It’s news – to the NYT – that a lot of black people these days think they’ll be better off in the South

“…a degree in criminology but could not find a job in New York.  In Atlanta, he became a deputy sheriff within weeks”

“The South is more benevolent than New York”

“New York has become like the old South in its racial attitudes”

More jobs, better economy, lower taxes, lower cost of living, friendlier and more welcoming communities, less crime, more integration and better race relations.  Who wouldn’t prefer to live in the South?

via Ann Althouse

About 17 percent of the African-Americans who moved to the South from other states in the past decade came from New York, far more than from any other state, according to census data. Of the 44,474 who left New York State in 2009, more than half, or 22,508, went to the South….

The movement is not limited to New York. The percentage of blacks leaving big cities in the East and in the Midwest and heading to the South is now at the highest levels in decades, demographers say…. 

Just for the record

Thanks.

Oh. Remember that 28kg of Semtex stolen in France the other day?

The Year that Wasn’t….By Victor Davis Hanson

On the Democratic side, Clinton was stopped cold — but still has yet to be finished off by Obama. Now we can expect months more of infighting. As the Democrats raise tens of millions to destroy themselves, McCain can only sit back and smile. With Obama the likely nominee, we can also expect to hear more from, and about, his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Reporters no doubt are scanning Rev. Wright’s massive corpus of texts and DVDs for more hate speech. Even before the Wright controversy, the Democratic vote had been split heavily along racial lines — whites for Clinton, blacks for Obama — in certain states, including the all-important Ohio. That’s not a good sign for a party that’s supposed to be a model of racial transcendence.Clinton will weaken Obama for months to come. There is no reason to believe the former front-runner will quit the Democratic race soon, even though Obama has an all-but-insurmountable delegate lead.

Clinton has momentum and should win sizably in Pennsylvania later this month. Millions want to vote for her in the remaining primaries. By convention time, she could even end up with a slight lead in the aggregate popular vote.

Clinton has also so far won all the big states that will be in play in the general election. She knows the superdelegates were created precisely for a year like this, and so will argue that these Democratic pros are there to check the exuberance of a liberal electorate that might actually nominate someone untested like Obama. Had Clinton run under Republican primary rules, her wins would have already sealed for her the nomination.

National Review

Since Barack asked us to discuss race…

Here is one of the most honest discussions I’ve ever seen, and it has been largely ignored by the blogosphere (something we would expect from the MSM).

We can have this conversation now — should have this conversation now — because African-Americans are on the verge of the greatest setback they’ve experienced since the election of Rutherford B. Hayes. You see, you’ve just given life to the suspicion that black people in America are, and have long been, a fifth column — unanimously hating the very country that has afforded the highest standard of living ever achieved by black people in human history. We’re teetering at the edge of believing that you’re a secret society, a massive collection of sleeper cells just waiting for your chance to do serious harm to the rest of us. You’ve made it possible for us to believe that. Because you’re never outraged by what the worst black people do. Because you continue to make excuses for what should be inexcusable to everyone.

The path to equality is counter-intuitive. Admit and decry the failings of your community. Concede that a generation of single mothers has been a disaster. Let go of the fantasy that black mothers are some kind of infallible force of nature. Demand that your children spend more time reading and doing sums than farting around on the basketball court. Only about two thousand people in the whole country make a living by playing sports. The rest have to get real jobs. Do whatever it takes to make your preachers emphasize the value of being a good father instead of ranting from the pulpit about how all of life’s woes are the fault of rich old white men. Tip your white waitress. Stay at work after 5 o’clock. Allow your kids to find somebody to admire and emulate who isn’t black. (My two best friends in high school — white guys — fought like dogs about their conflicting candidates for best rightfielder in baseball: Clemente or Aaron.) Would it kill you if your kid fixated on Sandy Koufax, Mozart, or Shakespeare rather than Mays, Armstrong, or Jay-Z? Does being black really have to be a full-time job?

Admit it. White people have these thoughts, and some black people, if they were honest with themselves, do too.

Here’s the biggest thing we “racists” notice. Every single immigrant group that ever came to America — including the Chinese who came as railroad slaves — has risen out of poverty and want to prosperity and respect. The Irish, the Italians, the Polish, the Jews, the Koreans, the Vietnamese. Every group but you. And you’re the only group we fought a war to free.

Old Guy goes on to explain his use of the word “nigger” (which he used to make a point, not as a gratuitous insult), which is verboten to all white people (and should be verboten to black people as well, if it’s such an insult to them).

I’m not proposing the generalized use of the term, just trying to be clear for once, in the wake of Obama’s call for us to have a dialogue about race. However much they may scream and protest, black people will know what I mean when I demand they concede that the following people are niggers:

– Jeremiah Wright
– O.J. Simpson
– Marion Barry
– Alan Iverson
– William Jefferson
– Louis Farrakhan
– Mike Tyson

You know what I mean. They hold you back. They’re dirty, violent, and stupid. They make you look bad, and you foul yourselves by defending them, by reelecting them to office, by admiring them in spite of all their awful behavior.

Old Guy (OldPunk, actually) responds to the hysterics who got their panties in a twist over his original post:

My sin? I have spent much of a long life thinking about racial matters. Born in a nominally northern town that was nevertheless 60 percent black and 40 percent white, I have witnessed the sins and virtues of segregation and the sins and virtues of the civil rights movement. Segregation was a deadly wrong and it ended. Civil rights was a moral imperative and it prevailed. Today, my town and the black community that lived in it since the Revolution are worse off — families destroyed, prostitution a commonplace where it never existed before, drugs and guns and dead children of both races rife, and because I will die in this town as I was born in this town, I want to understand it and help navigate a new way forward. Not back. I don’t want black people to be subservient, or white, or know their place, or be just like me. I just want them to get over the past and start building their own lives without waiting for the government to do it for them.

He goes on to demonstrate that the term “nigger” probably ought to apply to certain people who aren’t black, but whom we usually designate as “white trash” (and boy, is he ever right):

I’m delighted to provide a ‘white trash’ list that corresponds to the ‘nigger’ list. It’s even more expansive. It includes people who aren’t just dirty, violent, and stupid, but also slimy, mean, hypocritical, and manipulative. And unlike a lot of the commenters, it’s not confined to just one political party. I urge our leaders — and, indeed, all white people, to join me in admitting that the following white people are inexcusable trash:

Pat Buchanan
David Duke
Michael Moore
Michael Savage
Keith Olbermann
Larry Craig
Charles Schumer
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
William Ayers
Bernadine Dohrn
Jimmy Swaggert
Ted Stevens
Britney Spears
John Murtha
Trent Lott
Howard Stern
Don Imus
John Rocker
George Galloway
Sean Penn
& many many others

Yeah, I know the list can be longer. And people will object that some of the entries seem political. But both parties are represented, and no one is on the list who isn’t — regardless of political stripe — corrupt, a liar, a fraud, damagingly immoral, an unabashed hater, suspiciously well connected, or all of those things…

Related thoughts here, including this salient point:

In the end, the right response to racism has to be to uphold a consistently applied standard of behavior that holds true regardless of skin color. Chris Rock had it right: we don’t get to congratulate ourselves for doing the right thing, whether we are white, black, yellow or brown.

We are supposed to do the right thing, every day, regardless of our skin color. That is the standard Barack Obama forgot to uphold, and one we have a right to expect from the next President of the United States.

In Parts of Pa., Racial Divide Colors Election

Still not quite awake…but if one clicks here, one can read the article

One clue:

“Anytime we are in anything, they are going to try to inject race in there,” said Mounds, who sees truth in Wright’s statement that “racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run.” “When we look at the powers that be, the majority are white,” Mounds said.”

They”?? Could damn swear, that Rev. Wright is Black. Writes not to self..Junk current TV and laptop, purchase new models that have color…Ditch my ‘black and white’ versions of said products.

DAMN.. Stolen from Instapundit, told you I was NOT quite awake yet

UPDATE:

Added note: Mr. Mounds, in case you haven’t noticed, the “majority are white“, stems from the fact that THE “majority” IS “white“. What would you have the “majority” “white” do? Turn the nation over to the a 13% ‘minority‘, which are ‘Black‘?

Is this what you want, Mr. Mounds? Were it to happen, I doubt you’d be happy even then. How about we give you the WORLD? Maybe The Milky Way? You see Mr. Mounds even THAT name “The Milky Way” has racial connotations. I mean are you looking for something called, The Chocolate Way?

If you are, I’d suggest speaking with Ray Nagin, Mayor of the “Chocolate City” as he described New Orleans.

Mr. Mounds, I thought this nation was ONE nation “under God“…white, black, brown, red, yellow OR a mixture thereof. Evidently you do not, even when fighting for it, as you did do.

Further UPDATE:

Tiz a pity I waste my typed words, on someone with a very, very closed mind…For even if you were to read this…Your mind would not open. THAT Mr. Mounds is part of the problem, for I see you in the Harry Belafonte wing of thinking, where people like Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Ward Connerly, Clarence Thomas, Thurgood Marshall, The Tuskegee Flyers, The Buffalo Soldiers….are or were “house slaves”…NOT people with great minds and accomplishments, honor and bravery.

Apologize for getting carried away, for the more I read the article, they angrier I became…You may file this under RANT of the Day. The thinking and words of the likes of Mr. Mounds, Jeremiah Wright, Michelle Obama (pardon the play on words coming next) are getting under my skin!

Further, Further UPDATE:

Every step the above people did take…was a step forward….Mr. Mounds to bad you see things as stepping backwards. The audacity of you and people like you (see Rev. Wright and Michelle) to think yourselves still in shackles and chains, fresh off a boat, that your own people put you on.

That is still happening, Mr. Mounds….BUT you see, it is a vile cult called Islam, that is perpetuating this deed, but your people seem to be more then happy to aid the “vile cult”.

If Barack Hussein Obama wants a healing and a “bringing together”, THE ABOVE is where he and others must start. “Change” is wonderful, as long as the “change” heads and ends in the proper way, Mr. Mounds. The sooner YOU and others see that, the better off this ONE NATION UNDER GOD, will be.

Mr. Mounds…You wanted ‘frank and earnest’, by damn, I tried. Your repsonse, THE Mr. Mounds, in this nation?

Quiet Observations

It seems to me that John McCain’s pastor, Dan Yeary, is a good man to be a religious adviser to a man who may very well become the next President of the United States. As this Reuters article states, Yeary seems to hold dear many of the values of the Christian faith. He believes life to be precious, which is why he opposes abortion, and he believes homosexuality to be a biblican sin. However, he also holds the belief that Christians should also love sinners.

This type of religious teaching is rather refreshing in a major news network, after the disgusting and vile beliefs perpetrated by the Westboro Baptist Church, which doesn’t actually appear to have any affiliation with Baptist beliefs at all, and people like Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the religious adviser to Democratic President hopeful Barack Obama.

Reverend Wright and Pastor Yeary seem to differ in their methods of accepting others and the idea of Christian love. Pastor Yeary believes in loving thy brother… despite his skin colour. Reverend Wright believes in loving thy brother… providing he’s your colour and neither of you are white. Considering McCain has been attending sermons at Yeary’s church for 15 years and readily admits he agrees with many of his sermons, one can assume that the message is one McCain will bring to the Presidency. Obama has been attending Wright’s sermons for 20 years, yet now that the controversial sermons have been brought to the attention of the wider black community, as well as all other voters in the United States, Obama’s actions show that he’s embarrassed that people may rightly and correctly assume that he also holds those views.

I ask, if Obama disagreed with the views presented by Reverend Wright, would he have:

• Firstly, denied being present at the sermons;
• Secondly, written an article in which “I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies.” but then state that he would continue to attend the church and that he supported Reverend Wright, his mentor for twenty years;
• Thirdly, claim that he loves white people, because half of his family is white; and lastly
• Claim that it’s okay that the Reverend preached some rather racist sermons, because Obama’s grandmother was racist once too.

I fear the biggest difference between Obama and McCain is how they deal with beliefs others hold that they don’t agree with. Obama seems to have lied and twisted to try to get out of the controversy surrounding Reverend Wright, whereas I think McCain would have the courage to go up to the Pastor after the sermon and challenge his views, if not leave the church, rather than wait for the media to get hold of damaging material.

Japanese Whaling

Japanese whalers have released a video on YouTube describing Australians as ‘racist’, and needless to say, they found the worst possible footage, took it all completely out of context, and added subtitles.

The movie is below. I haven’t watched it all, but I’m working on the assumption that it’s quite disturbing, so watch it at your own discretion.

1984 Anyone?

We are asked to keep an eye on this British blog, because the author has been threatened with arrest for possibly violating Britain’s “incitement of religious and racial hatred” laws. Folks, if things keep going as they are, it could happen right here in the US.

Personally, I think a law banning “religious and racial hatred”, while no doubt well-intentioned, is an extremely bad idea, and unnecessary. We already have laws against committing physical crimes against people and property, and when they’re properly enforced, that should be enough. Even freedom of speech, one of our most sacred tenets, has limits set on it (falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is the example always brought up, but it means not inciting violence against people because of religion, race, etc.). But freedom of speech also means freedom of thought, and if you want to be a religious bigot or a racist asshole in the privacy of your head, that’s your right, no matter how little I might think of you for it. Enforcing laws against hatred is the same as enforcing laws against freedom of thought, the very step needed to create a totalitarian society.

Unfortunately, Britain appears to be already far down that road, with Canada not far behind. We in the US (and with the help of the Anglosphere) should be vigilant and militant, to make sure that doesn’t happen here.

(h/t Instapundit and The Gates of Vienna).