An article published this week on CNN is worth a closer inspection because it reveals the total incoherence and rampant self-contradiction of the “America is racist and evil” narrative. The piece, titled, “She packed her bags, quit her job in law enforcement and moved to Mexico after George Floyd’s death,” tells the story of a woman named Demetria Brown who, as the title suggests, fled alleged systemic persecution in America and sought refuge in the peaceful utopia of the second most violent country on Earth (right behind Syria).
From the article:
On June 1, a week after Floyd’s death, [Brown] quit her job as a detention officer for the Los Angeles County Probation Department. In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, she sold her house, stuffed her belongings into 13 duffel bags and relocated to Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Brown, 42, is one of many African Americans leaving the United States permanently for many reasons, including racism and fear of police brutality. Her flight landed in her new hometown on June 25, a month to the day Floyd died.
We are informed that Brown is not alone in fleeing America for supposedly better countries in which they feel “safer.” More from CNN:
For Brown, following her heart and living without fear of racism meant moving to the resort town 1,200 miles from the city she’d worked as a detention officer since 2004.
She visited Mexico several times before she decided to relocate to the nation the State Department says is home to 1.5 million US citizens. That number includes US-born children who’ve returned with their Mexican parents, American retirees and digital nomads.
She calls the move the best decision she’s ever made. While Mexico is not perfect and has its own problems, she says, she’s never encountered any racism in the tourist destination made famous by the 1960s film, “The Night of the Iguana.”
Of course, because she is so dedicated to equality and social justice, Brown, who is now a life coach and travel blogger, has chosen to live in a resort town where rich people go to be pampered by impoverished locals. This should afford her some measure of insulation and protection from the horrors that are a daily part of life for many Mexicans. But that doesn’t change the fact that Mexico is, by every conceivable measure, considerably worse than the United States.
Mexico’s murder rate is 7 times higher. Police corruption is so bad that entire police forces are arrested for being on the payroll of the drug cartels. Then there’s the problem of severed heads littering streets. What about racism? Funny enough, CNN has itself reported that racism in Mexico “hides in plain sight” and that “the best, highest-paying, most important jobs [in Mexico] often seem to go to those who, in addition to having the best education and the strongest connections, have the lightest skin.”
What about treatment of immigrants? USA Today reports that immigrants in Mexico are treated “much worse” than they are in any other country. Someone who moves to Mexico, especially from countries to the south, faces a significant chance of being kidnapped by a cartel or robbed and extorted by police and government officials. Indeed, Mexico is far tougher — both in legal and illegal ways — on immigrants and refugees.
And if Brown thinks that at least Mexico is a place where income equality reigns supreme, she is again delusional. The vast majority of the wealth in the country is concentrated in the hands of the elites while nearly half of the population lives in poverty. By comparison, the poverty rate in the United States is less than 12 percent.
Mexico is less safe, less equitable, less tolerant, and less progressive, right down the line, and in every category. Though I’m sure its resort towns are still pretty — provided you don’t travel too far outside of them and find yourself getting robbed at gunpoint by a federale or kidnapped by a cartel.
But this is, as I said, instructive. Those who complain about all of the alleged systemic problems in America tend to have a childishly simplistic, if not hallucinatory, view of the issues in question and the world at large. They look through a cartoon lens, and believe, despite a total lack of evidence or logical reasoning, that America is uniquely racist, uniquely unjust, uniquely evil. The absurdity of this perspective becomes painfully obvious when they act on it by leaving and seeking shelter on some other country’s shores.
Wherever they choose — especially if they choose Mexico, but the same holds true almost anywhere else — they are likely to end up somewhere that has quite a bit more of whatever it was they were trying to escape. In fact, they may well find themselves in a place where the cartoon in their head has come to life. Police are not prowling the streets in America, robbing and murdering innocent people for no reason, despite what left-wing activists tells us. Police actually are doing that in Mexico. People like Brown are making their fantasies into realities, but not in the way they intended.
America is not perfect. It is a country, after all, a human institution. No human institution can ever be perfect. But the fact is that our country is a paradise compared to places like Mexico, which is probably why so many Mexicans want to come here. Brown is one of the few heading in the other direction. It is fun to imagine Brown passing by one of those Mexican immigrants as they both cross the border from opposite ends. The confusion on the Mexican’s face would be something to behold. To him, it would seem like someone jumping from a life raft and into a sinking ship. Granted, the life raft may not have all of the luxuries and comforts that she feels herself entitled to. But at least it floats. Which is more than can be said of the place she now calls home.
More from Matt Walsh: George Floyd Body Cam Footage Is Out. The Story Is Far More Complicated Than Media Led Us To Believe.