Posted on 06/22/2020 6:12:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
If BLM leaders care about black lives, they ought to focus on what can improve the quality of life for black Americans — starting with stronger families.
>Positing that “Black Lives Matter” is such an obvious fact that repeating it sounds banal. Only an outright racist would question this premise. Therefore, the frequent “All Lives Matter” retort of critics often inflames the sensibilities of activists, with many in the BLM movement find this assertion objectionable on the basis that it misinterprets their message. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is not a declaration that other lives are unimportant, activists say, but an affirmation that black lives are worth protecting.
Activists usually invoke the controversial killings of black men by the police to argue that black lives are treated as insignificant in America. But while footage depicting black men shot by police may draw raw emotions, such cases are extremely rare.
Although protesting police brutality is entirely legitimate, the BLM movement is built on the specious claim that as a result of systemic racism, black men are disproportionately killed by the police. So, by mischaracterizing the problem as “systemic racism,” the BLM movement will ultimately fail in its pursuit to save black lives.
The BLM movement could be an effective force for police reform, but activists wrongly direct their anger at eliminating the element of “systemic racism” they say permeates police departments, despite the lack of data implicating its existence. Several studies have shown that the claim of widespread racism in law enforcement is baseless. For instance, a study published by Harvard economist Roland Fryer found that black Americans are less likely to be shot by police when compared to their Caucasian counterparts, even when black Americans wield weapons.
To some skeptics, this may not be enough to disprove systemic racism. Cynics postulate if police officers could get away murdering black Americans without facing the consequences, then they would do so. Yet in the article “The Reverse Racism Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects?” researchers show that due to trepidation stemming from possible legal and social consequences, police officers are more circumspect when deciding to shoot black suspects than Caucasians. This, in turn, leads to fewer mistakes and slower response times in a simulated policing environment. If racism is rampant in the police force, why would officers refuse to act on this impulse in real-life situations because they fear the resulting implications, then act on it under simulated conditions when they can kill blacks with impunity?
Yet even if black Americans were disproportionately killed by police, would this be evidence of systemic racism? Contrary to the speculations of activists, research suggests the answer is “no.” In an article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found “no evidence of anti-black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-white officers.’’
The study, however, further notes that “as the proportion of violent crime committed by black civilians increased, a person fatally shot was more likely to be black.” Similar trends were also reported for Hispanics. It can reasonably be concluded the greater likelihood of black Americans being killed by officers is a result of their higher level of exposure incidents involving police.
Despite the moral indignation of activists, there is no logical justification for so many of their beliefs. Even when we are discussing the matter of extrajudicial killings, the evidence suggests that American police kill very few unarmed individuals. According to the database of the Washington Post, only 15 unarmed black Americans were killed in 2019. The figure for Caucasians was only slightly higher. Additionally, unarmed does not mean non-violent — even a suspect who physically attacks a police officer is classified as unarmed.
The argument that black Americans are inordinately killed by the police when accounting for their size in the population is also fallacious. Although they are only 13 percent of the population, the fact remains that black Americans are responsible for a much higher percentage of homicides in America relative to their share of the population.
In a recent article, researcher Heather Macdonald aptly describes the extensive involvement of blacks in crime: “Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial 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 percent of all interracial violent victimization or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks.”
If major players in the BLM movement care about black lives, then they ought to focus on reforms that can improve the quality of life for black Americans. Presently, several activists have been recommending that states defund the police force. But the effect of this policy will be the reverse of what lobbyists desire. Defunding or abolishing the police will make it harder for officers to police crime-ridden inner-city communities, mainly occupied by blacks Americans.
Ending the war on marijuana is a worthwhile alternative to reduce hostile interactions between blacks Americans and the police as well as reducing the black incarceration rate. During 2015-2017, there were more arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined. This proposal will not only result in fewer black Americans being imprisoned, but more resources will be devoted to solving and preventing serious crimes; thereby saving the lives of black Americans who are more likely to be victims of violent crimes.
It is good that the BLM movement is working to ensure that black Americans are protected from police brutality. Yet it should also work to eliminate other policies instituted by the American government that can indeed become obstacles to justice. One such policy usually criticized by Libertarians is prosecutorial immunity. As Clark Neily illustrates in his essay “A Libertarian Vision for Criminal Justice”:
Absolute prosecutorial immunity is precisely what it sounds like: a complete bar on suing prosecutors for anything they do within the scope of their job as a prosecutor. Incredibly, that includes deliberate acts of malfeasance, such as knowingly and even vindictively prosecuting an innocent person and even suborning perjury to help secure an unjust conviction.
For the BLM movement to become a serious organization, its adherents must propose sensible policies that can ameliorate the conditions of Black America.
Another variable that is often not mentioned in this debate is the role of families in improving outcomes for black Americans. Research has shown that young people raised in stable two-parent homes generate higher incomes than their contemporaries raised by single parents.
Sociologist David Popenoe has spent a career documenting the appalling effects of fatherlessness. Based on the findings of a landmark study, “racial income gaps are smaller when more fathers and married adults are present in a black boy’s community, irrespective of his own personal situation.”
Communities with stronger families are richer in social capital and opportunities; hence the benefits of residing in such neighborhoods, also positively affect children, whose own parents may not be living together. Fixing black families, therefore, will produce a beneficial effect for black Americans overall.
It is incredibly important that leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement take an inward look by examining how blacks Americans can create stronger families. The improved outcomes that will result will, by extension, reduce the negative externalities caused by unstable families which can manifest in criminal activity.
The BLM movement must dismiss hysterical recommendations. It must advocate serious reforms of the criminal justice system that ensure that the application of justice is fair and equitable. Furthermore, activists cannot expect most people to endorse the BLM movement when supporters seem to ignore the facts that black Americans so frequently take the lives of other blacks.
Black Lives Matter will not be a legitimate movement until activists begin to care about all lives — not just those killed by the police. Unless and until the BLM movement accepts the facts of reality, it will always remain a rogue group.
In New Carlisle, Ohio (pop. 5578) the Woke crowd protested after Councilman Grimm’s actions...
“On June 3, Grimm shared an image that said: “Black lives don’t matter to black people unless killed by a white person. Y’all not ready for this conversation. Y’all kill each other all day everyday.”
Grimm wrote “Brilliant” in the comment to that post when he shared it.”
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/local/protest-planned-new-carlisle-after-councilman-social-media-posts/n6ZFfGpicAqVkYdfNaP15N/
I agree with the original post from Alaska , “Y’all not ready for this conversation.”
What???? And screw up Fathers Day in Chicago???
It is like the Russian hoax that the democrats have used so successfully — why give it up.
The hoax that the police are hunting down black men for sport has been so successful no one should expect it to be given up.
After all, it has tremendous numbers of white people, leaders, kneeling in submission. Kneeling in submission to the hoax itself, or kneeling in submission to the idea that their lives don’t matter, or kneeling in submission to the idea that if they think all lives matter equally they are racist.
Black Fathers Matter.
Black Babies Matter.
Black Shooting Victims Matter.
I Black Lives Matter as they say, why are they killing themselves at such an alarming rate??
The only explanation for that phenomenon is that they are stupid. But they would respond with a charge of "racism" against anybody who observed the obvious.
There is no point in writing articles about what BLM “needs” to do. They won’t be doing anything that needs to be done. Best to simply report on what they do.
Black Fetal Lives Matter
was Grimm tossed down the Memory Hole?
BLM leadership admits they are marxists looking to get rid of trump as their primary goal.
So lets see... get rid of the man whose policies and removal of regulation makes him personally responsible for the best unemployment numbers for black people in history...
Really.
Seems some folks read the name and think thats all there is to the organization. Time for those folks to get off the plantation because that’s all they are is self-made slaves.
The BLM movement is a sad joke. Can’t take them at all seriously, sorry, their plank is ridiculous.
This isn’t about Black lives mattering it is the decades planned Black Liberation Movement aka Jeremiah Wright and Obama. That is why Obama did nothing to help blacks while President he brought in South America to cause ultimate chaos.The black communities know as well as anyone how to help their communities but Obama still did nothing on purpose so Trump coming in and helping everyone was a base killer in the Democrat party.Biden is expected to do nothing as well. Doing Nothing is what Democrats always do.
BLM is a communist front for the Dimocrat Party. They don’t care about black lives they care about destroying the country.
Black Lives Marxists
BLM needs to march through the streets of primarily black neighborhoods and demand that their men STOP BEATING ON POLICE. Stop resisting arrest. There, problem solved.
Now if I was a mayor, I’d be forced to resign. That’s how stupid all of this has become.
Oooh, you’re blaming the victim, I’m sure the call would be. It’s like blaming trees for drunk driving deaths. Sure as hell I’m blaming the ‘victim.’ Sick of this junk.
The "activists" with such tender "sensibilities" (as if) claim their own words mean something other than what they plainly say, and this author gratuitously labels anyone who observes the words in context of the accompanying actions as being "outright racist[s]". Killing a white college student outside the college library because he would not say their catch-phrase belies their proclaimed message.
BLM simply omits the first word - ONLY. That is the message, as shown by their actions and demands.
We have reached the point where it is racist to say:
“All Black Lives Matter”.
We are a nation gone mad.
It doesn’t, and won’t, because it can get huge money streams from the government by playing on White Guilt. So, for them, it’s not worth even talking about the Blacks killed by Blacks.
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