HOCHUL HOKUM: WHITE SUPREMACISM IS THE MOST SERIOUS THREAT WE FACE AS A NATION

Hochul’s racial huckstering after Buffalo ignores NY’s violent-crime surge 

 

By Bob McManus

 

 

New York Post 

May 20, 2022

 

 

Hochul signed an executive order on May 18 declaring that New York would require state police to seek court orders to keep guns away from people who might pose a threat to themselves or others 

 

Add racial huckstering and executive overreach to the case against Kathy Hochul.

New York’s most recent accidental governor has responded to last weekend’s Buffalo massacre with executive orders vastly expanding police surveillance powers to address what she described as race-driven domestic terrorism.

“The truth is that the most serious threat we face as a nation is from within,” Hochul asserted. “Not from the Russians, not from people elsewhere — it’s white supremacism.”

But she provides no evidence of this.

Nor has she ever shown serious concern for the growing number of black citizens killed by other black citizens across the state — and especially in New York City.

So take it for what it is: Hochul hokum.

Not that there is any doubt that 18-year-old Payton Gendron, accused in the Buffalo shootings, is a white supremacist; he explicitly describes himself as such in his bizarre “manifesto.”

But it’s also obvious that Gendron is murderously mentally ill — though by no means part of an organization that poses a threat to black New Yorkers.

Just as it is clear that among all of the Empire State’s problems, Ku Klux Klan wannabes lurking in the weeds aren’t included.

 

Kevin Bruen, Superintendent of the New York State Police, holds a firearm as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks during a news conference following the massacre in Buffalo

The sad but compelling fact is that African Americans routinely are shot — many fatally — in New York’s cities out of all proportion to their numbers. And that the shooters are almost always other African Americans.

Jim Quinn, former Queens executive district attorney, and a cowriter put it this way recently in The New York Times: “While all New Yorkers are affected by rising crime, the brunt of the increase is borne by black New Yorkers. In 2020, black New Yorkers, who make up about 24 percent of the city’s population, were the victims in 65 percent of murders and 74 percent of shootings.”

The data lag, to be sure, but there is no reason to believe the current violent-crime surge has been any less burdensome on black New Yorkers.

Nor is New York unique.

A recent study by Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that while black males aged 15 to 34 make up just 2% of all Americans, they accounted for a staggering 38% of the nation’s gun-murder victims between 2019 and 2020 — a period when such killings themselves jumped by 40%.

But who pulled the triggers?

Johns Hopkins’ answer to that is a deflection — much as is Hochul’s response to the Buffalo murders.

“These racial disparities are largely the result of structural inequities that increase the risk of interpersonal violence,” asserts the university — a word salad translating roughly to “white supremacism,” but disclosing virtually nothing about who’s actually committing the murders.

For that, it’s necessary to go to FBI figures, which show that murder tends to be an intra-racial crime: Whites are generally killed by other whites — and blacks are overwhelmingly killed by other blacks.

In 2018, for example, fully 88.6% of black murder victims nationally were killed by black offenders.

Closer to home, NYPD numbers from 2021 demonstrate that blacks — roughly 23% of New York City’s population — were 67% of its murder victims, 64% of its murder suspects and 62% of those arrested for murder.

So while New York doesn’t lack for senseless bloodshed, it isn’t remotely the result of white supremacism or terrorism.

Certainly the numbers don’t justify Hochul’s power-grabbing executive orders — which, among other things, sharply expand the spying authority of New York’s homeland security agency and the State Police.

Hochul’s hyperbole, of course, is explained by New York’s political calendar: Assuming office last year upon her shamed predecessor’s resignation, she’s seeking a full, four-year term.

And her record on crime could interfere with that. She’s a committed softy, and the polls show New Yorkers are looking for something entirely different.

 

Hochul signs an executive order on May 18

Certainly New York Mayor Eric Adams is looking for changes in the state’s penal code to combat his city’s rising violent-crime rates — and Hochul has been of no help whatsoever. To the contrary.

This stands to hurt her campaign — hence the attempt to convert a very real street-violence problem into a campaign against phony “white supremacism.”

The cynicism — and the betrayal of black New Yorkers — is breathtaking, but neither has ever been an impediment to political success in the Empire State.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handpicked former lieutenant governor seem to understand this — because she’s certainly acting like it.

Whether she’ll fool anyone is the question of the moment.