BLM v. The Truth

I'm still suffering from Child-Induced Murderous Cold Syndrome. So today might not be the best written article ever. What I'm going to talk about is an article I saw in the New York Post which rips the Black Lives Matter movement to shreds. The article is written by Heather MacDonald and is titled "The lies told by the Black Lives Matter movement."

The article begins by noting the black celebrities, e.g. Beyonce and Colin Kaepernick, who are supporting the propaganda of the BLM movement and notes that the Democrats have been feting them and sucking up for months. Then the article dives into the meat:

"Yet the Black Lives Matter movement is based on a lie. The idea that the United States is experiencing an epidemic of racially driven police shootings is false — and dangerously so.

The facts are these: Last year, the police shot 990 people, the vast majority armed or violently resisting arrest, according to the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings. Whites made up 49.9 percent of those victims, blacks 26 percent. That proportion of black victims is lower than what the black violent crime rate would predict. Blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants in America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, 57 percent of all murder defendants and 45 percent of all assault defendants, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, even though blacks comprise only 15 percent of the population in those counties."

So think about that for a moment. That means that cops are statistically more likely to kill a white defendant than a black defendant. So much for racism. And don't forget, the head of the San Francisco Police Union noted that 8,000 blacks were killed by other blacks in the last two years. Compare that figure with the 990 shootings multiplied by 26% reduced for justified shootings. 8,000 versus a dozen, which is worse? So where is the real place to focus to protect black lives? Rogue cops or black on black crime? Apparently, black lives only matter in some instances.

Moreover, lets be honest about these figures. If 57% of murder defendants are black, but blacks only make up 15% of the population, then the obvious problem is black violence... not cop violence.

Consider these facts also from the article:

"In New York City, where blacks make up 23 percent of the city’s population, blacks commit three-quarters of all shootings and 70 percent of all robberies... Whites, by contrast, commit less than 2 percent of all shootings and 4 percent of all robberies, though they are nearly 34 percent of the city’s population.

In Chicago, 80 percent of all known murder suspects in 2015 were black, as were 80 percent of all known nonfatal shooting suspects, though they’re a little less than a third of the population. Whites made up 0.9 percent of known murder suspects in Chicago in 2015 and 1.4 percent of known nonfatal shooting suspects, though they are about a third of the city’s residents."

Again, an unbiased observer could draw only one conclusion here. It is ludicrous to pretend otherwise. In fact, I would argue that it promotes the very thing BLM claims to want to stop. When "whites" (Western society) have had problems in the past, western society set about changing attitudes. In the 1960s, western society told whites it was no longer acceptable to be racist or sexist. In the 1970s, we ran campaigns to stop littering. Antisemitism was fought in the 1980s. Old ageism in the 1990s. And so on. When something bad exists as a value in the community, the community works hard to change hearts and minds to eliminate it. Soon, the behavior becomes socially intollerable.

There is one exception however. For my entire life, it has been considered "racist" to offer criticisms of the black community. Point out that black ghettos are full of crime and broken families... you're a racist. Point out that black intellectuals are racists... you're a racist. Point out that all lives should matter... you're a racist. Point out the corruption of black leaders, the abuses of black teachers in Atlanta, the rapes of Bill Cosby, the dead end of Ebonics, the insanity that the University of California will let blacks have a black dorm to segregate themselves, and you are the racist. Not only that, you are the racist who oppressed the ancestors of black people and thereby is responsible for the failure of every single black person who needs an excuse.

Do you know what this does? It keeps blacks people from openly and honestly addressing their problems and fixing them. And the result is that the black community has decayed and can't fix itself because it cannot admit failure.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think any instance of police abuse must be examined, punished and stopped. And what I said above was a generalization and, as such, does not apply to everyone. But it applies to enough, and the police are not the problem. They always tell alcoholics that the first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you have a problem. Until the black community does that, nothing will change... because it can't. You can't stop 8,000 murders by shifting the blame to a handful of unrelated incidents and stifling debate.