Posted on 12/25/2014 9:24:45 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
One of this morning’s big news stories is the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Antonio Martin by a policeman in Berkeley, Missouri–a place that, the Associated Press tells us helpfully, is “just a few miles from Ferguson.” The Antonio Martin shooting is currently the top story on Google News, and it is being headlined on pretty much every newspaper’s website.
But why? What makes this a major news story? The Michael Brown and Eric Garner stories that preceded it, obviously. But what made them worldwide news? Or, to go back in time, what made the Trayvon Martin case a cause célèbre, commented on by the President of the United States and followed breathlessly by millions?
The Antonio Martin case won’t be as big a story as Brown’s and Garner’s deaths. Rather than being your typical “unarmed” 300-pounder, Martin apparently pulled a 9 mm. pistol on the policeman who responded by shooting him. But every shooting of a civilian by a police officer is now deemed an important news story–with the critical qualification that the civilian, but not the officer, be black.
Are these shootings worldwide news because of an epidemic of racist murders being carried out by American policemen? That is what Eric Holder, Bill DeBlasio and Al Sharpton would have us believe. But it obviously isn’t true. Heather Mac Donald writes:
Police killings of blacks are an extremely rare feature of black life and are a minute fraction of black homicide deaths. The police could end all killings of civilians tomorrow and it would have no effect on the black homicide risk, which comes overwhelmingly from other blacks. In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the U.S.—almost all killed by black civilians—resulting in a death risk in inner cities that is ten times higher for blacks than for whites. None of those killings triggered mass protests; they are deemed normal and beneath notice. The police, by contrast, according to published reports, kill roughly 200 blacks a year, most of them armed and dangerous, out of about 40 million police-civilian contacts a year. Blacks are in fact killed by police at a lower rate than their threat to officers would predict. In 2013, blacks made up 42 percent of all cop killers whose race was known, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the nation’s population. The percentage of black suspects killed by the police nationally is 29 percent lower than the percentage of blacks mortally threatening them.
These stories about the killings of African-American men by police officers (or by a “neighborhood watch captain,” in Trayvon Martin’s case) are all what my long-time radio and podcast partner Brian Ward calls “stories of choice.” They are plucked from a nearly endless supply of sad events that occur daily in a nation of 315 million, and are promoted because they further a political narrative. An unholy alliance of activists and newspaper reporters and editors tries to distort our perception of reality by giving undue emphasis to them. Then, of course, reality begins to catch up with perception, and we have riots, murders of police officers, and so on. But understand that the decision to promote these stories, in preference to others that are equally or more newsworthy, is a choice that is consciously made by people with a political agenda.
I am happy he didn’t kill the police officer or someone else. Sooner or later, it was likely to happen.
Yes, their agenda is to destroy local police and have a federal force that answers to the president. People don’t realize how having sheriffs and local police chiefs protect us from federal tyranny. I would really like to know how all these agitators support themselves and how much of our tax money goes to “community organizations” that pay these vermin.
The article is excellent. I would probably change the title because every death mean grieving family members. “So what” seems cold. I get the point. I would just try to say it differently. Even if your dead family member was a bum and a criminal, it still matters to you.
I am happy he didn’t kill the police officer or someone else. Sooner or later, it was likely to happen.
...............................
Or it already has.
>> Police killings of blacks are an extremely rare feature of black life and are a minute fraction of black homicide deaths. The police could end all killings of civilians tomorrow and it would have no effect on the black homicide risk, which comes overwhelmingly from other blacks.
Speaking the truth is heresy!
Expect an Eric Holder hate-crime investigation and an IRS audit.
Blame Michael Brown, not police
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bs-ed-police-safety-letter-20141225-story.html
That’s excellent
Not all black lives count.
The connecting theme is that most of these blacks are thugs. With the exceptions of the twelve year old and career criminal Garner, they were major problems to their communities. The Christmas Eve shooting in MO was yet another incident of self defense. Yet these shootings are bringing down American society in a mass movement fueled, at the center, by black thugs and Occupy Wall Street. Insanity.
I know the other families have been wretched. I do not know about this specific one. Still, even creeps grieve. It would not be a big deal to say the same thing only be more sensitive with the headline.
I think the protests have been horrible and I agree with the point of the article. I don’t know, I have been to many funerals in the past several years so I’m sensitive to it.
They could say: Teenager Shot In Missouri. Condolences to the Family But it is Not National News
It is just more polite. I guess polite is out of fashion.
“WTF does that mean?”
Count, as in having significance, importance, or meaning something. When black thugs point guns at cops, attack cops, hurt or kill others, their lives don’t matter. As a value to humanity, or measure of practical or spiritual worth, they add up to zip, nadda, nothing; they don’t count. When protesters chant slogans like, “Black lives matter too,” they need to be more specific, or risk being absurd. Do they mean the innocent black lives that are lost everyday to black violence? If so, then I’m with them. If they mean black thugs who have no regard for human life other than their own, they are wrong.
The majority of the people that write the stories, speak the words are politically driven, for sure. Yet there is such a sense, an air of ghoulish delight that is often conveyed with it, one wonders just how the minds that perpetrate this are created.
Did they mommies make them sit at the table and watch while they pulled the wings off flies or something?
To my mind, conventional journalist is about the lowest scumbag form of life I can imagine. I rate them even below Congressional politician.
I think a lot of the recent rage is because many blacks themselves realize they “don’t matter”. Because so many urban blacks have failed to assimilate and lead productive lives, instead living as taxpayer-funded “gypsies” on the fringes of society, there is no real loss when they exit the picture. Not only are we not losing tomorrow’s doctors, we aren’t even losing future taxpayers; in fact, too often we are preventing future tax drains on our system. Outside of those “employed” in the “poverty industry” (providing “services” to these non-paying clients), most Americans would be better off without them.
Many blacks are realizing that six years after “one of them” was elected to the highest office in the land, they are even further marginalized (in part due to his actions - or inaction - regarding illegal immigration. This situations will only get worse.
I’m watching the local Houston news, and there was a shooting in Texas City in which a dude was arguing with another dude in a lounge parking lot. Cops showed up, and the perp turned his gun on the cops who took him out. The latest is a crowd is throwing bottles at the cops now.
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