Repeating Something Often and Loudly Does Not Make It True

During WWII, propaganda was a weapon used to devastating effect. 

Joseph Goebbels wrote that “When one lies, one should lie big and stick with it.”  The Nazis attempted to use propaganda to rationalize their genocide against Russian Civilians and German Jews.   Ultimately, and thankfully, what they tried to do failed and the Nazis were defeated by America, Great Britain, and Russia. 

Unfortunately, this defeat did not come early enough to save 13 Million Russians and 6 Million Jews from death at the hand of the Nazis.

Today, many different groups in the United States utilize this same tactic—telling big lies often and loudly to drive public perception and ultimately to sway public opinion.  In politics, in the media, among various ideological factions, and even among different religions—people stretch, distort or manipulate the truth and/or tell outright lies.

 

Telling a lie often and telling it loudly does not make a lie the truth, though. 

Because everyone is entitled to his own opinions--- but not his own facts!

One Lie that I hear a lot is especially egregious.  It is a whopper.  It goes a little something like this:

  

“Professional educators, counselors, principals, school board members, and other personnel involved in public schools nationwide are targeting, purposely, black students for harsher discipline than non-black students due strictly to the race of these students!”

This statement is typically accompanied by some sort of a statistical presentation describing the make-up of black students that receive out of school punishment compared to the percentage of white students that are suspended, contrasted with a school community’s overall racial makeup.  A pattern nationwide has been observed and documented whereby a disproportionate number of black students, as compared to these same students’ percentage of a school’s total population, end up receiving greater numbers of out of school suspensions when compared to other-race and white students.

This pattern is repeated all over the country.  For decades.

But the lie comes with how this information is (mis)characterized. 

People make faulty conclusions about what this phenomenon means.  Special interest groups and social justice organizations point to this and say “See, the schools are targeting black students, and