It’s the Culture, Stupid

Several news stories have come out about the rise in street violence all across America. And while some want to avoid the real reasons why, I will not. There is a common denominator here that cannot be denied. It is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that people including politicians on both sides of the aisle, newspaper writers, intellectual elites and community activists refuse to admit or acknowledge except for a handful.

First in the common thread is that this daily street violence is centrally located in urban centers under the political control of Progressive Democrat politicians. Next is that the street violence occurs mainly in black neighborhoods that have a plethora of urban pathologies like ineffective parenting, the absence of fathers in the home leading to school failure and questionable lifestyle choices by young blacks. These truths are inescapable, and it is time to admit that these urban pathologies are self-inflicted and have led to the acceptance of a lifestyle of cultural rot and cultural dysfunction that are precursors to criminal behavior. Another embarrassing aspect of this ineffective parenting is that the age of the black perpetrator is younger and younger. We have 13-, 14- and 15-year-old suspects. involved in shootings.

Let me be very clear here. That there are fewer incidents of crime and violence in white suburbia is not because of race. It has to do with the fact that in greater rates, white parents take responsibility for raising their kids. They don’t let the streets raise their children. They teach their kids to respect authority figures like teachers and the police. My dad did and I ‘m black and did not grow up in the suburbs. It used to be a trait of urban middle-class upbringing among all races. In suburbia, kids are taught to adopt more mainstream values and better lifestyle choices. Again, there is a cultural aspect to this. In the black community today to often the police are expected to fill the void of ineffective parenting. That means more police interaction with black youths on the street. Increased human interaction means an increase in the potential for conflict when police orders are not adhered to. That can have deadly consequences.

Instead of holding people in the black community responsibility for their plight in life, we get the usual BS excuse making by the media, race baiting activists and Democrat politicians who wrongly see this as the result of racism, discrimination or police brutality. They promote the false narrative that not enough money is being appropriated for social programs, programs that have never worked, by the way. Then they go back to the excuse that more gun control laws are needed. These pandering politicians and activists used to parrot that more jobs are needed in the ghetto to stem the violence. They can’t use that excuse in an economy that has more jobs available today than workers to fill them. Damn, they must be thinking. That excuse was a good one while it lasted. The more jobs whine has been replaced by, get this, that this street violence has been exasperated by the COVID pandemic. I kid you not.

Let unpack this nonsense. Whites in suburban areas have not culturally abandoned the societal, time-tested importance of an intact family structure with two parents raising their kids and not having more kids than they can raise or afford. Today 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. For white children it is about 28%. This is according to numerous sources that keep these statistics. It is undeniable that this factor alone contributes to much of what ails the black community. Then there is the education aspect. Reading and math scores of black students in ghetto public schools are abysmal. Black underclass parental involvement in the education of their children is basically nonexistent. It is reflected in the graduation rates. Asian children have the highest graduation rates followed by white students, Hispanics, American Indian students and at the bottom of the list? Yes, black students bring up the rear.

Are you surprised? No, you aren’t. You might feel guilty to admit it for fear of being labeled as racist. They say the truth hurts, but they also say the truth will set you free. On reading and math scores, according to the U.S. Department of Education, nearly 80% of Chicago public schools (code language for black students) are not grade level proficient in both reading and math. These black kids are functionally illiterate for all the money we spend on education in the United States.

Now let’s debunk the proliferation of firearms as being the cause for the historic rise in murder rates and people injured in nonfatal shootings. There are approximately 150 million gun owners in the US. Most of them are white. If the availability of guns was the issue, then gun violence by race would be evenly distributed across the spectrum, yet it is black suspects who are over-represented in both murders and nonfatal shootings. The truth is that the average gun owner does not use a firearm to settle disputes or take property by force. That is a cultural phenomenon primarily located in the black community. Admit it. The statistics do not lie. The people pushing an anti-gun agenda can easily find out by race who is using a firearm to commit violence and if the perpetrator was a concealed carry license holder or if they obtained the gun legally. They don’t want to research it because they know the data will destroy their narrative. More whites own firearms than blacks do and if gun availability was the cause of all the street violence, then more white gun owners would be involved in gun violence incidents and they are not. Again, culture plays a role.

As for blaming COVID lockdowns? COVID lockdowns also occurred in white suburban areas too without the accompanying street violence, so cut the crap about COVID lockdowns causing ghetto violence So where am I going with all this? I want to talk about the role of police in all this. Society takes all this black underclass cultural rot and dysfunction and throws it in the lap of a police officer to solve. Homicides are up nationwide in 2021 by 15%. This follows record violence levels in 2020. Again, where is this happening? In predominantly black neighborhoods, not white neighborhoods. Why do I keep coming back to this aspect? Because too many who know better won’t acknowledge the role that black underclass behavior plays in this. When you add inane public policy like no bail, decarceration and politically motivated prosecutors who won’t charge career violent offenders because they see them as the victims, you have now put street violence on steroids.

I am tired of hearing think tank intellectual elitists talk about police improving their relationship with a dysfunctional community that won’t give police information to help solve crime. That is an advanced stage of cultural rot. After all, it is black people who are being slaughtered here. That isn’t enough motivation to want to help? Is the cultural rot so deep that they can’t summon their better angels to do what’s right regardless of how they might feel about the police? And that’s the fault of the police? Seriously?

It is time to stop the nonsense about how to reduce crime. Stop with the police reform efforts, the calls for more minority recruitment and the sensitivity training junk. It is time to let the police do what they do very effectively, and that is keeping the peace and improving the quality of life for the overall majority of law abiding in the black community by making arrests and getting career criminals off the street. Stop making police the fall guy for bad public policy decisions by progressive cop-hating politicians and activist prosecutors. Politicians have to find the courage to demand better behavior from the black underclass. Law abiding blacks have to shame and condemn poor lifestyle choices and call for black people to make better lifestyle choices.

Stop blaming the police, racism, COVID and guns for the violence in the ghetto. Stop trying to fix the police. And stop funding black underclass cultural rot and dysfunction with more government spending. Like I said. It’s the culture, stupid.

Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of Americas Sheriff LLC, President of Rise Up Wisconsin INC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com