Tuesday, December 22, 2015

No Safe Spaces at Morning Joe

Mika Brezinski on MSNBC's Morning Joe gave former senator Rick Santorum a good browbeating yesterday for holding politically incorrect views on Muslims, but she herself said something that should have sent the racial sensitivity antenna of liberals humming toward the end of her reprimand:
Forget that citing white men with guns seemed like a bit of a non-sequitur in the context of the discussion, the deeper concern is the explicit racism, at least as the PC crowd see racism, in her challenge to Santorum. Why "white" men? Why does race matter when talking about gun deaths? Why not just say "men with guns"? This seems a clear-cut case of racial "macroaggression" if ever there was one.

Maybe somebody might reply that Mika believes the problem in this country really is white men with guns, that white men are responsible for the overwhelming majority of gun deaths nationally, but surely she can't think that. If she does she's burying her head in the sand. Has she not heard of the homicide statistics coming out of cities like Chicago where in one year five hundred victims are murdered by non-whites wielding guns?

Consider the data from FBI statistics for 2014:

2722 homicides were committed by whites (including several hundred females and Hispanics) in 2014. Blacks, despite being only 12% -15% of the population, committed 2676 homicides - virtually the same number as whites. If we assume that most of these murders were committed with guns then for Mika to implicate white men when white men are, in terms of their proportion of the population, obviously not responsible for the gun death problem in America clearly reveals a racial animus on her part toward whites.

Here's an irony: Her implied claim that the gun problem is a problem primarily of white men is factually incorrect but evidently acceptable in the liberal circles in which she moves because it's politically correct. However, had a conservative alleged that the real problem is black men with guns, she would be factually correct but would be labelled a racist for saying it because political correctness is more important in much of our society than is truth.

P.S. Those who, like me, are concerned about excessive use of force by police, might find this chart interesting. Look at the tiny sliver (pale blue) of deaths caused by police at the top of the chart. Notice that not only are the percentages of deaths, including justified deaths, caused by police miniscule, they're also about the same for whites as they are for blacks. We don't hear much about that from our media: