An issue too sensitive to discuss?

It would be very easy to put up a video of black American punks running rampant through the streets of Los Angeles and Oakland, California under the caption, “Eric Holder’s America.”  There is enough truth in it to warrant it.

It is more complex to address the legal thinking behind “stand your ground” laws which now exist in more than half of the states – the positive consequences of such laws – and the obvious problem with them in the case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

What follows is a commentary of why those laws are needed – why they work – and why our failure to solve what is perhaps America’s most chronic social and culture issue – the collapse of discipline in black urban communities, is going to amplify the racial divide in America and bring occasional media glare to incidents where a white American ventures into a closed urban black community or a black American ventures into a closed white American community with dire consequences. 

Let’s start.   Before anything, survival is always present.  Before food, sex, shelter, you name it – survival is present – at the top.  That’s a fundamental.

A white person wandering sections of Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc, for whatever reason – sightseeing, lost, seeking a snack and a soft drink, at any time of day, is, at best, problematic and, at worse, stupid; perhaps, suicidal.  (see:  http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0412/white_woman_black_neighborhood.php3#.UeaUjk4o5jo )  The crime statistics support this observation – black on black crime in these communities is epidemic – black on white crime is opportunistic and therefore less but that is mostly a matter of circumstances – logistics, geography and the simple segregated nature of black and white communities in America.

It becomes a bit different when a black person enters a white community.  The crime statistics do not support a likely criminal occurrence.  On the other hand, survival sensibility most likely keeps those occasions limited.

Enter – stand your ground laws.  You don’t have to run if confronted.  If fearful of grave harm or death, you may deliver grave harm or death and be presumed to be innocent.  Is this concept – in law form – a deterrent to crime?  The statistics say, resoundingly, “yes.”  Many urban blacks welcome the inherent protection of stand your ground law.  In effect all that has happened is the same status a police officer has in dealing with a confrontation is now extended to a citizen and, notwithstanding the grossly inaccurate and overused  application of “first responder” status to police and firemen, most citizens are their own “first responders” and, in many cases, second and third responder.  Citizens need to be prepared – survival requires preparation.

Stand your ground laws are here to stay but they obviously carry with them a heightened risk because of  the common knowledge that most criminals in America today are black and no one with a survival instinct is going to wander anywhere, his/her neighborhood or adjacent neighborhoods,  without that prevalent survival instinct on their mind and preparation to take survival action if needed.

If you seriously wish to solve the problem Eric identifies, you must first eliminate the reality of black on black crime and black on white crime.  If you wish to do that you must move away from an emotional form of governance when it comes to responsibility and participation and move to a disciplined form of governance.  In other words, the black community needs to get some discipline – in all those forms of human behavior in which they now trail, excessively trail, white America.  That discipline is not coming voluntarily and it is not being imposed involuntarily.

Neither Holder nor Obama have embraced that purpose - discipline, as black leaders.  The few black leaders who have are excommunicated from the black family, such as it is.  And that shunning is done by both Holder and Obama as well as other profiteers.

No justice – no peace is emotional blather.  As is the abuse and overuse of the concept of “racial profiling.”  Discipline is the answer and few grasp it – even fewer preach it – even fewer practice it.   This country of ours will not survive without a return to discipline.  Much of the urban black community is living testimony to this fundamental.