Black Lives Matter And Unpopular Views

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I’ve watched with dismay and horror at the well-publicised shootings by (and of) the police in America. I’ve also been incredibly sceptical and suspicious of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement based on some of the rhetoric and tactics that I’ve seen (mandatory ‘not all BLM supporters’ disclaimer).

I’m also disappointed this issue hasn’t received greater scrutiny and attention from prominent ‘skeptics’ and ‘skeptic groups’. This is understandable however when you consider the toxic swamp this discussion has become.

I’ve weighed up the pros and cons of writing about this myself with particular consideration given to its potential worth vs. the time required to defend myself from misrepresentation and accusations of racism. This is what you can now expect when you enter the arena of identity politics armed with Occam’s razor and an alternate hymn sheet.

Instead, I’d rather bring this Facebook post from Jay Stalien to your attention. Stalien’s Facebook profile indicates that he is a police officer based in Florida with previous experience in Baltimore:

“I have come to realize something that is still hard for me to understand to this day. The following may be a shock to some coming from an African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as Humans.

I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way to our 1 bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I used to be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each other.

It never sat right with me. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop the bloodshed.

As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me, spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it personally, I knew they were hurting. I remember the countless times I had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from the blood of another black victim…of black on black crime. I remember the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having watched another black male die in front me, having to start my preliminary report something like this:

Suspect- Black/ Male, Victim-Black /Male.

I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and asked everyone “did you see who did it”, and the popular response from the very same family members was always, “Fuck the Police, I ain’t no snitch, Im gonna take care of this myself”. This happened every single time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization became clearer.

I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, “Make sure you come back home to us”. I always replied, “I will”, but the truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again. I was a target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They called me “Uncle Tom”, and “wanna be white boy”, and I couldn’t understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn’t understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy? I dove deep into that question…Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer.

I spoke to members of the community and listened to some of the complaints as to why they hated cops. I then did research on the facts. I also presented facts to these members of the community, and listened to their complaints in response. This is what I learned:

Complaint: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man.

Fact: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on. It’s called Demographics

Complaint: More black people get arrested than white boys.

Fact: Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime. Data from the FBI shows that Nationwide, Blacks committed 5,173 homicides in 2014, whites committed 4,367. Chicago’s death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. Chicago’s death toll from 2001–November, 26 2015 stands at 7,401. The combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815) and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506), total 8,321.

Complaint: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more.

Fact: As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.

Fact: Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man. University of Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson examined the latest crime data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012. Professor Johnson’s research further concluded that 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually during this same period.

Complaint: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we don’t need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.

The more I listened, the more I realized. The more I researched, the more I realized. I would ask questions, and would only get emotional responses & inferences based on no facts at all. The more killing I saw, the more tragedy, the more savagery, the more violence, the more loss of life of a black man at the hands of another black man….the more I realized.

I haven’t slept well in the past few nights. Heartbreak weighs me down, rage flows through my veins, and tears fills my eyes. I watched my fellow officers assassinated on live television, and the images of them laying on the ground are seared into my brain forever. I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been me, a black man, a black cop, on TV, assassinated, laying on the ground dead,..would my friends and family still think black lives mattered? Would my life have mattered? Would they make t-shirts in remembrance of me? Would they go on tv and protest violence? Would they even make a Facebook post, or share a post in reference to my death?

All of my realizations came to this conclusion. Black Lives do not matter to most black people. Only the lives that make the national news matter to them. Only the lives that are taken at the hands of cops or white people, matter. The other thousands of lives lost, the other black souls that I along with every cop, have seen taken at the hands of other blacks, do not matter. Their deaths are unnoticed, accepted as the “norm”, and swept underneath the rug by the very people who claim and post “black lives matter”. I realized that this country is full of ignorance, where an educated individual will watch the ratings-driven news media, and watch a couple YouTube video clips, and then come to the conclusion that they have all the knowledge they need to have in order to know what it feels like to have a bullet proof vest as part of your office equipment, “Stay Alive” as part of your daily to do list, and having insurance for your health insurance because of the high rate of death in your profession. They watch a couple videos and then they magically know in 2 minutes 35 seconds, how you are supposed to handle a violent encounter, which took you 6 months of Academy training, 2 – 3 months of field training, and countless years of blood, sweat, tears and broken bones experiencing violent encounters and fine tuning your execution of the Use of Force Continuum. I realized that there are even cops, COPS, duly sworn law enforcement officers, who are supposed to be decent investigators, who will publicly go on the media and call other white cops racist and KKK, based on a video clip that they watched thousands of miles away, which was filmed after the fact, based on a case where the details aren’t even known yet and the investigation hasn’t even begun. I realized that most in the African American community refuse to look at solving the bigger problem that I see and deal with every day, which is black on black crime taking hundreds of innocent black lives each year, and instead focus on the 9 questionable deaths of black men, where some were in the act of committing crimes. I realized that they value the life of a Sex Offender and Convicted Felon, [who was in the act of committing multiple felonies: felon in possession of a firearm-FELONY, brandishing and threatening a homeless man with a gun-Aggravated Assault in Florida: FELONY, who resisted officers who first tried to taze him, and WAS NOT RESTRAINED, who can be clearly seen in one of the videos raising his right shoulder, then shooting it down towards the right side of his body exactly where the firearm was located and recovered] more than the lives of the innocent cops who were assassinated in Dallas protecting the very people that hated them the most. I realized that they refuse to believe that most cops acknowledge that there are Bad cops who should have never been given a badge & gun, who are chicken shit and will shoot a cockroach if it crawls at them too fast, who never worked in the hood and may be intimidated. That most cops dread the thought of having to shoot someone, and never see the turmoil and mental anguish that a cop goes through after having to kill someone to save his own life. Instead they believe that we are all blood thirsty killers, because the media says so, even though the numbers prove otherwise. I realize that they truly feel as if the death of cops will help people realize the false narrative that Black Lives Matter, when all it will do is take their movement two steps backwards and label them domestic terrorist. I realized that some of these people, who say Black Lives Matter, are full of hate and racism. Hate for cops, because of the false narrative that more black people are targeted and killed. Racism against white people, for a tragedy that began 100’s of years ago, when most of the white people today weren’t even born yet. I realized that some in the African American community’s idea of “Justice” is the prosecution of ANY and EVERY cop or white man that kills or is believed to have killed a black man, no matter what the circumstances are. I realized the African American community refuses to look within to solve its major issues, and instead makes excuses and looks outside for solutions. I realized that a lot of people in the African American community lead with hate, instead of love. Division instead of Unity. Turmoil and rioting, instead of Peace. I realized that they have become the very entity that they claim they are fighting against.

I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged political climate, I am now more likely to die,… and it is still hard for me to understand…. to this day”

Regardless of whether you agree with some, all or none of the points made by Stalien, here we have an individual with experience and insight. A contrasting view that doesn’t fit the mainstream narrative nor can be condensed into easy virtue-signalling sound bites and hash-taggery. It’s also a viewpoint that doesn’t seem to be getting equal air time.

This post by Stalien currently has over 130,000 shares online. Now witness all those pretending to care about minority voices come for Jay Stalien and his inconvenient viewpoints in the most egregious manner imaginable.

The BBC have also carried out some commentary and analysis on the claims made in Stalien’s post, which you can read here.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Stephen Knight is host of The #GSPodcast. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.

58 comments

  • I can’t help view the officer’s comments with the same dose of scepticism I feel listening to many from the BLM movement – a scepticism born from the transparent emotions influencing the statements. The academic from the BBC article seems to be much more concerned with the facts, and the facts are demonstrably bleak regarding police violence against black people.

    Yes, the facts are demonstrably bleak regarding black-on-black violence, but that’s an ignoratio elenchi.

    • YOU have clearly not looked at the symmetry between crime statistics and mortality. The rate at which crimes are reported, cars are pulled over, etc.

      Tell me genius… what percentage DIFFERENCE is there of felony arrests resulting in death or force by race? I KNOW you don’t know, because if you looked that up… you’d see they’re the same. You stop a felon, the odds of getting killed or of having to shoot them are the same, regardless of race. Does that fit your narrative? Check the FBI and DOJ.

      You’re “concern” is stupid. I recommend you turn it in to research — so that it can be informed. The fucking media is the enemy here.

      Research this;

      homicides by race compared to police shootings by race.
      police shootings by black cops vs. white cops.
      Police shootings of blacks by black cops or white cops.

      Just be intellectually honest. There may be a problem… but you CAN’T know if it’s racism or excessive force until you look for variables which let you peak in them via big data.

      White guilt can’t fix a problem if that problem can’t be fixed with white guilt. Yes, slavery was bad. Yes, lynchings are horrifying. Yes, blacks needed their civil liberties. No, no one should ever be judged based on their appearance.

      And no, we shouldn’t make it even more dangerous to be a cop… potentially make cops racist by imposing racially divisive policies… if the only goal is to avoid UNLAWFUL shootings.

      Just watch shootings where the cops are pleading people not to do something that will force them to shoot them. But those won’t make the news… only “I can’t breath, I can’t breath.” Who’s at fault THERE? The fucking EMTs. But that GIANT was agitated, was on felony pre-trial bond and as such, was subject to the police’ right to search him. HE SIGNED that document of his free will. He was NOT compliant. Did you see a “less forceful” way of restraining him? I didn’t. His arms were the size of 2 of the guys who were trying to get him in custody.

      It’s the fuckers who pretend like they can’t breath who ruined it for him. Its the people who gamed the system with fake claims of pain that desensitized them to his physical state. And if you can talk, you can breath. Trust me. I can prove it to you first hand anytime you like. Eric chose the wrong words — fatally. He should have said, “I’m having an asthma attack!” Duh!!

      • YOUR volunteering to choke me voiceless says all I need to know about the integrity of you as an honest communicator.

        Seek help.

        • How is he choking you? He is merely asking you to get your facts straight.

          • I suggest you get your facts straight. I didn’t say he WAS choking me. I said he was volunteering to do so. Why should I entertain the viewpoint of a violent jackass?

  • A well written piece by Stalien and wholly supports the notion of “facts are facts whether you like them or not”.
    I cannot see any reasonable person disagreeing with the points being made. Unfortunately nowadays, we see people sweep facts under the carpet that do not fit their narrative in the interests of furthering their own agendas. I suspect that the usual bigoted labels such as “coconut” will be levelled at Stalien for his position, sadly. Opinions such as his need to be put into the public domain as far as possible to combat the fact-starved slobbering idiots drowning in their own sea of virtue-signalling bullshit and hypocrisy. Well done GS for finding and publishing this – I wouldn’t have heard about it otherwise.

  • As usual people are reluctant to express their views on the subject for fear of being screamed down as a racist. The fact is that BLM, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam and books like Michael Moor’s ‘Stupid white men’ are all racist organisations or sentiments. They may argue that they are only trying to level the playing field but they are using anti-white racism to do it which is simply aggravating the problem and making it worse. Its a bit like positive discrimination which I find equally distasteful as it is simply another form of discrimination which simply alienates the other side and further divides society. I would call it positive racism and it has been encouraged for many decades by all the liberal left apologist ‘progressives’ who maintain that every problem in the world is down to white men.
    I wonder what would happen if they introduced a black only police force to operate in places like Chicago, Baltimore, and Brooklyn. I doubt they would be able to get enough blacks into such a force in the first place as they are very wary of dealing with their own kind in law and order matters but I wonder how this would affect the crime rate?

  • I would suggest reading the book “The new Jim Crow” if you are interested in how our justice system became what it is. I’m baffled how anyone can think the distrust of police just magically appeared out of no where. When you can’t trust the police and you have a problem, where do you turn? Gang violence is directly caused by a failed justice system.

    • THIS is the key point that has been largely missed in this debate, though is touched upon early in the black policeman’s FB post. If a community doesn’t trust the police (for good or bad reasons), they will fall back on the ancient remedies of veendetta and “dispaly” violence. Much “black-on-black” can be explained by this sort of “failed state” analysis – Steven Pinker’s recent “Better Angels” book goes into this (though without applying it to black-on-black crime). The solution is to *somehow* build trust of the police in these communities…

      • Everyone needs to read “Better Angels”. It lays out almost every problem the world has or has ever had, and describes which solutions have worked and which haven’t.

      • Agreed, although I think it is beyond the pale to suggest they have bad reasons for not trusting the police. It is hard to distill into a short comment how all-encompassing the institutional racism is. It isn’t just police, it is the housing policies, it is the banks, it is the drug policies, it is the welfare programs, it is the jury selection, so on and so on and the further back you go in history, the more obvious what has driven it to the current condition. I would once again recommend reading the book, it is hard to read because it is so insane how we got where we are.

  • In my opinion, the general argument from BLM is blatant anti-white racism, and needs to be challenged and exposed quickly before it spirals even further out of control.

    I’m seeing this movement gain ground in British society too in a stealthier format than what’s being served in the states.

    Here’s an example of their racism.
    Can you honestly imagine a white person saying this (so casually with black supporters stood at their side) about black people?

  • That BBC article with its supposed expert read like a giant grade school NUH UH argument. Shouting down source material and only sighting ethereal other studies without links to their existence. Using bold compare contrast in almost a mocking tone to the original articles bulleted format. Reads like a troll’s rebuttal to almost anything but lacks any real passion.

    Main article was a great read that inspires additional research. The BBC article is complete junk.

    • Unfortunately this seems to be the BBC way. If the author of the facebook article is who he says he is and has described his experiences accordingly, it seems to me a new low for the BBC to roll out some guy, ostensibly to challenge the statistical rigour of the statements, who instead seem to do little more than offer opinion against the perfectly sound observations of someone who tells it as he sees it (and risk his life doing so, b the way).
      Go free speech and open discussion!
      GS Good. BBC less so. Again.

    • Thanks for writing this. I thought I’m the only one who noticed the BS in his responses on BBC. Doesn’t get into the most important statistic, which is clearly true: Black on black crime is much higher than the very, very few cases of police misconduct. They apparently never heard of utilitarianism. It’s a perfect example of how empathy makes the people focus on a few cases instead of helping the many others.
      Also the irony when he said: “We simply cannot turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers and paranoid.” Sure. Peaceful protests.
      This whole BLM thing seems to be more about making sh*t up and creating a scapegoat for all their miseries. Also, have a little meaning in your life for once by protesting, college ‘punk’.

  • This post of course is a step back from the core BLM subject of police on black males (primarily) crime to compare to black on black crime which is of course a major issue but so different as its by criminals and not paid agents servering the public. I totally agree that issue needs some real change and protests, et all as well but of course isn’t the main subject by BLM, even if their names surely sounds like it should be.

    I like to take another step back and see what is common behind all of this. Lethal force. By cops, by gang members, or like just happened in my city of Minneapolis days after Philando Castile when a 15 mo old and 2 year old were shot in drive by fire, and 2 year old died. Then to all our mass shootings, domestic homicides and suicides by gun that rarely get the airtime as an issue. Step back from all the issues causes that need to be figured out of course, and what do you have….guns. Guns killing people and our sad US ‘gun culture’ combined with people’s fear and insecurity that make sudden use of the gun just a second away. If our country didn’t have so many and such accessible guns, I believe all of those subjects would be much less of issues, and by far less dead bodies from someone with a gun in the heat of the moment. Guns are too easy to get, to easy and quick to kill, and just embedded too much where they seem like the default means to use for about anything, not nearly enough non-lethal force to defuse situation so we all see another day, just a gun and bullet and a life gone that in most cases didn’t need to be taken. If we didn’t have more guns than people, the cops also wouldn’t be so on edge to use (or even need) lethal force as they wouldn’t be nearly as worried of a suspect having a gun on them.

    Sadly I long for mass misuse of rubber bullets, pepper spray, and massacres with those instead, as at least it won’t end up with dead bodies of all kinds, black males, cops, and everyone else.

    Eliminate the number of guns and we’d see so many less dead bodies of all kinds.

    • The police vs. “criminal” difference is greatly exaggerated by BLM.

      1) Homicide victims are equally dead regardless of the identity of the killer. The consequence for the victim of being shot and killed by the police versus being shot by a random person walking down the street are exactly the same. The loss to the family is exactly the same. Drive by a cemetery. Do you know how any of those folks died? No. But there they all are. As some have said, the great equalizer is death.

      2) Even if you give police killings more weight, you would have to give the police killings over 20X more weight to even match the number of killings by those other than the police. And 20X more weight is not justified, one, because the consequences of police shootings are not 20X more severe (see point #1), and two, because the police are more often than not acting in the role that society pays them to act in. Meaning that erroneous judgment in assessing risk should not be treated as if it is the same as wantonly spraying bullets into someone’s home or killing someone during a carjacking.

      3) This labelling of anyone who commits a crime as a “criminal” is a subtle way of attempting to put them in a different category from just people in general, or black people in general. The fact of the matter is that individuals make choices everyday to do or not do certain things. Making the wrong choice does not put them in a separate category that removes them from the discussion about the contribution of black communities to the problem. I had an argument with someone who attempted to do just that and it was a bogus move because she wanted to say that a black person who was confronted by the police for a crime was a “criminal” (that happened to be black) but “black people” don’t kill one another.

  • Though I can’t dispute the guy’s personal experience, I would like to say a few things:

    1.) The stat that a greater number of white people are killed by police than black people is highly misleading. Nonhispanic blacks make up approximately 12% of the US population. On a percentage basis, the number of blacks killed by police incredibly disproportionate.

    2.) Part of the specific complaint of BLM is less about raw statistics (though those are part of it) then of the disproportionate response that a lot of black suspects get from white officers. In the case in Minnesota, he was shot when he tried to retrieve his identification, after he had told the cop that he was legally carrying a firearm. The same goes with people who were summarily executed for selling counterfeit products, cigarettes, etc–offenses that should carry a light prison term.

    3.) There is evidence that officers cover for their comrades who act inappropriately.

    I know that not all police officers are racist, but there does seem to be a disparity in how people are treated by police based on their race or socioeconomic class. In seeing the need to change this, I fully support BLM. I just tend to see their tactics as alienating people more than getting tangible results.

    • Thanks for your comment Matt. Just a quick question. What is your evidence for this?

      In the case in Minnesota, he was shot when he tried to retrieve his identification, after he had told the cop that he was legally carrying a firearm.

      You state this very matter of fact, but it was my understanding that this information wasn’t documented in any video footage and is therefore anecdotal. I believe the investigation is still under way. If I’m behind the latest info on this, I’d appreciate a link or two. Thank you

      Could you also explain what you understand ‘summarily executed’ to mean and give examples of people that have been victims of such an act simply for ‘selling counterfeit products’? This sounds like a very misleading oversimplification of police action at best.

      • Jonathan Anthony

        It is pointless commenting on these current events, as history has shown us, and as the officer clearly explains. A snatch of YT footage barely tells half the story. The hispanic cop who killed Philando Castile apparently stopped him as he was responding to an armed robbery APB and Castile resembled the suspect. Whether he was the suspect or not, we don’t know. HE did have a considerable minor felony rap sheet however. The BBC article is typical BBC and their expert – an ex-cop – does seem a specialist on police brutality, but there are a multitude of stats to support any position. But social media hysteria is no respecter of nuance or process or more often than not, the truth. What it does to great effect, however, is to stir base emotions in the heat of the moment, which then spill over into irrational fear or hatred just at the time when calm heads are needed.

  • The author (the black policeman) has an interesting take. But among the visceral details, there’s little consideration for the causes of his experiences. There’s little instructive about them.

    If black people are committing lots more crime, then why?

    Is it because of their genetic make-up or skin color? Let’s not, shall we!

    Is it because they just don’t like each other (black-on-black crime) or they simply like violence? I hardly think so.

    Is it because of their social and economic status? Much more likely.

    What or who has impressed these conditions upon them? In a country with a history of black slavery and with demonstrable, contemporary racism manifested in extremely popular ‘movements’ such as Trump’s, I’m going to go with…… white people, their pride, supposed superiority and privilege.

    Whether they’re being killed directly by cops or being subject to pervasive economic inequality leading them into desperate and often violent situations, it’s not because black folks are black, but because they are seen to be black. And that cannot come from the black community itself.

    Some people like to say “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative”, like that’s the best of both worlds; like those things aren’t connected. Only people in a privileged position can say this, and the only people I’ve heard say it are economically comfortable. Where fiscal conservatism means lack of regulation, those who are privileged continue to succeed. In America, that is a predominantly white, male establishment.

    For everyone else, things are much harder, and where you can’t have the things you want and need you might end up cheating, stealing or even killing to get them.

    So, to me “Black Lives Matter” isn’t hypocritical or otherwise irrelevant, even where there’s (supposedly, according to the author) much higher crime rates by black people. Whether it’s “stop killing me for no reason” (even the author acknowledges “the 9 questionable deaths of black men, where _some_ were in the act of committing crimes”) or “stop putting me in this desperate situation”, it’s because there’s a real and pervasive systemic racism at play.

    I don’t need to see a video of two white policemen pinning a black man down and executing him to know that. But I did see it anyway and it made me sick.

    • Kinda going off topic of the threat, but I love your notes about “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative” as I’m running across more of those now as Republican friends nowadays would say that and distance themselves from Conservatives (and Trump) of their parents. I have heard the same about if you are a fiscal conservative that you really can’t be socially liberal in the sense of anything progressing. I totally see that too as it seems some think free markets and just leaving people to themselves somehow would solve the issues of discrimination, lead in water, moving from fossil fuels, etc while also advancing the country and fueling private biz with progressive gov $ behind such things as NASA, SpaceX, Tesla, to clean energy and possible carbon tax. Anyways, also nice how you said that it’s only from a privileged position that one will of a Libertarian midset too, as of course the ones I hear from are at least upper middle class, if not upper. Apparently limiting regulations, taxes, and just everyone living their own lives will in anyway progress the social issues of the day.

      On a positive note to Libertarians in the US as I may note be one to vote for Gary Johnson, at least he seems like a respectable person and candidate which seems rather rare these days. On top of that, I can hear him out, understand why he thinks how he does, feel like he’s not bought off and simply disagree on policies and ways to get where we need to go. Seems like how it should be with all candidates of course, and I do wish him luck in even paving the way for a 3rd party candidate having a fair shake in the future elections. Of course Trump and Sanders both shouldn’t have been in the 2 party game, but if they didn’t, they’d be stuck on the outside per usual and in Johnson’s shoes at the bottom of a well looking for anyone to see him.

      So done with the rigged 2 party system, and guns. Man if we could address both those anytime soon, it’d be just amazing.

    • I think a lot of people (white liberals in particular) think they are being compassionate and understanding toward black Americans when in reality they infantilize black America. Black people do have agency. Individuals have choice. No, poverty does not explain the violence. 50% of black America was in poverty in 1950. That rate has been cut in half since then while violence has skyrocketed.

      • In was not my intention to ‘infantilize’ the black community, though I can see why you may have got that impression. Of course black folks have the same agency, motivation and intelligence as anyone else. I don’t mean to characterize them as passive dupes; just that they have—from the outset—been made to play with a loaded deck.

        I’m not sure where the poverty rate being halved comes from, but I think a lot of the violence we’re seeing since Obama’s presidency has been reactionary: white folks just not being able to cope with a black president; too big a challenge to their self-constructed ‘superior’ identity.

        • “If black people are committing lots more crime, then why?”

          ****There are black people that understand the historical legacy of slavery in America, but who do believe that black people have all the faculties to overcome this legacy. There are black Americans who find the criminality in the black community abhorrent and who do not ANY excuses for these people in 2016.

          “Is it because they just don’t like each other (black-on-black crime) or they simply like violence? I hardly think so.”

          ****There are black people who understand that there is a pernicious culture of violence within the black community. Again, we understand its possible origins but do not make excuses for this behavior.

          “Is it because of their social and economic status? Much more likely.”

          ****There are also black people who understand that within inner city black communities there is a culture of shiftlessness, and disregard for education that leads to poor socioeconomic outcomes.

          “What or who has impressed these conditions upon them? In a country with a history of black slavery and with demonstrable, contemporary racism manifested in extremely popular ‘movements’ such as Trump’s, I’m going to go with…… white people, their pride, supposed superiority and privilege.”

          ****There are also black people who understand that in 2016 we are, for the most part, doing this to ourselves
          .
          “Whether they’re being killed directly by cops or being subject to pervasive economic inequality leading them into desperate and often violent situations, it’s not because black folks are black, but because they are seen to be black. And that cannot come from the black community itself.”

          It’s really disheartening to me that white liberals think they are aligning with the black community by perpetuating stereotypical talking-points about the community. How you feel about any situation is how YOU feel. It’s incredibly insulting to black people who are ostensibly accurately diagnosing problems within their community, only to be undermined by white liberals who have probably never spent any extended period of time within a black community. For you to think you can speak on behalf of black people, like we all think the same, is disgusting. White liberals, to me, are some of the most ignorant people in regards to race. They take one narrative about the black experience and subscribe it to all black people. It’s hilarious when I talk with a white liberal who automatically assumes that I’m going to agree with them on leftist talking points regarding race in America, just because I’m black. It’s sickening.

          • Hang on. BLM is about the black community _per se_. It’s clumsy and catch-all, but it’s about people who are black. Me standing up and saying “I support this because, despite everything else, black folks get unfair treatment” is sickening? What? Because I’m not black myself? I can’t do that; I’ll always be ignorant in that regard. You don’t need to tell me that.

            I’m sorry if my clumsy support of a clunky movement is unwelcome to you. I get it, honestly. I just wish there were fewer out-and-out racist white asses out there and more relatively harmless ignorant white folks like me.

          • William Horsley

            Boom. Excellent retort.

          • Dana, thank you. I’m with you 100%. It is incredibly frustrating to me to see so much of the excuse making of the black left co-signed and given additional power by white “allies” who do not actually understand the dynamic or inner cultural history of black Americans. The black left has become more emboldened and increasingly less likely to listen to reason because they have so many white people willing to take their banner and run with it. I have no doubt that Haydon and others have good intentions, but the phrase “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” exists for a reason. Thomas So well as Vision of the Anointed deals with this problem at length.

          • Denise, could you explain to me what adverse effects my ‘good intentions’ as a white leftie supporting black lefties might have? I’m not following you.

          • Heydon, BLM and the Black Left in general need the buy-in of people who are not black to give their agenda legitimacy. They are insisting on a very specific interpretation of certain issues, and as broader support is gained, it results in an attitude of, “See, we must be right, ’cause even white people agree with us.”

            Obviously this is politics and people disagree. You can support whomever and whatever your conscience deems correct. I’m just expressing how I think that white liberals end up co-signing political points put out by black liberals which undermines the introspection that black America needs to undertake to address the inner cultural corrosion that is truly at the root of many if not most of these issues.

          • Ahh, so you’re saying that the danger of people from two different races agreeing with each other is that people from one of those races will suddenly forget who they are and cease to be able to think for themselves. That’s… tenuous.

          • I said nothing about anyone being able to think for themselves. I said that people jump onto BLM’s platform and it does undercut the conversation that needs to be had internally, which does not happen because many seek the support of whites as being validation in itself of the truth of their assertion. That is completely fallacious reasoning, but it is a real part of the dynamic.

  • It is disappointing to see this here without Stephen noting at least four glaring flaws in Stalien’s post.

    1.) Liberal use of strawmen. Nearly every one of his ‘complaints’ represents an uncharitable caricature of the opposing side’s argument. The clearest examples: “Complaint: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more” and “Black Lives do not matter to most black people.”

    2.) Demonstrably false statements. Example: “there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man.” People are outraged and protest against gang violence often.

    3.) Dishonesty using statistics: “As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.” These stats are supposed to rebut the claim that black people are “killed more” than white people, but without showing the percentages of blacks and whites in the United States, the numbers aren’t particularly meaningful. Here are my simple calculations, based on Stalien’s numbers:

    White people make up ~63% of the U.S. population and ~47% of the people killed by police in 2016
    Black people make up ~13% of the U.S. population and ~24% of the people killed by police in 2016

    4.) Textbook whataboutery. Example: “4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, …” So what? If police kill fewer blacks than other blacks do, does that mean that the deaths caused by police are somehow irrelevant or less important? Should we not hold our institutions to higher standards?

    • Comparing killings by police to the general population is an invalid comparison. You need to compare the number of deaths to the number of interactions between each demographic and the police. That WaPo article has been circling around and conservatives are just laughing at it, and it doesn’t help to reproduce faulty comparisons. When you balance the amount of violent crime committed by Blacks (about 50%) against the numbers of killings, the numbers balance. Black people, relative to the actual violent interactions with cops, end up dead just about as much as other races. This doesn’t mean that every interaction is justified, and that there are no incidents that involved racism, but on the whole police racism does not seem to be the overriding factor. Cops interact with criminals as a matter of course. The fact is that Blacks commit more crimes. This is a statistic, not a racist sentiment (though it is often used by racists to justify their bigotry, and conservative articles, while accurately presenting the statistics, leave that fact hanging there with implications that leave their white supremacist readers satisfied. While racism among cops surely exists, it does not appear, by the numbers, to be the core element to the number of cop related killings of Blacks. These facts beg a question that neither side of the arguments want to answer, because on the one hand, it seemingly places the blame on Black people in general, and on the other, leaving the question to hang feeds on the prejudice that likes to hang out on the far right side of the discourse without being overtly racist. We can’t let racists control the conversation by ignoring uncomfortable truths. Now, when it comes to violent crime and crime in general, the best predictor of this behavior is where a person lies under or above the Federal Poverty Line. When you adjust for poverty, Blacks do not commit any more crimes than Whites (while Hispanics are half as likely as either). The problem lies in that Blacks are still the poorest demographic in this country, and by that fact are more prone to violent crime. Why is that? Well, I’m sure racism is a strong element, since most bosses are white, and race in the workplace is not as well regulated as race on the police force. Also, freed slaves got the short end of the stick when it came to land grants in the 1800s, which means that they didn’t get the same boost in wealth overall. Now, I have no idea how to solve this problem, but the conversation to resolve the roots of racial inequality cannot be had if the focus is on the symptoms. I support BLM, because the conversation needs to happen. I don’t always agree with their tactics, but they are keeping the subject alive without being lost to the short term memory of the public.

      Blacks in this country have every reason to be angry, and the media is feeding on this anger, and the pundits are steering the conversation into a stalemate of shouting and stupid memes that doesn’t benefit anyone.

      • I agee completely that normalizing the stats for the rate of police interactions is a better indicator of whether race is a factor in deaths at the hands of police. I was merely pointing out that the raw numbers is a dishonest tactic on Stalien’s part because they don’t tell us much without context — which you provided better than I did.

    • Since you choose to ignore the experiences and facts presented by the anguished officer and decide to cherry pick stats that will suit your false narrative, let me show you what cherry picking looks like from the other side:

      According to the U.S. Department of Justice 2010 NCV Survey:
      – 62,593 blacks were victims of violence committed by whites
      – 320,082 whites were victims of violence committed by blacks

      You seem preoccupied by percentages so, that means that whites were nearly 2400% likelier to be victimized by a black violent offender than a black citizen was to be attacked by a white offender. While you are right about blacks being only 13% of the population, they commit over 54% of homicides. Since police don’t choose where they patrol, that may have something to do with why their presence seems commonplace in certain communities, which in turn leads to increased encounters and incidents with the police. Or racism.

      • What ‘false narrative’ are you referring to? I wasn’t aware that I had presented any narrative other than pointing out the logical fallacies of Stalien’s argument.

        As for the rest of your post, it’s just more ‘whataboutery’. Let’s say all of the numbers you present are true (I assume they are). What do they have to do with the proposition that the lives of black people have value?

        • The fact that the data requires complex interpretation in light of complex social factors does not mean that Staliens interpretation was “dishonest” He is the one who has to put his life on the line for his jog

          • Sorry, his “job” not his “jog”! J.o.b. I spelt it right this time. Also despite the high homicide rate in the US – this is calculated as way below medieval levels and the reason is a policing system and functioning state.

    • Sorry that you are offended by ‘Strawman’ comments and a sweeping statement which can easily be modified simply by ‘Blacks are usually the ones killed…It is perfectly reasonable to parody the oppositions comments especially when they deserve it. The fact remains that Jay Stalien is a black police officer talking from first hand experience about the appalling way he is treated by other blacks. I am sure he has a lot more authority on this subject than you or I and deserves to be taken seriously indeed. Making PC excuses for black behaviour is a far too easy thing to do, and in MHO, solves nothing and is in fact disadvantageous to blacks themselves as it perpetuates their victimisation mentality and does nothing to help them extricate themselves from the desperate situation they find themselves in.

      • “It is perfectly reasonable to parody the oppositions comments especially when they deserve it.”

        Bravo. The unaware circular reasoning of this statement is truly a thing of beauty. You are to be commended.

  • “A contrasting view that doesn’t fit the mainstream narrative or can be condensed into easy virtue-signalling sound bites and hash-taggery. It’s also a viewpoint that doesn’t seem to be getting equal air time.”

    Very well said.

  • Bravo, sir. With a post that good, the intro and the conclusion have to be perfect and you nailed it. Best article I’ve read in long time.

  • Stinson’s responses in the attached article are fairly unconvincing from what I’ve read so far–

    >I don’t agree with his logic. There certainly is implicit bias in many police street encounters with black males. Many police officers in the United States view blacks in these encounters as a threat. Similarly, many of the blacks in these street encounters with police officers are afraid of the police. There are good points to be made on all sides of this issue.”

    He’s talking about demogaphics, not bias. The fact that blacks are afraid of cops and cops are afraid of blacks doesn’t change the demographics.

    >”Blacks are shot and killed by on-duty police officers at a HIGHER RATE than are white persons. In other words, it is misleading to look at the raw numbers without adjusting for population differences.”

    Yes, but when you read the rest of what he said and note that blacks are also disproportionately responsible for violent crime, the reasons for this become clear.

    >”These numbers are wrong to the extent that the data relied upon are incomplete and inaccurate. Both the Supplemental Homicide Reports and the CDC data sets underreported. We know that, in part, from the Washington Post numbers for 2015 and 2016. But, we do not know if the error and bias in the underreported data in the FBI and/or CDC is systematic or random. As such, I would not use either data set to draw statistically significant conclusions,” adds Stinson.

    Underreported? There’s a gulf of 3,000 people there! Are we even reading the same information?

  • The bottom line, as far as I can see, is that we really don’t know if there’s a racial bias.
    There are so many subtle cultural differences between groups that can explain differences in the outcomes, that you’d need a manhattan project type investment to actually figure this stuff out.
    How can we know, for example, the differences between how white people and black people respond to the police? That difference could be huge and yet it’s incredibly hard to record.

  • The point that has been missed is the amount of INNOCENT black men that are killed by cops versus the amount of INNOCENT white men. No research or stats on that point, probably because it doesn’t back up the sentiment of the article.

    • Maybe you can enlighten us Scott. Where’s the analysis that shows how many (of either race) are “innocent”. Some undoubtedly are. Bear in mind that about 75% of those killed are armed criminals. Some of the others are in a physical fight with a policeman who then shoots them. That’s justified (in an American context). Three times last year an unarmed criminal took a gun from a policeman and killed him. Unarmed definitely does not mean “innocent”.
      A simple approach will reduce kills by police to (almost) zero. Don’t carry an illegal weapon. Follow police instructions. Don’t fumble around in your pockets or waistband. That could easily get you shot even if you don’t have a weapon. Don’t resist arrest. The figures from New York show that blacks arrested for a minor drug offence are 85% more likely to resist arrest (compared to whites).

  • “Black people kill more other blacks than Police do”

    Anyone who brings up this point in this context is either misguided or has bad intentions. We know African Americans have a higher crime rate than whites because of where they live, and the drug game. That’s all that needs to be pointed. And if African American have a higher crime rate, then they are going to commit the majority of those crimes AGAINST other African Americans! why? because people commit crimes against people they live near! So at the end of the day ‘black on black crime’ is just crime. the drug game, which leads to the most murders, occurs in African american neighborhoods. . So what is the value of bringing this stupid talking point up (black on black crime) unless you want to deflect the subject. (i.e. there is no fucking problem here, it’s they that are killing themselves) WHITES ALSO KILL MORE WHITES than anyone else. PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE THEY live nearer to in proximity.

    I’m willing to say only people with bad intentions bring this stupidity up. At the very least they have fallen for the talking points of bad actors without knowing it. It’s a deflation tool that wont’ fucking die.

    And finally, the police are empowered by us to do justice. They are and should be held to a higher standard. Why are we comparing the state killing people to random people killing people. We can control one, at least theoretically.

    And finally, the best way to diffuse this shit is by making the police the police instead of a damn army.

  • Someone commented that blacks are killed by police proportionately at a much higher rate. That’s not true if you look at the actual violent crime rates. This is what gets you into contact with the police. Whites are, in proportion to the number of violent encounters, more likely to be killed by the police. Most criminals killed by the police are in possession of firearms. That’s not a pre-requisite for getting yourself killed. Attacking an officer, even if you’re unarmed, may well get you shot. That may be justified. What if a violent criminal attacks a cop, overpowers him, and gets his gun?

    Someone else said the black crime problem resulted from socioeconomic factors. This in turn was caused by slavery, racism etc (white people). The main cause of poverty in the US black community seems to be the extraordinary high number of black children raised by single parents. It’s gone from 20% in the sixties to around 80%.today (it’s not a recent phenomena but happened prior to the 2008 recession) Almost 90% of children in single parent families are below the poverty line. In two parent black families it’s 10%. This is probably the only period since humans first evolved that fathers have stopped taking responsibility for their children. (The guy who got shot last week had 5 children with multiple mothers. At least one of these mothers thought he was a fine fellow – despite a lengthy criminal recordand $50,000 dollars of child maintenance arrears. Fecklessness and criminality have become the norm.)

    (We’ve seen this dreadful breakdown of the family unit in the UK as well (whites as well as blacks). A prominent black MP, David Lammy, said that black fathers must become more involved with their children, That’s how bad it’s got. What the hell does “more involved” mean? McDonalds twice a week?)

  • Speaking of straw men, who asserts that black lives don’t have value? It is cynical to believe today that a significant number of citizens hold such a monstrous view. Considering how often we meet incompetent, unskilled people in every vocation on a daily basis- how is it reasonable to believe that police are flawless at their jobs and are grotesquely asserting their white supremacy and racism in these tragic videos? This cartoonishly simplistic view is completely reactionary. It is also lazy as it requires no research and allows for evidence to be completely ignored- and in that sense, it’s just like any other religion. Of course racism exists, but it is imprudent to say it is the principal reason for all of these police failures.
    John McWhorter supports police protests and recently wrote an article for TIME with the title “Police Kill Too Many People”. I strongly urge you to read it. (Jul. 14)

    http://time.com/4404987/police-violence/

    McWhorter’s example of intellectual honesty is far more productive than tribalism or blind adherence to dogma, as was displayed in the insufferably narcissistic and dismissive response to Dana’s insightful post above. I also encourage you to check out his debates with Glenn Loury. They are the most sincere debates on race, unlike anything on TV and print journalism.

  • This video gives an indication of why the U.S. police are on a hair trigger when they confront someone. It’s only 2mins 30s.
    http://tinyurl.com/hvbs29h

  • There is a whole lot of uncomfortable truth in this article. On the other hand, there is the problem of police officers knowing who are the bad apples among them and refusing to speak up.

    In any organization, about 10% of the employees cause 90% of the problems–but when that 10% is police officers who employ deadly force innocent people get maimed and killed. Unless and until the police themselves get serious about stopping police abuse (all abuse, not just that directed at the black community), these incidents are going to escalate and many more people on both sides are going to die.

  • Please note: in the linked report “Dr.” Stinson references the Washington Post as a more accurate and reliable source of data than the CDC. Someone calling themselves a ‘doctor’ is saying a media rag that has shown extreme bias is a more reputable source of statistical data than the CDC; an organization that is a professional statistical data collection group. Also, if you can, side-by-side compare the officer’s original essay with the linked BBC article. One major fallacy that needs to be pointed out (one of many) is the comments concerning the rate and percentages of blacks shot by cops: “Dr.” Stinson (and/or Megha Mohan) are leaving out an important factor in this math. “Dr.” Stinson claims the numbers referring to whites shot by police doesn’t accurately represent the demographic, that blacks are involved in officer related shootings at a much higher percentage than whites. This point conveniently fails to point out that the Officer Stalien specifically addresses this point in the officer’s essay. Officer Stalien explains that his own research showed blacks will, far more often than whites, instigate a violent confrontation with police resulting in the statistics shown. Meaning; if blacks are having violent confrontations with police in greater proportion than whites, it is only mathematically logical that blacks would have a higher percentage of violent (possibly shooting) outcomes, especially when blacks are a minority of the overall population. The “Dr.” and the BBC article’s author conveniently leave out the fact that the officer already looked at this point. Bottom line: I wonder how long and hard the BBC looked for someone who would ‘half-truth and lie’ to refute the officer’s damning truths.

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