Black Man From the ‘Hood Takes On Racism, Reviewing Colin Flaherty’s Books, “White Girl Bleed a Lot” and “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry.”

With Starbucks closing for “racial sensitivity training” and the Roseanne cancellation currently in the spotlight, I’d like to emphasize that the media seldom talk to black people from the ‘hood despite speaking on subjects that pertain mainly to them. ‘Hood folks are too busy trying to survive in Trump’s America and media seldom gives them a voice so writings like Colin Flaherty’s “White Girl Bleed a Lot” and “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry” tend to go unchecked and continue to help fuel the American racist undercurrent that lead to Roseanne’s comment and Starbucks’ recent discrimination against two black men. I, as a person born and raised in the ‘hood and since assimilated, have taken the time to read both books and write a combined objective review based on the books’ information’s merits.  Enjoy! 

 

Racism is America’s HIV, suppressing the country’s immune system’s ability to truly stay healthy. Unity should be America’s natural defense, but lack of this crucial element causes its condition to slowly develop into deadly, irreconcilable social divisions—the AIDS of any country, so to speak. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome doesn’t actually kill a person, rather some other sickness the body could handle under normal circumstances, like a cold, delivers the last death blow. Imagine if the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, who successfully defended countless white aerial bomber crews, rejected the American ideal and subscribed to racism. Imagine if the 200,000 black troops that fought the South in the Civil War suddenly rejected the concept of an American union and pledged bigotry. Ignoring racism weakens us, allowing other nations to infiltrate our nation in their own interest and to our demise. Americans have trouble digging into the specifics of racism because the subject, by its own virtue, demonizes the ruling class, white males. Instead it is easier to address the topic by closing one’s ears and simply saying, “you’re a racist.” America’s mainstream tends to react this way, not knowing that fear of demonization drives this destructive tendency.

Black people who refuse to take up the conversation are just as guilty as white professionals and institutions, such as TV stations, major publications and public officials, who have dismissed Colin Flaherty, author of two books, White Girl Bleed a Lot and Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry, as a “race-baiting” quack. The opportunity to discuss race with an actual purveyor of racism is presenting itself, and no one wishes to seize it. Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic indicted the mainstream media in his piece, The First White President, by pointing out that it is complicit in perpetuating white supremacy (a term I narrow to “white-male” supremacy) by avoiding this tough conversation. By writing off the likes of Colin Flaherty, America allows his racist views, America’s original disease, to spread unchecked among the limited thinking masses and easy self-esteem seekers. Colin Flaherty’s racist books both have 4.5/5 ratings on Amazon.com, continue to get rave reviews from readers, and have risen to #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Our media, which bear the responsibility of apprising citizens of our nation’s happenings, refuse to stare racism in its face and make a true assessment. Instead, just as the majority, they choose to ignore it in hopes it will go away. Just like disregarding HIV, each day of denial brings us closer to demise.

Colin Flaherty is absolutely right when he says America is experiencing an epidemic, but his books are no more than a way to capitalize on the real threat to American society, an increasing lack of critical thinking skills and limited thinking tendencies on the part of its people. American education and the way Americans consume information has rendered us into people who accept pre-packaged information, flaws included, from anyone who can sell himself or herself as an expert. Flaherty has skillfully packaged a combination of true racial violence with other violence as filler and fed it to his readers, who seem satisfied with the contents labeled, “Black Mob” and “Racial Violence.”

This subject matter is right up my alley. It is not scholarly and clearly has the aim of pointing out black shortcomings to the gain of white-male self-esteem. There’s a great divide between theoretical, scholarly America and the impressionable mainstream; I call it “Paper vs. Practice”, where scholars become so obsessed with theories, academic concepts and titles that they lose sight of reality. While the powers that be write Mr. Flaherty off, the masses are eating his material up—hook, line, and sinker. In his book, Flaherty tries to engage several media and government figures, but they just brush him off as a “race-baiter.” The Paper vs. Practice phenomena became evident in the 2016 Presidential elections when academic America, on paper, saw the “Blue Wall” that practically guaranteed Hillary Clinton’s victory. However, in practice, impressionable America, the Colin Flaherty readers of the country, were going to sleep early, preparing to cast their ballots the next day. The new President’s campaign had its finger on the pulse of America while Democrats were fixated on the scholarly theoretical pulse. They learned the hard way that academic America with their theories, surveys, polls and formulas, were severely out of touch.

 

I am genuinely fascinated by the subject of racism and spend a great amount of time exploring it. I’m from the ‘hood, and have assimilated into a truly middle class life working in the film industry as a commercial Assistant Director. My job is to get executives, crews and cast sometimes numbering in the hundreds and all having different interests, on the same page working as one unit. Needless to say, I have to create connections with a myriad of types of people even if we have opposing views and interests. Being that Hollywood is the world’s melting pot, I have access to and have connected an array of people no academic research could ever compare to. The most dramatic connection I’ve made was with a Neo-Nazi ex-convict, complete with a Swastika tattoo in the middle of his chest and “white power” inked above his eyebrow. Believe it or not, he was pleasant to work with and you wouldn’t even know we stood on opposing sides of the ideology spectrum by the way we worked together.

I’ve also been on the opposite side of what Mr. Flaherty reports on, meaning I’ve been in “race riots” and incidents where white people have been punched. I also have friends who have had black on white violence perpetrated on them. Given my life experience, I’m extremely agile-minded in that I can find anyone on what I call the “Mentality Map,” where I use my empathy, imagination and creativity to mentally become someone else thinking as they do, even racists. Locating a person’s mentality involves removing emotion and respecting their views as a product of sincere belief, even though it might not be. Triangulating a racist’s mental position, my position and a third fictional, neutral-minded position of a person expressing the racist’s views in earnest, enables me to locate nearly anyone on the mentality map with great accuracy. I can connect to social rivals, such as racists and bigots, and solicit information that no heated argument would ever yield. The knowledge I get proves useful in creating solutions. It also serves me in my profession.

I derive much of my information by anonymously feuding with racist commenters online; they tend to be more candid when hiding behind a screen name. I find that the vast majority of racist commenters cannot back up their views with any substantial information or sources. You can tell these people were fed their opinions by a second or third-hand source. However, every so often, I encounter racists with well-founded views. These people are a gold mine for me and my efforts to understand racists and racism better. Online personalities have increasingly been citing Colin Flaherty’s books as support for their xenophobic views, so I bought a copy of White Girl Bleed a Lot. Flaherty proved to be the ultimate specimen of the online personalities times 100. Plus, he was in the open and standing behind his views, which is extremely rare.

The professional reviews I’ve seen on White Girl Bleed a Lot (WGBL) and Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry (DMBKA), while insightful, do not rise to the task of refuting the concept. Even the dissenting reviews are more so itemized dismissals than effective refutations of Colin Flaherty’s theme. The former is understandable because of the tendency of white Americans to try to eliminate racism by ignoring it. Terms like “black mob” and “Racial violence” provide the perfect opportunity to close one’s eyes and ears and say, “I don’t want to hear it because racism doesn’t exist.” Readers, being of the masses, are more receptive to articles that say, “he says this and it’s dumb because it’s not true and he’s a racist.” However, the disease of racism does exist, affecting Americans of all colors, so to advance the conversation my approach is, “so you feel this is happening, tell me more.” I welcome the conversation and invite America to take the brave step forward in curing our illness and becoming a “more perfect union” by exploring what we’ve been avoiding, the most powerful force in America, racism.

So what is “black mob violence?” What is “racial crime?” The premises of Colin Flaherty’s two books seem to constantly change. The subtitle of his first book White Girl Bleed a Lot is “The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore it.” Flaherty is our countryman and therefore deserves respect, so let’s take him seriously in order to learn about him and others with his mindset. For Mr. Flaherty, “racial violence” seems to be anything spectacular involving black people. Somehow incidents involving all black people in black neighborhoods made it into his book. For instance, on the 4^th of July 2013, a black guy shoots a black father and two of his kids. As tragic as this event is, it has nothing to do with mobs or racism. If these books are going to be about an epidemic of black people attacking white folks, then half of the examples do not fit the theme.

It is no secret that black neighborhoods have been violent, so lets discuss why. In a nutshell, black people are at the bottom of the lower class in America, despite the few exceptions like Jay Z, Oprah, and Michael Jordan. There are only three African American Billionaires, and two have well-known names, which says a lot. The vast majority of African Americans are poor, and amongst the deprived is where you will find dysfunction in any Western society. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 made Germany poor, and where did the most violent episode of Europe’s history occur?

Conventional wisdom seems to say that black people invented gang culture out of thin air, but that’s not true. Most gangs formed in reaction to white mob violence perpetrated on blacks when white men did not want to respect the new African American freedoms that came with the 1960s civil rights legislation. White mobs calling themselves the “Coon Catchers” and “Spook Hunters” sought to terrorize black people into “staying in line”, so black people emulated the dominant culture and grouped together to protect themselves.

Gang culture really took off in the 80s when the white-male-run government, failing in its purpose of providing a platform for prosperity for its citizens, allowed a new drug economy to fill the vacuum created by their economic failure. If you ever wondered why the gang violence didn’t skyrocket in the 1960s or 70s, the answer is membership did not have a financial incentive until the American government allowed Nicaraguan contras to supply gangs with cocaine. The influx of drugs shifted black people’s cultural focus, forcing everyone to adapt to this illegal economy. Gangs became extremely violent, and instead of addressing the problem, the American government capitalized by creating programs to penalize the people involved. The Edward Byrne fund granted police departments more money based on drug arrests. The government also created Operation Pipeline, a program designed to put black people in jail by scouring the neighborhoods, denying black people their 4^th amendment right. The end result of this Governmental misdeed was black people violently settling their problems amongst themselves because they could no longer rely on police, who because of the War on Drugs, became obsessed with jailing people for illegal substances instead of solving problems. The neighborhoods became tougher, and now that kids from the ‘hood are venturing out into the wider world, different methods of solving problems are becoming evident.

What white people often settle with words, gets them punched when dealing with black people from the ‘hood. ‘Hood folks know to stop arguing at a certain point to avoid violence, where white people will get in each other’s face and yell at the top of their lungs to settle a problem. I observed this difference in my early adulthood when we would venture into white neighborhoods to go to parties. Some white guy would have a problem with one of my friends and charge him to yell in his face, only to be caught with a right hook and knocked out. I’m sure many white men have experienced the same thing and conclude that black people are violent. No. There are just cultural differences between people who have had the luxury of police that solved their problems and those who didn’t.

 

White Girl Bleed a Lot

First, if I were in need of a budget director, Flaherty is the guy. His economical approach to presenting violent incidents is phenomenal. WGBL is 394 pages and it is supposed to document “thousands of videos and over 500 episodes of ‘black mob,’ ‘racial’ violence.” In truth, Flaherty has skillfully used a budget of true racial violence, mixed with a portion of events that happen to involve different races and a large helping of black violence (which is no secret in America) to artfully promote a narrative I am all too familiar with from debating racists online, an ensuing race-war. I estimate that WGBL would be half its size if he were to write about each event once and not “fluff” it up with nonsense. He cunningly writes about an incident beginning with “July of 2011” and in a later chapter he describes the same event again in full detail, beginning with “a few months later,” adding volume to his book and doubling the impact of a single event. Flaherty writes about several occurrences, sometimes between three and five times. For instance, a large fight in Philadelphia broke out and a man named Jeremy Shenkel got beat up. As the kids beat him up they said, “It’s not our fault you can’t fight.” Flaherty weaves this fear-provoking statement into a story on page three; he then tells the whole story on page five, then on page 39 he tells the story again, this time referring to Shenkel as “the victim.” Flaherty once again tells the same story by beginning chapter 29 with Mr. Shenkel’s experience and quotation. If this is not pitiful enough, he tells it again on page 21 of his second book (DMBKA), describing the victim as a “middle-aged white man.” I’ve written a book, have gone through the editing process, and can tell you that any half-competent editor would bring these stories’ repetition to the writer’s attention and urge they consolidate them into perhaps a mention in the intro and a full story in a chapter. Printing this book in this form indicates that Flaherty deliberately inflated his book’s content, perhaps for visual impact, but definitely to infect his readers’ minds with his paranoia about black people coming to repay him for slavery. He’s like a person infected with HIV purposely having unprotected sex to create awareness of an epidemic. Even more alarming is that none of my online opponents ever mentioned his story over-usage to me. Nor have any of the book reviews from readers on Amazon.com or professionals I’ve read mention this. It makes me worry about the general ability of Americans to comprehend information. He also has endorsements from very credible people, such as journalist John Derbyshire, who describes Flaherty as “…just an old-style reporter with no ax to grind” and Neal Boortz who calls Flaherty“public enemy #1 to the leftist media because of his research on black culture of violence,” and David Horowitz, who says Flaherty, “broke rank to document these rampages.” These guys actually take him seriously. None of these prominent men make any light of his books’ convoluted messaging, which really makes me question America’s general intelligence. Have we been dumbed down and duped?

I won’t bore the reader with every story Flaherty tells multiple times, but I will list a few. The “Philly suburb” incident at Sears on page 5 is the same “Upper Darby” fight as on page 237. There’s an incident on page 91 involving only black people that doesn’t belong in a book of “racial violence” where a group of black teens assaulted Rubin Robinson, after he spilled a drink on one of them. This is the same event as page 245. The assault on Nihan Tran on page 200 is the same one as page 250. He also shares the same story on page 376 of his next book DMBKA. The event on page 201 where Danny Vega was killed is the same one as on page 251 and retold in his second book on page 376. The event on page 202 where two “passengers” were assaulted is the same one from page 221. Flaherty simply duplicates them by referring to them as flight attendants. The Bus Driver fight from page 206 is the same event from 342. The assault in a Milwaukee park in the intro (page ii) is the same one from page 111, page 277, and on page 319 of DMBKA. I can keep going but you get it. The burning question in my mind (and probably yours) is, if there is an epidemic of racial violence, why not share all the stories instead of repeating the same ones? Why the need to report on black-on-black assaults when there are so many black-on-white ones? If you’re exposing something, doesn’t it make sense to actually expose all of it and not events that don’t pertain to the theme?

Mr. Flaherty also exaggerates his theme by turning single events into many. For instance, the “Thousands of black people who had swarmed the upscale bars, restaurants and shops in South Philly” are the same people that injured a local reporter Emily Guendelsberger and her boyfriend. This same group beat up and taunted Jeremy Shenkel, and although he begins another story with “and months later,” they are the same kids from the Anna Taylor story. One occurrence, yet four stories in a single chapter. If Mr. Flaherty really respected his readers’ intelligence, he would say, “a group of kids rampaged through and upscale bar area, causing havoc in restaurants and shops. Then they proceeded downtown where they beat up News Reporter, Guendelsberger, and her boyfriend. They then continued their rampage and hurt Anna Taylor. If this is the way white men view black people’s actions actions no wonder they seem to have a chip on their shoulder. It’s like the police officer after a foot-chase that, in addition to the original crime, charges the suspect with j-walking, littering and trespassing because he dropped his bag of Skittles, ran across the street and through a yard.

Flaherty’s claim to fame is an article he wrote that helped get a black man out of jail, who had been convicted of trying to kill his white girlfriend. This brings up a point about white men in general. Their scientific approach to building a society makes them see good will as a tally of points and not as something existential. “I have a black friend so I can’t be racist.” “I hire black employees so I’m not racist.” Donald Sterling, ex-owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, is a prime example. He mentioned in a conversation that he felt “he loved black people” because he owned a basketball team that served as a means for many black men to prosper. In the same conversation he said “don’t bring them to the games.” In his mind he was not a racist because of his deeds even though he was expressing bigotry. Flaherty’s approach is, essentially, “I helped a court see an innocent black man’s innocence and have black endorsers, so I am immune to being racist even if I write a racist book.” White men tend to think a tally of gestures and deeds can absolve them from coming to terms with who they are. I find this phenomenon rampant when speaking to white men online. In one debate during the Colin Kaepernick controversy I brought up how the Star Spangled Banner celebrates terrorizing and killing slaves in its third verse. The debater told me Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote America’s National Anthem, was not racist because he “fought for many slaves’ freedom.” This person conveniently didn’t learn or forgot that Francis Scott Key was a slave owner himself. Plus, Key’s goal was to send freed Africans back to Africa to colonize it on behalf of America. The debater felt Key’s fight for some slaves’ freedom outweighed his holding human beings in bondage and intent to exclude them from enjoying what they and their ancestors built. Many don’t know that numerous abolitionists we hold so dear in our hearts did not seek to free slaves into American society, rather their seemingly altruistic intent was to release and deport them back to Africa. American popular sentiment and history books regard Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves as being good-hearted, when his principal goal was to keep the union together, whether with slavery or without. He even said, “…there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” President Lincoln said that black people could never live in equality with white men and he was right, yet we Americans consider him a good man because of his deed.

 

Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry

Colin Flaherty’s first book must have been a resounding success because his story repetition scheme increases exponentially in his second book. So does what I call, “anglomale narcissism,” where white men can’t see the wrong in white men’s misdeeds. I know all white men aren’t Anglo-Saxons but you must admit, the term is catchy and illustrates a phenomenon.

Clearly Flaherty’s readers didn’t catch his scheme the first time because Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry (DMBKA) is 106 pages longer and the book’s dimensions are bigger. He got so confident that he used this extra space to repeat stories even more times; sometimes five times in the same book. This time Flaherty was smart and took the index out; I guess he realized how obviously the index in WGBL revealed his method. He also downgraded his reference game significantly by solely listing websites as footnotes. To see YouTube clips, readers of physical books, like me, would have to type in its full URL code perfectly. I did a few times only to realize the page had been removed. This is a very effective way to make people not verify your sources.

Here are a few of his story repeats from DMBKA. The Kansas Country Club Plaza event on page three is the same as on page 44, page 77, page 104 and page 166. The High school fights from page 21 are repeated on page 129 and 382. Flaherty also tells these stories in the intro and page 43 of his last book. The roller skating fights from page 60 are the same ones from page 298. The attacks from page 68 in Portland, Oregon are the same from page 233. The 50 year-old teacher beaten on page 87 is the same person from page 208. The Indiana Black Expo event from page 94 is the same from 201, page 341 and page 438. The Black Beach Week event from page 95 is the same as page 271. Flaherty tells the story of a girl that fell from a window in Chicago on page 153, page 227 and page 285. He also tells the same story on page 226 of his last book. The 86 year-old veteran from page 161 is redressed as simply a “white man” and his story retold on page 437. The Jewish kid punched in Brooklyn on page 163 has his neighborhood re-labeled as “Crown Heights” on page 390. Crown Heights is in Brooklyn and the two stories are from one occurrence. Mr. Flaherty tells Tracey Halvorson’s gentrification story on page 232, page 287, page 330 and page 452. Flaherty claims, “1000 new and recent examples of black mob and black-on-white crime and denial and deceit and encouragement documented in this book.” My question is, if you have so many new examples, why do you keep recapping the old ones, and why all the repetition? Once again, no legitimate editor would allow a blunder like this.

Lack of empathy and understanding is the life-blood of Flaherty’s books. From police telling people in their own neighborhood to stop using fireworks on the 4^th of July to white men driving up to a crowd of 30 black kids ordering them to stop their snowball fight so they can park, Flaherty seems unable to see the wrong in white males imposing their will on other people’s situations. In one story, a car full of white men driving down the beach strip can’t get anywhere because of the Labor Day pedestrian traffic of mainly black people. One of the white men yells out “run them over” and the driver “guns it.” Flaherty considers these men victims because the crowd got angry and started kicking their car. Many of the situations in Flaherty’s book could have been avoided had the victims simply not done anything to provoke an incident. For instance, a man named Jim Thomas got beat up in Savannah, Georgia when it appears he said or did something to anger a black man walking by minding his own business. The black guy then goes back and punches him. This whole situation could have been avoided by Thomas simply not doing what he did. But Anglo-narcissistic Mr. Thomas sees no fault, saying to a local news station, “He, (the black guy) was the aggressor in the whole thing,” seemingly oblivious to the fact that the situation didn’t exist until he created it. Even more disturbing, the surveillance video mysteriously begins right after whatever Mr. Thomas did and only shows the black man going after him. There’s absolutely no way a surveillance camera just started rolling at the perfect moment between cause and effect. Someone who handled the footage, possibly the police department, edited it to the advantage of the white guy, probably the same type of person to find Flaherty’s books truthful.

Flaherty doesn’t seem to understand that this country was built on race and the problem was never solved. Most of the incidents in his books result from the wave of highly publicized killings of unarmed black men by white men. A chapter into the book, I made a list of the dates and names of the unarmed black people killed during that period along with their killers’ acquittal dates and it coincides with Flaherty’s “epidemic.” The uptick of teenaged black boys randomly punching white men occurs right after Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were killed (we consider George Zimmerman white). Those teens were venting anger and trying to warn white men not to kill them. In fact, the very first example in his book in Waterfront Park, KY occurred when the courts had already found George Zimmerman “not guilty” and one month earlier, a jury let Jordan Davis’ murderer, Michael Dunn off with an attempted murder conviction despite killing the unarmed teen in cold blood. Flaherty refers to Jordan Davis as the “national poster boy for white on black violence” and Dunn the “chief villain.” This is not a play, rather it’s real lives and real mothers grieving because white men don’t think black lives matter. American history is primarily white men rampaging through the continent attacking and killing others, but they didn’t just knock their victims out. They castrated them, hung them, burned them, raped, and killed their families and children. The first chapter of the book, “Red Summer”, starts in 1919 with a black farmer, Louis Ruffin, who had great relations with the white people in his city and served as a sort of diplomat between the black and white communities. He was headed to a church celebration when the police pulled up behind Ruffin with his arrested friend in the back seat. He attempted to write a bond check but they demanded cash. Suddenly the officer fired at him, all hell broke loose, and the officer along with Ruffin’s friend were dead. That night, the town’s white men ravaged the whole city, burning down churches and homes. They killed and tortured many black people indiscriminately, including throwing Mr. Ruffin’s two sons into a fire. And Flaherty complains about the “Knockout Game” myth?

As I read DMBKA I found myself wondering about the white victims, “why didn’t he just walk away,” “why would he do that,” “that wasn’t smart.” For instance, on page 387, Ronald Russo and his wife were in their car stuck at a crosswalk because a group of kids were crossing illegally. Ronald claims he “honked for them to get out of the way” and they surrounded his car, kicking it. Then, according to Flaherty, he “got out to inspect the damage” and the kids assaulted him and his wife. Anglomale narcissism is written all over this story. For one, why in the hell would you honk at a bunch of unruly kids? Secondly, if the kids were violent to your car, why would you get out and risk them being violent to you? Although Mr. Russo could have avoided the whole situation by letting the kids pass and not telling them what to do, he elected to engage them. He then irresponsibly doubled down on the endangerment by placing he and his wife in danger when he got out of the car. Flaherty goes on to repeat the same story on page 398, describing Mr. Russo and his wife as “a white couple.”

In Georgia, the incident involving the 30 kids playing in the snow mentioned before, a group of white people drove into these kids’ snow fight, demanded they stop and then got beat up. Flaherty describing it as “30 black people punching, kicking and spitting at five white people including a mom and baby” reeks of Anglomale narcissism. The news report said something different. According to freerepublic.com, a snowball hit the white family’s car, so the wife got out and demanded they stop their snow fight. She was then hit with a snowball so the husband idiotically got out and confronted the kids, which led to him getting a beat down. His friends tried to help and got their butts kicked too. As I read this story, I wondered, why didn’t they just leave? If I walk into a situation I don’t agree with I just leave. I’ve walked into concerts, seen one too many confederate flags and didn’t feel compelled to tell the crowd to put them away. I’ve been to parties and heard white people say the “N” word too many times and didn’t feel an urge to tell them to change the way they speak. I simply leave. One societal group, white males, are the only members of Western society that historically have never had to regard any other race or gender in their discourse, so they’re the only people delusional enough to demand a group of 30 black kids having fun to stop, and really expect them to. Without a weapon or police, you have no ability to enforce such a ridiculous demand. Flaherty also speaks of a gentrification story where Tracie Halvorson complains that she can’t visit her local park because of the violence and drug dealing there. He really thinks that a community is supposed to change their behavior to accommodate the new white resident. Only people not accustomed to considering others in their life’s discourse would not find that idea ridiculous.

In another episode of anglomale narcissism, two off-duty police officers from Minneapolis, MN went to Green Bay for a night out. Alcohol was involved and one of the cops called a black guy a nigger and punched him. The cop even made the statement, “The mob was doing their monkey thing. We’re police officers. I punched him in the face and I will do it again.” He also made fun of his own openly gay police chief. Wow! I feel sorry for all the black and gay people in the district where he enforces law. Anyway, Flaherty feels these officers, who obviously started a fight with a group of black guys for “doing their monkey thing,” are victims. His anglomale narcissism completely eliminates their admitted guilt. People like Flaherty sit on grand juries to indict officers that have killed unarmed black men. They are judges, policemen, legislators, teachers and people of great influence throughout America. Flaherty even claims that many cops, active and retired, support his views and send him stories and information about racial violence. If you want to see the root of America’s problem with hurting black people, Colin Flaherty’s mind is the key.  

The Green bay incident I just mentioned made me think; a lot of these situations in Flaherty’s book seem so illogical, however, they make perfect sense if you add one element, the “N” word. The phrase “get out of the crosswalk niggers” would make kids surround and kick Mr. Russo’s car, the “N” word would definitely cause that black man to suddenly become obsessed with Mr. Thomas in Savannah and the “N” word would surely bring a black guy enjoying his night out into an off-duty Officer’s punching range to punish him for doing his “monkey thing.” I’m not saying any of these people besides the Minnesota police officer used this horrible racial epithet, but I can tell you many stories in DMBKA seem extremely far-fetched. However, if you add the “N” word to all of them, they make complete sense. Common denominator?

Flaherty may not know but some of his white witnesses’ quotes express the same brand of discontent that leads to black people having conflict with police. One person who was disappointed that police shut down his local 4^th of July fireworks show sarcastically says,“…Nothing better to see police in riot gear riding on the outside of a SWAT van as the fireworks celebrating our freedom from the English rule rush toward a crowd of idiots, then police officers telling people that are there to watch the fireworks that THEY have to leave. “ Hmmmm. Apply that logic to this incident in DMBKA: “In Watts, Los Angeles, in (sic) July 4, 2012 eight hundred black people setting off fireworks at the Nickerson Gardens public housing project did not take kindly to police and fireman (sic) who showed up to stop it. During the incident, the suspects allegedly tossed rocks, bottles and fireworks at Los Angeles police officers…” If the white witness is allowed to be mad at police for ending the fireworks show, why aren’t the residents in Watts? Now imagine a life where in addition to fireworks shows, police stop you from walking to the store, they stop you and your friends from standing and talking, you can’t do anything without wondering if police are going to exercise domain over your freedom or in America’s forefathers’ words, your “pursuit of happiness.” It’s a constant frustration for people in the ‘hood, so no wonder this incident culminated when they were enjoying fireworks on the 4^th of July and police in riot gear menacingly demanded they stop. One call from a resident and police use it as a means of exercising domain over their community, telling them what they have to stop doing. I’ve been at parties in white neighborhoods where a resident calls police. Sometimes they don’t show up. If they do, the approach is completely different and respectful. In the ‘hood police speak to grown men and women like children. They speak to mothers in front of their grown children with the disrespect they would an animal and if someone says something, police escalate the situation immediately. One person throws something at police and another theme prevalent throughout Flaherty’s books takes place; all the black people are punished as being responsible. In the two books, if two black people in a crowd of 20 get in a fight, “20 people are fighting.” Flaherty doesn’t bother to distinguish and police don’t either. They just tell everyone to leave. If you ask why, they don’t acknowledge you and simply repeat their command in a forceful tone. Ask again and they pull out their billy-club and lunge at you the same way a person stomps at a threatening stray dog. One of the people involved in the Watts incident wrote, “I got attacked by racist cops and attack dogs yesterday, cuz niggas wanted to start a riot at the fireworks.” So this person clearly wasn’t a rioter but police, just like Flaherty, see them as violent and attacked them. If you don’t see how this could result in rocks and bottles being thrown at police, you are probably part of the problem.

I once left a nightclub in Hollywood where The Game, a Los Angeles rapper, and a rival rapper were partying. I walked outside and police had shut down Hollywood Boulevard, with the whole department lining the streets in riot gear—helmets, batons, pepper spray and shotguns. Well, when The Game left, he got in his car and went home and so did the other rapper. What were police thinking? Needless to say, my plans to go to the after party changed when I saw all those LAPD gang members out for blood that night. It’s extremely demoralizing when your mere presence brings your own government ready for war.

Video from the night LAPD shut down Hollywood Blvd simply because the rapper The Game was there.

Video from the night LAPD shut down Hollywood Blvd. simply because the rapper The Game was there.

Flaherty brought in a few “experts” to bolster his message in DMBKA. His psychological expert, Marlin Newburn, a psychologist he feels so confident in that he has to introduce him by qualification no less than eight separate times in the book. On pages 22, 92, 139, 154, 176, 220, 454 and 466, you will find some combination of the words, “Marlin spent 30 years in the criminal justice system learning about the motives of racial violence.” I wonder how Flaherty views his readers if he doesn’t think they can remember who his experts are. I also wonder how credible his expert’s information is if he must constantly qualify it with a preface. To get a sense of Marlin Newbern’s outlook, here is one of his quotes: “The sick trait is that they (black people) have no problem publicly complaining about life conditions they have created for themselves. Maladapted adolescents do this often.” He continues, “As well, they sanctify the most pathological people and conditions, i.e., ’The Trayvon Martin Foundation.’ That would be like white people setting up a scholarship program in memory of John Dillinger.” So in Mr. Newburn’s mind, Trayvon Martin was mentally sick with violent potential equal to a convicted cop killer that robbed 24 banks and four police stations. It’s horrifying to think Marlin, who refers to black people as “black street predators,” worked for 30 years as a court appointed psychologist. America appointed a man with these views to weigh in on black men’s legal fate. Here’s another quote from Newburn, “black street predators are a completely infantilized population in their preferred lifestyle.” Is American academia producing professionals with the potential to have these types of views? Marlin also wrote a review on Flaherty’s book and wasn’t bright enough to notice the convoluted messaging either. In another article he wrote, he says of Oprah Winfrey, “…not only displays her pathologies, she also re-establishes her toxic-tribal bona fides among black people.” He clearly takes issue with Oprah’s prosperity and black people’s celebration of it.

Marlin Newburn loathing Oprah Winfrey’s success showed me another tendency in Colin Flaherty’s books: they loathe anything black and established, including black organizations and black icons. They are obsessed. MLK Boulevard gets dragged into any incident in its vicinity: “In Tallahassee near Martin Luther King Boulevard a large group of black people was causing mayhem and violence.” Flaherty describes people protesting at a middle school on MLK Boulevard over a school related matter as being “gathered at Martin Luther King Drive.” In one story, Flaherty is disappointed that police didn’t describe robbery suspects by race, but seems to feel it was a concession that the police mention that it took place “one mile north of Martin Luther King Boulevard.” You mean to tell me they don’t have any other major streets to describe where this took place? Or are the police, like Flaherty, making it a point to associate Dr. King’s name with negativity. Flaherty also takes shots at black movies, such as Django Unchained, Fruitvale Station and The Butler, calling them “white victimization.” Flaherty speaks negatively about the NAACP, National Association of Black Journalists, Indiana Black Business Expo, Freaknik, Black Bike Week, Black Beach Week and Black College Week, just to name a few. He even dedicates three whole chapters to crimes during Black History Month. Flaherty seems to be against blacks organizing anything and only seeks to belittle and associate black establishments with negativity. He says P. Diddy’s name wrong calling him “Puff Diddy,” quite possibly being the only person on Earth to utter those words. Flaherty dismissively mentions 50 Cent’s multi-million dollar establishments, saying “whatever vodka they are selling these days.” I’m sure his condescending undertone satisfies his readers by reducing these American success stories to misspelled side notes.

DMBKA’s second “expert,” Taleeb Starks, appears to be a black guy exploiting the propensity of whites to gravitate to any black man agreeing with white men’s viewpoints. This is why Flaherty touts endorsements by Thomas Sowell and Allen West.

Flaherty dedicates a chapter to Lakim Faust, a racist black guy that tried to carry out a mass killing in North Carolina. He makes a comparison between Faust and “white people who shoot up schools.” Really? Before I speak on this let me be clear that it appears Mr. Faust is one of the few black people who can successfully be proven racist. He affected the destiny of white people because they were white, which makes him racist, and I am just as much against him as any white-male racism. With that said let’s make a comparison to gain understanding into Flaherty’s outlook. By “white people that shoot up schools” we can consider a couple of events, namely Columbine and Sandy Hook. In Flaherty’s mind, those occurrences and Mr. Faust’s crimes are directly comparable. In Faust’s attack, nobody died. In Columbine 15 people died and Sandy Hook, 28. Faust injured four people. In Columbine 21 were injured and in Sandy Hook, two. Perhaps Flaherty’s statement excludes deaths and only considers injuries. Regardless, if I were forced to wish one of the situations on a random group of people, Lakim Faust’s would be my choice. Mr. Flaherty would flip a coin.

Update March 15^th 2018: Since I started writing this, another white man has committed another massacre. On February 14^th 2018 (yes, Valentine’s Day), Nicholas Cruz, who identifies as Italian, slaughtered 17 innocent souls. This has yet to be posted on Colin Flaherty’s Facebook page. He manages to update it daily with incidents of black violence but mentions nothing of this tragic event. Anglomale Narcissism at its best.

Update May, 18^th 2018: Since my last update another white guy has committed yet another massacre. This time was in Santa Fe, Texas, where Dimitrious Pagourtzis killed eight kids, two teachers and injured 13 more including a police officer. No mention from Flaherty on his Facebook page. However, it does feature tons of less spectacular black crime such as black kids fighting fruit vendors and older white vets beating up on disrespectful black children. America can’t fix its problems until we first acknowledge them.

Not focusing on white men’s mass shooting tendencies is the Affirmative Action racist white men love. Recruiting the vastly under-qualified Lakim Faust into the ranks of white male mass shooters like Adam Lanza, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attributes these horrible deeds to men in general. I call it “obstructive generalization.” Generalizing white men’s deeds into just “men” obstructs the fact that they commit a lot of random, senseless and unpredictable violence. On the south side of Chicago, currently the most violent part of America, people not involved with gangs are relatively safe when compared to concertgoers uninvolved with whatever bothered Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock. In fact, in just 10 minutes, Mr. Paddock killed more than twice the amount of whites than were killed all year in all of Chicago. In Flaherty’s mind, unpredictable white male murder is just a general male issue, an approach I find lacking in integrity especially if you write a book complaining about the media not focusing on race. Either we’re going to focus on race or not. Racist white men tend to axiomatically socialize white male evil deeds, yet complain that the media doesn’t emphasize race when black men commit crimes. Which is it going to be?

White men are averse to studying racism because it is a catastrophic net loss for white male self-esteem and the white male image. If Western civilization is supposed to be about peace and prosperity based on hard work, America, Western culture’s ultimate triumph, has failed in its ideal solely because of white men. The black slaves did the hard work and were the only peaceful ones. However, the white men that owned them were violent in ways unknown to humanity and can hardly be considered hardworking. Without digressing into the slavery topic lets just say that since Western society is all about gains and losses, white men explored the subject of race with subjects taught in American universities like Phrenology, Ethnology and Eugenics when it was beneficial to them and now Fox News is up in arms because a professor wants to teach about racism in a Florida school.

In one incident in DMBKA, a lady named Amber Ruth’s car was surrounded by a crowd of black teenagers and someone breaks her window. She hails an officer dispersing the masses, expecting him to abandon his duty and arrest someone. She seems disappointed that he simply tells her to leave because it was not safe. Sounds like she had Flaherty-like expectations. Should police arrest all of them so she can pick one out to punish? Should they make a report and if so, what exactly are they supposed to write? “A black person broke her window?” How much potential for police-inflicted violence on black people would that create?

Flaherty doesn’t seem to understand that lack of specificity when designating suspects leads to racism. Several times in his book, he takes issue with police not arresting someone based on vague descriptions. If you’re in a crowd of black people and tell police that you were punched by a six-foot black male, you just described half the crowd. Should they just arrest all the six-foot black males to figure it out? They used to do this to us a lot. It caused a lot of trouble then and does in Flaherty’s stories, but he doesn’t see the fault. He has likely never experienced being in handcuffs lined up on a wall while some random white person who thinks you all look alike and may hate black people altogether, sits in the patrol car behind tinted glass deciding which one will go to jail tonight. With Flaherty’s outlook, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. If police arrest no one, Flaherty finds fault with it. If they arrest all the six-foot males, the innocent ones along with the taller and shorter become enraged and you have a big situation on your hands for him to call, “black mob violence.” The better solution is not to get punched. If you do, try not seeing all black people as looking the same and make an accurate description.

No review of a book on “black mob violence” would be complete without a look at white mob violence. It’s easy to associate mob violence with black people because of the media, which throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s prioritized reports of black crime while minimizing white. But white men originated the mob, and slave patrols were the inception of the “racial violence mob.” Just as black people can be distinguished from gangs, we can distinguish regular white people from the KKK. These normal white people in the Northern US, who we usually regard as “good” for not having slavery, formed mobs and created a period called the “Red Summer” in 1919. White mob violence was rampant and caused more death and destruction than all the “black mob violence that has ever happened in the United States.” White mobs killed 940 black people in the summer of 1919 alone. I’d be curious to know how many deaths Flaherty can attribute to “black mob violence.” Since only about 20 white people were murdered in Chicago in 2017, the bulk of them by other whites, black people will never catch up.

When you control the fruits of the masses’ labor, you have the luxury of making your white mob less obvious. Today’s white mobs have uniforms and radios so they don’t have to travel around in full mob form. A quick radio call with the words “officer down” will assemble a mob ready to kill any threat in seconds; even off-duty police will show up. It’s even written into law that when they turn their sirens on, Americans must provide a clear route to the mob assembly point. Also, when the people’s tax dollars fund your “white mob,” and one can make a living as a member, many black people would find its prospects enticing; being a member also ensures less of a chance you will fall victim to it. Thus, the “white mob’s” enforcement arm can recruit black people and not technically be “white”, however the pedantic approach to using law to impose violence on black people has not changed. Police today do the exact thing white men did to black people throughout America’s violent history. Succinctly put, white mobs have just been disguised so well that Mr. Flaherty actually thinks white people are actually the persecuted group.

Thinking about black and white mobs made me realize that these supposed “black mobs” are a lot gentler than their white counterparts of the past and police today. The very first example of black mobs in the book features “hundreds of black people rampaging for three hours” in Waterfront Park, KY. I’m thinking, “and nobody died?” So many people riot throughout this book and victims are only walking away with black eyes and broken jaws. I wish America’s white mobs were that gentle.

Flaherty speaks of white gentrifiers as “Urban Pioneers.” “Pioneer” means “first to settle.” So who are the people already living in the urban neighborhoods before the white people? Non-human, as many racist online debaters call me and as our President describes MS-13 gang members? It appears that Mr. Flaherty has Christopher Columbus Syndrome and doesn’t see non-whites as people. Needless to say, white suburbanites are moving into non-white neighborhoods, the cultural differences are causing conflict, and some are getting beat up. One must ask themselves, if the “black mobs” that rough up white gentrifiers could have uniforms, make enforceable laws and a department to enforce them, how do you think they’d behave? Would they intimidate the white people under the color of authority to protect the neighborhood’s interests? Does this sound familiar? Have you heard the countless accounts by black people that move to white neighborhoods only to be followed, harassed, and beaten by local police? The only difference between what black people do to gentrifiers and what police do to blacks living in white neighborhoods is one is state sanctioned by the American government.

DMBKA’s highpoint is the chapter, “Black Crime Stats: High and Should Be Higher,” where Mr. Flaherty attempts to prove that America’s War on Drugs and tendency to enforce law more against blacks doesn’t influence black crime statistics, rather, black culture does. I got excited when I saw this chapter because I knew he would have to back up a claim I’m very familiar with with details. Many institutions, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics (yes, the very entity that benefits from jailing black men) and the ACLU, have proven and now concur that black people bore the brunt of the “War on Drugs” and that it was really a war on black people. Flaherty quotes radio host Cynthia Tucker who says, “countless studies have shown that black Americans’ drug use is in line with their share of the U.S. population.” Instead of taking the “many sources” head-on or finding a shared scheme to discredit, Flaherty picks the Census Bureau’s National Household Survey on Drug Abuse and Health study to try and prove white moral superiority.

There’s a really good book called The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander that makes the best case for how America employed drugs to reduce countless black people to second-class citizens. Here are a couple of points to illustrate how it happened, all provable. The War on Drugs started two years before crack cocaine became a problem. The Government created the Edward Byrne Fund, which gave departments more funding based on drug arrests. This incentivized and prioritized drug enforcement. Departments had to figure out who would be the enemy in this War on Drugs so they picked the most politically inept citizen group in America, black people. The results were skyrocketing prison numbers, tons of men removed from the home and many black providers being excluded from the job market by receiving second-class citizenship in the form of felony convictions.

With that said, let’s start with the fact that it’s been proven that all Americans use drugs at nearly the same rate, however it tends to be slightly higher for white people. The census shows this, but if you need a more empirically derived source, you can check hospital admissions for drug-related causes. If you need even more evidence, look at the current drug crisis resulting from years of under-enforcement in the suburbs. Black people have never comprised more than 15% of American drug users, yet police primarily enforced drug laws in black neighborhoods. Mr. Flaherty, possibly influenced by the War on Drugs propaganda from the ‘80s and ‘90s, feels that blacks account for a higher proportion of the drug trade, taking issue with the Census’ self-reporting method. He then attempts to prove black people lie more than whites when self reporting drug use by citing a study of African American males undergoing treatment for hypertension. The study says that of the 131 African American males in their care that tested positive for drug usage, only 48 self-reported it. Flaherty must have missed the part of the same report that says the strongest factors in underreporting were “experience with jail” and “living with friends or family.” So in America, who is least likely to go to jail, more likely to live on their own and be confident enough to give straight answers when being treated for hypertension? Answer: white males. However, the only true possible appraisal would be to compare this study with one of self-reporting amongst hypertensive white males undergoing treatment. Still that would only reflect the behavior of hypertensive males of both groups; what about non-hypertensive males, women, teenagers, etc.? Flaherty seems to only have just searched for a means to his end, but this was not the only evidence he used to try to make his case.

Flaherty also quotes the medical journal Addictive Behaviors, which stated, “underreporting of cocaine was documented with urine testing validation as well where African Americans in comparison to Caucasians who were urine positive were about 6 times less likely to report cocaine use when the other factors were controlled for.” Let’s just take this study at face value without figuring out what the “other factors” are. These were, once again, people in intimidating situations. In this case it was people who had relapsed after attempting to quit cocaine. Not exactly the ideal circumstances to get honest answers, I would think. Flaherty was obviously just seeking a way to prove black people are dishonest and more likely to lie on census forms. Using relapsing cocaine addicts to explain black people’s truthfulness is similar to the public pointing at ghetto dysfunction to explain African American behavior. But why did Mr. Flaherty only focus on cocaine? As the saying goes, “when you point at others, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.” The same study also says, “African Americans were more likely than white males to over-report marijuana usage.” HOLD ON! Police pulled me over countless times in the ‘90s and 2000s and not once did they ever say, “I need to search your car because I smell cocaine.” They claimed they smelled marijuana, the primary drug responsible for turning traffic stops into jail time. Americans use drugs at virtually the same rate as proved by actual science and research. I can also personally confirm this because I’ve lived in the ‘hood, I’ve experienced Middle America, and I run in the most elite white party circles in Hollywood. Now that marijuana is legal in California, I can say that white people use more illegal drugs in California yet black people are the ones being convicted. White people do the crime, black people do the time. The war on drugs was a war on black people and the crime statistics are the result. Mr. Flaherty’s failed attempt to refute well-though-out research will only make sense to those whose self-esteem needs it to.

Finally, Mr. Flaherty includes anecdotal letters from readers as a new feature in DMBKA. They describe their run-ins with racial situations and their discontent. Since there’s no counter-narrative or objectivity in any of his writing, I figured I’d respond to a few:

The first comes from a school librarian of nearly ten years who observed that black kids constantly sought books on slavery and discrimination, despite there being plenty of books on the Harlem Renaissance, Buffalo Soldiers, free people of color, etc. S/he says, “This is the only perspective they are getting.” The Librarian feels the kids’ gravitating towards this subject matter is a negative virtue.

I’ll offer an analogy to provide some perspective. Imagine you are in a room and experiencing grave hunger. You come to a door and open it. Inside the door it is pitch black but you immediately smell a most pleasant food aroma so you walk in and towards the smell. You can almost taste this meal as you draw nearer and suddenly someone punches you, knocking you out.

You reawaken outside of the door again with a headache and piercing hunger pains. You cautiously open the door again and smell that wonderful food. Having no other option, you walk into the room. Question: What is your absolute first concern: the food or what knocked you out the first time?

In America with black people, social progress is the food and slavery is the punch that first prevented us from getting to it. We have reentered the room several times only to be shamed for being concerned with the punches we constantly receive. Slavery punched us first. Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, which created a new slavery, was blow number two. We are barely regaining our bearings after the War on Drugs slugged us a third time. This school librarian writes his or her letter from the dominant class’ privileged perspective. S/he’s is perplexed as to why these children want to understand the threat that put them and their branch of humanity in the place in Western society they are today. She mentions that slavery ended in the 1860s, but if it did, what was the Civil Rights movement for? Here’s a little help to understand the effects of slavery. White men have been building their legacies in North America since 1607, each father having no legal or social restrictions to establishing and growing a legacy for their sons to continue building. My grandfather, on the other hand, grew up in Texas, a place with 352 documented post-slavery lynchings, many of which occurred while he was there. Texas also had countless undocumented racial slayings. I have no idea who my great-grandfather was. If my family couldn’t even establish family record, how could they possibly pass down a legacy for me to build on?

Those books about Jim Crow and Discrimination would help the librarian understand that black people haven’t been free “since the 1860s.” We’re working on that freedom now and this is why the kids read about slavery. Education can be considered a major organ of the American body; if well-meaning school officials are directing black children away from exploring their own past and how they can correct previous mistakes, those officials are like malignant cells in the body separating that which belongs together, a culture and its past experiences. In 2015, McGraw-Hill, a major school textbook company, distributed textbooks to schools that referred to slaves as “workers,” thereby diminishing accurate knowledge of black students’ own history. In 2018, a teacher in Austin Texas gave students an assignment to list the positives and negatives of slavery. HIV can live in the body undetected for years while it kills off infection-fighting white blood cells. Suddenly you’re blindsided by a sickness you can’t handle and you die. I’m sure this school librarian does not sense it, but his or her concerns are racist. Killing off black people’s knowledge of past racism reduces our ability to fight it in the future and, needless to say, we keep getting blindsided, blighting our ability to thrive.

Another letter comes from a 55-year-old man named Ed Humphries and is truly disturbing. He writes “In 1970, I began 7^th grade at Herring Run Jr. High School in Baltimore. It was my first experience with blacks. There was daily harassment by black groups on soft whites. Thefts, assaults, intimidation.” He continues: “I was a jock/tough guy—They only targeted the weak, scared and vulnerable whites. We called it ‘Little Africa.’ It was truly the law of the jungle there.” He goes on to describe how when he was 16, he and his buddy were driving in a parking lot and a black guy that was with his girlfriend travelling in the opposite direction suddenly stopped what he was doing and randomly decided to get out and punch Mr. Humphries’ friend. I’d like to once again remind you that the “N” word could easily make this unlikely situation plausible. Especially when it’s the “law of the jungle,” as Mr. Humphries described it. The following year, once again, black guys suddenly became obsessed with him and pulled over to fight. One of the black guys broke a bottle over his head and then grabbed a tire iron, only to be stopped and arrested by police. The man later testified that Mr. Humphries started the trouble by calling them “niggers.” In another situation, he says some black guys tried to rob him, but he grabbed his genitals and said “take all this, mother-f*cker.” He says they tried to run him over but he dodged the car and kicked it. In another situation, he saw a car stuck in the snow and ten black guys offering to push it out for a fee. He then hailed another white guy, pushed the car out for free, and yelled to the black guys, “F*ck every one of you bastards. Who wants to fight?”

The most alarming part of this letter is Mr. Humphries, with his attitude towards black men, went on to become a police officer and had a full career. He also felt the need to have his wife and son read Mr. Flaherty’s first book. If he’s grabbing his crotch and challenging groups of black men to fight as a kid, would he report a fellow officer for using too much force on a black man as an adult? Black police officers don’t even report them. Would Mr. Humphries have reservations about planting drugs on a black men or using force to get a false confession? If he saw the 10 black guys demanding money for a service as “threatening to take his (the driver stuck in the snow’s) money”, how did he see the black suspects he arrested day to day? It makes me wonder how much hardship he unnecessarily caused throughout his career. I wonder how much people like him contribute to the dilemma between black people and police. Law enforcement is a major organ in the American body, and Mr. Humphries’ racism is the infection. Good officers would be naturally preventative antibodies, so the fact that he made it to retirement means we clearly don’t have enough good cops to get rid of racism’s infection.

In another letter, a Midwestern cop complains that “there’s no good fight to fight.” He feels that his hands are tied because the city “hasn’t even addressed black violence as a problem” and “his role is to maintain just enough peace to maintain the status quo.” He feels citizens are frustrated at them, not understanding why “they just can’t arrest every punk that walks down the street.” I thought law enforcement’s job was to arrest only criminals, not “punks walking down the street.” It sounds like he and the citizens want to go back to the ‘90s, a time when I found myself in handcuffs on a weekly basis, yet never had charges filed.

America threads the needle between allowable racism and political correctness when the true effort should be towards social health. The President can call African nations “shithole countries” and the room full of white men sitting behind him just smile. There’s only one letter that differentiates the words “rapist” and “racist”—‘p’ and ‘c’. Coincidentally, PC stands for “political correctness,” and our politically correct media is scared to put skin in the game. If you are in a room full of men where a woman is about to be raped and you do nothing, simply not being a rapist no longer makes you a good person. You have to do something. Colin Flaherty is raping America with his propaganda; even worse, he’s spreading his diseased mindset. American media avoids treating this sickness by discussing ‘hood folks in a vacuum, when those people are the key to understanding what is truly happening. A real dialogue would make media personalities and white America at large have to face their fears. Instead, the media sidesteps its responsibility and Flaherty is filling the vacuum, providing refuge for white guilt. The online white debaters who brought Flaherty’s book to my attention are really in fear of a non-existent black-on-white violence epidemic; and American media, charged with the responsibility of apprising them of what’s really going on, has left its post. This dereliction of duty is like granting Fox a monopoly on world news. The “the black man hates you for slavery and wants to get you” narrative engenders the “they deserve it” reaction when police kill unarmed black people, and the media are looking away. Mr. Flaherty’s agenda is clear, and in place of objectivity, he cherry-picks comments from website conversation threads to form a pseudo-counter-narrative. Starbucks’ recent discrimination against two African American men, by having them arrested for waiting in their shop for friends to arrive before ordering, shows yet another example of white America’s tendency to avoid facing racism straight on. Instead of consulting with the very people discriminated against, Starbucks conferred with a Jewish organization, the Anti Defamation League, which offered a solution that did more to inflame racial tensions between black and white Americans than help. They proposed closing their stores to train their employees on racial sensitivities. Whether intentional or not, this act just added to the reservations many white people have towards blacks when white patrons showed up to get their daily coffee and realized they couldn’t because of black people’s complaints. Why did Starbucks axiomatically rule out dialogue with black people when figuring out how to address black grievances? The answer is, they were scared to look into the mirror, which would reveal that we’ve only been masking the symptoms of our ongoing disease of racism. The true cure for our sickness is a real dialogue between all Americans, especially racist whites and black people. I suggest that everyone buy Colin Flaherty’s books to see the anatomy of a true racial antagonist’s mind; perhaps it will encourage him to write more. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and the like think like Mr. Flaherty, yet have mastered the art of intimating these ideas without explicitly saying them. Flaherty’s books and, coincidentally, our President’s appeal, is solely because they take the tongue-in-cheek notions many influential white men intimate, and say them outright. Even worse, not all but many police chiefs and government officials carry out their duty under this pernicious outlook, which affects a truly cohesive American populace, our country’s natural defense against our original social disease.