BLACK LIVES Matter because racist police have murdered innocent black men no doubt, it has happened. The question is, how widespread is the malady? How frequently are police excessively violent toward blacks?
Put another way, are black lives more at risk at the hands of police, or at the hands of others?
According to a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal, based in large part on recent research by the Washington Post:
- Of the 6,095 black homicide deaths in 2014, almost all of the victims had black killers.
- Many more whites and Hispanics than blacks both in absolute numbers and in percentages of the population were killed by police officers.
- The overwhelming majority of victims of police shootings were shot when attacking — an officer, often attacking while armed with a gun;
- Police are also homicide victims, killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.
- Of all police-shooting killings, 26% of the victims are black, compared to only a 13% representation of blacks in the national population is this an indication of police racism? Or is this an indication of the great disproportion of crimes that are committed by blacks?
Blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of all murders and 45% of all assaults in the 75 largest US counties in 2009, where they made up roughly 15% of the population there. Charged is not necessarily convicted, but the great discrepancy between those charged and their percentage of the population remains telling. That is to say, the chances of violent confrontations between police and black criminals exceeds the percentage of blacks in the population, and some of those confrontations involve armed criminals, likely to end in a shooting death.
Clearly, the black community has a problem, which means America has a problem, but is the problem primarily racial bias by police or cultural breakdown?
Forget, for a moment, that all lives, not just black lives, matter. The next question for Black Lives Matter is whether all black lives matter, or just those killed by white police officers.
The great majority of black lives lost come at the hands of blacks, not of police, and not of whites. These black lives lost include those of children murdered by blacks. Do these black lives matter as much as the much smaller number of blacks criminals and innocents killed by police?
NONE OF this is to say that bias, bad training and bad procedures in police departments should not be addressed and corrected. None of this means that there is no police problem in America. Even in the relatively racially calm city of Denver, we have more than enough evidence of extreme behavior on the part of some police. Denver has had too many pay-outs for unjustified police brutality, including murder.
The facts remain: High profile killings by white police officers of black people are not the preponderant injustices wrought on black people.
As police are singled out as the primary source of injustice against black people, the pressures on police departments not to pursue criminals as robustly as they should increases. This endangers everyone, regardless of race.
The focus on racism in police departments as the primary problem in black communities means that disproportionately high poverty rates in black communities will take a back seat.
Ditto for family breakdown in the black community.
Ditto for dropout rates there.
Most of all, the inaccurate focus on the police as the primary challenge to success in the black community will divert attention from the major not the only, but the major solution: acceptance of personal responsibility.
If its the cop, or the school, or the gang, or the political class that, above all else, must be changed for blacks to succeed, they wont; not many of them, anyway. Yes, the pertinent social ills count and must be aggressively addressed. But the preponderant focus on them means that individual skills, discipline and education necessary to succeed will not be focused on.
Clearly, some blacks have assumed personal responsibility for their fate, yet nonetheless have failed due to institutional bias or blockage of opportunity.
Just as clearly, most people in the US in recent decades who have assumed responsibility for their fate have overcome the odds because, after all, other ethnic groups who arrived in this country with nothing no money, no English skills, no support system, a long history of suffering from bigotry and plenty of contemporaneous bigotry directed against them have also succeeded.
But let us say this is wrong. For the sake of argument, let us say that the lingering malignancies of slavery and Jim Crow make it harder for blacks than (for example) Holocaust survivors to overcome institutional biases and cultural challenges. My question remains: More than 150 years after slavery, more than 60 years after the voting rights act, and with decades of affirmative action in place, people like Denver Mayors Wellington Webb and Michael Hancock in effect said to themselves: It may not be sweet out there, but my focus is on what I personally can do to be successful. I matter. That, more than anything else, is what counts.
Am I missing something?
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg may be reached at hillel@ijn.com.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
