HOW RACIST ARE WE REALLY? Part I

Well, that’s the question of the day, isn’t it? There must be a way to answer this without bias or prejudice. Can real data prove one side or the other? 

 

Let us first acknowledge what many conservatives sometimes don’t want to admit: The world can still be an ugly, racist place. Anonymity, once provided by white hoods is now given to every racist idiot in the world with an internet connection. Recently, prolific abuse was heaped on Ghostbusters star and comedian Leslie Jones for the heinous crime of being black and sassy (White and sassy gets you your own reality show.) In response, she claimed to be a human being or something and quit Twitter in despair.

 

I don’t know, maybe she was being too sensitive?

 

Philando Castile was shot after notifying an officer he had a legally registered gun. He was just reaching for his driver’s license. The fact that the officer who shot him was Latino was not advertised much in the media. He seemed distraught immediately afterwards so it might not be what it seems. The interesting thing, however, is that Castile had been pulled over 52 times in his life. Never arrested, he accumulated 86 citations on minor violations.  If it was me, I’d just get my taillights fixed, but still….

 

Black Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott (He’s real!) has talked about the pain of being racially profiled. As a senator, he has been harassed and his credentials questioned by federal security officers. This is a real frustration for many blacks. However, in 2011, 13% of black drivers and 10% percent of white drivers were pulled over at least once, according to the U.S. Justice Department. 68% of black drivers considered the stops legitimate compared with 84% of white drivers. This is not exactly earth shattering. And when you consider that blacks have a violent crime rate about six times that of whites, you cannot write off increased police attention as simple racism.

 

The current narrative is that white officers are gunning down innocent blacks in the street with impunity. Words like “epidemic” and “systematic” are used. Is it true? Heather MacDonald’s new book The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe is a hot topic with columnists and on conservative talk shows and many of the numbers below are from this book. In 2015, of the 990 people shot dead by police, 93 were unarmed of which only 38 were black. Of the 505 people killed by police so far this year, 37 were unarmed and 13 of those were black. Have these numbers been rising? No. Police shootings of blacks are down 75% since 1971.

 

The New York Times recently published a study from esteemed black Harvard Professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. that showed blacks were about 18% more likely to be manhandled by cops but actually less likely to be shot. Given the much higher crime rate of blacks, the fact that being pushed around is only slightly higher shows blacks are somewhat treated with deference. “In shootings in…10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white.” “It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Fryer.

 

A recent study out of Washington State University found similar results from an experiment that put officers in “strikingly realistic” simulations. The results were that white officers were less likely to shoot both armed and unarmed blacks than whites.

 

The biggest race scandals in the last few years have all turned out to be either hoaxes or just plain false. Mike Nifong, the DA in the Duke rape scandal was disbarred and imprisoned for trying to imprison men he knew were innocent. Trayvon Martin looked like a victim of racism until pictures of George Zimmerman were released months later showing he had been badly beaten by Martin. NBC news deceptively edited Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him sound like a racist.

 

Three of the six officers indicted in the Baltimore/Freddy Gray case have been acquitted and one ended in a hung jury. After the prosecution was sharply rebuked by the judge for bringing such worthless cases, DA Marylin Mosby dropped the charges on the remaining two. Detective Dawnyell Taylor stated the written statement she was expected to read to the grand jury was full of inconsistencies and misstatements. When the jury asked her if the arrest was legal, prosecutors swooped in and removed her. In Mosby’s press conference, she blamed the police department and the whole racist system for a miscarriage of justice, even claiming evidence was fabricated and the case was intentionally sabotaged. Two prosecutors on the case have since resigned.

Lyin’est woman in America. Also very angry.

 

The worst of all, however, is the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, MO. The local DA and Obama’s own justice department found that the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” narrative was a complete lie. Brown attacked the officer and tried to take his gun. Yet, activists across the country still use Ferguson as “proof” of epidemic police racism.

 

The angry backlash at police has caused what is known as “the Ferguson effect”.  The anti-police rhetoric has caused officers to back off out of fear of having their careers ended. The result? After 20 years of decline, crime rates in big cities were up 17% in 2015. Among other violent crimes, homicides are up 90% in Cleveland, 25% in St. Louis, 24% in Chicago, 83% in Nashville, 54% in D.C. and 61% in Minneapolis. Baltimore had the worst murder rate in July since 1972. All but two of the victims were black. To “Black Lives Matter”, black lives don’t matter.

 

Lies have consequences. Fakehatecrimes.org lists hundreds of them. If racism is so prevalent, why would you have to make stuff up? The real epidemic is a false narrative that causes hate and division and yes, lots and lots of dead people.

 

(Fear not. Part II is coming soon. There. Will. Be. CHARTS AND GRAPHS!!!)