Examination necessary in police killings

Posted October 2020

By Garon Jones

Staff Editor

In light of recent events involving the numerous and highly publicised killings of African Americans by police officers, our nation has once again refueled its outrage over racial disparities in police treatment. But before we rush to vote for candidates or put solutions on the table, we must first examine the origin of such disparities and the circumstances surrounding them.

If you’ve been watching the mainstream media lately, you’ve been told how vast swaths of unarmed black men have been continually murdered in cold blood by vicious white police officers, feeding into a continuing system of white oppression. But this just isn’t true. And as persuasive as this picture of America may be, it misses one crucial component: The facts.

According to the Washington Post database, out of the 42 million blacks living in the United States today, the number of unarmed black men killed by police officers in 2019 was fourteen. Remove the men who were running from officers at the time of the shooting, and that number drops down to three. The idea that blacks are routinely hunted by police for doing absolutely nothing is utter nonsense. But to many Americans this idea doesn’t seem far fetched. Why?

Because to the media, the narrative comes first. The truth comes second.

The reality is that if you are black and living in the United States today, the threat you face from police by statistical standards is relatively low. Your chances of being fatally shot only increase when a crime has been committed. Your odds increase further when such a crime involves violence. So when we examine arrest rates between groups, wouldn’t it also make sense to examine crime statistics as well?

It’s true that blacks have higher arrest rates than whites. But as it turns out, blacks also have higher crime rates than whites. Despite making up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, over 50 percent of all murders in the United States are committed by African Americans. In 2018, blacks were responsible for 59 percent of all robbery cases, 40 percent of all aggravated assaults, and 43 percent of violent crimes overall. The black community does not face an arrest problem. The black community faces a crime problem.

This is not to say that the majority of blacks are violent criminals; quite the contrary. Studies even show that disproportionate numbers of blacks are victims of violent crime, due to mass violence in inner cities. But overall, blacks on average commit more crime, in proportion to population, than any other group. Yet, the media ignores these facts and continues to push an entirely false narrative.

The result? Riots in our streets and cities have continued for months on end with no signs of stopping. The president, whatever you may think of him, has at least offered federal aid to quell ongoing violence in our own city of Portland. But mayor Ted Wheeler and governor Kate Brown have both refused this aid. Why? According to Wheeler in a letter to President Trump, “We don’t need your politics of division and demagoguery.” Really? Is it not division when you let your own city burn over a game of politics? Is it not demagoguery when you appeal to your base by rejecting the support because it’s Trump who’s offering it? Maybe what Portland needs right now is leadership, not spineless mayors who care more about petty politics than they do about protecting their own cities.

What Portland also needs is agreement. We all agree that racism is evil, but we don’t all agree that burning down buildings deserves that same label. In fact, several defenses of rioting have sprung up in many leftist thought circles.

The most popular I’ve heard argues that buildings can simply be replaced. Human lives, of course, cannot. But I have a few questions: Replaced by who? The taxpayer? The small business owner who just lost everything? How long do you think it takes to rebuild a building? How much do you think it costs? Do you think money grows on trees? Are you going to volunteer your time in the process of rebuilding? When a small business owner loses her shop, can you explain in detail how we “replace” the years of her life she'll never get back? Answer those questions, and maybe we can start a discussion.

Another common defense of rioting makes the claim that looters are simply fighting against a racist white system. When they burn down a Target, they claim, what they're really burning down is a systemically racist capitalistic power structure. As far fetched as this may sound, it’s an idea that’s caught on fast. So, let’s make one thing clear: Low income and minority neighbourhoods are most affected by rioting and looting. Why, you may ask? Let me ask you this: When a Target is burned beyond recognition, who do you think is going to struggle more getting back on their feet? The poor minority single mother of three who just lost her job? Or the rich white CEO?

And it’s not just one Target or one single mother of three; it’s thousands of hard working Americans who have been crippled by the growing destruction. Small business owners, too, who have spent decades building up their livelihood, have watched in horror as their shops burn to the ground: 8.1 percent of the country’s total black owned businesses are in New York City alone, a mass rioting hotspot. Yet, we hear praise for riots against so-called white racism. Media pundits across the nation continue to applaud, or at least defend, violence in the name of “social justice.”

I’d like to mention something else as a side note. George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are all horrific tragedies. But they are not representative of the true scope of racial violence in America. You will never hear the names of the countless black men, women, and children gunned down on the streets of Chicago every year. They will not be buried in a gold casket or plastered as a hashtag on social media. And they will certainly not be honored as heroes or martyrs. Why do you think that is? It certainly is a question worth thinking about. Maybe ask yourself this question to push you in the right direction: Who controls the narrative?

We have established so far that police officers are not in fact on a wide scale mistreating blacks in the United States. High arrest and murder rates in the black community simply reflect a high crime rate in that very same community. But where do these high crime rates come from? And why in the black community and not others? To answer that, we must look to the number one problem facing black America today: the breakdown of the black family.

In the mid-60s, Daniel Patrick Moynahan conducted a study which found the out of wedlock birth rate among blacks to be 25 percent. At the time, he considered this to be a crisis and hoped with time that number would decrease. But many decades have passed since then, and as of 2015, that number has skyrocketed to 77 percent. The rate among whites has risen to 30 percent.

Why are these numbers so crucial?

It turns out that not having a father in the home has life changing consequences for young boys in America. If a child lives in The United States today, but grows up without a father, he is 5 times more likely to end up poor, 9 times more likely to drop out of high school, and 20 times more likely to end up in jail.

It’s no wonder we’re seeing the black community facing these issues today.

With single mothers left to raise children on their own, young boys are left without a strong male role model in their lives. We can’t begin to solve the issue until people start to recognize it. Our politicians and our media need to take a stand, but ultimately change will start with you. We must stop ignoring the problem and recognize it: America has too many dads and not enough fathers.