Hypocrisy Matters

“Black Lives Matter” is movement that started in the wake of the Trayvon Martin trial and acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman.  The movement gained momentum after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  There have been over 600 “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations worldwide and the protest organizers and protestors have met with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Attorney General Holder to demand that the federal government do something about the fact that, “[b]lack communities have suffered under racially biased policing and unconstitutional law enforcement policies for far too long.” Have the black communities suffered? In some ways, it depends on perspective.  However, the facts allude to a different story altogether.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports database provides a wealth of statistics on crime in the nation.  According to the FBI, in 2012, 123 blacks were shot and killed by police versus 326 whites killed by police.  However, the data doesn’t provide much information on whether the person was armed, unarmed, retreating, fighting with officers, etc., so it’s difficult to tell if the policing is racially biased or not.  But as I researched, I came across other facts that tell a different story.

In 2012, there were more than 8.3 million arrests in the United States.  Blacks accounted for 28 % of those arrests, while 69 % of those arrested were white (Note: The FBI data includes Hispanics as part of the white population).  The US Census bureau reports that blacks make up 13% of the US population, so one could say that there is a disproportionate number of arrests, but is that due to racial profiling or is the fact of the matter that blacks commit a larger portion of crimes?

When broken down by offense, 49% of those arrested for murder and 51% of those arrested for robbery were black.  Again, one could argue that this is indicative of widespread bias.  I think not.  Buried in the data are these two facts.  From 2003 to 2012, blacks were responsible for 44 % of the deaths of officers killed in the line of duty.  But more disturbingly, 91 % of the 2648 blacks murdered in 2012 were killed by blacks.  It seems to me that black-on-black crime is a much more serious problem than white on black (193 blacks murdered by whites in 2012) or police killing blacks.  So why don’t we hear more protests about black-on-black crime?

The professional rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the like don’t want to talk about the real issues because they get no mileage out of it.  Which is more sensational and more likely to grab headlines, an innocent teen killed by a racist neighborhood watch volunteer or another story about blacks killing blacks?  Obviously, they can’t get attention if they can’t grab headlines so they focus on the sensational, ignoring the real issue and try to make the rest of us feel guilty about race.  And the problem of black-on-black crime continues.  Sounds like hypocrisy to me.

Do blacks have a legitimate concern about unfair and biased policing? I’ll concede that it is not only possible, but likely.  Is it due to racism or stereotyping?  It’s hard to say.  But FBI data indicates that the bulk of the violent crimes happen in urban areas populated primarily by blacks.  And FBI data indicates that the majority of law enforcement patrols are deployed to these same areas.  For the many law-abiding blacks living in these communities, the police are their only protection; the police patrols exist because black lives do matter.

Black lives do matter; all lives matter. But the next time you hear one of these protestors say that black lives matter, ask yourself if they mean all black lives, or only the lives that give them 15 minutes of media time.