In the first chapter of this Black Lives Matter series, we examined BLM’s manifesto and core values. Naturally, the next step is to evaluate the claims and grievances made my BLM and evaluate their validity. It’s time to face the facts.
BLM’s claims, while evoking a lot of emotion and hyperbole, have little basis in any fact and BLM does not do much to refute that. Nowhere on the site does it outline any particular evidence in support of their outrageous grievances. If their claims were true, why not add news stories or links to statistics, or anything that demonstrates tangible evidence and not just rambling emotional diatribe? Furthermore, the one claim they made which has at least some basis in fact, regarding the number of Blacks incarcerated, is wildly inaccurate and inconsistent.
According to studies done by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Blacks make up 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population in the United States. Even if this study does not count those individuals who are on parole or probation as “incarcerated” (and some studies do), this hardly equates to their description of 2.8 million Black people locked in cages as described on BLMs “about us” page. In the manifesto, BLM then changes the number to the more accurate estimate of 1 million. The inconsistency is unprofessional at the least and troubling at the most.
Either way, it is critical to also mention the U.S. has one of the overall best records in the world in regards to humane treatment of its incarcerated population. However, including these kind of facts mitigates the raw emotional power of grossly inaccurate (or inconsistent) statistics and inflammatory language which seems to be the basis for accumulating support of BLM.
It is true Blacks make up an overall larger proportion of the incarcerated population than any other racial/ethnic groups in this country. However, no evidence exists to show the reason for this has anything to do with direct persecution of the Black population by “the state,” much less state sponsored genocide, as BLM suggests. There is a simple reason for the high rate of incarceration. Statistics have consistently proven the number of crimes committed by Blacks is far higher proportionately than any other single racial/ethnic group, and it is not racist to say so. Any second grader can do the math: more Black crime = more Black incarceration.
Though Blacks make up only about 13% of the population of the United States, they commit almost half of homicides nationwide. Over 90% of the time the victim is also Black, usually a male. Blacks commit over 50% of robberies, 30% of burglaries, 34% of aggravated assaults, 25% of vandalisms, and 67% of illegal gambling. Collectively, Blacks committed 38% of violent crimes and 29% of property crimes nationwide in 2012. Most of these figures have been documented in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. Though, as an establishment of “the state,” perhaps BLM does not give the FBI credit.
The numbers only get worse for Blacks when crime statistics for individual cities are examined. Take a study by Chicago Police Department in 2011 for example. Despite comprising about 33% of the Chicago population, 71% of all homicides in the city were committed by Blacks and 75% of the victims were Black. It is important to note only 29% of Chicago homicides for 2011 had a corresponding prosecution. This is ironic considering BLM’s charge that the state system is rigged against Blacks.
Strangely absent from BLM website, is the grievance we often see their supporters making on the major cable news networks; that the Black population in the United States is being hunted down by various Law Enforcement agencies in the country. Various studies have been conducted, including one by the Center for Disease Control in 2012, one by the Washington Post in 2015, and another published by a Harvard University professor in 2016. All of them concluded White people were about twice as likely to be shot by police as Black people.
Why is there a disparity between percentage of Blacks shot by police, contrasted to the proportionately lower percentage of other racial/ethnic groups? Just as is the case with Black incarceration, the disproportionate rates are due to the fact Blacks commit a proportionately higher percentage of crimes. One would also be hard pressed to find any legitimate study concluding that a majority of officer involved shootings of any racial/ethnic group, were unjustified, much less racially biased. At the very least, the statistics of police shootings of Blacks hardly reflects any form of genocide committed by the state, as BLM would suggest.
The problem this poses for BLM is these facts completely undermine the inflammatory claims they have made. Their grievances are based more in emotion than logic or fact. If BLM wants to be taken seriously, they need to make some important changes to their focus, overall organization, and to the behavior of their supporters. That is a subject for the next article.
~AD
Share This:
