[1]Baltimore has the fifth highest big city [2] murder rate in the country. The four cities ahead of it are Detroit, New Orleans, Newark and St. Louis. All these cities have something in common. Not racism, but race.
The killers and the dead are black.
The murder rate in Baltimore stood at 37.4 to 100,000 people. There have already been 63 murders this year. Fifty-six of the victims were black. Of the 16 murders in the last 30 days [3], 14 of the victims were black.
If black lives really mattered, then black violence would matter. But that would mean taking responsibility for a broken culture which few leaders in the black community are ready to do.
Instead the death of Freddie Gray in police custody became the excuse for another round of #BlackLivesMatter riots, looting and assaults. Rather than dealing with the violence killing black Baltimore, it became another excuse for more of the same.
The media is always ready with the usual lies about peaceful protests being “marred” by sudden outbreaks of violence. Ferguson’s peaceful protests of screaming and throwing things at cops were suddenly marred by days of looting, arson and shootings.
Baltimore’s peaceful protests were marred by smashing cars, smashing windows, throwing rocks and assaulting random people still showing their white faces [4] in the city. The police tried to stay out of it giving the protesters and their supporters what they really wanted; the opportunity to commit crimes without being held accountable.
Crime without accountability is the real cause that the protesters are there for. Their violence isn’t a reaction to anything except the permissive atmosphere created by their false accusations of racism.
Freddie Carlos Gray, the latest poster child for the riot squad and its media cheerleaders, was the son of an illiterate drug addict. He had been repeatedly busted for drug possession with intent to distribute. This year alone [5] he was charged with second-degree assault, fourth-degree burglary [6] and malicious destruction of property, among other contributions to society.
Like Michael Brown, Freddie Gray was a criminal; a ridiculously persistent one.
The men smashing open store windows are following in his footsteps. They’re career criminals from across the country exploiting media incitement to commit more crimes.
This isn’t about racism.
Baltimore has a black mayor, a black police commissioner and a majority non-white police force. Driving out the remaining white police officers will just eliminate the race card excuse for future riots.
Studies have shown that black officers are harder [7] on black suspects and that cops already hesitate more [8] before shooting black suspects than white suspects. The Detroit police force is 63% black. Federal oversight over it ended only recently. The Philadelphia police force has more blacks on it than any other racial group; it also has a high rate of police shootings and was targeted by the Justice Department.
If the black community leaders involved in these protests really cared about black lives, they would be leading marches through the crack houses and gang run territories that take hundreds of black lives in Baltimore every year.
They don’t. The protests are just another shakedown letting small-time Sharptons squeeze more money and influence out of the violence even while driving away the few sources of revenue the city still has.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is pushing huge budget increases even though her casino plan has imploded [9]. Blake is ignoring a report showing that Baltimore is headed for huge budget [10] deficits. The forces behind the riots are threatening the city’s revenue sources, businesses and tourism, to extract more cash that the city can’t afford. For black community leaders, this isn’t about police brutality; it’s about money and power to be negotiated in private after the press conferences for unity are held.
The black community is dominated by thoroughly corrupt leaders who exploit violence to advance their own private interests. They’re willing to destroy their own city and community just to cash in.
Black leaders, who hide behind religious titles, mount outcries over the deaths of young black men despite having done nothing for them while they were still alive. They are no different than the thugs smashing windows and faces at their protests. They’re just playing the same game at a bigger level.
The thugs loot stores. The community leaders loot cities. Their take is a lot bigger than the thug with bloody hands clutching a handbag and some cheap booze.
The #BlackLivesMatter movement touted by Obama and the media attracts looters from around the country to protests run by leftist community organizers. The organizers direct the protests toward police and/or white people to create a confrontation that will radicalize the marchers. The looters exploit the chaos to smash everything in sight while the media bemoans the “marring” of the peaceful protest.
The protests don’t degrade into violence. They aren’t marred by violence. Violence is the whole point.
A genuinely peaceful protest would attract too few people to fill a coffee shop. Protesters aren’t traveling around the country just to be able to carry a cardboard sign for twenty blocks.
They’re there to smash, throw and beat. They come to radicalize and stay to loot. And there’s always an excuse. There’s always another petty hood who gets shot by a white cop or who dies in police custody.
After all the MSNBC rhetoric about the genocide of white supremacy has been vomited up, the ugly fact remains that the mass murder of young black men is being carried out by other black men. The only thing that prevents the gang violence from escalating to truly genocidal proportions is the police officer.
In 2013, 2,245 black people were [11] killed by other black people. Only 189 were killed by whites. In 2012, [12] 2,412 black people were killed by other black people. That’s tens of thousands dead over a decade.
There have been genocides with lower death tolls.
Now imagine if there were no police to get in the way. It’s not hard. Detroit’s police force has been mostly wrecked. The police often don’t respond to calls. Citizens have been told to use guns to protect themselves. Detroit tops the big city murder rate with 45 murders per 100,000 [13] people.
If black lives really mattered, then we would be having a conversation about black violence. Instead we’re sitting through yet another violently cynical attempt to blame it on white supremacy in a city run by black people. Black lives still don’t matter, but hating white people is always on the menu.
The advocates for #BlackLivesMatter might want to talk to Vincent “Vito” Smothers, a black Detroit honors student who had killed a dozen black people by his twenties.
“When you grow up in the hood, you learn: if you sell drugs, you’re going to end up one of two things—in jail or dead,” he told an interviewer [14]. “Those are the results of that life.”
That’s what happened to Freddie Gray. It’s what happened to countless young black men across the country. Instead of fighting crime, the #BlackLivesMatter movement is pushing more violence and fewer cops, more crime and more criminals. And that means more dead young black men lying in the morgue.
For black lives to start really mattering, black violence has to matter.