I have been provided with several rations’ worth of bitter amusement over the last few years , when reading various news stories, especially those concerning incidents of murder, rape, mayhem and property crime – most of which can be laid at the door of a certain violently dysfunctional urban demographic – and then comparing the sympathetic manner in which that specific demographic is presented in pop entertainment.

Yes, just as the sun rises in the east, one can absolutely count on black urban youth being cast as hapless, misunderstood yet endearing rascals, automatically the prime suspect in a murder actually committed by the prep-school son of a white Wall Street magnate, or a deranged Christian minister, or some middle-class white schlub with a dirty secret – as is usually wrapped up in the final ten minutes of an hour-long episode.

Just as certainly, one may also count upon reading the headline about a mass brawl at an entertainment venue, fast-food place, business or at concert, a random violent street shooting/stabbing or a particularly nasty street beat-down … nine out of ten, one scrolls down to the story, or the pictures accompanying the story showing or describing the participants in brief detail, and says to oneself, “Self … yeah, just what I thought.”

Everybody knows that so-called urban black youths are the ones responsible for committing a staggering percentage of reported and unreported violent crime: murder, rape, robbery-assault or just plain assault. Everybody knows, except perhaps foreign viewers doing an epic binge of American crime drama. And almost everyone would prefer to deny this knowledge publicly. Generally, whites – especially the more prosperous whites in government, academia or media – don’t want to be tarred with the brush of accusations of racism by others in pointing this out or even admitting to acting preemptively on that knowledge or on the advice of John Derbyshire.

Prosperous and middle-class blacks are, I think, simultaneously embarrassed by the murderous antics of the black underclass and confounded by their own success in rising above it and in doing so they have somehow lost authenticity. Getting an education, making a good living, and creating a functional, affectionate family is somehow “acting white” and to be scorned by “real” black folk – the urban black underclass. Somehow, they have become the element setting the tone of the black minority culture. Which is purely ironic, as the black urban underclass has become everything that 19th century slaveholding racists insisted that blacks were: ignorant, illiterate, dissolute, violent at the slightest provocation and crudely lascivious. (Frederick Douglass must be spinning in his grave like a Black & Decker drill these days.) Thomas Sowell wrote an essay positing that the black underclass picked up these unsavory traits wholesale from the white Southern rednecks; a valid point, but the white redneck underclass hardly can be said to steering white culture generally. Instead, we repeat stories of Florida Man’s antics and snicker heartlessly.

But the urban black underclass has a powerful death-grip on black American culture, demonstrated by the new, shiny AOC-like star in the Democrat Party, Jasmine Crockett. Rep. Crockett, elected by a largely black district in Dallas, Texas to the US House of Representatives was the recipient of a privileged upbringing, including private school education and college. But she seems to find it necessary to present in public as a semi-literate, semi-articulate, potty-mouthed ‘hood ratlette with a resentful chip on her shoulder the size of the battleship Missouri. Nothing like the educated, articulate person that she really ought to be, given that background. That’s the other sad irony – that successful, prosperous leaders find it somehow necessary to take social cues from the worst and dysfunctional. Again – Frederick Douglass … et cetera. Too late for her parents to get a refund of the tuition to that nice Catholic girls’ school, I guess.
If there is any chance of positive change in the black community, it will have to come from inside the demographic. There’s nothing that outsiders can do, or want to do, or would even be welcome. All that is possible for us –white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever – to do is to quietly avoid the dangerous demographic to the best degree that we can. Comment as you wish, and dare.