Picking Our Heroes a Lot Better

Time to pull out my "black card", earned, as you know, through hard work and a thorough familiarity with my Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.  Today, I am a black man.  And I am really, really in need of some better heroes than the ones "my" community keeps celebrating.

Let's take a look.

There's good old Freddie Gray, with a long, long rap sheet peddling cocaine and other drugs on the streets of Baltimore.  Freddie's 18+ arrests, as recent as last month, included lots of drug convictions, vandalizing property, burglary and theft.  He was 25 or so when he died from injuries suffered after running from the police and taking an eventful ride in a paddy wagon.  He was so beloved in his neighborhood that when he died, the locals rioted and looted, and burned down a CVS in his honor.

Then there's Michael Brown, the "gentle giant" of lore.  Michael was also beloved in his home of Ferguson, Missouri, especially by convenience-store owners, even though he would rob them and strong-arm their employees as he walked out without paying.  We have that on video, and the viewer would certainly see someone who had done that kind of thing before.  Michael was killed after attacking a police car and trying to grab an officer's gun, walking away and then charging the cop -- all 6'4", 295 of Michael.  Ferguson so loved their Mike that they rioted, looted, burned down stores and invited Al Sharpton to bring them peace after the loss of their local hero.

Too many male heroes?  OK, let's celebrate Toni Morrison, who just this month declared that she wanted to "see a cop shoot an unarmed white teenager in the back", and see "a white man convicted for raping a black woman."  Mrs. Morrison has a Nobel Prize and a Pulitzer Prize, celebrating her way with words, so we have to assume she meant exactly what she said.  No less an authority than Barack Obama saw fit to give this promoter of murder the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Now, there's a hero we can celebrate.

Do you wonder why people think what they do of us?  Do white people look at white versions of  ignorant criminal thugs like Gray and Brown and riot, loot and burn when they are killed resisting arrest?  Do white people not publicly disassociate themselves from the ranting of people who advocate for murder, like Toni Morrison?  They sure don't get Nobel Prizes and Presidential Medals of Freedom.

I stand up, a proud black man today, asking for us to remember what our human values are, and proactively -- not reflexively -- seek out and celebrate the heroes who reflect those values.  Seek them out now, not after they're made heroes by the leftist press.  Promote the values we believe in -- work ethic, charity, treating our neighbors as we would ourselves.  Promote the heroes who exemplify that; good people in the clergy, in the military, in the professions and the sciences and even the arts, who have risen by their gravity, by their innate goodness, their talent, their diligence.

We as Americans of whatever color have failed ourselves miserably, if we find ourselves forced to find our heroes in jail cells and drug dens; if our passion is in defense of street thugs and criminals; if we listen to the rantings of poets grown entitled to say stupid things because we let them, and give them awards.

Ben Carson is weeping.
Tim Scott is weeping.
Colin Powell is weeping.
Sheriff David Clarke is weeping.
I hope Toya Graham is weeping.

Al Sharpton is doing a dance.  He, of course, is another one of those "heroes".

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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