Uncommon Sense

From the NRO, just to put all of that liberal MSM in their place:

When I first saw the clips, my suspicious and mean-spirited nature kicked in. I went to my computer and looked up the demography of that Hartford neighborhood. Uh-huh. (That’s just the broad zip code, which likely includes some gentrified zones. Here are student stats for the nearest public high school. Here are the same for the nearest public elementary school.) Yet in all the TV news and talking-head coverage of the incident, nobody bothered to tell us about neighborhood demographics. Not only did they not bother to tell us, they pointedly refrained from telling us. The talking heads were all: “What’s the matter with us?” and “How did we get this way?” and other verbal hand-wringings, while vast numbers of white TV viewers who’d already guessed the thing I’d looked up, were thinking to themselves: “Whaddya mean, us? This isn’t us, it’s them. Nothing to do with us.”

John Derbyshire cannot be serious can he?

“Whaddya mean, us? This isn’t us, it’s them. Nothing to do with us.”

First: Who is this them he is speaking of?  People from Connecticut.  Maybe, if he’s criticizing liberals.  Probably not though, most people in Connecticut are pretty well off and good standing citizens.  Ok, so not people from Connecticut.  How about people who watch a hit and run and fail to come to the person’s aid directly.  That’s what most people who agree was the horror surrounding this hit and run caught on tape.  But no, he’s not talking about them.  How about the people in Hartford.  Ok, getting warmer.  People in Hartford tend to have less education and less money than the rest of the people in Connecticut.  But to be more specific, he is talking about the high minority population, specifically Hispanics and African Americans that live in and around the area in Hartford (Park Street) where the hit and run occurred.  Ok so an US (white people who are citizens in good standing) vs. THEM (African Americans and Hispanics who are poor and live in inner-city Hartford, CT and couldn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves and their welfare checks).  Sounds to me like someone is making way to many generalizations about people and being openly racist.

Second:  What Derbyshire and his like-minded friends fail to realize is that of course the events that occurred in Hartford have to do with us.  The hit and run shows us all that we all have to watch out for and protect each other.  The Bible, other religious texts, etiquette, good manners, and being raised as good people and good citizens teach us to always care for other people.  Hit and runs are terrible crimes as the driver has no regard for the injury or possibly even death that he might have caused another.  Watching a hit and run happen and then stalling to get medical aid to an injured person lying in the street is also terrible as every moment counts in order to save a person’s life or minimize and injury.  The hit and run is an example to Americans of the wrong way to treat our fellow citizens.

Further, this crime is an example of the deplorable conditions in some parts of Hartford and in a greater meaning to the rest of America, other inner-city areas across the United States.  Scholars, politicians, etc. have debated and will continue to debate how to fix the problems of the urban underclass.  The events captured on tape show just how much a life of homelessness, money problems, drug use, gang violence, missing fathers, pregnant teens, and broken homes can harden a community and turn people into humans who’s only concern is looking out for themselves.

Obviously something needs to be done in America to change and reverse the plight of the urban underclass.  How?  Well there is no clear cut answer.  Obviously, universal preschool, a strong improvement in schools in the inner-city, ETIC and other aid programs, family planning classes, mentors, cleaning up the environment in the city,  job training programs, more police patrols, and more jobs that pay well enough to support a family and live comfortably will all go a long way towards helping those people.  The correct solution has never really been created yet, but it is surely a combination of many of those programs listed above, along with others.

One thing that most definitely will not help aid the urban underclass and change the hardening of the community is by drawing racial distinctions between people- attributing a person’s actions to race.

Our nation has come a long way since Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech”.  Unfortunately, his dream has not yet been fully achieved.  I see it in my generation- our indignation at drawing racial distinctions and our ability to simply accept all different types of people from all different walks of life.  We are the future, we are achieving King’s dream.  Yet, for every step forward, there are always steps back- racial distinctions are drawn and lines are crossed.  Once the majority of the nation beings to see the way the Millennials- no color or label attached to people- then King’s dream will have come true.  Until then, we “kids” will have to sit and listen to people like John Derbyshire, those that are too ignorant to realize that his conclusions are racist and have passed their prime in this country.