Black Lives Matter is an Insult
Why is it that some folks fail to see how racist they really are? Slinging the slogan "Black Lives Matter" by either whites or blacks is just as racist as "The White House is for White People." No rational person believes white cops are going into offices and singling out hardworking black employees and senselessly shooting them down. The deaths we see occurring are almost always when worthless, criminal thugs resist arrest or interact dangerously with police.
Please note that I write "worthless, criminal thugs," not "black worthless, criminal thugs," because color doesn't matter - in fact, more whites are killed by police than blacks:
Tampa Bay Times, 21 Aug 2014, Talk show host: Police kill more whites than blacks
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps data on fatal injuries from 1999 to 2011 and one category is homicides by legal intervention. The term "legal intervention" covers any situation when a person dies at the hands of anyone authorized to use deadly force in the line of duty.
Over the span of more than a decade, 2,151 whites died by being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks.
I know what you are going to say, "But Bernie, there are more whites than blacks in our population, so obviously there should be more whites killed than blacks at the hands of law enforcement."
However, any casual glance at FBI Uniform Crime Reports will quickly tell you that there are more black criminals than white criminals and so come more often in contact with police. From the same article:
Ibid,
Candace McCoy is a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. McCoy said blacks might be more likely to have a violent encounter with police because they are convicted of felonies at a higher rate than whites. Felonies include everything from violent crimes like murder and rape, to property crimes like burglary and embezzlement, to drug trafficking and gun offenses.
Blacks commit felonies at more than three times the rate of whites, so if anything, white criminals are being disproportionately killed. Because most of the criminals coming in contact with police are black, it is amazing that so few blacks are killed by police compared to whites. Police are probably being extra solicitous when confronted by black criminals.
But why don't we hear more about white killings by police? We certainly would if Al Sharpton were white. And it has nothing to do with racist cops.
The slogan all along should have been: "All Lives Matter." Anything else is an insult to all races.
