Very naturally, the rest of America regards the chronic and acute violence in black and Hispanic urban neighborhoods as an affair of violent criminals slaughtering one another.
They regret, of course, the deaths of innocent bystanders, often children.
But when gang-bangers murder each other they are neither at all surprised nor much disturbed.
Equally naturally, that same non-black and non-Hispanic America reacts with surprise, shock, and outrage to mass slaughters at schools, universities, gyms, theaters, or other locations, often suburban or exurban, little frequented by blacks or Hispanics and ordinarily much safer than those violence-torn urban streets.
Meanwhile, blacks and Hispanics respond with racial resentment to this disparity in the reactions of non-blacks and non-Hispanics to the two sorts of gun violence.
And that racial resentment colors their own reactions.
Out of overdone racial solidarity they often think, of the murderous gang-bangers you would expect them to hate worse than anything, "Those are our children," and wish to protect them from machinery of law and order that they see as a tool of racist oppression in the hands of malevolent whites.
Out of blind racial resentment they condemn for racism whites in particular, but anyone the shoe fits, for reacting with a shrug to urban gangster violence but with horror to the mass murder of innocents.
And to top it off they sometimes come within an inch of saying, when something like the mass carnage of children in Connecticut happens, if they don't say it outright, "Good. Now you know what it feels like when your people - your children - are slaughtered for a change."
And much of the professional left is right there with them.
Anyway, blacks and Hispanics in America of course want the violence in their urban neighborhoods reduced.
But not by firm and aggressive, effective law enforcement shooting the gangsters and sending them to prison for long stretches where, with any luck, they will kill more of each other without harming any bystanders.
Disarmament, gun control, seems to them the right way to save "their children" from themselves, and everyone else in the neighborhood from them.
That is the message the president's wife and his friends are sending.
And meanwhile the rest of America, sick of the mass murders in their neighborhoods and the supposedly safe places they frequent, has come around.
This is Obama's chance to do something.
His chance to renew the ban on high-capacity magazines and assault rifles, for example.
One hopes.
They regret, of course, the deaths of innocent bystanders, often children.
But when gang-bangers murder each other they are neither at all surprised nor much disturbed.
Equally naturally, that same non-black and non-Hispanic America reacts with surprise, shock, and outrage to mass slaughters at schools, universities, gyms, theaters, or other locations, often suburban or exurban, little frequented by blacks or Hispanics and ordinarily much safer than those violence-torn urban streets.
Meanwhile, blacks and Hispanics respond with racial resentment to this disparity in the reactions of non-blacks and non-Hispanics to the two sorts of gun violence.
And that racial resentment colors their own reactions.
Out of overdone racial solidarity they often think, of the murderous gang-bangers you would expect them to hate worse than anything, "Those are our children," and wish to protect them from machinery of law and order that they see as a tool of racist oppression in the hands of malevolent whites.
Out of blind racial resentment they condemn for racism whites in particular, but anyone the shoe fits, for reacting with a shrug to urban gangster violence but with horror to the mass murder of innocents.
And to top it off they sometimes come within an inch of saying, when something like the mass carnage of children in Connecticut happens, if they don't say it outright, "Good. Now you know what it feels like when your people - your children - are slaughtered for a change."
And much of the professional left is right there with them.
Anyway, blacks and Hispanics in America of course want the violence in their urban neighborhoods reduced.
But not by firm and aggressive, effective law enforcement shooting the gangsters and sending them to prison for long stretches where, with any luck, they will kill more of each other without harming any bystanders.
Disarmament, gun control, seems to them the right way to save "their children" from themselves, and everyone else in the neighborhood from them.
That is the message the president's wife and his friends are sending.
And meanwhile the rest of America, sick of the mass murders in their neighborhoods and the supposedly safe places they frequent, has come around.
This is Obama's chance to do something.
His chance to renew the ban on high-capacity magazines and assault rifles, for example.
One hopes.
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