Chamblee54

If you see a statistics junkie with glazed over eyes, it might be because of 2015 Crime in the United States. The FBI issued the report recently. CIUS shows that homicide went up 10.8% This is the crime that today’s feature will focus on, with an emphasis on black and white. If you want to skip over the text, and look at the pictures (from The Library of Congress,) you will be excused.
The FBI stats are a bit tricky. Hispanics are lumped in with the rest of the population. At the Census Bureau the categories are White, 77.1%, Black or African American, 13.3%, American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.2%, Asian, 5.6%, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 0.2%, Two or More Races, 2.6%. Links will be provided for the sources used today. If you want to look at these numbers, and see something different, you are welcome to do so.
There were 13,455 homicides in 2015. 5,854 white people, and 7,039 black people, were victims. If you break this down by gender, it was male, 10,608, female, 2818, and unknown, 29.
The next breakdown is based on Single victim/single offender killing. This category accounts for 45.6% of the homicides. This breakdown is Race of Victim by Race of Offender, 2015. Of 3,167 white victims, 81.2% were killed by white people, and 15.7% were killed by black people. Of 2,664 black victims, 8.5% were killed by white people, and 89.3% were killed by black people.
There were 5,854 white homicide victims. Out of an estimated population of 247,813,910 people, this works out to 23.6 murders per million. For black people, there were 7,039 victims. In a population of 42,748,703, this divides out to 164.6 murders per million.
The Guardian keeps track of police killings with a database, The Counted People killed by police in the US. In 2015, police killed 1,146 people. This breaks down to 306 Black, 13 Native American, 195 Hispanic/Latino, 581 White, 24 Asian/Pacific Islander, 27 Other/Unknown. The Guardian counts Hispanic/Latino as a separate category, unlike the FBI and the Census Bureau. The killing-per-million figures are 7.66 Black, 5.49 Native American, 3.45 Hispanic/Latino, 2.93 White, 1.34 Asian/Pacific Islander. (In 2016, Native Americans, 5.49 per million, are being killed by police at a higher rate than Black people, 5.03 per million.)
These statistics, in and of themselves, are of limited value. They do not reflect the much greater attention paid to police killing that to citizen on citizen crime killing. Links are provided to all sources. Readers are invited to look at the numbers, and see what conclusions they can come up with.

America likes to use racist as an insult. Some say that is the worst thing you can say about a person. When you are called the R-word, you should cower in shame, begging forgiveness as the scarlet R is super glued to your chest. In the debate tuesday night, HRC applied the dreaded R insult to DJT.
Part of the problem is the definition of racism. It seems to have a different meaning for every individual. Some say it is whatever you don’t like. Another popular definition, courtesy of the Jim Crow Museum , says “a system of group privilege by those who have a disproportionate share of society’s power, prestige, property, and privilege.” By this standard, only white people can be racist, because they are the group with the power.
One phrase you hear is “systemic oppression.” Lets call this an act of prejudice that has results. By this standard, the 1973 shenanigans of Donald Trump’s real estate company can legitimately be called racist. The fact that he settled with the Justice Department without admitting guilt means nothing.
But why talk about substance, when there is a sideshow to gawk at? Of the many controversies about BHO, the notion that he was not born in Hawaii is one of the silliest. Tacky, yes. Insulting to the American intelligence, yes. But does this deserve the dreaded R insult? Apparently HRC, and her corporate sponsors, think so.
TRUMP: Well, nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it. I figured you’d ask the question tonight, of course. But nobody was caring much about it. But I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate. And I think I did a good job…. But let me just tell you. When you talk about healing, I think that I’ve developed very, very good relationships over the last little while with the African-American community. I think you can see that….
CLINTON: And clearly, as Donald just admitted, he knew he was going to stand on this debate stage, and Lester Holt was going to be asking us questions, so he tried to put the whole racist birther lie to bed. But it can’t be dismissed that easily. He has really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted, he persisted year after year, because some of his supporters, people that he was trying to bring into his fold, apparently believed it or wanted to believe it… So he has a long record of engaging in racist behavior. And the birther lie was a very hurtful one…
While researching this story, PG stumbled onto another trivialization of the R insult. A few days ago, a video was released. Mary J Blige, wearing a blonde wig, sings to HRC “You can get killed just for living in… Your American skin.” The reaction has not been kind.
While searching for a copy of the video, PG saw an article, Mary J. Blige Serenades Hillary Clinton (Video). “R&B singer Mary J. Blige never got over the public response to her racist “Crispy Chicken” Burger King commercial in 2012. The commercial set in motion a backlash that ultimately derailed her career and her marriage.” In other words, an entertainer singing about Crispy Chicken, in a Burger King commercial, is racism. It is time for America to choose another favorite insult. Racist is past the expiration date. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

In 2014, the St. Louis Rams ran onto the field with their hands over their heads. If a referee makes this gesture, it means touchdown. With the Rams, it meant “hands up don’t shoot.”
When Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson MO, witnesses said he had his hands up. Later investigations indicate that “Brown never surrendered with his hands up.” While controversy over Mr. Brown’s death continues, very few people maintain that he had his hands up when he died.
A little over a year later, the St. Louis Rams announced a move to Los Angeles. There are various reasons for the move. It basically comes down to money. The NFL wants a team in Los Angeles. The Rams want to make more money. The hands up gesture became a hands out.
Athletes have traditionally been role models. Their opinions are solicited on a wide range of subjects. Some people question whether the ability to play a game qualifies someone to render these judgements. While football players are entitled to have opinions, the question remains: why should we care? Social justice is not a product endorsement.
Recently Cam Newton gave an interview to GQ magazine. Mr. Newton modeled some clothes, with apparent enthusiasm. Mr. Newton said “I don’t want this to be about race, because it’s not. It’s not. Like, we’re beyond that. As a nation.” It was the social media sensation of the day.
As you may have guessed, this brings us to Colin Kaepernick. He is certainly entitled to his opinion. @Kaepernick7 is a second string quarterback, who has asked to be traded. With his nine figure salary, there is a chance he will be cut from the team. Why is Colin Kaepernick suddenly taken seriously as an authority on race relations?
Most reports on Mr. Kaepernick have a 59 word summary of the comments to NFL media. You have to do a bit of digging to see the full transcript. Google is not a perfect tool. Perhaps someone does not want people to see the complete interview.
Number seven makes a few interesting comments. There are few specific solutions offered. The problem of citizen on citizen killing is not mentioned. Mr. Kaepernick does not come across as a deep thinker. When he is asked how teammates feel about his protest, number seven replies “I hope they stand with me.” Is he sitting down, or standing up?
NFL Media “In your mind have you been pulled over unjustly or had bad experiences?” CK: “Yes, multiple times. I’ve had times where one of my roommates was moving out of the house in college and because we were the only black people in that neighborhood the cops got called and we had guns drawn on us. Came in the house, without knocking, guns drawn on my teammates and roommates. So I have experienced this. People close to me have experienced this. This isn’t something that’s a one-off case here or a one-off case there. This has become habitual. This has become a habit. So this is something that needs to be addressed.”…
NM: “Does the election year have anything to do with timing? CK: It wasn’t a timing thing, it wasn’t something that was planned. But I think the two presidential candidates that we currently have also represent the issues that we have in this country right now.
NM:Do you want to expand on that? CK: You have Hillary who has called black teens or black kids super predators, you have Donald Trump who’s openly racist. We have a presidential candidate who has deleted emails and done things illegally … That doesn’t make sense to me because if that was any other person you’d be in prison. So, what is this country really standing for?
NM: It is a country that has elected a black president twice CK: It has elected a black president but there are also a lot of things that haven’t changed. There are a lot of issues that still haven’t been addressed and that’s something over an eight-year term there’s a lot of those things are hard to change and there’s a lot of those things that he doesn’t necessarily have complete control over.
NM: What would be a success? CK: That’s a tough question because there’s a lot of things that need to change, a lot of different issues that need to be addressed. That’s something that it’s really hard to lock down one specific thing that needs to change currently.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Pictures were taken at the grand opening of the Schwinn Sales South, 120 Aldredge Blvd., S.W. Atlanta, Ga. 30336, February 23rd 1969. Lester and Virginia Maddox were there.

*Results* of the 2016 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. The the XXXIVth Lyttoniad is a bad writing contest, named for Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton. Every year, thousands of writers-who-shouldn’t submit a first sentence, to a terrible novel. Chamblee54 wrote about BLFC in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.
The *winner,* and one other featured player, establish a new category this year: the dingy yellow glow. Here are the two players. Which one was the overall winner? It doesn’t really matter.
Even from the hall, the overpowering stench told me the dingy caramel glow in his office would be from a ten-thousand-cigarette layer of nicotine baked on a naked bulb hanging from a frayed wire in the center of a likely cracked and water-stained ceiling, but I was broke, he was cheap, and I had to find her. —William “Barry” Brockett, Tallahassee, FL
With his lamp giving off a dull yellow glow General Washington sat up late into the night contemplating his problems: Not enough food, not enough clothing, not enough men, and that idiot Private Doodle who kept putting feathers in his cap and calling it macaroni.
Dan Leyde, Shoreline, WA
A *value added feature* of this BLFC report is the contestants with funny names. Here are the writers, in search of a pen name: Andrew Caruso, Akron, OH, Barbara L. Pawley, Los Angeles, CA, Domingo Pestano, Caracas, Venezuela, Dorothy Harbeck, Fair Haven, NJ, Heather Fougere, Center Conway, NH, Henry Biggs, Sydney, Australia, James Siragusa, Lewiston, ME, Julie Crowley, Ballyphilibeen, Ireland, Kathryn El-Assal, Middleton, WI, Leslie Craven, Wellington, New Zealand, Neil T Godden, Nouméa, New Caledonia, Peter S. Bjorkman, Rocklin, CA, Rachel Nirenberg, Toronto, Canada, Raluca Murg, Paris, France, Randy Denker, Tallahassee, FL, Ted Downes, Cardiff, Wales, William Lattanzio, Boyertown, PA.
What follows is a sampling of the writers in the BLFC hall of shame. If you want to see more, use this link. This report is being divided into two parts, with the second half coming out soon. The blurbs are in alphabetical order, by the first word. Three entries begin was “As.” The last entry in part one begins with the phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
“Penguins, damnable penguins,” Cooperman muttered bitterly, staring hard into the maelstrom of cheap gin and bargain-basement vermouth swirling hopelessly in the low ball glass he held in his pale, doughy hand, the shards of rapidly melting ice crystals cruelly reminding him of those endless winter nights in the Antarctic weather station, and of Kwakina, with her lithe, lubricious figure, and tuxedo-feathered form. — Stephen Lewis Davis, Sacramento, CA
A murder of crows, ravenous with hunger, alighted on the skeletal limbs of a desiccated oak tree, their cacophonous scolding admonishing the solitary figure, cloaked in black, who had entered the gloomy graveyard to pay tribute to Poe’s tombstone, just as a tintinnabulation of church bells began chiming a counterpoint to the avians’ caws-stick chorus. — Kathryn El-Assal, Middleton, WI
As its newly-incentivized next-gen thought leader, Li-Kwan Patel saw the handwriting on the wall: there was no kicking the can down the road because the paradigm shift at Synergex, Inc. necessitated him to hit the ground running, avoid low-hanging fruit like the plague, and strategize scalable core competencies to close the loop on feedback redundancy, for at the end of the day it all boiled down to boldly going where none had gone before. — Thomas Frohlich, Miami, FL
As Night fell with the finality of a Sycamore toppled in a windstorm, the neon-clogged Arteries of the great Metropolis came alive with the banshee shriek of asphalt-tortured tires, the ululation of yammering sirens, and the bellow of brazen-lunged air horns, Predator Calls of the insomnolent Urban Jungle. —Anna McDougald, Winnipeg, Manitoba
As she reclined, naked, on the chaise longue, Constance’s breasts looked like two mounds of creamy coleslaw served up on a fine porcelain plate—but the good kind of coleslaw, not the violent, neon-green stuff you get at KFC.— Lisa Liscoumb, Oshawa, Ontario
Detective Hammer Logan III woke with a start, images of the bizarre bayou murder still fresh in his mind’s eye—a dame in trouble, body covered with bloody toothprints and saliva—but as sleep lifted, the grizzled detective remembered that he was a dog and the dame a coyote, so he spun on the bed three times and slept the rest of the day. — Jacob Smith, Dallas, TX
Francine was intrigued by the idea of a threesome with a unicyle-riding circus clown, a zither-playing contortionist, and a milkman because she didn’t know that the latter still even existed.
Randy Denker, Tallahassee, FL
Her grandmother had mopped her brow with the same antique kerchief for twenty years whilst working in the barley fields, and now Anastasia was to wear it on her wedding night knotted into a baggy loose panty; while her lover Anatoly would wear his father’s ancient gray and tattered undershorts tied around his neck to honor the old village custom of marital odor-blending.
David S. Nelson, Falls Creek, VA
I never did see the last thing I saw, the truck and the red light, the last thing I saw was a plus-size girl in a petite ensemble, giving her the appearance of a marshmallow tightly wrapped in dental floss.
Ted Wise, Hanover, PA
It was a dark and stormy night, and that translated into unchecked pandemonium among Los Angeles residents who hadn’t worn anything but open-toed shoes for five years, but tourist Alwyn Brewster was thankful for the scant traffic on Sunset Boulevard as he desperately accelerated his rental car through the tony neighborhoods, too preoccupied with the raging rivers of high-end, plastic patio-ware, which were making a break for the ocean, to notice the black Land Rover with diplomatic plates hot on his trail. — Barbara L. Pawley, Los Angeles, CA

There is a video making the rounds. It supposedly proves the existence of racial profiling. The only thing this video proves is the gullibility of people.
It opens in a city park. It is a bright, sunny day. A young man is trying to break a bicycle chain. He uses a saw, and bolt cutters. He spends over an hour on the job, and a hundred people pass by. No one makes an issue about it. A reporter talks to people, and gets their reaction. No one suspects anything.
To begin with, a real thief is not going to spend an hour working on a bike. He probably won’t openly operate in a sunny city park. There probably is not a reporter nearby. The bike is chained to a short road sign. It would be easy to lift the bike over the sign.
The first actor goes away, and the second actor comes in. The shadows don’t seem any different in the park. The second actor is dressed similarly to the first, except for the extra melanin. Yea, this is about how the white guy gets away with inept thievery, and the black guy gets questioned.
Soon, there is a crowd around the young black man. People are asking him whether he owns the bike. A man “whips out a cell phone, and calls 911.” He is standing next to the actor, who continues to saw.
It gets better. The actor rides off in the bike, then it is chained back to the sign. The experiment begins again. An old white man confronts the actor, and picks up the tools. What happens next? If you have ever caught a thief, you know that at this point all hell breaks loose. The thief will start yelling, or pull a knife, or start major trouble. But in this video, the bike thief actor says, politely, “Please sir, please sir, don’t touch my stuff sir”.
This video is a scripted piece of entertainment. It is a fantasy. It has nothing to do with the reality of crime and theft. It is not even very good acting. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost. UPDATE: When this feature was originally posted, PG was immediately unfriended by the person who posted the video on facebook.
Another issue with the video is the business of staging fake crimes, to illustrate videos about social justice issues. There is enough crime already. Police don’t need to be bothered with people staging fake crimes to make their point about social justice issues.