Watch — DC Protester to Black Cop: ‘B*tch-A** [N-Word], Keep Sucking that White Man’s D*ck’
2:49
A Black Lives Matter protester unleashed a slew of expletives in an angry tirade against a group of officers during Tuesday night’s protest in Washington, DC, calling a black officer a “bitch-ass [n-word]” and adding, “keep sucking that white man’s d*ck.”
Breitbart News captured the moment an angry protester confronted officers, challenging them to look him in the eye.
“You can’t swallow your pride and dignity and understand the hurt… Can’t even look me in the eye because you’re a bitch,” he told an officer before moving to the next one.
“You gonna look me in the eye or no? No, the fuck you can’t because you’re a bitch also,” he continued, moving to another officer and telling him to set his timer for 8 minutes and 46 seconds “because that’s how long that man said he could not fucking breath.”
“And that white man did not move a fucking muscle,” he said before pacing back in the other direction, only to pause to yell at a black officer, specifically.
“Why the fuck aren’t you over here with your people,” the protester could be heard shouting, mentioning the officer’s ancestors.
“And you’re on that side. Because you’re a bitch-ass [n-word]. Keep sucking that white man’s dick,” he yelled.
Breitbart News has captured several tense moments between officers and demonstrators during the two nights of protests in the nation’s capital this week. There have been several instances of protesters scolding officers, hurling a collection of insults, and even likening them to white supremacists.
“Her ancestors are upset with her… She needs to work through the trauma that has her out here. The internalized trauma,” a male protester told a black female officer on Monday night.
Matt Perdie
“Y’all don’t know that and you will never feel that. I don’t give a fuck if this is your job. I don’t respect you because all I know is you prioritize money over humanity and I will never respect anybody like that. Because you know who had that same ideology? Fucking white supremacists,” another protester shouted to a group of officers, accusing them of brutalization.
“You brutalize us. You don’t even see me as a person. I’m not a person to you. When white men rape us, they don’t care, because we’re just fucking pieces of meat right?” she yelled. “I’m a black bitch with a big booty right? That’s what I am to you right?”
Matt Perdie
“You can hold my dick, how’s that? I’ll hire you to hold my dick,” another activist told an officer during a tense exchange Monday evening.
Matt Perdie
Breitbart News also captured the scene on Tuesday as a Black Lives Matter activist attempted to stare down an Asian policewoman, who refused to flinch amid the act of intimidation.
Matt Perdie
2:49
A Black Lives Matter protester unleashed a slew of expletives in an angry tirade against a group of officers during Tuesday night’s protest in Washington, DC, calling a black officer a “bitch-ass [n-word]” and adding, “keep sucking that white man’s d*ck.”
Breitbart News captured the moment an angry protester confronted officers, challenging them to look him in the eye.
“You can’t swallow your pride and dignity and understand the hurt… Can’t even look me in the eye because you’re a bitch,” he told an officer before moving to the next one.
“You gonna look me in the eye or no? No, the fuck you can’t because you’re a bitch also,” he continued, moving to another officer and telling him to set his timer for 8 minutes and 46 seconds “because that’s how long that man said he could not fucking breath.”
“And that white man did not move a fucking muscle,” he said before pacing back in the other direction, only to pause to yell at a black officer, specifically.
“Why the fuck aren’t you over here with your people,” the protester could be heard shouting, mentioning the officer’s ancestors.
“And you’re on that side. Because you’re a bitch-ass [n-word]. Keep sucking that white man’s dick,” he yelled.
Breitbart News has captured several tense moments between officers and demonstrators during the two nights of protests in the nation’s capital this week. There have been several instances of protesters scolding officers, hurling a collection of insults, and even likening them to white supremacists.
“Her ancestors are upset with her… She needs to work through the trauma that has her out here. The internalized trauma,” a male protester told a black female officer on Monday night.
Matt Perdie
“Y’all don’t know that and you will never feel that. I don’t give a fuck if this is your job. I don’t respect you because all I know is you prioritize money over humanity and I will never respect anybody like that. Because you know who had that same ideology? Fucking white supremacists,” another protester shouted to a group of officers, accusing them of brutalization.
“You brutalize us. You don’t even see me as a person. I’m not a person to you. When white men rape us, they don’t care, because we’re just fucking pieces of meat right?” she yelled. “I’m a black bitch with a big booty right? That’s what I am to you right?”
Matt Perdie
“You can hold my dick, how’s that? I’ll hire you to hold my dick,” another activist told an officer during a tense exchange Monday evening.
Matt Perdie
Breitbart News also captured the scene on Tuesday as a Black Lives Matter activist attempted to stare down an Asian policewoman, who refused to flinch amid the act of intimidation.
Matt PerdieBlack Lives Matter Does Not Care about Black Youth
As a publicly avowed Marxist organization, Black Lives Matter (BLM) seeks to destroy the nuclear family. Its adherents aim to:
... disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and 'villages' that collectively care for one another. [BLM] also seeks to build 'a queer‐affirming network' and says, '[w]hen we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).'
According to The Epoch Times' adaptation of the Chinese book titled How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World, communism has always been about the destruction of the family.
The family is the building block of human society, allowing people not only to raise children in a stable and nurturing environment, but also to pass the knowledge of one generation to the next. Marriage is a sacred institution arranged by the divine for humanity to form families, preserving traditional heritage and morality.Today, the traditional family is being slowly destroyed. The writings of Karl Marx and other communists describe the family as a form of private ownership to be abolished. In addition to persecuting religion and spiritual faith, communist regimes place love for the Communist Party above love for even one's parents, spouse, or children, encouraging people to struggle against their own kin.
This has been repeatedly confirmed by those who have fled communist countries. At the Victims of Communism-Witness Project, Chinese Anastasia Lin tearfully speaks about how children were used to denounce their parents. Nazis were masters at using children as the agents of destruction for their parents who opposed Hitler. Sadly, however, too many historically illiterate people do not comprehend that history exists to learn from it. Enter the dangerous support by so many of Black Lives Matter.
Since the 1960s, a variety of anti-traditional movements, including modern feminism, sexual liberation, and gay rights, have risen to prominence in the West. The institution of the family has been hit the hardest. Under the banners of equality and emancipation — implicitly and explicitly backed by modern laws, school curricula, academic theory, and economic policies — these movements are twisting the traditional bonds between the sexes, corrupting children, and dragging human behavior to scarcely imaginable lows. This trend surfaced at the beginning of the nineteenth century and is deeply infused with communist ideological factors. Friedrich Engels ultimately hoped for widespread unconstrained sexual intercourse,' which is about dissolving traditional marriage and ultimately eliminating the family institution.
In fact:
Communism excels at continuous mutation and deception, which has led to constant confusion about what exactly people are supporting when they endorse its policies and ideologies. Over time, they come to accept communism's underlying ideas. The tragic situation today — the degradation of the traditional family and people's confusion about the true nature of this trend — is the result of meticulous planning and the gradual implementation of communism over the past two hundred years.Laws passed in the United States and other countries have opened the floodgates to divorce and broken families. In the 1950s, about 11 percent of American children born in a married family saw their parents divorce; by 1970, that number had soared to 50 percent. In 1956, less than 5 percent of newborn infants in the United States were born out of wedlock, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2016, the figure was close to 40 percent.
Thus, "[a]ccording to communism ... the family unit is an obstacle to human liberation. Classical communism regards economic factors to be key in determining the formation of familial relationships, and it requires the private family unit to be revolutionized into a form of public ownership."
Marx and Engels came to advocate "the so-called 'community of women' mentioned in The Communist Manifesto. Although their goal of eliminating the family had not changed, they adopted a more covert approach: attacking marriage as an instrument of oppression."
The shape of the typical American family has changed dramatically over the past four decades, in large part due to a precipitous drop in marriage rates. For almost every demographic group, whether broken down by age, education, or race and ethnicity, marriage rates have declined nearly continuously since 1970.The decline has been dramatic. Marriage rates for 20- to 24-year-olds, for instance, fell from 61% to 16%, a decline of almost 75% in four decades.This decline in marriage rates has coincided with steep increases in non-marital birth rates. The non-marital birth rate for African-Americans increased by more than 90%, from 38% to 72%. In 2010, the Hispanic rate was 53%, a 50% increase over 1989 (when data on Hispanic birth rates first began to be collected separately from non-Hispanic whites). The rate for non-Hispanic whites, which stood at 16% in 1989, had increased to 29% by 2010[.]
Most depressing is that "[a]fter many years of interviews and living in poor neighborhoods, sociologist Kathryn Edin and several research partners have assembled an extensive picture of how these young men are viewed by the young women in their neighborhoods. When asked why they don't want to marry the fathers of their children, the mothers indicated that they didn't trust the young men, that the men didn't work steadily or earn enough money, and that they were too often violent."
What does this have to do with BLM?
Consider that over 70% of black children now grow up fatherless. This past Father's Day meant little to them except possibly provoking indifference or hatred, as there is no father figure present in their lives. My own students write of this continually. Two themes repeatedly emerge: (a) women who were raised by their single mothers adamantly assert that they don't need a man; they can get along perfectly well without any men, and, furthermore, they don't trust any (emphasis mine) man; (b) women and men raised without their fathers often feel guilty that they may have been responsible for their fathers abandoning them.
These feelings hardly result in positive self-esteem or future solid relationships. This is certainly a perfect opening for a group like BLM, who can be the stand-in for the missing parental units. Then combine this with the endless indoctrination of left-wing ideology in schools, and it is a witch's brew for all.
Most men of any racial background who father a child are hardly cognizant of the Marxist-leftist-communist attitude about the nuclear family, but their irresponsible actions fall perfectly in line with what Black Lives Matter sanctions. They then become vehicles of their own ruin.
If the leaders of BLM were truly concerned about the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of their beautiful children, they would not be destroying statues, burning stores, and hating whitey.
They would be marching, demanding responsibility and accountability from both black men and women. They would be touting that education, marriage, and then parenthood in that order is the path to success in the world.
That they are not is proof positive that they care not a whit for black children. They should be repeatedly called out for it as Candace Owens does. It would appear that it is indisputable that Black Lives Matter does not care about black youth. Since it is a modern totalitarian revolutionary movement, it is concerned only with the seizure of power. Consequently, the souls who are destroyed are quite expendable.
Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.
'Shocking' video shows NYC man lighting fireworks and tossing them on sleeping homeless man
Barack Obama’s race hustling criminal coddling set the more recent tone where state and local law-enforcement officers were routinely attacked, accused of serial hate-inspired killings of suspects; where civilized norms were declared the illicit fruit of white privilege; where the epidemic of black-on-black homicides was either ignored or blamed on unresolved racial grievances. GEOFFREY P. HUNT
She never said it was the police, by the way (she casually refused, in an article about police killings, to place the blame anywhere), and we know it wasn't, because the police killed about 19 unarmed black males in 2017, and black people killed about 2,627 — a difference of over a hundred times. In fact, in 2018, black people killed about 2,600 black people, and whites in general — all of us, despite being 60% of the populace — killed only 234, more than ten times fewer. The greatest danger to black people in America today is always other black people. Black lives matter to Black Lives Matter only when it gives them an excuse to attack white people. JEREMY EGERER
49% of all murder victims are black. 42% of all cop killers are black.
99% of all major riots involving property damage, looting and civil disobedience are committed by blacks as opposed to ANY OTHER minority in America.
33% of all crimes in America are committed by 3% of the population; blacks between the ages of 16 and 36
8% of America’s population are black men, yet they account for 40% of America’s total prison population.
The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young white men is
accidents, like car accidents and drownings. The No. 1
reason for death, preventable or otherwise for young black
men, is homicide, almost always at the hands of another
young black man. In 2018, there were approximately 7,400
black homicide victims, more than half of the nation's total
number of homicides, out of a black population of 13%. Of
that number, the police killed a little over 200 blacks, and
nearly all of them had a weapon or violently resisted arrest.
Why Don’t These #BlackLivesMatter?
Racism Is An Empty Thesis
WE NEED TO DEAL WITH THE REALITY THAT MOST OF THE VIOLENT CRIMES IN AMERICA ARE COMMITTED BY BLACK MEN! AND WHITEY DIDN’T MAKE THEM DO IT!
'Shocking' video shows NYC man lighting fireworks and tossing them on sleeping homeless man
“Black Christians should protest the Democrat party's anti-Christian agenda which has led to the moral decay of the black community; fatherless households, gangs, crime, generational poverty, incarceration, and record-high black on black homicides.” LLOYD MARCUS
Blacks are only 13% of the population. White America gifted its first black president two terms. And yet, far too many blacks absurdly believe Democrats' and fake news media’s lie that white America did not want a black man in the White House. If America is such a hellhole of racism, how did Oprah Winfrey, a dark-complexioned stout black woman, become one of the wealthiest and most influential persons on the planet? The myth of America's racism is evil, destructive, and must end. LLOYD MARCUS
Barack Obama’s race hustling criminal coddling set the more recent tone where state and local law-enforcement officers were routinely attacked, accused of serial hate-inspired killings of suspects; where civilized norms were declared the illicit fruit of white privilege; where the epidemic of black-on-black homicides was either ignored or blamed on unresolved racial grievances. GEOFFREY P. HUNT
She never said it was the police, by the way (she casually refused, in an article about police killings, to place the blame anywhere), and we know it wasn't, because the police killed about 19 unarmed black males in 2017, and black people killed about 2,627 — a difference of over a hundred times. In fact, in 2018, black people killed about 2,600 black people, and whites in general — all of us, despite being 60% of the populace — killed only 234, more than ten times fewer. The greatest danger to black people in America today is always other black people. Black lives matter to Black Lives Matter only when it gives them an excuse to attack white people. JEREMY EGERER
13% of the population in the USA is black BUT THEY COMMIT 85% of all violent interracial crimes, 80% of all shootings, 79% of all robberies, 59% of all murders, 52% of all violent juvenile crimes, 45% of all drug offenses..
49% of all murder victims are black. 42% of all cop killers are black.
99% of all major riots involving property damage, looting and civil disobedience are committed by blacks as opposed to ANY OTHER minority in America.
93% of all black murder victims are murdered by another black.
33% of all crimes in America are committed by 3% of the population; blacks between the ages of 16 and 36
8% of America’s population are black men, yet they account for 40% of America’s total prison population.
40% of blacks are on welfare
Only 59% blacks graduate high school (Detroit, only 20%)Over 60% of black households have no fathers present
72% of black mothers are unwed!
72% of black mothers are unwed!
Blacks account for 38% of abortions (only 13%
of population and contraceptives are FREE)
(STATISTICS FROM Dept. of Justice, Dept. of
Commerce, FBI and USA Census (ALL and sect.5
Law Enforcement))
The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young white men is
accidents, like car accidents and drownings. The No. 1
reason for death, preventable or otherwise for young black
men, is homicide, almost always at the hands of another
young black man. In 2018, there were approximately 7,400
black homicide victims, more than half of the nation's total
number of homicides, out of a black population of 13%. Of
that number, the police killed a little over 200 blacks, and
nearly all of them had a weapon or violently resisted arrest.
The Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald writes: "Regarding threats to blacks from the police: A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer."
Why Don’t These #BlackLivesMatter?
Black Lives Matter is a political advocacy group, “[f]ounded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer,” according to the group’s website. Never mind that the George Zimmerman trial was a complete fraud, as Joel Gilbert brilliantly explained in his recent book and movie, “The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America.”
BLM is a self-described global network, which explains why protests and riots sprang up seemingly spontaneously all over the world after George Floyd’s death. Starting in Minneapolis, protests quickly spread to far off locales including New Zealand, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.
A white teenager cowers in a corner, his hands bound with orange cords and his mouth covered with tape. Four African Americans kick and hit him and slash at his scalp. As a cellphone camera captures their blurry images and broadcasts the ordeal on Facebook, the attackers hurl racial insults and denounce President-elect Donald J. Trump.
As reported by the New York Times: “A hashtag linking the assault to the Black Lives Matter movement exploded on social media.” Were the four attackers card-carrying members of BLM? Does it matter? After all, every police officer is a white supremacist and racist based on the actions of four cops in Minneapolis. Generalizing can work both ways.
BLM claims these noble goals: “We embody and practice justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.” They are, “huided by the fact that all Black lives matter.” Do they walk the walk, or just talk the talk?
Do the lives of Gregory Lewis, Teyonna Lofton, or Angelo Bronson matter? These are not and never will be household names like George Floyd. The Obama Foundation website won’t feature their faces. Michelle Obama won’t show pictures of any of them on her Instagram page. The justice brothers, Jesse and Al, won’t be hustling their deaths. Benjamin Crump won’t be representing any of their families. Dr. Michael Baden won’t be reviewing their autopsies. Members of Congress won’t take a knee for any of them. And there certainly won’t be widespread protests and riots over their deaths.
Why not? All three are black. Don’t their lives matter, too?
These poor souls were victims of another weekend in the killing fields of Chicago. As the Chicago Sun Times reported: “18 murders in 24 hours: Inside the most violent day in 60 years in Chicago.” This was last weekend while millions were proclaiming around the world that black lives matter.
“We’ve never seen anything like it, at all,” said Max Kapustin, the senior research director at the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
Yet I don’t hear Democrats, the DNC media, woke celebrities and athletes, or any race hustlers showing the least bit of concern. Where are the Obamas? This carnage occurred in their home city. Will any cable news networks be live streaming the funerals? Will Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ban funeral gatherings of more than ten for these individuals while encouraging gatherings of thousands of looters on Michigan Avenue?
Why don’t these black lives matter? These aren’t simply statistics but real people leaving lives, dreams and families behind.
A hardworking father killed just before 1 a.m.
A West Side high school student murdered two hours later.
A man killed amid South Side looting at a cellphone store at 12:30 p.m.
A college freshman who hoped to become a correctional officer, gunned down at 4:25 p.m. after getting into an argument in Englewood.
Chicago was home to 653 murders in 2016, more than the total in New York City and Los Angeles combined. Who was president in 2016? Who had eight years to “fundamentally transform America” when he wasn’t busy lowering the sea levels?
Interestingly CNN reported, “Chicago's homicide rate decreases for the third straight year.” Who has been president the past 3 years? Obviously, CNN won’t notice that association because Orange Man Bad. In their reporting, President Trump is a racist and white supremacist. The declining murder rate must be due to Obama, despite it being much higher when he was in office. CNN made the same claims crediting Trump’s economy to Obama.
It’s not just Chicago where black lives don’t seem to matter. Look at the last hundred homicides in Baltimore. One only has to go back to mid-February of this year to hit the 100 mark. The race of most victims was listed as “unknown” yet 29 of the 100 were blacks.
Antwan Phillips, Jared Hill, and Tyrone Henderson were among the victims, but no one will be wearing a T-shirt showing their names or faces. Jesse and Al won’t be at their funerals. Nancy Pelosi won’t take a knee on their behalf. Why don’t their lives matter?
Last January, 14 were killed by a roadside bomb in Burkina Faso, including seven children. A week earlier, 35 people, mostly women were killed in a terrorist attack. Did any of these black lives matter? Where were the protests? Or kneeling? Where was Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls hashtag she used as first lady, long before Donald Trump was a presidential candidate?
The woke kneeling liberals sing the praises of Planned Parenthood, founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger whose goal was “to exterminate the Negro population.” Their abortion clinics are disproportionately “located in ZIP codes with higher percentages of blacks and/or Hispanics than the state’s overall percentage.”
In New York City, home to some of the worst rioting, while blacks make up 25 percent of the NYC population, 46 percent of abortions were black babies. Shockingly more black babies were killed by abortion in NYC than were born alive. By contrast, Whites make up 44 percent of the NYC population but only account for 12 percent of abortions. Why don’t the lives of aborted black babies matter?
Will these protests cause a surge in Chinese coronavirus cases? Where are the protests occurring and who will be most affected? According to CNN,
Black Americans represent 13.4% of the American population, according to the US Census Bureau, but counties with higher black populations account for more than half of all Covid-19 cases and almost 60% of deaths, the study found.
Social justice warriors are happy to congregate in urban areas, ignoring the social distancing and mask mandates that the rest of us have been clubbed with for the past three months, potentially spreading the Wuhan virus to blacks, many of whom live in the protest zones. It is almost as bad as protesting in a nursing home. Don’t those black lives matter?
Liberal do-gooders are hijacking George Floyd’s death for their personal quest for power, money, and furthering their Marxist agenda. From defunding police departments to saying, “Some white people may have to die”, as a University of Georgia graduate student recommended.
If black lives truly mattered, there would be calls for more school choice and fewer abortions, more emphasis on intact nuclear families and less on reparations for events hundreds of years ago. But those are not part of the BLM political platform, contradicting their supposed message.
From a true advocate for social justice, Martin Luther King, Jr, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” If black lives truly mattered, that would be the emphasis of BLM and their liberal sycophants. Otherwise America will become a balkanized country, populated by fools who let our once shining city on a hill crumble into the ash heap of ruin.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a Denver-based physician and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, Rasmussen Reports, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and QuodVerum.
EYE ON THE NEWS
Racism Is An Empty Thesis
An African-American professor says that blacks hold their fate in their own hands.
June 11, 2020
The Social Order
Loury: Blacks make up an average of around 40
percent of inmates in prisons and jails, but they
make up no more than 15 percent of the
population. If you look at the statistics, there is no
evidence to support the hypothesis that this
overrepresentation can be explained by racist
prejudices of the police or the courts. Rather, the
numbers show that this is due to an
overrepresentation of blacks who violate the law.
Turmoil in the United States over police violence is the result of a distorted representation of the problem, says Brown University economist Glenn C. Loury. According to Loury, an African-American, the “empty thesis of racism” distracts us from the real problems of black Americans. Below is an edited and translated conversation that Loury had with Peter Winkler, U.S. correspondent for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung (NZZ).
Peter Winkler: Professor Loury, hundreds of thousands of people in American cities have been protesting that police treat black people more harshly than other populations. The reason, they say, is systemic racism. What do you think?
Glenn Loury: This is a representation that has developed a life of its own. The claim is: the police are hunting black people, black people are at risk, there is an epidemic of violence against black people—unarmed, innocent black people.
There is a problem, but I think its scale is exaggerated. There are approximately 330 million people in the United States, and there are many tens of thousands of encounters between citizens and the police every day. We take half a dozen, maybe a dozen, admittedly outrageous, disturbing incidents of police violence, and we form this into a general account of how people are treated. I think that’s dangerous.
Winkler: But wasn’t the incident in Minneapolis extraordinary in its nonchalant brutality?
Loury: I don’t want to understate it: the case is terrible. It is difficult to look at the images. There was nothing good about it; it’s certainly not good policing. But you still don’t know what exactly happened. This requires an in-depth investigation. Even so, people have started to call it a lynching, and to say that it characterizes the nature of racial relationships in America today. This is a kind of collective hysteria.
I am aware that millions of people are horrified by what they see as systemic racism in this case. But I repeat: I am waiting for the investigation to be completed. This applies to all such incidents. That they happen is nothing to dismiss, but I deny that these incidents are representative of the everyday experience of African-Americans.
I am a contrarian, and I have refused to follow the mob opinion that led to the recent turmoil. And I’m also convinced that this is about more than what happened to George Floyd. That event was a catalyst, and I hope we can finally talk about the broader framework and the circumstances in which racial charges are made in the United States.
Winkler: Even a superficial look at the statistics confirms that there are more confrontations, including violent ones, between blacks and the police. Isn’t that evidence of racist prejudice?
Loury: Not necessarily. Every year, more whites than blacks are shot by the police in the U.S. But it is true that the number of blacks killed by police, relative to population, is higher. However, the problem of police violence affects all ethnic groups.
Moreover, the likelihood that an individual will come into conflict with the police depends on the frequency with which that individual behaves in a manner that attracts police attention. Criminal behavior is not equally distributed across all population groups. African-Americans are overrepresented in prison because they commit more acts that can be punished with prison.
Winkler: Can you elaborate?
Loury: Blacks make up an average of around 40
percent of inmates in prisons and jails, but they
make up no more than 15 percent of the
population. If you look at the statistics, there is no
evidence to support the hypothesis that this
overrepresentation can be explained by racist
prejudices of the police or the courts. Rather, the
numbers show that this is due to an
overrepresentation of blacks who violate the law.
It’s legitimate to ask why black men commit more crimes than whites. But it is a fact that they commit massively more homicides; almost 50 percent of homicides, while representing maybe 6 percent or 7 percent of the U.S. population. Or consider robbery: many more whites are victimized by blacks than vice versa, speaking in absolute numbers, not per capita.
Part of the reason why the police have had so many difficult encounters with black people is because the crime rate in black areas is much higher. For example: If the police want to arrest a driver in a black neighborhood, they must be prepared for the possibility that the driver might have a gun on him. Statistically speaking, this is generally not the case—but experience has shown the likelihood that such a dangerous situation will arise is higher in black areas.
Winkler: But you yourself admit that what happened in Minneapolis was bad police work. Is anger at the police understandable?
Loury: The main threat to the quality of life of people living in black areas is the criminal behavior of their fellow citizens, most of whom happen to be black. Black people in American cities are victims of rape, robbery, and murder to a very significant degree, and the perpetrators are almost always black. The protection of life and property is the most important task of the state, and many African-Americans cannot feel safe in their homes. The police are part of the solution to this problem. Black people need the police more than other people do.
Of course, the police must treat all citizens with respect. Racist officers must be disciplined and fired. I don’t want to apologize for anything here: bad policing is bad policing, and you have to do something about it. But depriving the police of resources, making them an enemy, vilifying them, violently assaulting them, or hindering them when they are trying to arrest someone who committed a crime is destructive to black communities. Blacks would suffer the most if police pulled out of their neighborhoods.
Winkler: So you would say that African-Americans just have to take responsibility, get their act together—and then things will get better?
Loury: I wouldn’t say it in these words, though I think that’s true in a way. But if we just tell black people: “Get it together and everything will be fine!”, that would be a crude and ineffective way to start a conversation.
I don’t know the situation in Switzerland, but I assume that there is no racism there; and that Germany and France are flawless, too. I’m being sarcastic, of course. What I want to say is this: racism is a fact of human culture. Racism is also a fact in the United States. But the nature of formal legislation and informal social custom on racial matters has changed radically in America over the past 50 years. I’m 72 years old, and I know what things were like in the 1950s and 1960s. The United States has become a completely different country.
Whites can lose their jobs today if they talk to blacks in the wrong tone. Institutions at all levels of government work full-time against racism. Every university and major corporation has a powerful executive position that monitors and strives for diversity and inclusion. Affirmative-action measures have even penetrated Silicon Valley.
Yes, racism is real, but as a crucial factor that enables or prevents social advancement, it has lost a lot of force in the past half century. I am sure that there are deep-seated inequality problems in America that affect everyone, and black people in particular. Some are institutional, but many have to do with the culture and behavior of black people themselves. I’m talking about lack of educational achievement, and about the higher crime rate; I’m talking about the collapse of the black family. Seven out of ten black children are born outside of marriage. It is a plausible surmise that households where a mother is present, but no father, are more likely to produce adolescent males with behavioral problems.
People are frustrated that conventional political solutions, such as expanding anti-discrimination and welfare programs, have not worked. That’s why they take refuge in the empty thesis of racism. They speak of 1619, when the first blacks landed in America, and they speak of slavery, which was abolished more than 150 years ago. They talk of “centuries of oppression.” But, they don’t talk about how the social condition of blacks in America well may have been healthier in 1950 than it is today—the integrity of family structure, the level of the crime rate, the relationship to work of the poorly educated, and the values with which many children are raised. Summarized in one sentence: racism exists, of course, but it does not sufficiently explain what is going on here.
Winkler: Then what does explain it?
Loury: We need to focus much more on the means through which people acquire the techniques, skills, and behaviors that make them productive members of society. I call that development. It can be about education but also about behavioral, emotional, psychological, and social development. You learn restraint, patience, postponing reward, and things like that. When I look at statistics and find high rates of school failure, the low percentage of blacks in the professions—lawyer, doctor, engineer, or scientist—when I see the high rate of criminality and violence that is endemic in black communities, I see a failure in development, in people reaching their full human potential.
Please understand, that’s not just a question of mistakes or poor choices by these individuals or their families. It’s also about schools that are far less good in areas where many black people live. It is undoubtedly partly related to discrimination and the legacy of that discrimination. Blacks, for example, started with significantly less wealth.
Still, it’s a common mistake to think that we are still in the middle of the twentieth century and that the decisive obstacle to the successful inclusion of blacks in society is racial prejudice. Many people insist that we debate racism, face the injustices of history, and so on. Instead, they should be looking at our children and asking: Can they do math? Can they read a text and understand it? Can they cooperatively get involved in social groups? And when I see that this is sadly not the case with many black children, I believe I am seeing not simply “racism,” but something that is more specific and that is remediable—the obviously insufficient development of their human potential.
We find that immigrants, wherever they come from, have much better success rates than certain African-Americans. One of the main reasons for this is that these groups arrive here with a different culture; they have different, value-oriented expectations of the behavior of their fellows.
Winkler: Are you talking about the fact that violence is sometimes glorified in African-American culture—for example, in certain music styles?
Loury: No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is: How much am I willing to sacrifice so that my children get the support they need to develop the skills that will help them succeed? It’s also about which values are respected in the social environment and which are not. And violence—that’s culture, too, the willingness to kill, which is astronomical in certain African-American communities. I’m not referring to the entirety of black Americans, but to some black enclaves in big cities.
How many black people start their own businesses? Is it utopian for me to imagine that the income and wealth gap between blacks and other groups would be more quickly closed by more blacks starting their own businesses than by demanding reparations for slavery?
Winkler: Some banks have announced that they will make larger amounts available as loans for business start-ups, especially from African-Americans. Would that be the better approach?
Loury: If the people to whom this is directed are able to benefit from such offers, I think so.
Winkler: Would you admit, however, that there is a correlation between cultural incentives and the very painful history of African-Americans?
Loury: It would be foolish to suggest that the history of slavery and the long years of oppression that followed are unrelated to the current traits of African-American society. We are all, to some extent, products of our history.
I also don’t want to give the impression that I’m castigating those affected by these cultural issues. I’m not saying, “This is all your fault!” On the contrary, I insist that society as a whole is at some level responsible even for the unfavorable behavior patterns in some black communities. These communities are the product of historical dynamics of American society. But again: I don’t think that fact of historical influence is very relevant to the challenges black people face today.
If anyone wants to blame the history of racism as the culprit for the failures of modern black society in the United States, go ahead. I won’t argue the point. But I insist that, despite everything, we African-Americans are free actors who can shape our lives according to our ideas and convictions. We are not determined by the weight of historical disadvantage. That disadvantage was real and to some extent remains an obstacle, but it is not our fate. Our fate is not fixed by the fact that our ancestors were enslaved, or that racism still exists. Our fate is in our hands. One can believe this—indeed, if we are ever to enjoy equal dignity in this society, black people must believe this, I would hold—even while also recognizing that what we see today is in part a product of our past.
Winkler: Your ideas go against arguments that are currently very popular. In fact, the apparent consensus about racial guilt makes me slightly suspicious. What do you think?
Loury: I think we do not live in a really free space where we can discuss these questions. Pressure to conform is intense because nobody wants to give the impression that they stand on the wrong side of the great moral questions of our time. Ironically, this reticence undermines the possibility of genuine and effective moral reasoning. Instead, everyone follows the other, spouting platitudes, as in a herd. Everyone wants to underline their virtue by showing the world: I stand for “justice” and against “racism.” Part of it is simply a tacit agreement about what a truly virtuous person simply does and does not say—which we can also call political correctness.
To make matters worse, real racists still exist in America—people convinced of the superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks. They believe that the problems we are discussing are proof of supposed black inferiority. Though this is a small minority, these voices do exist, and when you make arguments such as I am doing here, you want to avoid being connected to them or strengthening them in any way.
Because you want as much space as possible between yourself and real racists, you are tempted to avoid hot-button debates about black crime or related topics. Because racists say that black crime is terrible, you are afraid even to address the issue and admit that it may be part of the problem. For example, you are afraid to say that in certain cities police officers fear young black men because those men are too often armed and known to be willing to use their weapons. These are facts—but you are afraid to acknowledge them because these are exactly the things that white racists also say. So you’d rather be silent. And that gets us nowhere—or rather, it gets us to where we are today.
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