When Trayvon Martin was killed by a “white Hispanic,” President Barack Obama had a lot to say. “If I had a son,” Obama reminded the nation, “he’d look like Trayvon.” If the 6’3 Obama had a son, his hypothetical teenager might also look a lot like LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley, or Jalen Hill, the three UCLA basketball players who were recently detained in China for shoplifting. According to reports, the three were caught on surveillance footage stealing luxury goods from high-end designer stores such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Yves Saint Laurent, while the Bruins were overseas to showcase U.S.-China sporting cooperation.
Needless to say, it is extremely unlikely that Obama — a staunch basketball fan — will hold a press conference to declare that his hypothetical sons might resemble the UCLA basketball players who embarrassed themselves, their school, and their country. This is because black liberals are fond of associating themselves with other blacks only when doing so allows them to claim victim status. But when black teenagers commit crimes that violate the property rights (or lives) of others (which occurs not infrequently), all we hear from black liberals is crickets or excuses.
Perhaps the UCLA students committing the alleged acts of shoplifting did so because their ancestors, unbeknownst to us, were enslaved by the Chinese? Or perhaps they targeted Chinese high-end designer stores because they are underprivileged? After all, it smacks of terrible oppression that the three black players were afforded the chance to travel overseas and spend several days in a luxury five-star hotel, and then had both the U.S. State Department and the President of the United States intervene on their behalf when they were detained for stealing merchandise.
At any rate, what is telling is that the current president (whose sons look nothing like the three detained athletes) helped to secure the players’ release from China through his “direct intervention with the country’s president, Xi Jinping.” What is equally telling, though, is the fact that many black liberals and hostile media networks refuse to give Trump credit for his intervention.
For example, The Root, a news site catering to black audiences, reluctantly acknowledged that President Trump may have assisted in the release of the UCLA athletes, but faulted him nevertheless for “scold[ing] the players for their behavior in a foreign country.” (Apparently, scolding consists of acknowledging that shoplifters may face long prison sentences in China.) Commentators on the website even speculated that the President would not have acted unless his staff tricked him into thinking that the three detained players were white.
Black liberals who refuse to show appreciation to the President for his intervention on behalf of the basketball players who got themselves in trouble show that they lack class. After all, if black athletes and entertainers think they are courageous for dissing Trump, fantasizing about his assassination, and boycotting the White House, they should also be man enough to give him credit where credit is due.
We shouldn’t hold our collective breath, however. Unfortunately, many black liberals are blindly following in the footsteps of white liberals who also refuse to give Trump credit for his successes, such as “boosting business and fueling our economic growth.” Consistent with this pattern, Chris Cillizza, CNN’s liberal editor-at-large, recently dismissed Trump’s efforts to save the three UCLA players (though, of course, he would have attacked the President had he not intervened).
According to Cillizza, Trump was merely “doing his job” when he asked the leader of the Chinese government to help resolve the situation involving the detained athletes. But this is patently false. It has never been the President’s “job” to convince the heads of foreign states that they should release American citizens who get caught overseas stealing other people’s property. (Nor, for that matter, would it be the President’s job to ask foreign governments to release U.S. citizens caught selling drugs overseas or committing other criminal acts.) To suggest otherwise, is just more fake news from a biased and non-credible news network.
Cillizza also showed his ugly liberal biases when he framed an innocuous tweet from the President asking whether the freed UCLA basketball players would acknowledge his intervention as “an older white man in a position of power demanding thanks from three young black men for saving them[.]”
Such race-baiting on the part of white liberals is despicable, but par for the course. Black Americans should not fall for this racial head fake. After all, race-baiting liberals have kept blacks trapped in failing schools by opposing school choice, have spent decades misgoverning cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee, and have nothing to offer blacks except more racial division and exploitation. We deserve better, but won’t get better treatment until we are honest enough to acknowledge when Republican actions and policies benefit the black community.
Nick James is the nom de plume of a trial attorney in the D.C. area who formerly worked for the United States Department of Justice as an award-winning federal prosecutor.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.