WHICH BLACK LIVES MATTER?

“And I say we should not listen to those who say the voice of the people is the voice of God. For the riotousness of the crowd is always close to madness.”

Alcuin to Charlemagne.

Some years ago, I walked around the ancient city of Ephesus in Turkey. A spectacular site with marble streets and statues, I stood in the great amphitheater and pondered something: In Acts 19, Demetrius, a silversmith who made his living fashioning idols, incited a mob. Angry over the dishonoring of his beloved goddess and the prospect of losing income from fewer tchotchke sales, he led the chant, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” for hours. “Soon the whole city was in an uproar,” v 29. They seized two of Paul’s companions intending to lynch them. The mob dispersed when a speaker noted they were about to be charged with rioting. Allegations of Roman racism would not have prevented their massacre. I thought to myself how odd this ancient scene was. Here in the 21^st century, people seem more reasonable and calm. And then last week, blocks from my home, banks were burned and stores were looted. And, in my opinion, it was all for a lie. 

Most have seen the video of the white knee on the black neck. If you are a decent person, it is painful to watch. The last straw in a seeming parade of incidents, it proved to many that the police and White Amerikka are violently, irredeemably, racist. Activists proclaim black genocide. It simply is not true. Racism, that stubborn vestige of human nature, clings to us like toilet paper from an airport bathroom. Yet, its perceived power is false. Nothing is more taboo in America.

How can so many can be so wrong?

In 1997, CNN and Time conducted a poll that asked white and black teens “Is racism a major problem in America?” Both groups said, "yes." But when black teens were asked about racism in their own lives, 89% percent said racism was a "small problem" or "not a problem at all". Nearly twice as many black teens than whites called "failure to take advantage of available opportunities" a big problem in their lives.

According to a 2014 Census Bureau study, blacks are almost twice as likely to live in poverty as all races combined, 27% vs. 15.5%. What can explain this? Marriage. Conservatives have always argued the preeminence of family and the data proves it. 71% of all black children are raised by single mothers. The poverty rate for black married couples with children is only 10.8% but skyrockets to 46.1% for single mothers. The rate for all races is very similar: 8.2% poverty for married couples and 37% for single mothers with children. The drastic difference in poverty rates is almost wholly explained by family status.

One of the least racist countries on earth according to the Washington Post, less than 5% of respondents in America say they would be bothered if a neighbor of a different race moved next door. Jonah Goldberg writes, “By any measure America has become astoundingly less racist…In 1958, according to the Brookings Institution, 44% of whites said they’d leave if a black family moved in next door. In 1998, only 1% did. In 1990, according to the Pew Research Center, 63% of non-blacks expressed dismay at the prospect of a close relative marrying a black person. By 2016, that number had dropped to 14%. In 1967, only 3% of Americans married outside their race or ethnicity. Today, nearly one-fifth do.” Fakehatecrimes.org has 390 entries. If racism was so ubiquitous, why would anyone fabricate examples? Wouldn’t they be everywhere? Did German Jews paint swastikas on their own shops? No. The Nazis did that for them.

Policy prescriptions behind the  “Defund the Police” movement range from popular reforms to… “Yes, We Mean Literally ‘Abolish the Police’”. In 2014, after the Michael Brown incident, there was a notable uptick of violent crime in many cities. Widely studied, most researchers believe the “Ferguson Effect”, a reduction in community policing and 911 calls due to mistrust, were a direct cause of the increased violence. In Baltimore, where police presence was reduced after the Freddie Gray riots, murders skyrocketed. Residents blamed it directly on the lack of police patrols. Charles Barkley asks a relevant question:

“Who the black people gonna call, Ghostbusters?”

Police shootings of blacks are down 75% since 1971. The Washington Post has kept statistics on fatal police shootings since 2015. Their summary, while noting the vast majority of the dead were armed, focuses heavily on racial disparity. When you dig into the data, however, you find this: Last year, out of 1001 fatalities, only 44 were unarmed. Of those, 10 were black. When you look at each individual case, only a handful were questionable shootings. Six were officers being assaulted. Two were unarmed men who threatened officers or claimed to have guns, and two, despite officers’ claim of seeing weapons which were later found, resulted in police being prosecuted. In a nation of 330 million, 43 million of whom are black, you have only 10 killed by police without a weapon. Only a couple of those, after intense investigations, were found to be inappropriate.

Black Harvard Professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. published a study showing 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 study shows blacks may be somewhat treated with deference. “It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Fryer. A recent study out of Washington State University found similar results.

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow notes:  

·         Black males, 6 percent of the U.S. population, are responsible for 42% of cop killings in the last decade.

·         In 2015, a cop was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was likely to be killed by a cop.

·         Whites commit 59% and blacks commit 37.5% of violent crimes (murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault).

·         Blacks are approximately 6.8 times more likely than whites to be arrested for murder.

Kirsanow quoted Heather Mac Donald, author of “The War on Cops”:

Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5% of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4% of all interracial violent victimizations, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks.

Race of victim	Total	Race of offender				Sex of offender			Ethnicity of offender
		White	Black or African American	Other1	Unknown	Male	Female	Unknown	Hispanic or Latino	Not Hispanic or Latino	Unknown
White	3,315	2,677	514	61	63	2,914	383	18	803	1,476	1,036
Black or African American	2,925	234	2,600	17	74	2,603	291	31	83	1,878	964
Other race1	220	54	39	122	5	196	22	2	19	132	69
Unknown race	110	46	24	7	33	100	9	1	18	40	52

Blacks are three times more likely to be murdered than whites. Chicago alone had 800 murders in 2016, dropping to 510 in 2019. For every unarmed black person killed by police, there are approximately 300 black murder victims, 89% of whom were murdered by other blacks. Just this weekend in Chicago, 102 people were shot and 14 killed including a 13 and a  three year old boy. Who cares about these black victims? No, really. Who cares about them?

 Dead child Mekhi James, 3. 

Everything is about narrative. Cops are great. Cops are bad. Blacks are innocent victims. Blacks deserve what they get. The George Floyd narrative, like Freddy Gray, Trayvon Martin, Rayshard Brooks, and many others, is not so clean. Floyd had meth and synthetic heroin in his system and tested positive for Covid-19. Officer Chauvin had multiple complaints of excessive force. Stopping this is hard. Politicians have attempted to reform police departments many times. What usually happens? If you want your blood to boil, read this piece about reform attempts destroyed by police union libel, slander, and blackmail. If you want effective reforms both sides can support, don’t defund cops, take on their unions.

With all the outrage over racism, life has been getting better for blacks in nearly all areas, thanks in large part to pre-Covid record low unemployment and poverty for blacks but also due to a decades-long reduction in crime, increasing levels of education and continually improving attitudes about race. Sadly, some of this is starting to reverse. Yet, the outrage does not match reality.

 And what is the wreckage that restless rioters have wrought?  Too early for accurate estimates, the Claims Journal fears insured property damage may reach “catastrophe level.” 750 officers were injured in the first week of June alone. Murders are up 56% in Chicago and 100% in New York City in the last 28 days. As of 6/10/20, at least 12 police officers were shot, two of them murdered, including this guy…

...retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn, shot dead while trying to keep a pawn shop from being looted. Do black lives matter? If so, which ones?