California NAACP demands Oakland declare a crime emergency

The NAACP has apparently discovered that black people don’t like being victims of crime.

After years of decrying the inherent racism of the “carceral state” and the structural racism of law enforcement, the NAACP has decided that perhaps handing over the streets to thugs and criminals wasn’t such a good idea.

California NAACP wants emergency declared over Oakland’s crimehttps://t.co/5hCHsCY5fR pic.twitter.com/dXUtyebVbi

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) July 31, 2023

Don’t worry, though, they will return to their regularly scheduled programming of hating on police if this crisis is ever solved.

By now everybody is familiar with the crime crisis in San Francisco. It makes for good visuals, and San Francisco is one of America’s most loved cities and has been since the Gold Rush.

Oakland, though, is hardly so famous or well regarded, is much less telegenic, and is populated by a less tony class of people. Oakland is where the people who keep San Francisco up and running live. San Francisco is where property and “lifestyle” crimes happen; Oakland is where violence dominates.

In other words, high-minded rhetoric meets reality on the streets of Oakland, and local Black leaders are done with the rhetoric. They want cops on the beat to stop the downward economic spiral and the terror that comes with violent crime.

NAACP leaders in California are calling for a state of emergency over crime in Oakland after the organization’s branch in the East Bay blamed efforts to defund police and limit prosecutions for putting the city in a “doom-loop.”

The NAACP said increases in violent crime and a lack of urgency to get a handle on the issue are hollowing out Oakland’s economic activity, and the vicious cycle will create more desperate people who will turn to crime to get by.

The California Hawaii State Conference NAACP said Friday that it “stands by and doubles down” on the Oakland branch’s request for city leaders to sound the alarm on lawlessness.

“Our community members are in danger and elected officials are turning their heads away. Crime is at an all time high in Oakland and we are calling the mayor to step up and work with the Oakland branch on this critical issue and call for a state of emergency,” said Rick L. Callender, NAACP regional president. “We cannot sit around and do nothing when people are in danger doing daily activities, trying to survive.”

There is and has been a big distance between the views of activists and those who actually walk the streets of most major cities. We tend to assume that Black activists actually represent the views of average people, largely because the political and media apparats act as if they do.

“Black people” think this, or that, or the other thing.

Yeah, well, no. While Blacks have for a variety of reasons have (mistakenly) been relatively unified as a voting bloc, in day-to-day life they are as diverse as any other group of people and as unlikely to be represented by activists as any other group.

Just Stop Oil may be populated by a bunch of White people mainly, but they likely don’t represent the views of the average White person. And nobody I know is flocking to the White Power movement, however much the Left tries to convince people that there is an upsurge in White Supremacists.

Working-class Blacks are among the most likely to be harmed by upsurges in crime, and unsurprisingly are unhappy when police presence goes down. Even though they are more likely to have bad interactions with police (when was the last time you were glad to see flashing lights behind you on the highway?), they are also more likely to depend upon their presence to make life livable.

The NAACP in Oakland is likely more reflective of opinion on the ground than the BLM activists there, whose activism has unsurprisingly not produced the utopia they promised.

The letter, written by chapter President Cynthia Adams and Bishop Bob Jackson of Acts Full Gospel Church in Oakland, said that local politicians’ embrace of the defund the police movement, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s lack of interest in prosecuting murder suspects and the mainstreaming of anti-police rhetoric have “created a heyday for criminals.”

The leaders added that a shortage of 500 police officers and a sluggish 911 system that can take hours to respond to non-fatal crimes have disheartened residents and emboldened thugs.

It is easy to forget–often due to the enomous efforts the political and media classes exert to hide this fact–that average people of all races, classes, and parties have much more in common than we are told. Nobody wants to be terrorized by thugs or to watch their hometowns descend into chaos. Most people understand that while police may not be perfect and that as with any other group with authority must be watched, they are also a key to keeping our communities livable.

Democrats’ stranglehold on the Black vote has more to do with targeted rhetoric and grotesque scare tactics than ideological overlap with average Black voters, who are far more likely to be politically moderate than White Democrats.

If an when Blacks become more open to voting for Republicans it will be due to the efforts of Democrats to alienate them, and rather less what Republicans will do to attract them. Republican individualism makes it difficult to impossible to attract Blacks as a voting bloc–we don’t have programs and handouts to act as carrots as the Democrats do.

What we can offer, though, is basic sanity. Hopefully that is enough, because without a unified Black vote the Democrats are toast.