It hasn’t been a good week in Oakland from a public safety point of view. I’m not going to be one of the rightwing crowd who points the finger at Barbara Lee and blames her for the murders. I’m sure she’s upset every time there’s a crime spree in Oakland. It detracts from her narrative that all is fine and dandy. This current crime wave isn’t her fault. She didn’t pull the trigger or personally rob the stores or do the stabbings.
But it’s so important for us to understand just how and why Barbara Lee and her progressive friends are culpable in every crime that’s committed in Oakland. Let me explain.
There’s an atmosphere, a creepy psychic climate in Oakland that signals to a lot of people that crime is normal, permitted and expected. It’s always been that way here. When I moved to Adams Point in 1987 it was like that, and it’s never changed. That’s why our city has had a national reputation for crime and violence for decades (and why high tech has avoided Oakland even though we’re in the geographic center of the Bay Area). It’s gotten worse over the last two mayoral administrations, but it’s really nothing new. Nor is there any surprise what causes it: a soft, permissive approach to crime and aberrant behavior that is due to the leftwing politicians who purport to represent people of color. And people of color—it’s not racist to point this out, it’s simply the truth—commit most of the crime.
The data confirm this. In 2019—a pre-pandemic representative year--the percentage of White people in America was about 63.4%, and that of Black people 12.4%. Yet of all the crimes committed in the U.S., about 69.4% were by White people, while that of Black people was 26.6%--more than double their percent of the population, according to FBI statistics.
When it comes to violent crimes like murder/non-negligent manslaughter and robbery, the percentage committed by Black people rises to above 50% nationally. Similarly high percentages of Black people, well in excess of their share of the population, commit the following crimes: rape, aggravated assault, possessing stolen property, weapons possession, prostitution, disorderly conduct, drug abuse and vandalism. There can be no doubt that Black people commit crime well out of their proportion of the total U.S. population, and anyone who questions that is either a fool or a liar.
So we have to ask, why is this the case?
The woke/progressive faction, which controls Oakland and has for decades, insists that it has a simple cause: racism. According to this view, racism is such a horrible problem that it traumatizes Black people, particularly boys and men, and somehow causes them to be criminals. Exactly how this causation works is never quite explained by Black activists, but it has somehow become a part of the American mantra, repeated endlessly in the media: that if it weren’t for systematic racism and White supremacy, Black people would not have higher rates of crime than do White people or Asian-Americans.
If you believe this racism theory, you’re probably a liberal, and you probably voted for Barbara Lee. If you don’t believe this, you’re part of growing number of Americans who are tired of the red herring of racism and are demanding better behavior from all of us.
This gets back to why Barbara Lee and her fellow progressives are so implicated in Oakland crime. First, a caveat: many of their progressive values are admirable, and I personally am grateful to progressives for defending Gay rights against the vicious, insane attacks on us by the so-called “Christian” right, who are in reality delusional under-educated louts out to cleanse America of the entire LGBTQ spectrum and establish a Christian theocracy. At the same time, progressives have gotten so enmeshed in the racial wars that they’ve lost their sanity. They have never spoken honestly to communities of color. They have never asked their constituencies to change their behavior. Instead, they crater to the popular belief on the street that every person of color has been wronged by racism, and thus is entitled to break the law in order to get even.
I simply do not believe that racism is a problem in America or, if it is, not a very big one. We have much bigger fish to fry. (The rise of the Christian nationalist right is our biggest threat.) And with Oakland being in such a sorry condition, economically and in every other way, it’s a damned shame our “leaders” waste so much time and energy babbling about race.
Have a wonderful weekend! It’s dangerous out there. If you have to go out at night in the flatlands, be careful. I myself would not go downtown past dark, but there’s not a lot to do there anyway, because downtown has been destroyed by Barbara Lee and her friends.
Steve Heimoff