Diversity Makes Us Stronger

... but let's not talk about anything negative when it relates to, err, people of color even if it means they die in huge numbers due to some social pathology. After all, ignoring a problem is half the battle. Or something like that.

A young man I used to know well when he was a boy recently succumbed to heroin. He was never going to set the world on fire, but he was a decent enough kid when I knew him. It hit me pretty hard.

I did a little more digging into the national heroin situation and I came across this bit on ABC News' website.

Republican Gov. Paul LePage is being accused again of making racially insensitive comments, this time by saying photos he's collected in a binder of drug dealers arrested in the state show more than 90 percent of them are black or Hispanic.

All of the standard gasping, fainting and pointing racialist nonsense is there. Nowhere in it are crime statistics mentioned. It doesn't matter if Governor LePage is telling the truth, it's all about his ghastly insensitivity. Mounds of black corpses could be piling up right outside the ABC News offices, each riddled with heroin needles, but that's not the point. In fact, much of the article addresses Trump.

Go figure.

Meanwhile, PBS has a similar article on heroin and race. In this case, the issue is that not enough people are paying attention to the heroin epidemic among blacks and Hispanics.

Dear PBS - you might want to consult ABC News as to why no one is talking about it. Governor LePage talked about it and look what he got for his trouble. Of course, PBS is so similarly race-besotted they hardly need to consult anyone else to find out why some things just aren't discussed in polite company.

Anyway, in that article, there's a series of graphs, breaking down the increase in heroin-related deaths by race. See if you can spot the outlier. You might need to click on the image.

"Figures are too small to reliably calculate a percentage increase." LOL!

Hmm. So the race with the lowest incidence of illegitimacy, the highest test scores and the highest income also uses heroin the least? Amazing. It's almost like self-denial and hard work are important or something. Oh well. Mustn't judge. There is no objective morality, after all.

From the comments section comes this perfect encapsulation of the secular culture of 2016.

Taking drugs isn't a crime, I own my body and I'll put into it anything I feel like. On the other hand if these hypocritical politicians want to be tough on crime and keep it illegal while refusing to provide treatment funds...

No irony intended there, I'm sure. I'll do what I want, you can't judge me and you need to buy my treatment drugs.

Also from the comments was a mention of this book which is the story of how a black woman got off heroin. I just bought it and might blog about it later.