Columnist Links Wright-Esque Preachers To High Black Murder Rates

If you read enough newspapers, you'll find that its not uncommon for articles on crime to contain a whole ton of grim statistics. Take this one, for example, which rambles on and on and on and on:

The Department of Justice reports that approximately 8,000 blacks were murdered in the United States in 2005...exactly double the total number of American military deaths during...the war in Iraq...A recent study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics...shows that blacks committed murders in 2005 at a rate seven times higher than whites...vast majority of those 8,000 black murders in 2005 were intraracial...Justice Department statistics covering the years 1976 through 2005 show that 94 percent of black murder victims were killed by blacks, and 86 percent of white murder victims were killed by whites.

Those are the highlights of three grafs. Do you find them, say, a bit slanty? Well, you'll love this! The article is titled, "Obama's Indoctrination." And it's author, Ralph R. Reiland, ("associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and... restaurateur.") ties it all together by saying:

Until I heard the racist and anti-American tirades of Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it hadn't occurred to me that the murderous fires in the black community were being stoked from the pulpits inside black churches.

Oh, dear. How on earth did this malformed piece of agitprop come about? The Atlantic's Matt Yglesias thinks there might be a conspiracy at work. A vast conspiracy.

Comments

[snowg00n]

Jason,

I don't think the paragraphs citing crime statistics are "a bit slanty," I think they're a hard to accept reality that liberals such as myself are loathe to process.

Reiland's argument is obviously terribly flawed. He falsely links Wright's reckless preaching about the federal government creating the AIDS virus to commit genocide against blacks to crime statistics showing that blacks are, well, committing genocide against themselves. If Wright's sermons were having the suggested effect, Chicago's South Side gangs would be attacking CDC scientists in lab coats, not, uh, each other.

The column is noteworthy in that it makes clear the vastly disproportionate amount of crime committed by nihilistic black men whom our society has failed. This subject is worthy of newsprint and national discussion. The points about Obama are merely absurd.

[treadway123]

I hope I'm the first post! This one is not even worth reading! Ir's not even worth commenting on, so I going to read something worth reading and responding to!

[demsrliars]

I noticed you didn't address the facts of the article. Interesting.