I will admit that in doing research for this blog, I read a lot of news. However, I don’t think I am any smarter than the average America. I may be better informed, but that is a choice I made. Anyone can make that choice. I believe that one of the major problems in America right now is that people are believing what they are told and not doing their own research. That was recently illustrated in a post at Townhall by Larry Elder.
The article reports:
A couple of years ago, I gave a speech before a conservative, predominantly white audience. I couldn’t help but notice a tall, heavyset Black man, arms folded, standing in the back. From time to time, I would look at him, only to see him frown and shake his head, I assumed disapprovingly, when I made what I considered important points.
After the speech, he came up to me. “I am angry,” he said. “Not at you — at myself. I thought I was well informed. I read the news. I watch the news. I now see I’ve been manipulated by the party that I voted for all my life.”
The article lists the things that the man learned from Larry Elder’s speech:
He said he had no idea that (according to a 2004 Thomas B. Fordham Institute study) 44% of Philadelphia public school teachers send their own school-age kids to private school. Yet the Democratic Party adamantly opposes school vouchers, which would give K-12 children of urban parents a chance at a better school.
He did not know that Democrats, including President Barack Obama, tried to end the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program. It is a lottery that allows fortunate parents to opt out of their local public school for a better private school. The program is so popular that there are far more parents who want to participate than there are seats. “What’s more important, ” he asked me, “than making sure are kids are well educated?”
He did not know that, in 1965, 25% of Black kids were born outside of wedlock, versus 70% today, a phenomenon that cannot be attributed to slavery and Jim Crow. He did not know that Barack Obama once said, “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
…He did not know that, according to Harvard economist George Borjas, illegal immigration creates winners and losers. But the big losers are low- and unskilled American workers of color who compete against low- and unskilled illegal immigrant workers — who place downward pressure on the wages of the native-born.
The man did not know that, according to The Washington Post, in recent years, more unarmed whites have been killed by the police than unarmed Blacks. He was unaware of studies, including one by a Black Harvard economist, that found the police more hesitant, more reluctant, to pull the trigger on a Black suspect than on a white suspect. He did not know that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, police killings of Blacks declined almost 80% from the late ’60s through the 2010s, while police killings of whites have flatlined.
Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We need to remember that bias in reporting is not only reflected in the way things are reported, it is also reflected by the things relevant to a story that are not mentioned.
