I was speaking to my Uncle Fred on Christmas Day about the racial tensions out in the Midwest and New York. We had a kitchen full of relatives from across the country wondering how it seemingly got divided so suddenly. Some of these conservative Republican ladies seemed put off by the fact that they had been lied to about the ‘chokehold death’ in New York once I explained to them that it had not been—even nearly—a choke. Some chinks in the armor of lies that is the news media were showing for what they were.

We had just watched a news report about ‘the robust economic recovery’ and one of the ladies waved it off. “You know this is all just propaganda. Anyone in retail can tell you that things are still terrible.”

I began discussing the roots of violence in urban black America, which was very hard for some of these people to understand. These ladies have middleclass black neighbors in the Saint Louis area who are horrified at the government and news media lionizing the criminal blacks and encouraging their behavior. There is no one in America who understands this process better than the middleclass black who worked hard to escape this type of violent stupidity only to have the news media a generation later hold this thuggish branded behavior up as their righteous racial identity. Middleclass blacks understand that someone in power has decided to reignite the racial tensions they once worked so hard to escape.

My Uncle Fred has worked as a football coach among other things and has spent a good deal of time in sports and business dealing with civilized blacks. He seemed offended greatly by the government seeming to encourage this racial unrest. When I told him that the government is encouraging this so that people like him will call for more militarized police forces he said:

“You bet I will. They should use a bulldozer to scoop up these protestors. You know Jimmy, in over seventy years I have only been attacked once; one time. My wife and I were walking downtown [an upscale East Baltimore neighborhood known for fine eateries] when these six kids came up behind and I was punched in the back of the head. When I turned around this one has got his finger stuck in the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt pretending it is a gun and trying to rob me. I punched him and they all ran like hell.

“So, since the only people that have ever shown a desire to attack me are black kids, why wouldn’t I support police action in that direction?”

I might note here that Uncle Fred once broke another linemen’s leg in a college game in the 1950s, and was not likely to be felled by a teenage punch.

The one thing that has been solidified by the recent thug-support unrest is the notion among whites that police profiling should be employed. I can’t blame them.

The purpose of including this account here is more in line with tracking the evolution of black youth street crime. This unsuccessful robbery attempt is clearly the genesis of what is now called the knockout game, and occurred only a few years before the first report of such recreational crimes. Most of the perpetrators of ‘knockout game’ attacks are not seeking to rob the target, but hoping to develop ‘street credibility’ and bond with fellow lower middleclass blacks who want to be feared the way the real ghetto kids are feared.

We live in a society in decline, and societies in decline emulate not the top, but the bottom.