It's bad enough that I stayed up 'til 5:00 a.m. to write this. I'll get around to linking my sources later. Proofreading, too. Most of the data are from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, but there are some from newspapers, too. Anyway...
A friend of mine posted this helpful video on Facebook to explain why anyone who has any objection to anything said or done by Black Lives Matter should just STFD & STFU. It's short--about four minutes. Watch it before reading on. Notice how compelling it is, how "truthy." Sorry I don't know how to embed Facebook videos here. Just follow the link.
Franchesca Ramsey refutes 4 remarks BLM disapproves of
This would be great except...
-3:35 "This assumes that the black community isn't worried..."
Wrong. Black Lives Matter is not "the black community." It is a specific organization with founders, leaders, local chapters, a written agenda, and a website where you can learn these things. What's being criticized is BLM, specifically. Trying to divert that to be a criticism of the black community, as a whole, is intellectually dishonest. It infers that anyone who disagrees with the group is racist, which is a tactic used to silence the group's critics. It's also a setup for a straw man argument. She can make a great case for how "the black community" and Cease Fire (a whole separate organization) are doing what BLM is being criticized for NOT doing...but that doesn't let BLM off the hook.
-3:19 "It's about the lack of consequence when black lives are taken at the hands of the police."
This statement presumes that all police killings of black people are cases of wrongful death. Most of them aren't. The vast majority are legitimate cases of self-defense. Why should a legitimate act of self-defense have "consequences?" If an armed robber shoots at people and the police return fire and kill the robber, the only consequences for the officers should be that they get some sort of recognition, maybe an award of some sort.
And in the cases of wrongful shootings, where consequences are appropriate, why should those consequences be limited to just killings of black people and not all people wrongfully killed by the police? Again, the inference we're supposed to absorb unchallenged is the idea that when the people getting shot by police are black, they're less often deserving of it than people who aren't black.
-3:16: "When a civilian has committed a violent crime..."
Again, she's conflating legitimate uses of force with criminal cases of excessive force. The message we're supposed to get is that every time a black person gets hurt in a conflict with a police officer, the police officer was the one in the wrong. Apparently, black people are supposed to enjoy some sort of special immunity from police use of force when they resist arrest or fight police.
I want you to stop and look at your own thought process for a moment, because BLM has really put a lot into drumming this particular message into people's heads over the past couple years. Coca-Cola should seriously look into hiring these people. When you hear numbers of black people injured or killed by police, your emotional reaction is based on the presumption that every one of those injuries and deaths was unprovoked and undeserved. When you recoil in horror at whatever number it is, you're not thinking, "OMG, why are black people so violent? Why are they being violent towards police officers at such a higher rate than everyone else is?" No, you're presuming each death was a murder, each injury a criminal assault, and that it was all motivated by racist police going out hunting black people for sport. That idea has no basis in fact, so why is it something you take for granted without even thinking about it anymore? That's the power of marketing and peer pressure.
-3:12: "Conversely, there's a lot of evidence that it's very rare to secure an indictment against a police officer for excessive force."
No, that's not a converse relationship. A true contrast would have been to look at how civilians who commit violent crimes are treated relative to police officers who commit violent crimes. But it wouldn't have been much of a contrast, because generally speaking, cops who commit violent crimes get prosecuted for them just like anyone else. You could fill a whole book with instances of cops who've been prosecuted for assault, stalking, domestic violence, all the way up to murder. I just heard of an Atlanta officer who's being tried for murder because of a shooting he was involved in on-duty. And the South Carolina officer who killed Walter Scott--he's been indicted for murder. He goes to trial this October. The officers in Baltimore who were involved in Freddie Gray's death were all charged with crimes and stood trial.
But none of that supports the narrative she's selling, so instead of contrasting criminal acts against criminal acts, she compares legitimate uses of force to criminal acts. She's right--it IS very rare to secure an indictment against a police officer for excessive force, just as it's very rare to secure an indictment against a police officer for bank robbery or blowing up a school or hijacking an airplane, and for the same reason--it's very rare that there's a case that warrants an indictment.
But, but...that would mean law enforcement officers are generally law-abiding people! We can't allow that conclusion! It doesn't support the theme here, which is: All police force against black people is excessive. No police officer ever has any reason to put his or her hands on a black person, and if they do it, it's a crime. And when the police don't get penalized for these "crimes," it's because the system is corrupt, not because the police did nothing wrong. All black people are innocent. And if you don't believe it, it's because you're a racist.
-3:01: "Black-on-black crime isn't a thing."
Oh, really? Despite the fact that blacks are only 13% of the population, they commit slightly over HALF of all murders in America...and most of their victims are black. If it's not a thing, then why was she just saying at the beginning of the video about how concerned about it "the black community" and Cease Fire are?
But most of you who are eating up her words don't even know what the Uniform Crime Report IS, let alone what it says, so she can claim whatever she wants, and you'll believe it so long as it paints all black people as angels and cops as the boogeyman.
-2:34: "But the truth is black people are not more violent or more likely to commit crimes than anyone else."
PANTS ON FIRE!!! In 2012, according to the FBI, 28.12% of all violent offenders were black. At only 13% of the population, that means blacks are committing slightly over TWICE their "share" of violent crimes.
Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that any particular individual is more likely to be violent. It could well be (and likely is) that a very tiny portion of that population is committing most of those crimes. This woman may be trying to sanctify an entire race of people, but just because I disagree with her doesn't mean I'm trying to demonize an entire race. But the numbers tell us that either violent individuals are more common among blacks; or that they're no more common among blacks than anyone else, but the ones who are violent are drastically more violent than the violent people of other races. We really can't say which from the data available, but it's one or the other.
-2:30: "The reality is, because of the history of institutional racism..."
Here she gives some very good reasons for the higher rate of violence among blacks...the violence she just claimed doesn't exist. "I didn't hit him, officer! And besides, he provoked me."
-2:22: "(Black communities)...are more likely to be targeted by police."
If by "targeted" you mean more patrol units are assigned to the precincts where the most crimes are being reported, yes. Why shouldn't they be? When you report that your house is on fire, you don't expect the fire engines to go instead to an address twelve blocks away where there's no fire, just so you can avoid feeling stigmatized. The cops go where the crime is--and most residents get upset if they don't.
-2:05: "Becoming a police officer is an occupation. It's a choice."
So is religion. By her logic, it's less wrong to oppress Jews than to oppress blacks, because Jews have the option of converting if they want to. So quit yer crybaby whining about the Holocaust, I guess, 'cause people of color have claimed king-of-the-hill status as Supreme Victims. Nobody else is allowed to complain when people RANDOMLY KILL THEM simply for belonging to a group.
Moreover, if police officers were to try to please BLM, it would basically mean not fighting back when someone attacks them anytime the attacker is black. Police, apparently, should just let black criminals shoot them. That sure as heck sounds like they think blue lives don't matter.
-1.43: "...this movement is not saying black lives matter more than anyone else's."
It is most certainly saying, however, that black people's concerns matter more than anyone else's. In the organization's early days, when people of other races, marching in solidarity, would try to include themselves in the cause by carrying signs saying "Black & Brown Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter" (yes, that was initially a slogan of the organization's sympathizers, not its opponents), BLM leadership shut them down and told them to get their own slogan instead of trying to steal the spotlight from black people. Sympathizers of other races were told that making it a multi-racial, multi-cultural movement would dilute the message.
The message that cops shouldn't hurt people when they're not supposed to...right? How is that message "diluted" by getting a huge cross-section of America on board? See, this isn't about ending wrongdoing by the police. It's about black identity, and making cops afraid to lay a hand on black criminals.
-1:35: "It's totally okay for a movement to focus on issues specific to one marginalized group."
So excessive use of force by the police is happening only to one, specific, marginalized group, eh?
-1:27: "A breast cancer walk isn't unfair to other forms of cancer."
Well, it is, actually. Breast cancer is big business, what with Pinktober and all, and other cancers that are just as lethal get underfunded trying to compete, but that's off-topic. Instead, let's bring this back to the point I was just making about black concerns mattering more than others. Suppose instead of being a breast cancer walk, it was a "Redheads with Breast Cancer" walk or a breast cancer walk only for women whose first names start with the letters A through L, and there's not another one scheduled for M through Z. Does that strike you as being very just? Or compassionate? Or inclusive? Do justice and compassion and inclusion matter?
See, just as breast cancer affects more than just women with names starting with A through L, police violence--and more precisely, unjustified police violence--affects people of all races, not just black people. But yet, the demand is that people of all races get behind muzzling the police...but only for the benefit of blacks.
-1:15: "Because of the brutalizing and killing of black people at the hands of police..."
Again, pushing the idea that we aren't talking about self-defense against black criminals who fight the police, or about justified use of force to effect an arrest of someone who's resisting, but just illegal attacks of any random, innocent black person. This is a total misrepresentation of the situation. When a lie this big is repeated this often, it behooves us to ask whom has what to gain by having people believe it.
-0:56: "...but when you look proportionately within the populations, black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers."
YES, and that figure correlates very closely with blacks' higher likelihood of committing violent crimes! Blacks are only 13% of the population but account for about 25% of all people shot by the police AND for 28% of violent criminals AND over HALF of all murderers! You can only hide for so long from the fact that most of the people getting shot by police are the same people SHOOTING AT police and others.
This next part was brilliant. I betcha whoever wrote this part has it framed somewhere. This is a resumé builder:
-0:46: (Graphic still says "Black men make up just 6% of the nation's population.") "...but of all the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015..."
My, that's mighty specific. Unarmed. Shot by police. Died of their wounds. 2015 and only 2015. That's got to be a fairly tiny sample Where's she going with this?
Keeping in mind, of course, that when she says, "unarmed," that's a dog whistle that's supposed to make you think, "not dangerous, not capable of killing someone with their bare hands, not trying to grab the officer's gun" as well as "a completely unjustified shooting, a murder." When she says, "shot by police," you're supposed to think, "wrongfully shot by police."
-0:42: (Ta-daa! The graphic now says, "Black men make up just 6% of the nation's population. But 40% of police killings in 2015." The 40% is printed extra large, and there was even a sound effect that went along with presenting it.) "...FORTY percent of them were black men."
A good magician can tell you what he's doing even as he's doing it, and you'll still miss it, so let me tell you what you just missed there in case you didn't catch it.
That black men make up 6% of the population is not an Earth-shattering statement all by itself, and by itself, it's not really even relevant to the discussion. But it still gets its own graphic as she reads it word for word. This is to hold your attention on the graphic. While you're holding your attention on the fact that black men are 6% of the population, she rattles off something about unarmed people, something your subconscious interprets as meaning "wrongful shootings by the police."
Then, riiiip! Look what the graphic now says. It doesn't say that black men, that 6% of the population, made up 40% of some relatively tiny number of people. It says that black men, 6% of the population, make up 40% of police killings. All of them. There's nothing up there about "unarmed," and you've probably forgotten about that part by now anyway, right? You're just thinking, "Wow, 40% of all people unjustly killed by police were black!"
According to the Washington Post, in 2015, police fatally shot 965 human beings. 564 of those people were armed with a gun. 281 were armed with some other weapon. (That's a total of 845 armed out of 965 total.) Ninety were unarmed. That doesn't mean non-aggressive, not presenting a threat, necessarily. They could have been sitting on an officer's chest, beating her head into the concrete for all we know. Or it could have been a negligent error on the officer's part, like some innocent bystander catching a stray bullet during a gunfight, or an officer thinking someone was reaching for a weapon. And in a very few cases, that might actually rise to the level of criminal negligence, where a cop will do time because he shot someone who was no threat at all for reasons even the officer himself is unclear about.
40% of 90 is 36. Now that's nothing to sneeze at. That's three a month. We don't know exactly what portion of those were innocent, non-aggressive people, or even aggressive people who maybe could've been handled without deadly force. It wasn't all of them, despite BLM wanting us to think that, but it was probably more than one or two, and those people's lives matter. It is a tragedy that they were killed, and the causes need to be addressed.
But let's also get a little perspective. In a country of 318,900,000 people, about 42 million of whom are black, with close to 800,000 cops working in 17,895 law enforcement agencies, 36 unarmed black men got shot in a whole year, and only a portion of them shouldn't have been.
This is the "genocide." This is what's making people so angry they kill cops two and three and five at a time--any cops, not even ones being aggressive toward black people. This is what a handful of radical feminists are using to manipulate everyone into agreeing with anything they say or risk being discounted as racist. That maybe 30-some people got accidentally killed with a weapon that kills pretty quickly and effortlessly, even by mistake, is what's making the black community afraid to death to encounter a police officer.
36 out of 42 million. That's a one-in-1,166,667 chance that you'll be shot to death by police while unarmed. You are LITERALLY MORE LIKELY TO BE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING than to be shot by a cop while you're unarmed. I looked it up.
