The racists behind all the woke nonsense have yet another idea to keep us tribally separated. It’s called an “Ebony Alert,” and is similar to an Amber Alert, except that it would only apply to Black people.
Senate Bill 673, currently under consideration in the Legislature, “would authorize a law enforcement agency to request the Department of the California Highway Patrol to activate an ‘Ebony Alert’ with respect to Black youth, including young women and girls, who are reported missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances.” Never mind that the existing Amber Alert law, which is a Federal law applying to all 50 states, already mandates similar measures be taken when a child disappears.
“Amber” stands for “America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response”; the program was created nearly thirty years ago as a legacy to a 9-year-old Texas girl, Amber Hagerman, who disappeared and was later found brutally murdered. That law says nothing about the gender, race or ethnicity of the child who disappeared. Why should it? It applies to all American children.
But racist wokes hate this sort of legislation, because it doesn’t treat Black children as a special class, which is what they want. It’s not good enough for them to have an Amber Alert if the child is Black. That’s because, in their interpretation, law enforcement agencies must be provided with “additional tools to disseminate timely, accurate information to engage the public and the media to more effectively assist with locating missing Black children and young women that are disproportionately missing in California.”
Just why Black kids who disappear need “additional tools” and “more assistance” from law enforcement than do White, Latino or Asian kids is never spelled out in SB 673. State Senator Steven Bradford, a Democrat representing the 35th District of California (Compton, Inglewood), who wrote the bill, is vice chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus; he also sponsored Senate Bill 2, which passed the State Senate in 2021. That law, a first in the nation, elucidated conditions under which police officers can be de-certified, including for misconduct. We can debate all day long whether such a law is needed or not, or is overly harsh on cops, or defines “misconduct” too broadly; but what is clear is that Bradford has aligned himself with the anti-police movement. He has sponsored amendments “that would prohibit a peace officer from initiating a traffic stop for a low-level violation,” a controversial act that would have a harmful impact on crime prevention.
I believe this proposed “Ebony Alert” is ridiculous and a waste of time. Do we really need two separate, competing alerts? All this does is to further divide us into warring tribes, whose interests are in competition with each other. Haven’t we had enough of that? When we start politicizing child abductions, we’re on the road to hell. The disappearance of any child is a terrible thing; Black children who go missing should not receive more preferential publicity, or separate publicity, or different publicity, than a White, Latino or Asian child. This is a slippery slope: What’s next, a Rainbow Alert for missing LGBTQ children?
This proposed Ebony Alert bill is simply another example of the entitlement Black activists demand. They claim that 400 years of racism and Jim Crow entitles Black Americans to more rights than any other class of Americans. Reparations, especially of a monetary kind, is the prime example. So is affirmative action, and so are Pamela Price’s efforts to “decarcerate” Black felons, and Libby Schaaf’s scheme to pay Black Oaklanders $500 a month, solely based on the color of their skin.
If there’s increasing backlash to Black political demands in this country—and there is—it’s because every demand made by Black activists and then granted is followed by more demands—unreasonable, sweeping and arbitrary. We’re already hearing suggestions from radicals that Black people need not pay rent. People look around and wonder what’s going on: they’ve had their share of hardships, too, but nobody is giving them extra goodies, nor are they asking for any. People wonder if our sense of compassion, of trying to make amends for past mistakes, has not gone too far. I wonder the same thing, and fear the answer is yes.
Steve Heimoff