Yep, now accidents are “racist.” In this case, deadly fires in America’s cities. As NBC News “race writer” Char Adams sees, “racism in urban planning fuels a high rate of Black fire deaths,” in part caused by apartments set ablaze by electric space heaters due to tenants’ inability to remain warm without them.
“[R]ecent deadly fires in the Bronx, New York, and Philadelphia follow a historical pattern that sees Black people dying in accidents at alarming rates,” writes Adams, adding:
As leaders shift blame from electric space heaters to overcrowded housing in the wake of deadly fires in both the Bronx, New York and Philadelphia, experts say the true culprit is poor residential conditions and the racism rife in the nation’s urban planning and infrastructure decisions.
Within days of each other, the fire in a Bronx building killed at least 17 people, including several Gambian immigrants, and another in a Philadelphia row house killed a dozen.
But the fatal nature of these fires follows a historical pattern in which negligent policymaking and infrastructural decisions can kill Black people at disproportionate rates.
While tragic, the “disproportionality” of which Adams speaks is a socioeconomic issue rather than a race-based issue, here. Black, brown, white, purple, or green, people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale are at a disadvantage on multiple levels. Moreover, I’d argue that six decades of failed Democrat policies have far more to do with “urban planning and infrastructure decisions” than racism.”
We need to look no further than Lyndon B. Johnson’s colossal failure, the so-called “War on Poverty” for answers. As noted by The Heritage Foundation in 2014 — the 50th anniversary of Johnson’s “war” — correctly observed the following:
For a decade and a half before the War on Poverty began, self-sufficiency in American improved dramatically. But for the last 45 years, there has been no improvement at all. Many groups are less capable of self-support today than when Johnson’s war started.
The culprit is, in part, the welfare system itself, which discourages work and penalizes marriage. When the War on Poverty began, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage. Today the number is 41 percent. The collapse of marriage is the main cause of child poverty today.The welfare state is self-perpetuating.
By undermining the social norms necessary for self-reliance, welfare creates a need for even greater assistance in the future. President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion over the next decade on welfare programs that will discourage work, penalize marriage and undermine self-sufficiency.
And the band plays on.
While we’re at it, let’s toss in the disastrous increase in energy costs, directly related to Bidenomics and its evil twin, Bidenflation.
American families spent around $3,500 more in 2021 to buy the same products as they had in recent years, according to a new Penn-Wharton analysis. Worse, lower-income families have had to spend more than their better-off counterparts.
Yet the Biden White House has either ignored or attacked critics for raising concerns about inflation, and tried to claim such inflation is merely “transitory,” although the Federal Reserve is now discouraging use of that term.
Again, Black, brown, white, purple, or green — it is what it is, and that is the disastrous policies of this president have harmed those he professes to most want to help more than any other socioeconomic group in the country. But “racism.” Please.
Bronx five alarm fire. Photo: Thomas Gaston Article: https://t.co/IlEOxkauDv pic.twitter.com/NrtNXa4y8k
— 𝙴𝚛𝚒𝚌 𝚁𝚎𝚢𝚐𝚎𝚛𝚜 (@EricReygers) January 9, 2022
Here’s Juanita Lewis, an organizer with the New York “social justice” group Community Voices Heard:
We’re looking at how land use and zoning policies are used. Because of housing segregation, those policies have been used against communities of color.
We’re still operating under the context of housing segregation and having to prove who is worthy of protection and living in decent housing. [“Worthy”? Worthy, here, is an ability to pay.]
The fire was started by a space heater because there was inadequate heat. The situation in the Bronx is extremely sad, unfortunate, and disheartening, but it’s not uncommon.
A Philadelphia fire that killed 12 last week was started by a lit Christmas tree.https://t.co/BAApX8i7fT
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) January 12, 2022
"Get rid of the tree if it's in your house," Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said. "And next year, remember this." https://t.co/CRAxMacq0P
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 12, 2022
NBC also quoted Jessie Singer, a journalist, and author of “There Are No Accidents,” who took home the prize for the most ridiculous comment in the already-ridiculous article.
Racism influences almost every way to die by accident in America, and it has for a long, long time.
I looked as far back as 1900, and Black people die by accident at a higher rate than white people, all accidents total. Accidents are supposed to be unpredictable, unpreventable events.
If that were true, accidental deaths would be randomly distributed across the U.S., but it’s not.
As with NBC News, Singer went on to cite the aforementioned deadly fires as “proof” of his racially-charged claim, reiterating that “accidental fires are yet another way Black people are vulnerable to infrastructure failures promoted by [non-existent ]systemic racism.”
The bottom line.
All deadly accidents are tragic, regardless of the color or ethnicity of the victims. But selective outrage should be seen as exactly what it is; blatant exploitation, solely with an eye on the ballot box.
Related on RedState:
Joy Reid Makes Ridiculous Claim That Gun Laws Are Based on White Supremacy
Noted Economist Needs Just 105 Seconds to Destroy Progressives’ ‘White Supremacy’ Nonsense
Leftists Blast Herschel Walker in What His Son Termed ‘Racist and Southern-Phobic’ Attack
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