June 8, 2020 - 11:00am
Corey Brooks is a moderate voice in a heated time. He is pastor and founder of the New Beginnings Church in the South Side of Chicago, an area that has been badly affected by looting and rioting in recent weeks. In today’s episode of Lockdown TV, the pastor spoke to Freddie Sayers about the damage this has caused, why the police are allowing looting, the failures of both liberal and conservative policies and cultural problems within the black community. He told us:
- Banks, pharmacies and groceries stores in primarily black, impoverished parts of Chicago were hit hard by looting over the past week.
- Police officers seemed to be standing down as this looting occurred – he saw at least one occasion where they allowed a store to be looted.
- Solutions like defunding the police are misguided – “I don’t want to live in an area without police” — but reform is urgently necessary.
- Both far-Left (Antifa) and far Right (white supremacists) are bringing damage to the country.
- Donald Trump has made mistakes but he is still ‘my President’.
- Obama’s management of the riots would have been different but not necessarily better.
- There was a false dawn with Obama’s election — the racial situation did not improve under his presidency.
- The black community needs to work on its own cultural challenges of violence, weak families and a lack of entrepreneurial ambition
- Self-hatred in the community stems from generations of racism too.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeSo good to hear a voice and actual solutions, instead of the “burn it down” rhetoric coming from some groups in the streets.
There is only one solution, a just society, is one in which the goods of society are distributed justly, and until that has been addressed, real peace will not come, until the weakest in the wealthiest country in the world have a decent and just life. Racism is just a little part of the iceberg, I like it when he addresses education, that is another aspect that fans the flames, but the white American is totally delusional if he thinks this society will return to some form of normality. The American dream is for one in a million so about 300 people in total, now that nonsense has been fed to this country for a long time. He talks about thinkers are necessary, what do we get we get a bunch of politicians in Washington all corrupted through lobbyists and big business. This is what is really going on…
I’m afraid you misunderstand the meaning of a just society. A just society has little to do with communism, it is a society in which the goods are spread justly, as in education, health, housing, law and all the aspects of society created by all tax payers in society. To call the States a just society is delusional just deserts in a society is a society in which people receive what they morally deserve, nothing muddled about that. Your talk of a police state is already present for the minority as seen almost daily on our TV screens, referring to Russia as communist is like saying that the U.S. is democratic.
You are quick in your compartmentalising, and your left-wing and Irishman with a temper are way off the mark. Isn’t that a sign of simple-mindedness? Your reply is rife with generalisations which weakens your rant immensely. Your seeming opposition to distributive justice is notable, but indefensible, to believe that the Blackman is treated fairly is a thinning that. Is antiquated, no nation can justify such treatment of its citizens and expect to survive for long with such a structure. Israel has been neglecting this fact for a long time, Northern Ireland has been force to awaken from its Slumber
So, i do believe you are the one who is muddled ‘just’ has little to do with equal and more to do with fair.
Well, you are right, I come from the lowlands, and unfortunately I have a corrector that changes words like’thinking’ to ‘ ‘thinning’.
You are a typical person who seems to want to place everything into compartments, unfortunately, that simplifies everything and we miss the shading. So, Hopp, old chap, you really seem to be a prisoner of your own thinking, otherwise you would be able to come up with decent argumentation, instead of the over-simplified one liners which I find extremely weak …”’usually’ talk about communism” is a howler, where did you get brainwashed? They sure did a thorough job.
You seem to have problems with the word just, again instead of asking yourself what it means why not give me an analysis of your ideas, now you just turn it into questions, again pretty sad because I thought this site was for thinkers, but your thinking is extremely monochrome and weak as you offer little in the way of argumentation.
So, although you may be a native speaker your command of the language and your thinking leave lots to be desired.I suggest you read the Harvard philosopher Rawls to get a better understanding of distributive justice, or you can go back in your bubble and pretend society is hunky dory.
My excuses for any major blunders in my English, as it is way down the list in my use of languages.
You are hopping from defense to defense, and that is sad, I gave you the name Rawls to get you out of your benighted state so that you may understand what a just society is, my idea of a just society is not far removed from many philosophical ideas of a just society, in which the institutions and structures are set up to treat all members fairly. In which each member receives their just deserts. This system now is being run for the happy few and an example of that is the taxation system, you put 100 morally decent people in a room and let them come up with a just tax system from a position which Rawls calls ‘the Veil of Ignorance’ and it is guaranteed that you will see a much more just system of taxation, do this then in order to draw up a social contract for society, and you will find a totally different type of society at the end of it. Not one (i.e.a social contract) that is motivated by self interest as the original Constitution had been.
Now allow me to name drop one more time, Immanuel Kant states that if something is morally good, it meets 4 conditions one of these is called ‘reversibility’, which implies if something is morally ok, then you would not mind it for you yourself, and so, if being Black is fine and just, well Kant implies, then nobody would mind waking up tomorrow morning to discover their skin is a slightly different tint than usual. A fine measurement for a just society, far removed from communism and hot wired to the crème de la crème of political philosophers.
I hope you will now leave your cave and show you can grasp the concept of what a just society is, and try to leave your position of right and left, for that does tend to get you stuck on the ground floor of argumentation.
One more point, it is obvious from your use of language ( see reply on Israel) that you rely on political discussion to get to ‘the truth’, I suggest you give that futile exercise up as it yields jaundice, some one said that identity immediately implies separation, I couldn’t agree more.
In your opinion ‘mature’ means explaining some simple terms to you, and now you state that I am trying to assert intellectual superiority, you really using a lot of defeatist talk Mr Hopp, what a pity, we could have held some of these philosophical theories up for discussion and deciding whether they are addressing a society in need of change or not. I really do understand that you haven’t a clue about philosophical theory and so you go into your ad hominem attack, shame on you Mr Hopp, so sad that all you could give me is a mass media echo of Israel’s extremely poor performance in its dealings with its neighbours, you really need to get out of the echo chamber and start to think for yourself.
There is absolutely nothing crafty in turning to solid philosophical reasoning for answers to complex questions such as these. However, I should have taken into account your weak thinking that lacks any type of criteria in formulating arguments, and so farewell my hollow friend, you should continue on a site that is intellectually more deserving of your standards. Maybe in a few years time you can enter the deep end of the pool.
A refreshingly balanced and considered perspective – like a patch of calm in the sea of wild insanity of media coverage elsewhere. Thank you.
God bless people like this who give me a ray of hope for the future of humanity.
Yes, he makes me feel that the status quo will continue for many years to come until the 0.1 percent have plundered everything!
Great to hear this side of the story.
How the hell is it great? He doesn’t address the corruption in politics throughout America, he doesn’t address many of the big issues such as the plundering committed by the 0.1 percent.
His view of the bigger issues are extremely narrow and are far removed from what Many see as the major problems in the US today.
But he sounds reasonable not like the scary black man that many people have in their heads because of the fever in society created by a media that seldom seeks truth.
https://chicago.suntimes.co…
Yes, God bless him, he talks about the little picture, what about the 73 people who got at least a million a piece in bonuses just a short time ago, isn’t this your worst kind of looting. What about the companies that have received huge relief although indirectly Related to Warren Buffet? How come we never hear about all of this plunder? We hear about right, left, black, far right etc etc. But we never hear about people complain about stuff like this? This fades in comparison to the white-collar theft going on in society today, greed rules,
Sure he has a nice calm voice, but this voice has been speaking for a long time in American history without any change.
You know if America is ok, and Blacks are just Americans, well how come I see very few white brothers out there supporting them, apart from a lot of young people. If black is fine in the U.S. let’s try a little test: who would like to wake up tomorrow a black man in the USA? To be honest, I would probably not wait for some idiot to kill me.
The police have no choice but to permiit looting when most of Chicago’s politicians and leaders are on the side of the looters.
Excellent. Thank you Freddie for introducing me to Corey Brooks.
He actually has ideas that make a lot of sense and could so easily became actionable.
Producers, not just consumers. Investing not just spending.
Looking at how to improve their own lives: families, poverty, violence.
Ignoring racists as the ignorant people they are but working with white people who want to help as allies. So much better than being angry all the time and alienating others. If you can work with people as allies you gain so much more respect (and self respect) than if you just demand everything be done for you.
Oh, that is strange Jennie, ignoring racists etc and working with white people sounds a little strange….I would say when the foundation of this country classified the slave as 60% human and so little has changed for the better, then I think I would also be as angry as hell. When I see week in week out policemen bullying people of African decent, then That would make me angry. You know someone said on this forum last week that just as many whites were killed by police last year So what’s the problem, and that type of Mickey Mouse thinking makes me so angry, why because 13% of the population is black,
So please Jennie stop grabbing straws to help you sleep at night, the country is extremely racist and unjust towards fellow Americans. On top of that you have a deep-rooted paranoia that is fed by left, right and centre.
‘Demanding everything be done for you’ is an extremely stereotypical racist thing Jessie, so I suggest you start by answering a few honest questions for yourself before you throw this type of nonsense about.
Err…. did you listen to the video?
I merely wrote a precis of what Corey Brookes said that I liked. Not a single one of those things I wrote was an original idea of mine.
He even said “ignore the racists” by which he meant ignore the ones whose minds you’ll never change. And he suggested working with white people (not all white people are racists, see) as allies because many had called him up to ask how they could help.
So stop getting so angry. Anger doesn’t help produce any solutions.
A weird anomaly I noticed in the footage coming from the American riots and demonstrations is that the police seemed to stand back and allow the rioting and looting to continue uninterrupted, while peaceful protestors were maced, batonned, shot with rubber bullets, physically shoved and generally over policed.
Police recruitment and training would seem to be the biggest issue for policing in America.
It’s a big and dangerous job at the frontline of conflict in society. In a society that has such a high number of guns, not to mention the fact that the police’s own weapons are within handy reach of anybody they are engaging with, you’d think recruitment and training would be of the highest order.
Police records show that deaths during arrests in America have fallen to their lowest levels in 2019. So something is working.
I hope the trend continues, but I fear the quality of potential recruits will fall due to events of the past months and that their training will concentrate on issues that won’t ultimately improve the quality of the force and reduce deaths.
Janet, a wonderfully illuminating piece showing your grasp of what society values; a peaceful protest and a well-trained police force. So that we can continue living the delusion of a democratic society. Unfortunately, this society is neither democratic nor just, and it has never been from its very inception in which a black person was considered to be 60% human, and so sub-human, that idea has remained in society right up till this very day, and we cannot point to the southern states anymore and blame them, black political leaders have become just as entrenched in their comfortable positions as their crooked white counterparts, and so this broken and corrupt society hobbles onwards. Being bullied by bad boy China when they surpass the almighty USA when it comes to wealth, and led by a spoilt brat who would not be trusted as a second hand car salesman let alone president.
It would be wonderful Janet, if you left your tiny little bubble and woke up to the reality of life in modern day America and not how you would like it to be.