George Floyd’s tragic death unleashed unprecedented national outrage over police killings of African Americans. Unfortunately, the directions this outrage has taken so far offer little hope for real change either in police outcomes or other racial disparities that underlie them. Instead, they promote more polarization and divisiveness through distortions from activists and much of the media, posturing and demagoguery from politicians, and symbolism over substance. These reactions feature heavy doses of tribalistic, stereotyping rhetoric that demeans both Blacks and Whites and impedes constructive debate. Until we come together in honest, good faith dialogue the problems will only grow worse.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) along with other activists and most media promote the narrative that police are engaged in ongoing lethal warfare against Blacks. This is demonstrably false. Even worse, measures they advocate would cost Black lives rather than save them and exacerbate racial disparities.
State and local politicians cravenly attack their police departments to deflect attention from their own leadership failures. They control the police and bear direct responsibility for police performance. If cops systematically engage in bad practices, these officials allow it. If police unions have too much power, these officials approved it. Whatever excess funding or responsibilities police have these officials provided.
Symbolic actions coming from many quarters, including Whites intent on demonstrating their “wokeness,” are shallow and largely empty gestures. Destroying statues, renaming things, confessing to White privilege and racism, as well as other forms of virtue-signaling do nothing to save Black lives. Protests over Floyd’s death and more recent incidents have descended into riots and looting, sometimes apparently spearheaded by White anarchists. The ongoing protests in Portland seem to be an end in themselves and a form of local sport that has turned deadly. These actions repel rather than attract support for their supposed causes.
The overheated rhetoric that permeates social media, academia, and much of what passes for civil discourse likewise turns off well-meaning people who would be receptive to rational debate. Branding everyone and everything “racist” trivializes that concept and robs it of meaning. Many of today’s “anti-racist” practitioners (often Whites) insult all races and discourage dialog. They seek to shoehorn everyone into monolithic tribal groups defined by ridiculous stereotypes. Whites are privileged racists who benefit from America’s defining history of suppressing minorities. Blacks are hapless victims who lack individual agency and the ability to affect their own destinies. As one (African American) reviewer observed, Robin DiAngelo’s best-selling book White Fragility, a prime example of contemporary anti-racist dogma, “entails an elaborate and pitilessly dehumanizing condescension toward Black people.” Similarly, another reviewer described her book as based on the “unstated assumption . . . that all black people are emotionally immature and child-like.”
What, then, can be done to harness the outrage into something productive? Serious efforts to reduce racial disparities in fatal police encounters must start with dispassionate, fact-based analysis. Two hard truths lie at the heart of the problem:
- The cause of disproportionate Black deaths at the hands of police is not racism but the disproportionate rate of Black violent crime, overwhelmingly committed against Black victims. Disproportionate police killings of Blacks will subside only when disproportionate Black violent crime subsides. This will also save many more Black lives than police take.
- Disproportionate Black violent crime, in turn, stems from a host of other racial disparities that persist after centuries of true race discrimination. For example, Black males on average earn less money, are less likely to graduate from college, and die at younger ages than other American men. Until these underlying disparities are addressed, disproportionate Black crime is unlikely to subside.
BLM activists and their allies ignore the first truth; BLM critics and their allies ignore the second. Until all sides acknowledge and address both, little will change.
Remedying broader racial disparities requires attacking their root causes. Some are obvious, such as dangerous, drug- and gang-ridden neighborhoods and failing public schools. At a bare minimum, every American deserves physical security and every child deserves a decent education in a safe environment that is conducive to learning. Other root causes involve more complex problems such as entrenched segregated housing patterns and a range of sociological and cultural issues.
Paradoxically, activists like BLM and “woke” elites promote policies that diminish rather than enhance Black lives. This is manifestly true of calls to “defund” the police. Police reforms are appropriate to reduce excess use of force, enhance accountability, and improve relationships between police and minority citizens. However, reducing police presence, especially in high-crime neighborhoods, will increase innocent Black deaths. Unsurprisingly, few African Americans favor this approach. They want better not less policing.
Similarly, activists undermine the cause of racial justice by disparaging as “White values” such obviously beneficial paths to achievement as the nuclear family, traditional education, rational thinking, and individual responsibility. This also is hypocritical since elites embrace these values in their own lives and for their own families. Along the same lines, activists as well as academic and media elites increasingly espouse once-fringe “critical race theory” that portrays the United States as an irredeemably White supremacist country defined by “institutional” and “systemic” racism whose stated ideals are nothing but lies. These spurious charges not only turn off most Americans but also create what one critic describes as an ”activist black hole” that offers only a cynical message of victimhood and despair.
Another commentator noted that such assertions “create in the minds of students and teachers of all races a vision of America that is imbued with a permanent malignancy that is hostile to the dreams of students of color” and promotes “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” He contrasted this with the positive message of former President Obama, who argued that a constructive path forward for African Americans calls for–
“taking full responsibility for our own lives—by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that, while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism. They must always believe that they can write their own destiny.”
As President Obama recognized, the United States, like most countries, has a complex history that features both shameful episodes and those that inspire hope for the future. Our Nation has consistently evolved to reverse past shortcomings. It practiced slavery and engaged in legalized race discrimination but later fought a war to end slavery, outlawed race discrimination, and enacted numerous laws to promote racial equality. Anyone serious about eliminating racial disparities in police encounters and other areas needs to embrace and build upon this foundation—not tear it down.