State of Wednesday: 'WHAT HAPPENED TO BLACK PEOPLE?'

A growing, undeniable trend takes over the Internet

Mar 25, 2026

Greetings, Dear Reader,

It’s Wednesday, March 25, in the year of our lord 2026.

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Hey, by the way, did you see what happened at the trampoline park?

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‘WHAT HAPPENED TO BLACK PEOPLE?’

The scenes are almost identical but the contexts vary.

A riot at a trampoline park. A mall nearly destroyed. A riot at a gated, suburban community pool. Public parks “taken over.” Cruise ship dining rooms become a backdrop to violent melees. A brawl at an Outback Steakhouse. Fights at airport terminals. The yearly Houston Rodeo is ruined. More fights. At concessions. In the parking lot. Wigs fly. Morbidly obese women with their asses showing in public. The rodeo shuts down. New rules for everyone. Daytona Beach spring break devolves into mob violence. More fights. More wigs flying. Gunshots. Human stampedes.

Twenty-year-old Caydence Carpenter drives her Tesla through a mob of people in downtown Lexington, Kentucky. Video shows she’s clearly fleeing. She’s their target. Police on the scene do nothing to prevent the mob from forming. The streets are an absolute mess of unruly people. Carpenter is later put up on charges. She pleads not guilty.

Kissy Dorito (I can’t believe that’s her real name) took her family to the beach for spring break and couldn’t even get out of the car.

“Twerking, dancing, stopping traffic, cussing people, flipping people off, stopping everyone, screaming, it was … insane,” she told local news.

All of these cases are unique and related in various ways. First, they’re new and they’re undeniable. If you’re even slightly online, you’ve almost certainly encountered these videos. We’ve never seen anything quite like this before. It’s never been so consistent. Second, they almost always involve masses of unruly black youth, but in some cases, even grown adults are involved. Third, they’re a growing trend.

The central question uniting all of this is what happened? What changed?

I sent Grok one of these videos and asked a pointed, touchy question: “What happened to black people?”

The question is a bit loaded. It assumes from the outset that something happened. I think that’s fair, honestly, all things considered.

The answer was surprisingly good, and it won’t be unfamiliar for anyone who’s read Thomas Sowell.

First, Grok says, “Family structure collapsed.”

‘Where are the parents?’ is often the first thing that comes to mind. Indeed, police in Richmond responded to one instance by saying flatly they’d drive to kids’ homes and arrest parents too.

Grok echoed Sowell, noting that percentages of black children born in fatherless homes more or less mirrored white America until the acceleration of the welfare state in the latter half of the 20th century. Now it’s up from around ~25% to nearly ~75%.

Essentially, the incentives changed dramatically.

Government provided a positive and progressive financial incentive for mothers to have multiple fatherless children. But another, negative incentive, was recently removed.

Second, law enforcement structures have changed radically in just the last 10 years.

The advent and institutional dominance of racial “equity” has seen law enforcement and judicial systems taking it vastly easier on repeat offenders. The result has been an explosion of sheer lawlessness. The victims are overwhelmingly members of the same minority communities these policies explicitly aim to help. Peaceful and productive black people held hostage by an emboldened sub-culture of violent repeat offenders.

“A small, hyper-violent underclass drives the numbers and the viral videos,” Grok says.

Third, the culture has changed. There’s status associated with being loud and thuggish. And it’s certainly easier than learning to read, getting A’s, and being productive. Anyone can turn their phone on record and pretend to be a thug.

It’s not just me saying this either. You can call me Elvis because countless black commentators and intellectuals have been saying it for years: John McWhorter, Larry Elder, and Glenn Loury, who recently wrote “Condemning the Riff Raff” on Substack to address this trend. Can’t forget WSJ’s Jason Riley, who authored an entire book begging liberal America to “Stop Helping Us.”

Add TikTok and viral applications to the policy evolutions, and you’ve got an unstoppable accelerant to this sweeping culture change.

So what’s the fix?

Removing the positive incentive for broken homes would certainly help, but good luck doing that. Liberals from coast to coast would shriek incessantly about working black mothers. They wouldn’t be wrong, in some regards, but the buck’s got to stop somewhere. The negative correlation at this point is undeniable.

Second, for the love of God, restore the rule of law.

Less than .03% of the black population in NYC is responsible for 99.9 percent of homicides – mostly of other, innocent black people – in the city this year.

The beat cops walking the street definitely know where the trouble originates. They know how to disrupt the violence.

The issue is liberal dominance of the law enforcement structures there.

Remember Alvin Bragg? Do we think that guy is going to prosecute and lock up a ton of violent black teenagers? Do we think Judge Juan Merchan is going to hand down strict sentences?

Beleaguered, demoralized, unsupported police departments aren’t the problem.

I should be clear, Dear Reader, I’m all for holding people accountable for their actions. The people most responsible for the violence and lawlessness are the people captured in those videos (often shot by the perpetrators themselves!).

It’s not without self awareness that I say a vacuum of competent leadership has its downsides. We’re all watching them occur in real time.

Young adults, parents, officials, judges, prosecutors, educators. They’re all the biggest part of the problem.

Until we can get them on board, good luck planning your next family outing.

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