What a Difference Five Years Makes

Five years ago, Kansas City Star sportswriter Jason Whitlock wrote an op-ed on the topic of violent crime among black males after Washington Redskin Sean Taylor was killed by an armed burglar.  His death was due to a gunshot wound to his femoral artery.

At the time, Whitlock wrote:

Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you're a black man living in America, you've been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.

The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.

No, we don't know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor's death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it's no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You'd assume a heart attack, and you'd know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

Well, after Kansas City Chief's player Jovan Belcher's murder/suicide, Whitlock is still peddling "aggresive speculation" and blaming a "KKK," but his target has shifted a bit:

Sports gets so much attention, and people tune out the real world, that I try to take advantage of the opportunity to talk about the real world when sports lends itself to that and try to open people’s eyes. You know, I did not go as far as I’d like to go because my thoughts on the NRA and America’s gun culture – I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, uh, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don’t have our best interests [at heart].

I think it’s obvious if you’ve traveled abroad, and traveled to countries where they have legitimate gun laws, that we don’t have to have what we have in America, where people somehow think a gun enhances their liberty, and that people somehow think a gun makes them safer. It just doesn’t. A gun turns some kids listening to music into a murder scene. And uh, you know, if you don’t have a gun, you drive home. You know, kids listening to some loud music, you don’t like it, you go home and complain to your wife. But when you have a gun, you open fire, potentially, and take the life of a child.

So, it's no longer the black KKK, but the NRA KKK that's at fault for, well, black men killing black men (and women.)  It's no longer the "black KKK" (aka: the gang culture) that turns "kids listening to music into a murder scene," it's the NRA's culture!  You see, black men don't die of murder at six times the rate of any other group in America because their culture tells them that getting "dissed" is a capital offense, oh no!  It's because they're unable to overcome the evil brain-melting rays that guns produce!

Must be a genetic thing, no?  So we need to disarm Billy Bob and Cletus so that a Jovan won't kill his girlfriend and then himself.  But what about Alexandria?

Sounds like rationalization to me. But what do I know. I'm just some cracker....

(h/t: SayUncle)