Mr. Bennett, Black Poverty, and Black Crime

Recently, I got a lot of response to an essay written for another "blogsite" (man - is that a word?), so I guess the subject is on people's minds, and important. The subject originally was William Bennett's (ex - I guess - politican and host of something called "Morning in America") paraphrase of Jonatha Swift's "Modest Proposal." If we were to reduce the black population, the gentleman said, we would, of course, lower the crime rate. If you've paid any attention to the news at all during the time since the Civil Rights 60s, you know what happened. Yeah, a bullshit brouhaha. One gentleman apologist for all things Afro-American (since there are thirty-five nations in the hemisphere, doesn't that include everybody black in them all - and where does that leave the argument?), wrote a scathing excoriation (figurative, of course) of Bennett. I wrote a carefully measured and reasoned response, to point out that - while I am on his side, and generally in agreement with his interest in the furtherance of black persons' advancement - his arguments and reasoning were flawed.

As I say, I got a lot of comment, mostly from people who seem to believe - like the gentleman whose essay I criticized - that poverty explains levels of black violence and crime far above those of whites and other ethic groups. This was my reply to one such writer, and it is my general view:

"I think you're right (about poverty), but only to a degree. As has been my penchant since high school, I did living research in order to see what the truth was. This time, however, it wasn't a matter of choice. The poverty I investigated was imposed directly - as opposed to its usual social and economic methods - by the Internal Revenue Service when my family and I were completely ruined and dispossessed. In my book, "Letters to Aaron," I relate having lived with my son among the very poor in the parks, waterfronts, and alleys of the nation. We had nothing, and only the money we could earn with odd jobs. But we didn't steal. We didn't commit any kind of crime, matter of fact (except refuse to pay taxes with money the government had already taken).

"Point? In every kind of struggle or fight, people acquit themselves differently. Some men in combat - or other kinds of extreme stress (like combative sports, for instance) get tougher and tougher. Some break and run. Taken prisoner, it's all but invariably the same. Some turn to stone under the interrogator's tormenting, other's spill their guts. There is always a spectrum of behavior. We simply don't know enough to predict what it will be.

"I mentioned the Quantificational Judgment model and TNDM in my essay. A few years before he published, Colonel Dupuy (the author) wrote to me to ask, "Why do Germans fight so much better than everyone else (he knew I'm the product of twenty three generations of pure German-ness)? I said honestly that I knew that (about German soldiers), too, but I could only guess at the reasons.

"First, I was raised from childhood (age four, matter of fact) to be a soldier and a gentleman. I stood when spoken to by an adult. When a woman came into the room or my presence, I stood - and at attention. I took my hat off in a woman's presence, and when I went into a building. I opened the door for a woman. I went upstairs before her, and down behind her. I walked next to the curb when accompanying a lady. I clicked my heels when, if, a woman offered her hand, and when I left the room. I did not cry in the presence of others, and when told to stop, I stopped. Immediately.

"In short, I was raised with discipline. I learned and obeyed a code of honor. The power of my upbringing is still amazing to me even today. I still cannot sit at a table with my hat on or with a woman present. Just can't. There's more, but it's boring - to most everybody. I obey the law, too. I stop at stop signs, obey the speed limit, all of it. I think you'll find that even today, Germans are the most disciplined and law-abiding people on the globe.

"Why are they better soldiers? Well, I said, I thought it's the way they are (were?) reared. The culture.

"I also noted that Germans are probably among the most intelligent people per capita on earth. Germans invented physics, you know, and a number of other sciences. I know how that sounds, and that it does may be part of our problem. I mean by that the fact that you dare not discuss differences between or among cultures without being labelled and cursed as a "racist." A whole behavioral science, that of sociology, has been effectively outlawed. We MUST "celebrate diversity."

"Nevertheless, "facts are stubborn things," to quote John Adams. It's either true or it isn't that Germans are better soldiers, or, for instance, that Germans have crime rates - particularly violent crimes - far, far, less than blacks (here or in Germany). More, Germans (white, that is) do not abandon their wives and families. White German males do not father babies they abandon at will. "Loyalty," my German nobleman grandfather would say again and again, "above everything - except honor." Et Cetera, etc., etc.

"As with the QJM and TNDM, comparisons like that could do us a great deal of good. We can't do them, of course, because they're "racist." But they work for the military, and they could work elsewhere.

"Oh, when my son and I were being forced to live off the land, the fields, streams, and woodlands, I thought about stealing - food, especially. At one point, I had to begin selling my blood to get food for my son (he was recovering from three attempts at suicide). I didn't, but I do see an understand the motivation. I don't even begrudge someone living in poverty the theft of things other than food, the things he sees other people enjoy while he is deprived. Morality isn't that simple.

"More, you can't just "break up a ghetto" (as one writer suggested would stop black crime). When I was still in the bucks (in April, 1974, I made $1,764,239.17), my boys' mother and I sat on the board of a new housing development for the "disadvantaged." The buildings were all brand new, constructed for the purpose. So were the furnishings. I contributed amounts of money you'd find hard to believe. The tenants were all black people, families. I saw to it personally that every man in the "project" - yes, that hated word - had a job. One was the first insurance adjuster our company every hired, probably - I couldn't seem to find out - the first black adjuster and investigator in the nation.

"There proved to be no way to prevent what you know - and we've all seen literally hundreds of times - happened. Repairs could simply not be done fast enough. A few years ago, the whole affair was finally bull-dozed (too bad, I'd have probably kept it up, had IRS not ruined me - hey, that's still another social lesson, isn't it?).

"Charles, the adjuster I mentioned, embezzled funds repeatedly (despite my admonitions each time) until the comptroller for one of my franchises caught him and its president demanded that I fire him. When I did, the NAACP charged me with racial discrimination. Only the local black community (one black leader, a man named Virgil Cunningham, told federal investigators and the NAACP rep, "Man, of all the white guys you could have picked to call racist, this is the last one - Hal Luebbert hasn't got a motherfucking racist cell in his body.") having come to my support saved me a helluva lot of trouble.

"NO, my well-meaning friends, the answer isn't anything we dare state right now (though Bill Cosby is damned close). It's culture. Africa is like Africa because of Africans. Mexico is like Mexico because of Mexicans. We, citizens of the USA, haven't the legal and social algorithms necessary to deal with the problem and produce a solution because WE are who WE are. The United States is the way the United States is because of its citizenry (11,000,000 illegal aliens is another matter, though further representative of wht WE are).

"You write well, and you think well, too. But you need to do it more, and without restrictions."