How is the tweet that follows mind-boggling? Let me count the ways.
The first and most obvious way resides in the identity of the tweeter, which is the oxymoronic Planned Parenthood Black Community. What makes that group oxymoronic is that the parent organization, Planned Parenthood, was founded by Margaret Sanger, who was among other things a eugenist. That’s someone who believes in improving the species through the careful selection of parents.
Putting this in more concrete terms, Sanger advocated for the elimination of the black race, which she found inferior. But Sanger’s ideas didn’t stop at the theoretical stage. They have remained in practice long after her death in the organization she started. Consider:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America.
Here at long last is the tweet, which I invite the reader to try to reconcile with some of the information above.
We deserve to live. We deserve to survive. We deserve to thrive.
Being Black should not be a capital offense.https://t.co/f2Ly5hD9WC
— PP Black Community (@PPBlackComm) July 7, 2016
But there’s more about this tweet that deserves scrutiny. And that is the message about guns. Although police are not named overtly as the wholesale killers of black children, the occasion for the tweet — the latest police shooting of a black man, Alton Sterling — hints strongly that the men in blue are a prime mover in this scourge. The politicization of Sterling’s death has loomed large in the mainstream media. Here’s a tweet of the front page of New York’s Daily News:
An early look at tomorrow's front page:
HIS HANDS WERE EMPTY#AltonSterling didn't pull gun https://t.co/S5BDVXyGyC pic.twitter.com/CtctbfZ1cJ— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) July 7, 2016
There are two problems with this message. One is that the police have been show repeatedly to be a necessary buffer against crime in a community. No more accurate barometer of this can be found than in Baltimore, where murder rates have soared as the number of police has dwindled. A second problem is that vast majority of black homicides by gun are at the hands of other blacks. While this might constitute an argument against guns, it is first and foremost an argument in favor of self-determination against seeking out scapegoats.
