John Bennett, WND

If blacks can criticize whites, then whites should be able to say the inner city “needs to get its act together.”

That was the bottom line of “Being White in Philly,” a controversial article written by Robert Huber and published in Philadelphia Magazine.

What followed was predictable. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said the article was a “sin” and an “incitement to extreme reaction.” The mayor called upon the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission to “rebuke” the magazine and Huber.

But not long ago, Nutter was calling for a “national conversation” about racial issues: “Black on black crime is not an isolated problem. It affects every member of every community. This is a national problem with national implications, and there needs to be a national conversation.”

Huber told WND that he assumed that when the mayor said “conversation” he meant the ordinary meaning.

“We need to learn to talk to each other honestly, without fear,” Huber said. “That would be a big step toward solving some problems.

{snip}

Huber and some of the people he interviewed were critical of the crime and social disorganization in the city. Several spoke honestly about the racial aspect of crime and other social problems (See a condensed summary of their statements). On the basis of personal experience, some interviewees spoke about break-ins, assaults, robbery and other antisocial acts.

But what are the actual circumstances of crime in Philadelphia?

Over the last two decades, the city has lost 32 percent of its white population, or 263,254 people. {snip}

In the late 1990s, blacks were 43 percent of Philadelphia’s population and 76 percent of the alleged murderers (see chart below). Whites were 52 percent of the population but just 5 percent of alleged murderers.

Today, blacks are 42 percent of Philadelphia’s population and 83 percent of known murder offenders. Whites are now 37 percent of the population and 4 percent of known murder offenders.

The chart comes from a report titled “Murder Is No Mystery: An Analysis of Philadelphia Homicide, 1996-1999,” which was released in 2001 and provocatively asked:

If this went on in your own neighborhood, would you stay? Would you go out at night? Would you consider leaving the neighborhood, or even the city, if you could? Of course you would.

{snip}

A WND review of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Murder Analysis for 2007-2010 and Murder/Shooting Analysis 2012 reveals startling demographic data that affirm the crime trends found a decade earlier in the “Murder Is No Mystery” report.

Between 2007 and 2012, there were 1,987 murders (an average of 331 murders per year) in Philadelphia. Of those victims, 80 percent were black; 11.2 percent were Hispanic; 6.9 percent were white; and 1.7 percent were Asian.

Only 64 percent of these crimes had known offenders (1,290 of 1,987), with 81 percent of known offenders being black; 7.2 percent white; 10.2 percent Hispanic; and 1.2 percent  Asian.

Because of the “no snitchin’” culture, “defendants charged with murder, rape, robbery and serious assaults were walking free on all charges in nearly two-thirds of all cases” in the city, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. In 2009, Philadelphia had the lowest felony conviction rate of all large cities in America. Soon after taking office, Nutter put in 250 video cameras across the city, in part to compensate for witnesses’ refusal to cooperate with investigations.

According to a WND review of the 2012 Philadelphia Police Murder/Shooting Analysis, of known offenders in 1,083 shootings in the city between 2011 and 2012, 88 percent were by blacks (956). Hispanics represented 102 of the shooting offenders (9 percent), while whites made up 2 percent of offenders in shootings (22) in Philadelphia during that same period.

{snip}

Historically, racial disparities in crime are not simply products of the 1960s. In 1950, Philadelphia was predominantly white, with blacks comprising roughly 20 percent of the population. Even then, disproportionate levels of criminal offending existed. “Patterns in Criminal Homicide,” written by renowned criminologist Marvin Wolfgang, was hailed as the most thorough study of homicide at the time. Wolfgang studied every homicide in Philadelphia between 1948 and 1952, and concluded that many were caused by trivial insults and petty arguments (162).

Wolfgang showed that the white murder rate in Philadelphia between 1948 and 1952 was 1.8 per 100,000 people, while the black rate was 25.6, or 14 times the white rate. By the mid-1970s, the white murder rate increased to 2.8 per 100,000. The black murder rate, meanwhile, increased to 64.2, 23 times the white rate.

Many of the voices in Huber’s piece can be seen as expressing long-standing concerns, rooted in the statistical reality of crime.

{snip}

Nutter himself has had to address a subset of the black population involved in violent flash mobs. In an emotional speech, he said of those involved, “You’ve damaged yourself, you’ve damaged another person, you’ve damaged your peers and, quite honestly, you’ve damaged your own race.”

{snip}

But in response to Huber’s article, the mayor “expressly suggested that the speech in the article was unprotected, and therefore punishable outright,” observed leading First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh.

The mayor’s official condemnation letter claimed that the article presents “negative stereotypes” of blacks. {snip}

Nutter simply said the article arose from Huber’s “misguided perception of African-Americans … as an ethnic group that, in its entirety, is lazy, shiftless, irresponsible, and largely criminal.”

{snip}

In fact, critics contend the mayor stereotyped the article. Philadelphia Magazine’s editor, who describes himself as “center-left,” told WND that the mayor’s description is a “gross distortion of the piece.”

{snip}

http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/mayor-changes-tune-on-black-violence-discussion/

Read the story below and remember this: Businesses care about one thing – money.  If they can make money in an area, they will be there.  It is very simple.  They make money – they open up.  They lose money – they close down.  There is nothing racist about it.  The question should be why businesses in highly black populated areas lose money despite the income levels of the local residents.

Racist ‘Retail Redlining’ Is Still a Big Problem in America

Emily Badger, Business Insider

David Mekarski, the village administrator for the south Chicago suburb of Olympia Fields, told a startling story this week at the American Planning Association’s annual conference about a debate he recently had with a restaurant official.

Why, he wanted to know, wouldn’t quality restaurants come to his mixed-race community, where the average annual household income is $77,000, above the county average?

The reply: “Black folks don’t tip, and so managers can’t maintain a quality staff. And if they can’t maintain a quality staff, they can’t maintain a quality restaurant.”

A gasp then rippled through the room in front of Mekarski. “This is one of the most pervasive and insidious forms of racism left in America today,” he says.

There’s a term for the phenomenon he’s describing: retail redlining. The practice is a more recent and less studied variation on redlining as it’s been historically recognized in the housing sector. In the context of retail, grocery stores, and restaurants, redlining refers to the “spatially discriminatory practice” of not serving certain communities because of their ethnic or racial composition, rather than their economic prospects.

{snip}

Olympia Fields and three adjacent south suburbs wanted to better understand this phenomenon (and if it really existed). So they undertook a quarter-of-a-million dollar, multi-year study in conjunction with researchers at the University of Illinois. In the 1960s, these four suburbs had almost no black residents.

By 2010, 72 percent of the population was black, with three of the communities having above-average income levels for the county. These are among the most racially mixed higher-income communities in the region. {snip}

{snip}

The researchers tried to approach a seemingly immeasurable question (is there racial bias here?) by examining case studies of retail outlets that had recently left these communities; by studying stores that one would expect to find in these places based on their buying power; and by comparing the quality and variety of merchandise in stores in this area compared to identical brands elsewhere.

The researchers concluded that the location decisions of businesses were so complicated (involving varied property tax rates, the co-location of related retail, and the presence of daytime workers) that their demographic and survey data was inconclusive. “However,” the researchers wrote, “findings do suggest that race may be a driver or mitigating factor in some retail decisions.”

{snip}

http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-redlining-in-us-is-racist-2013-4

Daily Mail (London)

New York City’s plummeting murder rate may have increased the average life expectancy for residents of the Big Apple has risen, and the NYPD is crediting it to their controversial stop-and-frisk policy.

The life expectancy of New Yorkers was listed at 81 in 2010 compared to 78 a decade ago, according to a report from the city’s Health Department.

There are other reasons for the increased longevity besides less crime. The report credits two-thirds of the boost in life expectancy to a reduction in heart disease and cancer rates.

It also attributes 11 per cent of the increase to better treatment for residents living with AIDS/HIV.

However, the report agrees that the murder rate’s decline is contributing as much as 2 per cent to the change.

Last year there were 419 homicides in New York City, compared to 536 in 2010 and 673 in 2000.

The city’s overall death rate dropped from 7.4 per cent in 2002, which saw the deaths of 59,651 people, to 6.4 per cent in 2010, when 52,575 people died.

While every ethnic group benefits from the bump, the greatest increase is among the city’s black residents, who got another 3.8 years. Whites were given 3.2 years more while Hispanics were given an extra 2.2 years.

The murder rate for blacks is highest among ethnic groups at 16.8 per 100,000. Those figures are triple that of Hispanics and eight times the rate among whites.

When asked about the connection between the homicide rate and increased life spans by the New York Post, Health Department spokesman Sam Miller agreed that one had affected the other.

‘Yes, it has,’ he said.

Law-enforcement called the numbers a special case.

‘Wow. That’s amazing. Normally life-span increases are due to medical advances — not law-enforcement advances,’ said City Council Public Safety Committee Chairman Peter Vallone Jr.

The stop-and-frisk policy has been under fire recently, with critics claiming it is simply a tool for the city’s police to target and harass minorities.

The NYPD is in the midst of fighting a federal class-action lawsuit from the New York Civil Liberties Union alleging the the practice of stopping a person who an officer suspects has committed a crime, is committing a crime or is about to commit one, is unconstitutional.

The NYCL alleged that while black and Latino men ages 14 to 24 make up only 4.7 per cent of the city’s population, they accounted for 41 per cent of stop-and-frisk cases in 2011.

In testimony earlier this month, former NYPD Chief Joseph Esposito said no resident had ever criticized the program, The Huffington Post reported.

‘I don’t get a complaint from a civilian,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard it from Al Sharpton’s group.’

But an audio recording made public as part of the suit revealed a commanding officer ordering cops to stop ‘male blacks.’

The recording was made in secret in February by Officer Pedro Serrano in the 40th Precinct station house in the South Bronx and played for jurors.

Serrano captured a heated argument with his commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack.

In the tape, McCormack lambasts Serrano for not stopping enough people and insists that he has a duty to prevent violent crime by frisking ’the right people at the right time, the right location.’

After being pressed as to who the ‘right people’ were, McCormack explained that they were the ones causing the most problems, Gothamist reports.

Finally, he specifies exactly who he means.

‘The problem was, what, male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21,’ McCormack can be heard to say on the tape.

Since Bloomberg took office the number of people subjected to stop-and-frisks has increased more than five times over.

531,000 were stopped-and-frisked last year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2312961/NYPD-credits-controversial-stop-frisk-program-rise-life-expectancy-homicide-rates-plummet.html

Jeff Poor, Daily Caller

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill will, if passed, threaten national security and destroy the Republican Party’s ability to compete on a national level.

Buchanan, author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” told radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday that passing a “blanket pardon” of illegal immigrants would be “an act of madness,” particularly in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Boston.

“It’s been one week since something like 178 to 180 Americans—three of them murdered—but 178 injured, maimed and wounded by two individuals who were immigrants to this country who were asylum seekers and granted asylum and given benefits,” Buchanan said. “They were newcomers to America, and the idea that we would be considering amnesty—a blanket pardon for all 11 or 12 or 20 million, or however many millions of illegal immigrants are in the country—[that] we would be considering a blanket pardon is an act of madness.”

“I mean what the United States ought to do and what Marco Rubio and the others ought to do is say what we need to get into law is these enforcement mechanisms we’re working on at the border,” he continued. “Get all the enforcement mechanisms and drop the amnesty until we find out who these folks are and who is in this country. This is ridiculous, absurd that the United States should be thinking about amnesty for 11 or 12 million people right now.”

{snip}

“[W]hat is the reason Republicans are doing it?” Buchanan said. “You and I know, Laura—they were terrified by the fact that they lost the Hispanic vote 71-to-27 [percent]. I think there were many other reasons why they did that but that’s what they believe, and they’re in a political panic because of this, which is all fine and politicians in panic do various things. But, right now amnesty for 11 or 12 million people that we do not know—we do not know where they are or who they are—a blanket amnesty, it seems to me, is almost an act of suicidal folly.”

http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/22/pat-buchanan-calls-gang-of-8-proposal-acts-of-madness-suicidal-folly-for-gop/

Neil Munro, Daily Caller

The Senate’s Gang of Eight immigration bill offers $50 million in taxpayer-funded assistance to help illegal immigrants file for the multi-stage amnesty offered by the controversial bill.

The proposed spending is intended to help illegals get “registered provisional immigration status,” which is the first stage of the legalization process.

The money can be given to activist groups to support immigrants who need help “completing applications and petitions, including providing assistance in obtaining the requisite documents and supporting evidence … applying for any waivers for which applicants and qualifying family members may be eligible,” according to Section 2106, beginning on page 131 of the complex 844-page bill.

The very long bill also includes language granting the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to spend the money on other priorities.

The money can be used for “providing any other assistance that the Secretary or grantees consider useful or necessary to apply for registered provisional immigrant status,” the bill says.

Also, in more good news for illegal immigrants, the $50 million may be just a down payment. Section 2106(d)2(A) of the law provides a five-year authorization to congressional appropriations committees to spend even more taxpayer funds to help activist groups guide illegal immigrants in their quests for green cards as well as access to taxpayer aid and welfare programs.

{snip}

A variety of Democratic-leaning organizations would meet those requirements. They include La Raza and Casa De Maryland, both of whom are strongly promoting the new amnesty and guest-worker bill.

{snip}

http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/18/immigration-bill-would-spend-50-million-to-advise-illegals/

Michael Neibauer, Washington Business Journal

The “master suite” is being phased out—not from our homes, but from our lexicon.

A survey of 10 major Washington, D.C.-area homebuilders found that six no longer use the term “master” in their floor plans to describe the largest bedroom in the house. They have replaced it with “owner’s suite” or “owner’s bedroom” or, in one case, “mastre bedroom.”

Why? In large part for exactly the reason you would think: “Master” has connotation problems, in gender (it skews toward male) and race (the slave-master).

{snip}

“I imagine it’s not only a more accurate description but also a more politically correct term of art,” said Steve Nardella, senior vice president of operations for Bethesda-based Winchester Homes Inc.

Either way, the “master suite” has been linguistically shoved aside.

{snip}

Randy Creaser, owner of D.C.’s Creaser/O’Brien Architects PC, said he ditched “master” in the early 1990s in his home designs. He vaguely recalled a few lawsuits brought against builders over the phrase. {snip}

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2013/04/16/homebuilders-scrap-racist.html

Jeff Karoub, Yahoo! News

A judge on Wednesday finalized a $700,000 settlement between McDonald’s Corp. and members of Michigan’s Muslim community over claims a suburban Detroit restaurant falsely advertised its food as prepared according to Islamic law.

Ahmed Ahmed, the Dearborn Heights man who represents plaintiffs in the class-action suit, claims he bought a chicken sandwich in September 2011 at the restaurant but found it wasn’t halal. Islam forbids consumption of pork, and God’s name must be invoked before an animal providing meat for consumption is slaughtered.

The McDonald’s restaurant chain and one of its franchise owners agreed in January to the tentative settlement that would be shared by Ahmed, as well as a Muslim-run Detroit health clinic, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and lawyers.

{snip}

The lawsuit technically covered anyone who bought the halal-advertised products between September 2005 and January from the restaurant and another McDonald’s in the city with a different owner. The other location wasn’t a defendant or a focus of the investigation.

Dakhlallah has said he was approached by Ahmed, and they conducted an investigation. A letter sent to McDonald’s and the restaurant franchisee, Finley’s Management, by Dakhlallah’s firm said Ahmed had “confirmed from a source familiar with the inventory” that the restaurant had sold non-halal food “on many occasions.”

In the settlement notice, Finley’s Management said it “has a carefully designed system for preparing and serving halal such that halal chicken products are labeled, stored, refrigerated, and cooked in halal-only areas.” The company added it trains its employees on preparing halal food and “requires strict adherence to the process.”

McDonald’s attorney Thomas McNeill said the investigations and negotiations proved that if a problem arose, “it was isolated and rare.”

{snip}

There are only two McDonald’s in the United States that sell halal products and both are in Dearborn, which has one of the nation’s largest Arab and Muslim communities. Overall, the Detroit area is home to about 150,000 Muslims of many ethnicities.

http://news.yahoo.com/deal-approved-muslims-suit-against-mcdonalds-154151003–finance.html

Eight Arresed Folling Protest for Tuition For Tuition Equality for Undocumented Students

Jennifer Calfas et al., Michigan Daily

Led by a University Police officer, Public Policy senior Kevin Mersol-Barg crossed State Street, hands cuffed behind his back. Before entering the squad car, he uttered a few words as chants advocating in-state tuition equality were echoed across the street.

“We won’t rest until tuition equality is passed,” he said.

Mersol-Barg—who is a columnist at The Michigan Daily—was one of eight protesters arrested after blocking traffic for around 30 minutes outside the Michigan Union at State Street and South University Avenue. About 40 people originally impeded traffic, though many retreated as officers from the University and Ann Arbor Police Departments approached. The arrested include six University students.

In a protest organized by One Michigan—a Detroit-based organization led by undocumented youth and allies—students and community members gathered in front of the Union to call attention to University policy on undocumented students’ tuition rates. A press release for the demonstration said students were “risking arrest” to demand in-state rates for Michigan’s undocumented residents.

At about $12,000 per year, in-state tuition is nearly $28,000 less than out-of-state rates.

{snip}

Members of the University’s Coalition for Tuition Equality participated in the event to support One Michigan, although the two groups are not affiliated. The event occurred as administrators continue to discuss possible changes to University residency policy.

University Police spokeswoman Diane Brown said the UMPD dispatch center received several calls at about 6:28 p.m. — including one from a University bus driver — after the students went into the street.

“Several chose to comply, and these eight got arrested,” Brown said. “They were very cooperative—they were arrested, brought to our office, processed and released.”

Brown said charges against the students won’t be clear until prosecutors review the case, but could include disorderly conduct, disobeying a police officer or impeding traffic. When asked whether prosecutors could choose to dismiss the case, she said it’s “possible, but hard to say,” noting that the students were clearly disobeying the law.

{snip}

Before taking to the streets, three local youth said they were unable to attend the University due to the tuition policy shared their stories to inspire the crowd before the march.

Javier Contreras, a senior at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, was admitted to the University but remains unsure if he can attend due to the high cost as an undocumented student. Contreras was born in Mexico, but has lived in the city since he was four years old.

{snip}

After the speakers shared their stories, the protesters marched to President Coleman’s house on South University Avenue, shouting, “Education not segregation.”

When protesters moved to the intersection of State Street and South University Avenue, immediately clogging traffic, horns blared and drivers yelled out car windows. Some drivers supported the protest, but yelled for them to clear the road.

{snip}

http://www.michigandaily.com/news/students-arrested-following-protest-tuition-equality-undocumented-students

Kyle Olson, EAG News

 The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction runs several programs that heavily emphasize racial issues in public schools.