The facts and the data tell a far different story than what the media is feeding us.
As I’ve explained here at ResCon1, groupthink is a real problem in contemporary America. We’ve seen it with the cult-like following behind mask-wearing allegedly to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
And now we see it with the universal declaration, trumpeted throughout the media and in the popular culture, that the murder of George Floyd is an obvious instance of racism—and emblematic of the “systemic racism” that supposedly pervades U.S. law enforcement and American society more generally.
In truth, racism is less of a problem today in American than in all of human history. No country in the history of the world, moreover, has done more for blacks and other minorities than the United States of America.
And, despite the best efforts of left-wing, “progressive” journalists to show otherwise, there simply is no data to support the notion that there is “systemic racism” in law enforcement.
Quite the opposite: as Jason Riley reports in the Wall Street Journal :
In 2016, [Harvard economist Roland] Fryer released a study of racial differences in police use of deadly force.
To the surprise of the author, as well as many in the media and on the left who take racist law enforcement as a given, he found no evidence of bias in police shootings.
His conclusions have been echoed by researchers at the University of Maryland and Michigan State University, who in a paper released last year wrote:
“We didn’t find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime.
Adds talk radio host Larry Elder in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity (June 2, 2020):
According to the CDC, in the last 45 years, killings of black by the police has declined [by] 75 percent.
Last year there were nine unarmed black people killed; 19 unarmed white people. Name the unarmed white people who were killed.
You can’t because the media gives you the impression that this is something that happens all the time [and only to black people].
Obama said this ought not be normal. Mr. former President, it’s not normal; it is rare. Cops rarely kill anybody, let alone an unarmed black person.
And the idea that this happens all the time is why some of these young people are out there in the streets. And it is simply false. Isn’t that good news? It’s not true!
What most left-wing “progressives” gloss over or refuse to forthrightly acknowledge is that, as Riley explains, “racial disparities in police shootings [stem] primary from racial disparities in criminal behavior.”
“Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods?” asks Heather Mac Donald.
Because that’s where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds.
Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.
The murder of George Floyd was an abomination, but it is not a racial or racist abomination. Instead, it is a rare law enforcement problem that affects a small number of police officers, white and black.
It was only last year, after all, in Minneapolis of all places, that a black Somalian-American police officer, Mohamed Noor, was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for wrongly killing an unarmed white woman while on patrol in 2017.
Acording to the New York Times, the woman “was unarmed, wearing pajamas, and holding nothing but a glittery cellphone.” Yet she was killed by this black police officer. However, nowhere in this Times article on the case does the word “racism” appear.
Racism? So why is racism being seized upon now in the murder of George Floyd?
In part because all Americans of goodwill are understandably sensitive to the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial discrimination, and how that legacy might have ramifications even today.
But there are less benign reasons as well.
Anti-American anarchists and far-left extremists seek to use the cudgel of race and racism, real and imagined, to attack and destroy America.
These are the people affiliated with Antifa and foreign intelligence services who have hijacked otherwise peaceful protests and used them as vehicles for arson, looting, rioting, and lawlessness.
Politics. There also are nonviolent “progressives” eager to exploit Floyd’s murder for rank political reasons. They see in his death an opportunity to push for sweeping legislative changes that will “fundamentally transform” America along statist lines.
The racist narrative, albeit false, is politically useful to these left-wing activists; so they push it with unrestrained gusto.
We the people, however, should not be fooled. While racism certainly exists and should be called out and acted against whenever it rears its ugly head, it is a far cry from the most significant problem that we face today.
And it is far cry from the most significant problem that blacks and other minorities face today.
What’s worse? Subpar schools and a lack of educational choice and opportunity in too many poor black neighborhoods. The breakdown of the family and the absence of fathers in too many homes, black and white.
Black-on-black crime that results in the senseless death of too many young black men and innocent children. And a relative lack of jobs and economic opportunity in too many of our nation’s disadvantaged communities.
But all of this has very little to do with racism and a lot do with economics, sociology, and public policy.
In truth, we Americans should take pride in what our nation has done for blacks and other minorities. And we should be grateful for our police, of all hues, colors and ethnicities, who put their lives on the line every day to protect us from the barbarians at the proverbial gate.
The thin blue line, remember, is neither black nor white. It’s blue, and it includes Americans of every race, color and creed.
Feature photo credit: LAist.com.