To Understand the Ferguson Riots, Look to Africa

The con works like this: Blacks claim racism. They scream and demonstrate. Their leaders fly in to pump up the excitement. The lickspittle press clucks about oppression. Lickspittle whites join the demonstrations. Eventually the facts come out, and they are nothing like what was initially claimed — but it makes no difference. Blacks are so drunk on indignation that facts don’t matter, and whites are so drunk on self righteousness they can’t see they were flimflammed.

We’ve seen this over and over: Trayvon Martin, the Duke Rape Hoax, the Jena Six, Tawana Brawley, the “Compton Cookout”/UC San Diego fraud, and America’s never-ending stream of hate-crime hoaxes. Why do we always fall for the same trick? First, we have Africa in our midst. Second, our rulers don’t realize we have Africa in our midst.

It may be that the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, that touched off a week of black riots was unjustified. But let us recall the very first version of events — the one that sent blacks screaming into the streets.

Brown’s pal, Dorian Johnson, went on the air and claimed that he and Brown were walking in the middle of the street, a white cop told them to get on the sidewalk, and then blazed away at Brown when he refused. He says Brown had his hands in the air and was saying “I don’t have a gun. Don’t shoot,” when the cop poured lead into him from 20 or 30 feet away.

There is probably not a single sworn peace officer anywhere in the United States who would shoot an unarmed man with his hands in the air from 20 feet away. That’s about as likely as an entire white lacrosse team gang-raping a black stripper. But that is what the press reported — along with a vague police account of a struggle for the officer’s gun — and it sent thousands of people into the streets running around with their arms in the air, pretending to be an innocent black men about to be shot.

The essential point is that the public doesn’t yet know what happened — though there is evidence now coming out that looks bad for the six-foot, four-inch, 294-pound “gentle giant,” as his admirers now no longer call him: He was high on marijuana, had just committed a strong-arm robbery, may have fractured the white cop’s eye socket in a struggle, and may have been charging straight for the officer when he was shot.

An even more important point is that a huge number of blacks don’t care what happened. An early Rasmussen poll found that 57 percent of blacks think the officer who did the shooting — Darren Wilson — should be found guilty of murder. The figure for whites was 17 percent. Brown’s mother says Officer Wilson should be arrested, tried, convicted, and given the death penalty. The Black Panthers are leading groups of blacks in a responsive chant: “What’s his name?” “Darren Wilson.” “How do we want him?” “Dead.” The president of the county NAACP chapter issued a press release saying that “yet another teenaged boy has been slaughtered by law enforcement.”

Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the head of the national NAACP have all jetted in to demand “justice.” Not one of them has pointed out that there are at least three investigations going on — federal, county, and police department — and that there should be no baying for blood until the facts are known.

Attorney General Eric Holder, who arrived today to join the tub-thumping, has sent no fewer than 40 FBI agents to Ferguson to find out what happened. I can’t believe that 40 FBI agents-worth of anything has ever happened in Ferguson, but it is clear that if we sit tight, we will know more than we do now.

As for Officer Wilson, we have a procedure for deciding, first, whether to indict him and, second, if he is guilty. Prosecutors present the known evidence to a grand jury. If the grand jury finds probable cause, it votes to indict. At trial, witnesses for both sides are examined and cross examined in open court. Only then does a jury determine guilt or innocence.

This is a Western procedure that evolved over many centuries, and is designed to be as fair as possible. It is based on the presumption of innocence, and withholds judgment until all evidence is considered. It derives, in other words, from a deliberative, reasoned approach to the truth that is obviously alien to large numbers of blacks.

The public is often surprised and frustrated by how long it takes for the facts to emerge in cases such as the Trayvon Martin incident or the Jena Six. By the time the press gets anything like the whole picture, blacks have already swallowed a fantastic tale of “racism,” and have been rampaging for weeks.

The truth comes out slowly because the system is designed to prevent leaks and half truths that could give rise to precisely what is happening in Ferguson. Grand jury proceedings, for example, are strictly sealed in order to protect the innocent in case deliberations do not lead to indictment.

In the Michael Brown case, police released the video of the strong-arm robbery far earlier than is usual. Eric holder objected and was furious when local police ignored him. Obviously, the police released the video in the hope of balancing the skewed story that was fueling the riots, but Mr. Holder was punctilious about a procedure that just happened to protect Brown’s reputation.

In Ferguson, African-Americans are acting like Africans rather than Americans. Presumptions of innocence, rules of evidence, and deliberative justice are about as rare on the street as they are south of the Sahara. Africa is notorious for mob justice. Alleged thieves are often beaten to death on the spot. Witch-burning is so common, you can now see it on YouTube. UNICEF reports that more Africans than ever believe in witchcraft.

In Africa, hit-and-run is a safety measure; if you stop to help, the crowd is likely to kill you. That nearly happened right here in America when Steve Utash, who was driving through Detroit, stopped to help a child who had jumped in front of his car, and was very nearly murdered by a black crowd. This was not ruled a hate crime — it’s just what blacks do, apparently.

Is there any doubt what would happen to Officer Darren Wilson if the blacks on the streets of Ferguson got their hands on him? We have riots and blood lust rather than orderly procedure because we have Africa in our midst.

Another reason we have riots is because whites refuse to understand that we have Africa in our midst. The official view is that the Ferguson rioters might as well be white people, except that they’re victims of society. Our rulers tell us that looting and arson are regrettable but understandable expressions of legitimate black rage.

In one of the many insights in Michael Levin’s classic, Why Race Matters, he writes that most whites don’t realize what drives so much black anger: hysteria, delusions, envy, and just plain hatred. Whites see furious blacks, and assume they could not possibly be so angry unless they had legitimate grievances. That is why the media lard their coverage of the riots with hand-wringing over bad schools and downtrodden neighborhoods, and 60- and 70-year-old tales of white racism.

The wilder blacks get, the sillier whites get. The attorney general of the state of Missouri, Chris Koster, went to St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson to tell its black congregation that he had come to “pray and grieve” with them. “You have lost a member of your community at the hands of a member of my community,” he said. “Not just the Caucasian community, but the law enforcement community. And that is painful to every good-hearted person in this city.”

Mr. Koster is a lawyer who understands the presumption of innocence and the hazards of police work. Surely, he would never have resorted to this sort of mush if there had not been a week of rioting.

Whites will never understand anything until they realize that blacks are different, that they bring their misery upon themselves, and that blaming whites and making excuses only makes blacks angrier and more reckless.

But it is Captain Ronald Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol who takes the prize for idiotic comments. He is the black officer who was rolled out to bring calm when it seemed whites couldn’t do the job. He can’t seem to decide whether he is a policeman or Al Sharpton.

In a church packed with blacks, and in what the New York Times called “the cadences of a preacher,” he said: “My heart goes out to you, and I say that I’m sorry. I wear this uniform, and I should stand up here and say that I’m sorry.” At a service for Michael Brown in a different church, he said we should all be thankful to the young man’s family because Brown’s death will “make it better for our sons so they can be better black men.”

But this admiring account of him mixing with the protesters best captures the insanity:

‘We should be able to walk the streets, we should be able to go to the store without being shot in cold blood,’ shouted the woman, one of hundreds protesting the police slaying of teenager Michael Brown. ‘We don’t feel safe in these streets. Never. Ever. Report that. Tell that. Don’t go around sugar-coating things to the media.’ . . .

‘I couldn’t have said it better,’ the tall, charismatic African-American conceded.

A black woman blurts out the African-style nonsense blacks believe: that Michael Brown was “shot in cold blood.” A black police officer agrees, and a white journalist admires his charisma. Sanity is a distant dream.

Fortunately, after days of mayhem, we are finally getting a few realistic reports on the rioters. The Washington Post notes that some have come from as far away as Chicago, Detroit, and Brooklyn:

DeAndre Smith, fresh from looting the QuikTrip on a recent night, told reporters: ‘I’m proud of us. We deserve this, and this is what’s supposed to happen when there’s injustice in your community.’

“We are jobless men, and this is our job now: getting justice,” says another man. “If that means violence, that’s okay by me. They’ve been doing this to us for years.” A Ferguson policeman who noted all the out-of-towners called it “looting tourism.”

Clearly, Michael Brown has become an excuse, not just to go looting but to chant “Time to kill a cop” at the police, throw bottles of urine at them, set off Molotov cocktails, and maybe even get a few seconds of TV time. “If it wasn’t for the looting,” said one man, “we wouldn’t get the attention.”

Besides the businesses that have been burned down or stripped clean, businesses in the area, including medical practices, have seen hardly any customers for a week. At least one shop, the Yolo! Boutique, has put up a sign “black owned,” in open recognition of who’s doing the looting. Schools that were supposed to open have remained closed.

But let us return to what this means for our institutions. The Ferguson police already broke procedure when it released the robbery video. It was a small point, but it was a sacrifice to Africa in our midst. There will be more. A grand jury is supposed to consider the evidence without regard to politics or public opinion. No matter what case the prosecutor presents — even if it is the weakest the grand jury has ever seen — does anyone in America think the jurors have the courage to refuse to indict? The rabble in Ferguson have already corrupted one hard-won achievement of Western common law.

And when the case goes to trial, what juror will not recall the 50 deaths that followed the acquittal of the police who beat Rodney King? What juror will not recall the insults heaped on the jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman? It will do no good to move the trial to a different jurisdiction. Officer Darren Wilson will not get a fair trial unless it takes place on the moon. This is another sacrifice to Africa.

In the long term, as Africa and other parts of the Third World expand in our midst, it will become harder and harder for any of our basic European institutions to function. We are slipping back towards corruption and the rule of brute power. Africa may always be in our midst, but unless our rulers understand what that means, many Fergusons are in our future.