural or hereditary or both--flows all the mayhem and malice that's come to be associated with black America, which of course includes violent police encounters.

Black America rejects white norms and demands its own; this is what black obsession with black authenticity is all about. The Black Lives movement can be seen as a struggle between white and black norms, where the moral insurgency, so to speak, leading the offense and represented by BLM and others, is mostly delusional, but very effective because its delusions we're all force to share.

The lives, property and dignity of others is less valued in American black society; personal strength, charisma and nerve are more highly valued. Whiter is politer. In the absence of white norms black America defaults comically to what is so well represented in hip hop--where black America has carved out nearly complete cultural autonomy from (and influence over) white America and which represents the authentic voice of black America, violence, obscenity and all: an African strongman system, fractured by modern atomization into a hellscape of thousands of  America's own little Big Men fighting over street corners. Hip hop is not "black America's CNN", as DMX said. CNN doesn't represent an ethnic community. Hip hop is much more like the Rwandan radio station that sent the Hutu out to massacre the Tutsi.

But none of this is spoken of; it's barely thought, if the behavior of virtually everyone in a position of authority is to be believed; and in a nation of 300 million a plausible police outrage should come along regularly enough. What's most remarkable is that they don't come along more often and more narrative-worthy. Considering the scale of the problem of black American malice--exposed by the rioting of the Black Lives movement--I'm beginning to see America's police forces as heroically restrained.

Black America fights for its autonomy as black America, and the values, mores and customs it desires; they are not yours. Only listen and you will hear just that. What do black America's white allies fight for?