Stupid White Men-- and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! - Michael Moore [37]
Nonetheless, we have almost a quarter-billion guns in our homes.
The vast majority of guns in America are purchased and owned—that is, introduced into society—by white people. Each year about 500,000 guns are stolen, mostly from these same white people in the suburbs. And the vast majority of those guns end up in the inner city, sold cheaply or traded for legal or illegal goods and services.
These white guns have caused an enormous amount of death and suffering among African-Americans. Gunfire is the number one cause of death among young blacks. Black men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four are almost six times more likely to be shot to death than white men in that same age group.
No African-American owns a gun company. Cruise through the part of your town where African-Americans live: there are no gun factories there. At prices that range from several hundred to several thousand dollars, most African-Americans can’t afford to buy a Glock, Beretta, Luger, Colt, or Smith & Wesson. No black guy owns a plane that’s smuggling automatic weapons into the country
All of this is done by whites. But sooner or later, thousands of these legally purchased guns end up in the hands of desperate people who live in poverty and who live with their own set of fears. To introduce guns into this volatile environment—which we white people have done little to improve—is a deadly proposition.
So if you’re white, and you’d like to help reduce the number one cause of death among young black men, here’s the answer: Don’t buy a gun. Don’t keep one in your house or car. No guns laying around means no guns stolen to be resold in poor black neighborhoods. Wherever you live, chances are that crime is at an all-time low. Chill out, sit back, and enjoy the good life an unlevel playing field has given you. If you’re truly concerned about your protection, get a dog. Bad guys generally don’t want to tussle with a crazy barking animal with sharp teeth.
You don’t need a gun.
4. Lose all the liberal “concern” for black people.
Really. Black people are onto us. They know we say and do things to make it look as if progress has been made. They see us working hard to show how not-prejudiced we are. Skip it. We haven’t made real progress. We’re still bigots—and they know it.
Cut the crap about all your “black friends.” You don’t have black friends. A friend is someone you have over for dinner regularly, someone you go on vacation with, someone you ask to be in your wedding party, someone you go to church with on Sunday, someone you call often to share your most intimate secrets. That kind of friend.
Your black “friends” know that the chances of your dropping your toddler off with them in their part of town while you go on a weekend trip is about as good as your inviting them to go on the trip with you.
I’ve heard liberals say dumb things like, “There are no black people on Friends.” I like it that there are no black friends on
Friends, because in real life friends like that don’t have black friends. It’s an honest, believable show.
So let’s dispense with this ruse that blacks and whites are now all part of that big multi-cultural quilt we call America. We live in our world, they live in theirs. And that’s what we’ve grown comfortable with, like it or not. This wouldn’t be so bad if their world existed on a financially and socially parallel plane. If it did, then we could just mix and mingle however we saw fit—as equals, the way we already do with other white people. For instance, I don’t have much desire to hang out with Young Republicans. That’s okay, because they’re going to do just fine without me, and my decision not to associate with them doesn’t affect their standard of living or quality of life. (In fact, it probably improves it.)
Isn’t it better not to coddle each other with the delusion that African-Americans are finally part of the mainstream? Isn’t it smarter to lift the veil