Jiggyfly
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It is terrorism I don't see how that makes it any different.
The Great Police Work Thread
- Thread starter BipolarFuk
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BipolarFuk
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Exactly right. White guys in Oregon carrying weapons: THAT'S MY RIGHT!! Black guys in the city doing the same: THUGS!
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I agree, and just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Under almost any circumstances, let alone one as volatile as that one.
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One, I have never promoted anyone carry around a semi-automatic rifle in public. Two, it's stupid on both accounts, but even more stupid when you're at a protest where everyone is already amped up and pissed.
Jiggyfly
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Micah Xavier Johnson: Dallas suspect was Afghanistan war veteran, army says
Johnson, 25, served in Afghanistan for eight months from 2013-2014 and had no known ties to terrorism and no criminal record, officials say
The man killed by police after five officers were murdered in Dallas on Thursday night was a veteran of the Afghanistan war, the US army has confirmed.
Three suspects remain in police custody, but one was killed during the confrontation by an explosive device set off by a police robot.
The dead suspect is Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old resident of the Dallas area, law enforcement and government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press and Reuters.
Johnson, an enlisted US army reservist, deployed to Afghanistan in November 2013 and served there until July 2014, according to his service record, released by the US army on Friday. He was an engineer and a carpentry and masonry specialist.
His rank was private first class, earned the year after his March 2009 enlistment. He left the military in April 2015 after serving in the 420th Engineer Brigade in Seagoville, Texas.
Johnson had no known ties to terrorism and no criminal record, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to CNN.
On his Facebook page, which has been taken down, his profile picture showed him wearing an African dashiki shirt and raising his fist in a black power salute. Other pictures showed him dressed in military uniform.
During negotiations with police following the shootout in Dallas, he “said he was upset about Black Lives Matter”, Dallas police chief David Brown told the media. “The suspect said he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers. The suspect said that he was not affiliated with any groups and he stated that he did this alone.”
One of the organizers of the Dallas protest, Pastor Jeff Hood, said he did not recognize Johnson and had never heard of him.
Around a half dozen police vehicles were parked outside what was believed to be Johnson’s home in Mesquite, Texas, on Friday, according to the AP. Investigators were seen walking in and out of the two-story brick home located in the suburbs of Dallas.
On the Facebook page of Delphene Johnson, 49, who is believed to be Micah’s mother, friends and family had left messages saying they send their prayers. A photo posted in 2010 by his mother, captioned “my first born Micah at 2”, showed a small, smiling boy dressed in a green and white baseball shirt and blue jeans.
In another photo posted in 2010, a teenage boy in a blue polo shirt sits in front of an old car, with the caption: “Micah chilin on the cruise”.
Johnson, 25, served in Afghanistan for eight months from 2013-2014 and had no known ties to terrorism and no criminal record, officials say
The man killed by police after five officers were murdered in Dallas on Thursday night was a veteran of the Afghanistan war, the US army has confirmed.
Three suspects remain in police custody, but one was killed during the confrontation by an explosive device set off by a police robot.
The dead suspect is Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old resident of the Dallas area, law enforcement and government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press and Reuters.
Johnson, an enlisted US army reservist, deployed to Afghanistan in November 2013 and served there until July 2014, according to his service record, released by the US army on Friday. He was an engineer and a carpentry and masonry specialist.
His rank was private first class, earned the year after his March 2009 enlistment. He left the military in April 2015 after serving in the 420th Engineer Brigade in Seagoville, Texas.
Johnson had no known ties to terrorism and no criminal record, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to CNN.
On his Facebook page, which has been taken down, his profile picture showed him wearing an African dashiki shirt and raising his fist in a black power salute. Other pictures showed him dressed in military uniform.
During negotiations with police following the shootout in Dallas, he “said he was upset about Black Lives Matter”, Dallas police chief David Brown told the media. “The suspect said he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers. The suspect said that he was not affiliated with any groups and he stated that he did this alone.”
One of the organizers of the Dallas protest, Pastor Jeff Hood, said he did not recognize Johnson and had never heard of him.
Around a half dozen police vehicles were parked outside what was believed to be Johnson’s home in Mesquite, Texas, on Friday, according to the AP. Investigators were seen walking in and out of the two-story brick home located in the suburbs of Dallas.
On the Facebook page of Delphene Johnson, 49, who is believed to be Micah’s mother, friends and family had left messages saying they send their prayers. A photo posted in 2010 by his mother, captioned “my first born Micah at 2”, showed a small, smiling boy dressed in a green and white baseball shirt and blue jeans.
In another photo posted in 2010, a teenage boy in a blue polo shirt sits in front of an old car, with the caption: “Micah chilin on the cruise”.
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A photo posted in 2010 by his mother, captioned “my first born Micah at 2”, showed a small, smiling boy dressed in a green and white baseball shirt and blue jeans.
In another photo posted in 2010, a teenage boy in a blue polo shirt sits in front of an old car, with the caption: “Micah chilin on the cruise”.
What does this have to do with anything?
In another photo posted in 2010, a teenage boy in a blue polo shirt sits in front of an old car, with the caption: “Micah chilin on the cruise”.
What does this have to do with anything?
Kbrown
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I remember a CNN interview with the Boston bomber's high school wrestling teammate. I think news outlets run out of things to say and start getting goofy.A photo posted in 2010 by his mother, captioned “my first born Micah at 2”, showed a small, smiling boy dressed in a green and white baseball shirt and blue jeans.
In another photo posted in 2010, a teenage boy in a blue polo shirt sits in front of an old car, with the caption: “Micah chilin on the cruise”.
What does this have to do with anything?
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I guess.
Jiggyfly
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The Uncomfortable Reason Why It Came To This In Dallas Yesterday
Posted at 9:28 am on July 8, 2016 by Leon H. Wolf
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http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/08/uncomfortable-reason-came-dallas-yesterday/
Let me say this right off the bat: I don't at all condone any shooting of police officers or attacking them in any way. I hope that the people responsible are caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law - which, given that the attacks appear to have been premeditated and directed at law enforcement, means the death penalty. I assume, given that these idiots chose to perpetrate their crime in Texas, that this is exactly what will happen.
Fine. Good, even.
Now let's take a step back and look at the forces that would drive someone to do something like this yesterday. Here's the reality that we don't often talk about - that societies are held together less by laws and force and threats of force than we are by ethereal and fragile concepts like mutual respect and belief in the justness of the system itself.
In America, there are 376 police officers per 100,000 citizens - or one police officer per every 266 citizens. Stop and think about that. Could every police officer in America maintain order over 266 unruly people who had no respect for him him or the badge he wields? Absolutely not. The only thing that makes the situation even a little bit tenable is that the vast majority of people never think about confronting or challenging a police officer, and instead get up each day with the commitment to live their lives peacefully and lawfully, because they believe a) that they live in a society that is basically just and b) they believe that the few policemen who do exist will be there to protect them if something goes wrong and c) they have faith, by and large, that if someone commits a crime against them, they will be caught and punished.
Think, though, about what happens when these invisible bonds that are the most important part of maintaining law and order begin to dissolve - especially within a given subcommunity. Perception is, quite often, more important than reality. We are, in addition, creatures of our upbringing. The way our parents raise us to think about people and institutions shapes us to degrees that we often can't or won't acknowledge.
As the child of white parents who grew up in the rural panhandle of Texas, I was taught that police were there to help, any time I had a problem I should go to them. I should always follow their orders and show them the utmost respect. No one is more important and helpful to your community than the police.
Now imagine, for a minute, that your parents instead grew up as black people in the 50s or 60s in one of the many areas where police were often the agents of - let's call it what it was - white oppression. How might that have changed, for understandable reasons, the way not only those people but also their children and their children's children interact with the police? More importantly, how might it impact the belief that police will ever be held accountable for abuses of their power?
I think the evidence would show that the vast majority of police do their jobs with the greatest professionalism possible. I don't think that's a sufficient answer to the reality of lingering mistrust between police and minority communities, especially in certain areas of the country. And the proliferation of cell phone video recording has really confirmed (in their minds) something they have long anecdotally believed or been taught - that police often interact with minority communities in different ways than they do with the white community.
And here's the most important part: when they do so, they never or almost never face punishment.
Look, I don't know. I don't want to rush to judgment on either the Baton Rouge shooting or the Falcon Heights shooting, but based upon what we have seen, they look bad. Very bad. They look, at least at first glance, to confirm a lot of biases that people have. They look like a scenario that has played out all too often that the white community either doesn't believe ever happens (or at least believes is at most a freak occurrence) and minority communities believe is a systemic occurrence. And they look, most importantly, like many other scenarios in which officers have skated either scot free or with a slap on their wrist.
And here is the important point and the point I have been trying to make with this excessively wordy post. The most important safety valve to prevent violence like we saw in Dallas last night is the belief that when officers do go off the rails, the legal system will punish them accordingly. If minority communities (and everyone else, for that matter) believed that, resort to reprisal killings would be either non existent or far less frequent.
But they don't, and there's good reason for that. And that is because a huge, overwhelming segment of America does not really give a damn what cops do in the course of maintaining order because they assume (probably correctly) that abuse at the hands of police will never happen to them. As long as the cops keep people away from my door, they have my blessing handling "the thugs" in whatever way they see fit.
I see the attitude all the time even in the comments to the stories I write here at RedState. I'll post about some story or video where someone did something to break the law and thus found themselves in contact with the police. Fine. During the course of interaction with the police, however, the police drastically escalate the confrontation using what I think any reasonable person should consider to be wildly excessive force in bringing the situation to heel, and someone ends up either seriously injured or dead. Very often, the victim of this escalation is black.
Every time I post these stories, I get a flood of comments from people who look for even the smallest hook on which to hang an excuse for the cops. "Well, he was rude and confrontational to the cop." "Well, when the officer was trying to arrest him, he ran." "He was 'resisting arrest.'" (My personal favorite, which was used by several dozen people I talked to regarding Eric Garner, whose "resisting arrest" consisted entirely of turning his back to a cop and putting his hands in the air.)
Look, this is not how a free society works. Being rude/disrespectful to a cop, running from a cop, demanding in a hostile tone to know why a cop has pulled you over might well be contraindicated to the peaceful continuation of your day, but they are not an excuse for someone getting shot. I'm for the death penalty, but the kind that is carried out after, you know, a trial and some appeals - not the kind that is carried out on the spot by a cop who's had his authority challenged in some non life-threatening way.
These excuses, though, are indicative of an abdication of critical thinking about the legal and proper application of police force that really and truly is endemic in America. Prosecutors are often guilty of it when deciding whether to indict officers for excessive force. More often, they know that jury members will be extremely guilty of it if they decide to bring charges at all, which makes the whole exercise not worth their time.
Here's all you need to know: since 2000, NYPD officers have shot and killed about 180 people. Only 3 of those officers was even indicted for anything and only 1 was convicted, for a non-jail time offense. And these statistics are fairly typical of the nation at large.
Reasonable people can disagree about the prevalence of police brutality in America, and the extent to which race plays a factor in it. I don't think reasonable people can disagree that excessive police force is punished way less often than it actually happens. And that's the kind of problem that leads to people taking up guns and committing acts of violence - tragically (and with evil intent) against cops who as far as we know have done nothing wrong.
But people's willingness to act rationally and within the confines of the law and the political system is generally speaking directly proportional to their belief that the law and political system will ever punish wrongdoing. And right now, that belief is largely broken, especially in many minority communities.
And it's the blind, uncritical belief that the police never (or only in freak circumstances) do anything wrong that is a major contributing factor to that.
It's at least as much of a factor, if not more so, than the blind, uncritical belief that the police always do things wrong - which many conservatives today are blaming in entirety for what happened in Dallas.
The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle, but acknowledging that requires looking in the mirror in a way that makes us all a little uncomfortable.
Posted at 9:28 am on July 8, 2016 by Leon H. Wolf
Share On Facebook Share On Twitter
http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/08/uncomfortable-reason-came-dallas-yesterday/
Let me say this right off the bat: I don't at all condone any shooting of police officers or attacking them in any way. I hope that the people responsible are caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law - which, given that the attacks appear to have been premeditated and directed at law enforcement, means the death penalty. I assume, given that these idiots chose to perpetrate their crime in Texas, that this is exactly what will happen.
Fine. Good, even.
Now let's take a step back and look at the forces that would drive someone to do something like this yesterday. Here's the reality that we don't often talk about - that societies are held together less by laws and force and threats of force than we are by ethereal and fragile concepts like mutual respect and belief in the justness of the system itself.
In America, there are 376 police officers per 100,000 citizens - or one police officer per every 266 citizens. Stop and think about that. Could every police officer in America maintain order over 266 unruly people who had no respect for him him or the badge he wields? Absolutely not. The only thing that makes the situation even a little bit tenable is that the vast majority of people never think about confronting or challenging a police officer, and instead get up each day with the commitment to live their lives peacefully and lawfully, because they believe a) that they live in a society that is basically just and b) they believe that the few policemen who do exist will be there to protect them if something goes wrong and c) they have faith, by and large, that if someone commits a crime against them, they will be caught and punished.
Think, though, about what happens when these invisible bonds that are the most important part of maintaining law and order begin to dissolve - especially within a given subcommunity. Perception is, quite often, more important than reality. We are, in addition, creatures of our upbringing. The way our parents raise us to think about people and institutions shapes us to degrees that we often can't or won't acknowledge.
As the child of white parents who grew up in the rural panhandle of Texas, I was taught that police were there to help, any time I had a problem I should go to them. I should always follow their orders and show them the utmost respect. No one is more important and helpful to your community than the police.
Now imagine, for a minute, that your parents instead grew up as black people in the 50s or 60s in one of the many areas where police were often the agents of - let's call it what it was - white oppression. How might that have changed, for understandable reasons, the way not only those people but also their children and their children's children interact with the police? More importantly, how might it impact the belief that police will ever be held accountable for abuses of their power?
I think the evidence would show that the vast majority of police do their jobs with the greatest professionalism possible. I don't think that's a sufficient answer to the reality of lingering mistrust between police and minority communities, especially in certain areas of the country. And the proliferation of cell phone video recording has really confirmed (in their minds) something they have long anecdotally believed or been taught - that police often interact with minority communities in different ways than they do with the white community.
And here's the most important part: when they do so, they never or almost never face punishment.
Look, I don't know. I don't want to rush to judgment on either the Baton Rouge shooting or the Falcon Heights shooting, but based upon what we have seen, they look bad. Very bad. They look, at least at first glance, to confirm a lot of biases that people have. They look like a scenario that has played out all too often that the white community either doesn't believe ever happens (or at least believes is at most a freak occurrence) and minority communities believe is a systemic occurrence. And they look, most importantly, like many other scenarios in which officers have skated either scot free or with a slap on their wrist.
And here is the important point and the point I have been trying to make with this excessively wordy post. The most important safety valve to prevent violence like we saw in Dallas last night is the belief that when officers do go off the rails, the legal system will punish them accordingly. If minority communities (and everyone else, for that matter) believed that, resort to reprisal killings would be either non existent or far less frequent.
But they don't, and there's good reason for that. And that is because a huge, overwhelming segment of America does not really give a damn what cops do in the course of maintaining order because they assume (probably correctly) that abuse at the hands of police will never happen to them. As long as the cops keep people away from my door, they have my blessing handling "the thugs" in whatever way they see fit.
I see the attitude all the time even in the comments to the stories I write here at RedState. I'll post about some story or video where someone did something to break the law and thus found themselves in contact with the police. Fine. During the course of interaction with the police, however, the police drastically escalate the confrontation using what I think any reasonable person should consider to be wildly excessive force in bringing the situation to heel, and someone ends up either seriously injured or dead. Very often, the victim of this escalation is black.
Every time I post these stories, I get a flood of comments from people who look for even the smallest hook on which to hang an excuse for the cops. "Well, he was rude and confrontational to the cop." "Well, when the officer was trying to arrest him, he ran." "He was 'resisting arrest.'" (My personal favorite, which was used by several dozen people I talked to regarding Eric Garner, whose "resisting arrest" consisted entirely of turning his back to a cop and putting his hands in the air.)
Look, this is not how a free society works. Being rude/disrespectful to a cop, running from a cop, demanding in a hostile tone to know why a cop has pulled you over might well be contraindicated to the peaceful continuation of your day, but they are not an excuse for someone getting shot. I'm for the death penalty, but the kind that is carried out after, you know, a trial and some appeals - not the kind that is carried out on the spot by a cop who's had his authority challenged in some non life-threatening way.
These excuses, though, are indicative of an abdication of critical thinking about the legal and proper application of police force that really and truly is endemic in America. Prosecutors are often guilty of it when deciding whether to indict officers for excessive force. More often, they know that jury members will be extremely guilty of it if they decide to bring charges at all, which makes the whole exercise not worth their time.
Here's all you need to know: since 2000, NYPD officers have shot and killed about 180 people. Only 3 of those officers was even indicted for anything and only 1 was convicted, for a non-jail time offense. And these statistics are fairly typical of the nation at large.
Reasonable people can disagree about the prevalence of police brutality in America, and the extent to which race plays a factor in it. I don't think reasonable people can disagree that excessive police force is punished way less often than it actually happens. And that's the kind of problem that leads to people taking up guns and committing acts of violence - tragically (and with evil intent) against cops who as far as we know have done nothing wrong.
But people's willingness to act rationally and within the confines of the law and the political system is generally speaking directly proportional to their belief that the law and political system will ever punish wrongdoing. And right now, that belief is largely broken, especially in many minority communities.
And it's the blind, uncritical belief that the police never (or only in freak circumstances) do anything wrong that is a major contributing factor to that.
It's at least as much of a factor, if not more so, than the blind, uncritical belief that the police always do things wrong - which many conservatives today are blaming in entirety for what happened in Dallas.
The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle, but acknowledging that requires looking in the mirror in a way that makes us all a little uncomfortable.
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http://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dallas-cowboys/cowboys/2016/07/08/huffington-post-calls-troy-aikmans-tweet-support-dallas-police-tone-deaf-former-cowboys-qb-responds?hootPostID=c6291e79c8f291685584a955660bae3f
Jeez. Seriously. I see nothing wrong with what Aikman posted.
What I don't get about the BLM movement is that anyone who does not automatically respond the way they feel is appropriate, they can't speak about anything else involved with this shit storm.
Jeez. Seriously. I see nothing wrong with what Aikman posted.
What I don't get about the BLM movement is that anyone who does not automatically respond the way they feel is appropriate, they can't speak about anything else involved with this shit storm.
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Total bullshit here.
I don't buy it was the parents of this generation of shithead millennials teaching kids this stuff.
Those from the 1950s and 1960s experienced profound examples of racism.
Those kids that matured in the 1990s and 2000s, not so much.
How about the hip hop culture with "F the Police" as a big part as its base ever getting examined?
When will the glorification of gangster culture ever get pointed at as part of a contributing factor?
I just don't think many people are actually bridging the generational gaps very well and it leads to a pretty limited message.
And that goes especially for white folks as the minority divide has shrunk significantly in the last 30 years.
L.T. Fan
I'm Easy If You Are
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Yes I believe this to be true. There has not been a generation in several years that hasn't experienced bias and discrimination but the levels that are exhibited currently are the most venal I have witnessed. And that is from every front.
Jiggyfly
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Who is the BLM?
Where is BLM even mentioned in this?
Some people want to have an issue with anything like this author just like some want to attach BLM to anything negative.
Not talking about you but about what has been going on with Fox news all day.
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Jiggyfly
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Will the reason that F the police was even made ever be examined.
There are 2 sides to everything and gangster culture has been glorified since the 30's there is a reason there were so many ganster flicks made, why the godfather is so beloved and scarface so revered.
This did not just happen with hip hop which is not all about F the police being a gangster anyway.
Jiggyfly
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And I want to say this Booze.
I am not calling you out or trying to make this hostile, I want to try and have an honest discussion about all of this.
I understand how an article like that can piss you off because its being petty and shit like that is the reason people are so upset these days.
But when people act like any nitwit saying something stupid and using the BLM hashtag discredits anything else associated with it that gets me steamed also.
Frankly I am sick of the tit for tat and finger-pointing on all sides.
And I hope even if you disagree with that particular part of the article you can at least ponder the rest because IMO he captured the sentiment behind the unrest.
I am not calling you out or trying to make this hostile, I want to try and have an honest discussion about all of this.
I understand how an article like that can piss you off because its being petty and shit like that is the reason people are so upset these days.
But when people act like any nitwit saying something stupid and using the BLM hashtag discredits anything else associated with it that gets me steamed also.
Frankly I am sick of the tit for tat and finger-pointing on all sides.
And I hope even if you disagree with that particular part of the article you can at least ponder the rest because IMO he captured the sentiment behind the unrest.
Chocolate Lab
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Of course there wasn't anything wrong with it. Not a single thing. Why are people so quick to ignore that plenty of cops are black, also? Aikman isn't obligated to tweet about every incident if he doesn't feel like it.
So sick of the SJW culture.
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Good and I will reply in kind.
As bluntly as I can put it, the BLM thing is not helping. It is part of the social justice movement right now that does little to help the situation.
From where I see it, it is a simplistic and dividing movement.
It is not intended to stop the killings as much as it is to pander to emotion and continue to spread the cultural division that is at the root of it all to begin with. It is basically taking a stance that it is preferable to bludgeon someone over the head with self-evident crap and does not inspire any dialogue at all.
Exactly right.
It does discredit it as far as I am saying. Using a hashtag aligns that person and their comments to an extreme polar side of the discussion.
From where I stand, it is not a lot different than being silly and ignorant and throwing up a hand, and a calling someone a "hater" mainly because you want to make the argument one sided and simple. There is nothing simple about any of this.
Continued ignorance is not going to make anything better.
And as far as I am concerned the BLM is a huge part of that. It polarizes. It ends discussion. It divides.
But then again, that is apparently what is desired. There is no desire for unity, just continued segregation. Even the deaths of the policemen have been shouted down by people who drop the hashtag. I don't know what the end game is for this. I don't even it is meant to stop the murder of innocent lives anymore, just the ones they feel are more justified.
Twitter was a sickening place to be today. People were being called out for mourning the death of the cops by people who wanted to point out the continued message that "black lives matter" and how dare that whitey Troy Aikman suggest the police were anything other than the white devil. Peter King tweeted comments about how someone like MLK is needed now, and got the same kind of idiotic treatment. Yep, that kind of moronic thinking is going to continue the inflammation.
The ignorance was appalling.
I took exception with that part of the article certainly. I don't argue with the fact that you have a bunch of racist morons occupying positions in our nation's police departments. I picked that particular section out as it really tries a little too hard. It suggested that this generation got the message from parents who suffered state-sponsored racism in the 1950s and 1960s. Nope. This generation was raised in a different era, with a separate subculture of their own that is nothing like that.
Examined? What's to examine? A racist police force in L.A. brought that out. It then spread to become part of the subculture, even to people that it doesn't even have relevance.
And to have a large part of a musical subgenre . A movie is a movie, but a song is going to be far more influential and hammer a message in much more as it is repetitive. So I grow up with a F the police message over and over again, I am going to develop a healthy bit of anger. That anger comes out and it causes white fear, which is huge with this as far as I am concerned.
I don't even think half the idiot cops who are murdering people would truly put on a white hood and burn a cross. But they are scared by what they perceive is a prevalent part of the culture.
Sorry if the hip hop label was too broad for you. You are right, it's not. But if you honestly think that gangsta rap hasn't played a part in this, I don't know what to say.
It is the most influential and commercially successful subgenre, which means it reaches more of the audience. It glorifies gangs, drugs and countless other crap that does not help anyone. It's garbage and it happens to have a big message which preaches denying authority, embracing crime and promotes mistrust. If anything, it has inspired fear from the police force, which only inflates the brutality.
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This guy nailed it:
The "Black Lives Matter" Slogan Ignores Self-Destructive Behavior
by Derryck Green
"Black Lives Matter" is a great slogan. As a black man, I agree that black lives matter just as much as the lives of any of our racial counterparts.
But chanting, marching and hashtag activism isn't going to work unless we also are willing to see the big-picture problems affecting black America.
Here's a hint: making black lives matter has little to do with institutional racism, white privilege and white cops.
One website organizing people pushing "black lives matter" calls it "a slogan under which black people can unite to end state sanctioned violence both in Ferguson, but also across the United States of America… to end the insidious and widespread assault on black life." It states "Black people make up a mere 13 percent of the U.S. population [but] make up more than a third of those killed in officer-involved shootings across the country."
Perhaps. But the virtuous goal of promoting the perceived value of black lives in the manner now demanded by radical community activists is tragically misguided.
Activism advocating that black lives matter could have much more moral authority, and could be taken much more seriously, if it focused on actions devaluing black lives. These have very little to do with white cops and everything to do with self-destructive black behavior.
There is a disparity regarding violent death in the black community. We are killing our own at an alarming rate. According to a U.S. Department of Justice analysis, most murders are intraracial and "93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks" between 1980 and 2008. Yet Attorney General Holder, President Obama and Reverend Sharpton haven't wanted a national conversation about this shocking figure.
In a black-white comparison, black homicide victimization rates were around six times higher than for whites. Furthermore:
• Blacks were 47.4 percent of all homicide victims and 52.5 percent of offenders.
• Blacks accounted for 62.1 percent of all drug-related homicide victims compared to 36.9 percent for whites. Over 65.6 percent — almost two-thirds — of all drug-related homicide offenders were black as compared to 33.2 percent being white.
• Blacks were 44.1 percent of felony murder victims and almost 59.9 percent of the offenders.
It's not like things improved under Obama's leadership. According to FBI statistics for 2012, 2,412 of 2,648 cases of black homicide had a black perpetrator.
This, to me, qualifies as an "insidious and widespread assault on black life." Yet those claiming black lives matter fixate on Michael Brown and Eric Garner while virtually ignoring the thousands of black-on-black murder victims who remain largely nameless and faceless except to their loved ones.
The internecine war doesn't begin there. It actually begins in the womb. As deadly as black-on-black crime can be, the most dangerous place for a black child is still in the womb.
While blacks make up only around 13 percent of the American population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported black abortions accounted for nearly 35.7 percent of all abortions performed in 2010. In Mississippi, blacks accounted for 71.7 percent of all abortions, despite blacks comprising only around 37 percent of the population.
Similarly, a report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found more black babies were killed by abortion (31,328) in New York City than were born (24,758) in 2012 — totaling 42.4 percent of all abortions performed there.
Black lives matter? Not only is it questionable if black lives really do matter to blacks themselves, but one could also sincerely question if deep self-hate is responsible for motivating blacks to kill themselves off with the recklessness that seems to permeate our actions.
Combining the black victims of abortion and black-on-black homicides, we are facing an assault on black lives that has nothing to do with racist, white cops.
If we don't take our own lives seriously, why should we expect or demand that anyone else do so?
I believe black lives matter. It's more than an Internet hashtag to me. But black lives should matter to black folk at least as much as they matter to others. Black lives have to matter just as much when blacks take them.
# # #
Derryck Green, a member of the national advisory council of the Project 21 black leadership network, received an M.A. in Theological Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing his doctorate in ministry at Azusa Pacific University. Comments may be sent to Project21@nationalcenter.org.
Published by the National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21, other Project 21 members, or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.
The "Black Lives Matter" Slogan Ignores Self-Destructive Behavior
by Derryck Green
"Black Lives Matter" is a great slogan. As a black man, I agree that black lives matter just as much as the lives of any of our racial counterparts.
But chanting, marching and hashtag activism isn't going to work unless we also are willing to see the big-picture problems affecting black America.
Here's a hint: making black lives matter has little to do with institutional racism, white privilege and white cops.
One website organizing people pushing "black lives matter" calls it "a slogan under which black people can unite to end state sanctioned violence both in Ferguson, but also across the United States of America… to end the insidious and widespread assault on black life." It states "Black people make up a mere 13 percent of the U.S. population [but] make up more than a third of those killed in officer-involved shootings across the country."
Perhaps. But the virtuous goal of promoting the perceived value of black lives in the manner now demanded by radical community activists is tragically misguided.
Activism advocating that black lives matter could have much more moral authority, and could be taken much more seriously, if it focused on actions devaluing black lives. These have very little to do with white cops and everything to do with self-destructive black behavior.
There is a disparity regarding violent death in the black community. We are killing our own at an alarming rate. According to a U.S. Department of Justice analysis, most murders are intraracial and "93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks" between 1980 and 2008. Yet Attorney General Holder, President Obama and Reverend Sharpton haven't wanted a national conversation about this shocking figure.
In a black-white comparison, black homicide victimization rates were around six times higher than for whites. Furthermore:
• Blacks were 47.4 percent of all homicide victims and 52.5 percent of offenders.
• Blacks accounted for 62.1 percent of all drug-related homicide victims compared to 36.9 percent for whites. Over 65.6 percent — almost two-thirds — of all drug-related homicide offenders were black as compared to 33.2 percent being white.
• Blacks were 44.1 percent of felony murder victims and almost 59.9 percent of the offenders.
It's not like things improved under Obama's leadership. According to FBI statistics for 2012, 2,412 of 2,648 cases of black homicide had a black perpetrator.
This, to me, qualifies as an "insidious and widespread assault on black life." Yet those claiming black lives matter fixate on Michael Brown and Eric Garner while virtually ignoring the thousands of black-on-black murder victims who remain largely nameless and faceless except to their loved ones.
The internecine war doesn't begin there. It actually begins in the womb. As deadly as black-on-black crime can be, the most dangerous place for a black child is still in the womb.
While blacks make up only around 13 percent of the American population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported black abortions accounted for nearly 35.7 percent of all abortions performed in 2010. In Mississippi, blacks accounted for 71.7 percent of all abortions, despite blacks comprising only around 37 percent of the population.
Similarly, a report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found more black babies were killed by abortion (31,328) in New York City than were born (24,758) in 2012 — totaling 42.4 percent of all abortions performed there.
Black lives matter? Not only is it questionable if black lives really do matter to blacks themselves, but one could also sincerely question if deep self-hate is responsible for motivating blacks to kill themselves off with the recklessness that seems to permeate our actions.
Combining the black victims of abortion and black-on-black homicides, we are facing an assault on black lives that has nothing to do with racist, white cops.
If we don't take our own lives seriously, why should we expect or demand that anyone else do so?
I believe black lives matter. It's more than an Internet hashtag to me. But black lives should matter to black folk at least as much as they matter to others. Black lives have to matter just as much when blacks take them.
# # #
Derryck Green, a member of the national advisory council of the Project 21 black leadership network, received an M.A. in Theological Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing his doctorate in ministry at Azusa Pacific University. Comments may be sent to Project21@nationalcenter.org.
Published by the National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21, other Project 21 members, or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.
fortsbest
DCC 4Life
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2013
- Messages
- 3,741
You will never hear that coming from the left because that just doesn't divide us like "white cops hate black folk and kill them every chance they get." I heard audio of preachers saying they were going to tell their kids to not listen to cops if they were confronted and "defend yourself" against the police. Yeah, that is smart parenting and will help keep their kids safe.