Fifty teens arrested in Philadelphia curfew
14th August 2011
Michael Nutter, the city’s mayor, has enacted the curfew on Friday and Saturday nights in three districts where bystanders have been attacked by marauding teens using social media networks to co-ordinate their meetings and movements.
No! They wouldn’t do that? Would they?
The arrested teens face fines of up to $300 (£185) for their first offence. Parents may be fined up to $500 (£307) if their children are caught a second time and could also be charged with child neglect if they do not respond to police requests to collect arrested teenagers.
Not that anything like that ever happens, of course. They’ll have their hands slapped and be let go, thereby encouraging them to do it again. That’s the way law enforcement works these days.
But Mr Nutter, who is black, also lectured parents and the African-American community about their social responsibilities.
“If you want to act like an idiot – move,” Mr Nutter said in a scathing speech from the pulpit of a predominantly black church in comments directed both at troublemakers and negligent parents.
“You’ve damaged yourself; you’ve damaged another person; you’ve damaged your peers; and quite frankly you’ve damaged your race.”
They have to mention that he’s black, of course; only black people can criticize black people in Black Run America, and even then they get denigrated (oooh, that word!) as ‘Uncle Toms’.
He aimed much of his fire at absentee fathers in a city with an high black illegitimacy rate: “You’re not a father just because you have a kid, or two, or three.
Unspoken, of course, is the fact that there is no city that does not have a high black illegitimacy rate, but to admit that plain fact would be raaaaaaacist.
August 14th, 2011 at 17:21
It isn’t that only black people can criticize black people; it’s that only black people can criticize black people with any hope of getting through to a black audience.
All other commentators, however accurate their statements may be, are dismissed out of hand and thus rendered impotent.
August 14th, 2011 at 18:17
Oh, really? Gee, that thought never occurred to me.
August 14th, 2011 at 19:48
I thought not; otherwise, you wouldn’t have inserted your snide comment about it.
Welcome to reality, my friend, where change, if it is to happen, must happen according to the facts on the ground and not according to your perception of how things ought to be.