If they had any point at all, the NFL’s various ‘take-a-knee’ protests would still be disrespectful, distasteful, and completely out-of-place.
But here’s the thing – they have no point!
Sure, there are exceptions and outlier cases, but all their tripe about inequality and racist police brutality being any sort of statistically significant ‘thing’ is complete nonsense. And black columnist Larry Elder proves it in slam-dunk fashion in this brilliant Townhall column.
"Larry Elder: National Anthem Protests–Do FACTS matter?"https://t.co/QnEkx3TKmJ#TakeAKnee pic.twitter.com/ovCMrAE7WC
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) September 28, 2017
Elder begins his piece by referring to the source of today’s protests, former San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who referred to “bodies in the street” and people “getting away with murder.”
“According to the Centers for Disease Control,” Elder writes, “since 1968 police killings of blacks have declined nearly 75 percent. According to The Washington Post, almost 500 whites were killed by cops in 2015, an average of more than one a day. Two hundred fifty-nine blacks were killed by the police. Most suspects killed by police had a weapon.”
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd gets one of America’s most basic founding principles so wrong it’s scary
The columnist and radio host then launches into a dizzying array of brutal facts that would convince any open-minded individual – if only these crazed social justice warriors were in any way open-minded.
Out of the 965 people killed by the police in 2015 (as of Dec. 24), the Post reported (on Dec. 26) that “less than 4 percent” involved an unarmed black man and a white cop, the fact pattern most commonly referred to by anti-police activists like Black Lives Matter. Last year, The Washington Post put the number of unarmed black men killed by the police at 17, less than the number of blacks likely struck by lightning. Twenty-two unarmed whites were killed by the police. Any death that results from police misconduct is one death too many, but the point is that police killing of a suspect is rare, no matter the race of the suspect or the cop. And a police shooting of an unarmed black male is still more rare.
But what about the blacks who are “routinely and disproportionately being stopped, pulled over and/or arrested due to police misconduct?” Elder asks rhetorically.
No, not according to numerous studies, many by the government. Take traffic stops. In 2013, the National Institute of Justice, the research and evaluation agency of the Department of Justice, published a study of whether the police, as a result of racial bias, stop blacks more than other drivers. The conclusion? Any racial disparity in traffic stops is due to “differences in offending” in addition to “differences in exposure to the police” and “differences in driving patterns.”
According to Philippe Lemoine, writing in National Review, a white person is, on average, more likely to have interactions with the police in any year than a black person, 20.7 percent vs. 17.5 percent. It is true that a black person is more likely to have multiple contacts with the police. But according to the data, multiple contacts with the police are rare, as well. Lemoine writes that 1.2 percent of white men have more than three contacts with the police in a year versus 1.5 percent of black men.
Elder then compared the experiences of blacks with police to whites, citing DOJ statistics:
Lemoine writes: “Only 0.6 percent of black men experience physical force by the police in any given year, while approximately 0.2 percent of white men do. … Moreover, keep in mind that these tallies of police violence include violence that is legally justified.” And keep in mind the much higher levels of crime by mostly black males. It is estimated that half of all homicides are committed by, and mostly against, black males.
In 1995, the federal government looked at 42,500 defendants in the nation’s 75 largest counties. A government statistician, Patrick A. Langan, found “no evidence that, in the places where blacks in the United States have most of their contacts with the justice system, that system treats them more harshly than whites.” So much for the so-called “institutional racism” in the criminal justice system.
https://twitter.com/johnhawkinsrwn/status/913306621023019009
Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BizPac Review.
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