In the film The Shawshank Redemption, inmate Ellis Boyd Redding (Morgan Freeman) says:

“There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret…I look back at the way I was then. A young…stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I wanna talk to him. I wanna try and talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid is long gone. This old man is all that’s left. I gotta live with that…” 

In Chicago a young stupid kid, just 22, is charged with the terrible crime of murdering a Chicago police officer as he returned home at 3 A.M. Four young stupid kids, aged 19, 19, 18, and 16, are in jail charged with the terrible crime of murdering a beautiful 24-year-old black policewoman in a carjacking, just hours after she got her Master’s degree. These “kids” were said to be on a robbery spree to raise money for a girlfriend’s barbecue. All accused murderers are black. 

Black lives matter? 

Dexter Reed of Chicago showed just how much his life mattered to himself and his now-grieving mother when he opened fire on police during a routine traffic stop. As police legally instructed him to not roll his tinted windows up he defiantly began rolling his tinted windows up. He fired at police, emptying his magazine of 11 rounds. He received 96 in return. His mother is suing police. Social justice. 

In New York another young, stupid kid faces 25 years in prison for the terrible crime of viciously throwing a 68-year-old woman down the steps of a church, fracturing her skull. The 16-year-old black teen then rummaged through her still body, stealing $300 and car keys before running away while pulling his pants up. This “young kid’s” life began the year America made history by electing its first black president. Hope and change? 

There are countless more stories like this everywhere. Same make and model. All with long criminal histories of arrests, juvenile detention, parole, out on bail, no bail, due back in court…. fleeing police. No fear. No respect for the law. No respect for human beings or decent society. And why should they? 

Since 2015 George Soros has poured millions into electing progressive Democrat DA’s instructed to, “reverse engineer and dismantle the criminal justice infrastructure.” Results? In cities across America black teens routinely commit retail theft up to $1000 without penalty or deterrence. Shootings, homicides, car theft, and carjackings have all exploded. Many of the victims are black. Compassion? 

In 2000 George W. Bush called out the, “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Today we see the harsh bigotry of no expectations.

How can black lives matter if those who claim to care about black lives are the ones destroying them? Every night prime-time race hustlers tell us, “America is systemically racist.” Yet they are the system that destroyed the black family and public education. Why do they blame every black failure on white supremacy but then go to such great lengths trying to prove black inferiority? Because, according to Obama, Sharpton, Joy Reid, Van Jones, Whoopie, Ibram X. Kendi, Micheal Eric Dyson, and many more, blacks are simply not capable of the very standards that made all of them successful. Makes no sense? It isn’t supposed to. These grievance industry titans don’t care about black uplift. They only care about the power and profit derived from producing black failure. Why else would they elect mayors, councils, DAs, and CRT/DEI school boards who change, lower and eliminate all standards of merit and achievement, guaranteeing more black failure and dysfunction? Why do they legislate against school choice when it’s proven to dramatically outperform public union schools and black parents overwhelmingly want it?  And while they’re on TV every night trying to sell white racism, the rest of us are seeing the same viral videos of crime after crime committed by black criminals: Carjackings. Armed robberies. Mobs brawling in a restaurants, malls, and amusement parks. Kids fighting in schools, throwing punches and chairs at teachers. In every scene it’s the same cast and crew. 

Did the 15-year-old black girl in Missouri who viciously slammed a white girl’s head into the pavement repeatedly while screaming, “bitch,” miss all the successful blacks in TV commercials? Weren’t they supposed to groom her into accounting or architecture? Or was she groomed by the dehumanizing rap lyrics of “nigga and bitch”?

“The way things are…” 

Why are blacks free to hold hostile opinions towards police because of their experiences, real or exaggerated, yet the rest of us aren’t allowed to form opinions about blacks who are 12% of the population yet commit 50-70% of all violent crime? Profiling? Implicit bias? 

Americans know what black potential is and what black achievement looks like because we’ve seen it everywhere throughout our lives. Knowing this, how can so many white suburbanites, aching with woke compassion, demand that their kids study, finish homework, hand assignments in on time, behave in class and achieve good grades, but allow all these standards to be lowered or removed for blacks? Equality? And how are black kids supposed to succeed in school if they’re not even expected to show up to school? Because DEI and “Disparate Impact” now defines attendance as “racist.” Equity? This is the “systemic racism,” that whites “aching with compassion,” and 90% of blacks vote for.  

How many of these young, stupid kids groomed by democrat policies to commit crimes without consequences will eventually commit crimes with life ending consequences? How many will wake up one day, old and imprisoned, and echo the impassioned words of Shawshank’s Ellis Boyd Redding? 

“Rehabilitated? You know I don’t have any idea what that word means…. I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it’s just a made up word. Politician’s word. So that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job… Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word… So you go ahead and stamp your forms and stop wasting my time because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a s***.” 

BLM? It’s just a made-up phrase. A virtue-signaling phrase so that activists can feel better about themselves and fundraise $90 million so that Patrisse Cullors, the black lesbian Marxist who advocates against the nuclear family and school choice, can live in a $1.4-million-dollar home in Topanga Canyon. Black population: 1.4%

Talk sense? Apparently DEI, reading about “white fragility,” “unpacking whiteness” seminars and shaming eight-year-old kids for being born white aren’t working. You’d think that the NAACP, which claims to stand for the “advancement of colored people” would take a long look at nearly 60 years of post civil rights and Great Society legislation and come to some obvious conclusions: Culture matters. Race does not.

Black lives matter? It’s just a bullsh*t phrase. So you go ahead and punch your Democrat ticket and stop wasting our time pretending to care about black lives because to tell the truth, you don’t really care. Live with that.

Doug MacGregor is a former trader, real estate broker, investor, writer, screenwriter and Uber driver in Chicago.

Image: Erica Cherup