Black Grievance Month Gets Off to Delicious Start

For the connoisseur of racial grievance, Black History Month is off to a delicious start.

Let’s start with you: You didn’t know February was Black History Month? Shaking my damn head or SMDH -- which is the standard response on Twitter to anyone who says Michael Brown of Ferguson fame was a thug who never had his hands up; never said don’t shoot; never got shot in the back; and never was much of anything except a dope-smoking symbol of bogus racial grievance.

Your children know about Michael Brown and Black History Month. In seminars, lectures, contests, movies, TV shows and other activities they learn over and over and over this month what they already receive in toxic doses the rest of the year: Black people are relentless victims of relentless white racism, all the time, everywhere, and that explains everything.

Including Little League. This month a black Chicago Little League team was stripped of its national championship after it was learned it assembled a super team from outside of its boundaries.

Racist, said Jess Jackson.

Racist, said Father Pfleger.

"I'm outraged,” Chicago rapper Twista told TMZ.com. “You don't see this extensive of an investigation happen unless it happens to black people.”

Congressman John Conyers had that figured out a long time ago. He was breaking it down for a Congressional committee last year about why black people are arrested, convicted and sent to prison more often than white people. “With enough time and officers in a certain location, it is only a matter of time before they find reasonable suspicion to stop, detain and arrest someone -- or many people,” said Conyer.

Now you know what people mean when they talk about poor police-community relations: Too many white cops catching too many black people breaking too many laws.

At a black-tie dinner for the Congressional Black Caucus last year, the president talked about the “justice gap.”

“That’s what we saw in Ferguson this summer, when Michael Brown was killed and a community was divided,” the president reminded us.  “Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement, guilty of walking while black, or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.”

President Obama figured out early on that his own athletic disappointments were all because of race: “I might not get the breaks on the team that some guys get, but they play like white boys do,” the future president explained in Dreams From My Father. “I don’t play that way.” A few weeks ago in India when he reminded everyone “there were moments in my life where I’ve been treated differently because of the color of my skin.”

To that list of walking, talking, driving and doing nothing, we now add playing baseball and basketball and eating curry while black.

Despite the relentless racism that surrounded the president all the time, everywhere and explained everything, he muddled on. Somehow getting into Columbia, then Harvard Law despite racism -- and his mediocre grades.

Even so, earlier in Black History Month, the president’s political guru David Axelrod was explaining to the guardians of racial grievance at NPR how white people were racist for not supporting his client Barack Obama. “It's undeniable that race is an element of the opposition to the president,” Axelrod said. “Are there some Americans uncomfortable with the changing demographics of our country -- the more diverse country that he represents? I think the answer to that is absolutely yes.”

This image of white people as a seething cauldron of resentment because they all took a course in demography and did not like what they found is easy to find. Here’s another from another talking head, Cynthia Tucker, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “I knew some whites would have difficulty with a browner America but didn't know they'd want to destroy the country over it.” 

What is harder find is anyone who actually believes that.    

Over at the Washington Post, Phillip Bump joined the chorus of those who say white racism deprived the movie Selma of its 162 Oscar entitlements. The headline tells the rest of the story: ‘American Sniper’ sold six times as many tickets as ‘Selma’ — and race may be part of the reason.”

Only “part?” SMDH.

There was no such half-heartedness on display at Frederick Douglass High School in the Bronx.  Their racial grievances were so urgent they could not wait until February to put them on display.

In December, a few days after the assassination of two New York police officers, two school cops raised an eyebrow when they saw what the New York Post called a “racially charged anti-cop poster.”

The Post broke the story this week: “We need justice for Mike Brown and Eric Garner. We can’t let these whites win. Let’s fight for what’s right, because if we don’t, no one will,” reads the poster, which was signed by the student. The principal dropped a dime on the cops, telling their boss the school cops gave her a “racist vibe.”  

SMDH.

Over at Bloomberg TV, Charlie Rose celebrated Black History Month with a conversation about the movie Selma with one of its stars, the rapper Common. Charlie graciously ignored all the parts of the movie they made up. As he ignored a song from Common celebrating the life of the New Jersey cop killer Joanne Chesimard. On the one hand, Common says she did not do it. On the other hand, the song explained why she did it.

Charlie? SMDH.

Let’s wrap up this intro to Black History Month in two courtrooms. The first in Aiken, South Carolina, where we saw a video of Stephon Carter as he pulled a gun and shot a cop at close range.

We did not have video of Fredrick Young killing two white kids in Detroit. But we do have video of what he said to kick off Black History Month when the judge gave him a moment to address the families of his victims: “I’d like to say sorry to the families of Aiyanna Jones, Michael Brown, Eric Garner,” he said. “And I want to apologize to them for not being able to get justice for their loved ones who was murdered in cold blood. And in respect for the peaceful protest, I want to say ‘hands up don’t shoot,’” he said, raising his hands in the air. “Black lives matter -- that’s it your honor.”

And that’s it for the start of Black History Month.

Colin Flaherty is the author of White Girl Bleed a Lot. His new book, Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry: The hoax of black victimization and its enablers, will be released March 1.

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