Victor Davis Hanson: Why Race Relations Are Getting Worse

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Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Recently, we've had a lot of discussion about racial relations and the consensus from left to right seems constant and uniform that they're getting much worse. There were two or three iconic events this last week that emphasize that pessimism.
One was in the Juneteenth celebration in Chicago, which commemorated the official end of slavery in the 1860s and is now our newest national holiday. It ended up with 39 people wounded, seven dead, semi-automatic gunfire. It was almost like a war zone. The mayor of Chicago, Mayor Johnson, did not comment on what was the cause of this or the pathologies that would lead people to slaughter. This was entirely 100 percent black on black crime, but he was talking about illiberality and discrimination against trans people. When his city is under siege, at the same time or prior to that, was the Carmelo Anthony murder, where Carmelo Anthony, a young black teenager at a track meet, ventured over to the opposing side by intent, carrying a knife in his backpack, went into a tent, where the entire group there was from the opposite team that he was playing, and then said he would not leave when asked 10, 12 times, and finally said, somebody, he said, push me out or try it and you'll find out.
A young man by the name of Metcalfe slightly touched him, and he stabbed him in the heart, killed him, ran away, and the result was the black community has championed Carmelo Anthony, not all of the black community, but a sizable portion, and it's gotten to the point where they believe that he was justified because the so-called white community doesn't understand black pride and you don't interfere with the space, etc. In other words, ignoring all the details that he deliberately ventured over to cause of confrontation, which could have been settled peacefully if he just left. But the reaction was what was disturbing. And then, in addition to that, there was the Caitlin Clark incident. She is, remember, the superstar of the Women's Basketball Association. And she came out of a fantastic college career. She's very tall, kind of thin, not frail, but not muscular, but she's a wonderful outside shooter. And somebody with that height and the ability, who's quick, and the ability to pass has revolutionized the Women's Basketball Association. And the result is she is gaining, not just for herself and her team, but for the entire league, enormous increases in revenue. Some people believe that she's responsible for 25 percent in increased revenues. So all the players are getting raises, they have increased stature, they have bigger audience, they have bigger ads, opportunities, they fly not, you know, passenger class commercial anymore. It's been a win-win, and yet, systematically, black players, women, have been trying to hurt her. And the most recent incident was that we had a black player from the opposite team knock her down, and then, when she tried to get up, another player may have tried to stop her, but one player took her fist and hit her in the neck, or pressed her in the neck, and there were also a knee involved, and it was pretty clear that it was a deliberate attempt. And this is one of, according to a lot of news accounts, 10 or 12 incidents where there has been flagrant fouls issued because the players are trying to hurt her. So what was the commentary? The commentary was, well, the teams in the WBA are mostly black, they're mostly, to be candid, lesbian, and Caitlin Clark is white and straight, and therefore this supposedly racist audience has flocked to the WBA to cheer her on in a divisive standard. There's no evidence that that is true, but the reaction from the black women and the majority of them, probably not so, but from a sizable minority of them, is to hurt her and damage her, even though they know that that is not in their interest. I'm going to talk about that a little bit later, but when you add up all of these incidents, you get the impression that something has gone wrong. And usually the standard exegesis is, given the traditions of slavery that have been gone for 160 plus years, Jim Crow in the South, and then this new term systematic racism, white privilege, etc., etc.,