To Understand Why Racism Isn't the Problem, Look to South Africa's Pilanesberg Park

Will Alexander Apr 02, 2021 @ Townhall.com

“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” – 17th Century English Proverb.

Years ago, South Africa’s Pilanesberg Park had big trouble. Tons of it. Someone went on a killing spree of its prized white rhinos. Thirty-nine of the 5-ton ungulates were mysteriously turning up dead around the park. That was 10 percent of the park’s endangered rhino population. The killers had to be stopped, so park rangers turned into homicide detectives. Who did it?  Poachers, perhaps? No. It couldn’t have been. The dead rhinos didn’t have bullet holes, and their horns were still intact. Who, then?

A break came in the case when staff saw a video of young elephants terrorizing tourists.  Others witnessed elephants taunting and bullying rhinos for hours.  After tracking the herds, chronicling their behavior, and developing rap sheets on the most aggressive ones, rangers found their killers: gangs of teen male elephants................Why?

The problem went back two decades. Kruger National Park, half the size of Switzerland, was dangerously overpopulated with elephants.  Adult males were too big to relocate, so the excruciating decision was made to shoot them and move the children and some of their mothers to other parks.

But what seemed like a good idea at the time severely disrupted the delicate balance of life in elephant society. It triggered a disaster. Young elephant herds, deprived of adult male leadership, were forced into an extremely destabilized childhood that turned deadly in their teens.

“Like juvenile delinquents from urban jungles, they’ve grown up without role models,” said journalist Bob Simon, who reported on the story for 60 Minutes in 1999.

 “What’s different is they don’t have a father,” said Dyk. “I think everyone needs a role model, and these elephants that left the herd had no role model and had no idea of what appropriate elephant behavior was.”

Something else triggered the aggressive behavior: the biochemistry in male elephants called musth.  During musth, male elephants secrete a hormone-rich substance from glands on the sides of their foreheads and they walk around dribbling urine.  They become sexually hyperactive, unpredictable, and possessed by the urge to dominate their peers.

“There’s no more dangerous animal on Earth, than a bull elephant in musth,”.............Without a father to “curb their youthful exuberance,” said Simon, the Pilanesberg elephants’ sexual development became premature.  They entered into musth too soon, and it left them “pumped up with testosterone; stressed out with sexual anxiety and looking for a fight.”............Something similar happened inside America’s urban jungles.  Gangs of angry young black males – without fathers or role models to teach them appropriate behavior – are wreaking havoc in their neighborhoods.

In 2005, blacks were the victims of 805,000 non-fatal violent crimes and about 8,000 murders, a 2007 DOJ study found.  In one-to-one murders, 93 percent of the perpetrators were black – mostly young and mostly male. In 2018, blacks were overrepresented among those arrested for violent crime, according to a January 2021 DOJ study.  All this was before George Floyd’s death, an event used to dignify deviancy.............

After some masterful detective work by the likes of Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Bob Woodson, Shelby Steele and others, the perpetrator was found.  It was the perverse incentives created by Lyndon Johnson’s “War On Poverty” programs. What seemed like a good idea at the time severely disrupted the delicate balance of life in black urban society.  It triggered a disaster..............Young blacks, deprived of adult male leadership, were brought up into a severely destabilized childhood that turned destructive in their teens, and they grew up into troublemakers.

So, I have an idea for the Obamas, Oprah, Sharpton, LeBron, and all the BLMs of the world who have strong connections to troubled neighborhoods.  Instead of blaming “white folks” for problems that are impossible for them to solve, concentrate your immense wealth and influence to create a movement that would infuse these neighborhoods with adult males who can “kick butt” and establish a new hierarchy..........To Read More....