Black Lives Matter

It should be a bipartisan truism that black lives matter both in word and in deed. Unfortunately neither party gets it right. The Democrat sin is to not act as if black lives matter. The Republican sin is not to speak as if black lives matter. All in all, I find the GOP error less disgusting and wrong but it is wrong.

In 2013, 14,196 people were murdered or became victims of non-negligent manislaughter. Not all law enforcement forces collect racial statistics so out of the 12,253 murders with race of victim attached, 6,261 were black victims. This is the largest racial grouping of all. The US population is 13.2% black. 77.7% of the country is white.

By any normal standards, this represents a horrible tragedy and a tremendous opportunity. If the if the 5,537 murders of whites represented a proportional 77.7% of murders, we would have had 7,126 murders in the US in total and the racially identifiable black total would be 941. Something is terribly wrong when we have 5,320 black murders excess of population percentage and this happens year after year.

We have massive protests about police shooting blacks and having those shootings inappropriately ruled justified. Putting aside the merits of any individual cases, The total number of people killed by police in 2013 was 461. Justifiable homicides by non-police civilians was 281 in 2013. We can say with confidence that the vast majority of excess black deaths do not have anything to do with trigger happy racist whites who get away with it because the criminal justice system doesn’t think that black lives matter. The numbers to justify the left wing activist story line just aren’t there. At most this would reduce the carnage by 742, and let’s not kid ourselves, there are a lot of non-blacks in those justified homicide numbers.

No community needs vigorous law enforcement to keep them safe more than the black community. No community needs full out school reform to improve educational outcomes and increase economic opportunity more than the black community. No community needs regulatory reform to unleash economic activity more than the black community. The GOP has a compelling case to make on all three issues and it’s been like this for decades. So why isn’t the case being made? Why aren’t the Democratic demagogues who shout out that black lives matter but are advocating policies that are objectively anti-black being persistently called on it? It’s a mystery that every year helps perpetuate a lot of extra black funerals.

26 thoughts on “Black Lives Matter”

  1. Black population all over the world have high rates of violence. If the US Virgin Islands for example were an independent country it would have one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

    In addition to factors such as low average IQ the frequency of the 2-R allele of the MAOA gene is about 5-10% among US black males compared to .1% among US white males.

  2. Jim – You’re right that the USVI has a very high murder rate, exceeded only by Honduras and Venezuela. The top ten violent jurisdictions feature a 50/50 split between latin american and african dominated populations. In fact, you have to go all the way down to 26 (Greenland) to find a non black/non hispanic dominated jurisdiction.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

    You’d expect latin american murder victimization to be right up there with african american murder victimization. In fact, since hispanic population figures now make them a significantly larger minority, your analysis would indicate that latin american murder victims should be a larger number than black murder victims, right? The actual hispanic/latino figure is 1,729, a small fraction of the black rate.

    I’ve no knowledge of how influential the factors you cite are. It’s not really my field. However, you don’t need to be an expert to see that the discrepancy between hispanic and african american murders needs a better explanation for your theory to hold water.

  3. please show examples of the supposed GOP sin of not speaking as if black lives matter … sounds like you want some sort of racial speaking quota … maybe you should start with ALL LIVES MATTER and dispense with your racialist attitude …

  4. KaiserDerden – Sometimes race matters. Go take a look at suicide rates for example:
    http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/rates02.html

    Here, the big at risk group is whites on a numeric basis and on a rate basis native indians/alaskan natives edge them out. The case of murder shows a very different at risk group.

    The idea that a plurality (and almost a majority) of US murders happen to a race that’s less than 15% of the population and that race doesn’t matter in the case of murder is something that needs to be proven. Numbers this out of whack don’t just happen, year after year on a random basis. The global UN statistics on homicides show that black and hispanic populations dominate the statistics. We would expect similar results within the US, especially within newly arrived populations that carry their violence prone culture with them across the border. But the numbers don’t match when you look at the US.

    The problem with the GOP is that the GOP doesn’t go after the black vote and hasn’t for decades. It has an admirable story on policy but it doesn’t toot its own horn. It does this to such an extent that it has largely become socially unacceptable for black people to be Republicans regardless of policy affinity. There is a social price to be paid if you’re a black Republican and not a lot of electoral benefit if you go after the black vote as a Republican. In the off year when electoral considerations are not at the forefront, the GOP needs to let blacks know that the party isn’t blind to these outsized murder numbers and lay out how the policies that are already being advocated by the GOP are a better solution than the policies advocated by the Democratic party to address these problems.

    I have a great admiration for Jack Kemp, a genuine Republican who did, in fact, go after the black vote and got a significant number of black votes in his western NY district. Will I recount the private conversations with committeemen and candidates on how we should be emulating that approach to the black vote? No. Those are private. I will just say that I fully understand that the party is in the business of winning elections and making a serious play for a demographic that, in the best case, you are going to lose 4:1 is a tough sell. That strategy is, however, bad for the republic.

  5. I do not think for a moment that Republicans have ever spoken as if black lives do not matter. However, no matter what they say, the message from the media will be that Republicans are the modern incarnation of the KKK.

    Furthermore, if black people want non-black people to think that black lives matter, they should start acting as if black lives matter. They need to start sending the thugs that terrorize their communities to jail. They need to stop using “no snitching” as a slogan, and start calling the cops to report crimes and cooperating with police and prosecutors. If black lives matter, black people who serve on juries need to vote for conviction of black criminals. If black lives matter, they need stop using abortion as their preferred means of contraception. They need to marry before they have children, send their kids to school, and make sure their kids study. They need to stop valorizing “gangstas”, pimps, “hos”, and “ballers”. In short, if black lives matter, black people are going to have to change their ways.

  6. With all due respect, the obvious marker in this case is racial; but the actual difference is cultural. Every immigrant group that has assimilated into the American version of Western European culture approaches the societal norms for criminal conduct and positive achievement. Those who remain separate, through deliberate separation or imposed segregation underachieve and have higher rates of criminal conduct.

    From the end of slavery until the early 1960’s the separation was imposed by White society. I will insist on noting that despite the cultural meme that it was the evil southerners who did this; the north was in the main just as bigoted. And from experience and observation growing up in Kansas in the 1950’s and for a few years in Nebraska in the 1960’s, also in the Midwest. It is interesting in that during that period, the Black culture in the US aspired to imitate the White culture. And in fact, it had higher rates of employment, marriage, and church attendance; and lower divorce rates.

    Since the 1960’s Civil Rights movement, the cultural tendency has been to reject the mainstream society with disastrous results. This has been exacerbated by the institutionalization of Affirmative Action. If the standards used by the mainstream culture do not apply, legally, and both political parties, and the media, and the entertainment-industrial complex for at least generations have extolled the separateness, the lack of accountability, and undesirability of success on society’s terms to American Blacks; we have reaped what we have sown.

    I will grant that it is the Left and the Democrats who have promoted this the hardest. They have no concern for Black Americans as Americans or as people. They are a dependent class and reliable political power base. But consistently, it has been the Republicans who have gone along with it, out of reluctance to get involved with the Black culture, and out of abject terror at being lambasted by the media and the entertainment-industrial complex.

    In the off year when electoral considerations are not at the forefront, the GOP needs to let blacks know that the party isn’t blind to these outsized murder numbers and lay out how the policies that are already being advocated by the GOP are a better solution than the policies advocated by the Democratic party to address these problems.

    Right now, the Republican Party is incapable of convincing its own voting base that it is anything but a cat’s paw for the Democrats. It, very reluctantly and as little as possible, will mouth some conservative sentiments during election campaigns. But it goes to war with any real conservatives who run as Republicans, going so far as to openly and actively ally themselves with the Democrats and throw the elections.

    When in office, they vote with the Democrats to fund the very policies that destroy not only the Black community, but also the nation itself. Last session’s acceptance of presidential rule by decree proved that there is no longer any reason to vote for Republicans nor a measurable amount of difference between the two parties. We are a one-party state.

    With that as the set of facts on the ground, the Republican party can’t make the case for their policies, because no one believes that they have any intention of carrying out anything that they claim to believe.

    I would also like to make a note of something that seems to have been missed. Yes, there is a horrendous difference in the murder rates between Blacks and Whites. And all violent crimes.

    I commend the following edition of FIREWALL by Bill Whittle to the attention of all.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGTUcS-yQtQ

    2010: White on Black crimes reported to police – 62,593. Black on White crimes reported to police – 320,082. 5 times the rate.

    But when you adjust for the different racial percentages of the American population, the Black on White crime rate is actually 25 times higher than the White on Black crime rate. When you break out Aggravated Assault [that is, use of a weapon] the Black on White rate is 200 times the White on Black rate.

    One has to wonder if the differences are resolvable by political action [especially since there is really only one political party], political words, or the actions and goodwill of the population as a whole. Not all societal or political problems have a happy ending.

    Subotai Bahadur

  7. To TM Lutas – US Hispanic average IQ is about 90 as opposed to about 85 for US blacks. I believe that Hispanic levels of low repeat alleles of the MAOA gene are much nearer to white levels than black levels. Of course violent crime like all human behavior is multifactorial however the unusually high level of low repeat alleles of the MAOA gene among blacks is very interesting and the relation of this to the tendency of black populations to high rates of violence warrants careful investigation.

  8. Robert Schwartz – To clarify, my problem is that the GOP simply doesn’t talk. It’s a sin of omission, not commission. The job of a party is to seek out votes. Republicans have no trouble making appeals to the Cuban exile community. I believe that somewhere in my father’s desk drawer is a Romanian-Americans for Reagan button. These outreach efforts have various levels of success but I do agree with you that the media tends to do a lot of heavy lifting for the Democrats and has successfully scared many Republicans off from reaching out to blacks. That has led to a very dangerous situation where the only people really appealing for the black vote are people who are pushing policies that are not in the interests of black america.

    I have to disagree with you that blacks must do anything to convince us that black lives matter. Life is an inalienable right. All lives matter. Even if Baal or Moloch rose again, the lives of the believers of such evil gods would still matter. Blacks, who are nowhere near that low level shouldn’t even be a hard call.

    Subotai Bahadur – I think that it’s possible that some sections of the civil rights movement agitated for such separatist foolishness but I’d like you to consider an alternate cause, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs which have had a pernicious effect on everyone entangled in them. Due to the malign effects of Jim Crow, blacks were more vulnerable to them and thus disproportionately caught up in their trap.

    I do not disagree with Bill Whittle’s numbers. You’ve gotten ahead of me a little bit, in fact. If black lives matter, then we should be going after the biggest cause of all those black murders. That is the other blacks who are killing them.

    Inter-racial crime of all types is dwarfed by the crime committed by members of all racial groups against their own. Those interracial crimes Bill is talking about are there and we should be concerned about them. But they’re not the biggest story. In terms of raw numbers of crimes, the biggest numbers are black on black crimes. If black lives matter, finding a way to stop blacks killing other blacks has to be job #1 and anybody who tries to distract from this elephant in the middle of the room is not actually concerned about black lives.

    To drive those murder rates down, a combination of rigorous policing in black neighborhoods and the encouragement of a healthy black gun culture are needed. In both cases the Democrats tend to stand in the way.

  9. “I have to disagree with you that blacks must do anything to convince us that black lives matter. Life is an inalienable right.”

    Yes, all lives matter. But, until blacks begin to act like they believe it, and include themselves, they will be at odds with the rest of the world.

  10. All the global crime folks in this conversation need to stop talking with cross sections and start thinking in time series.

    if black people want non-black people to think that black lives matter, they should start acting as if black lives matter.

    & since I’ve commented on this thread, I might as well add for the record: What an utterly despicable thing to say. Or think. There is no Christianity in such notions.

  11. The one statistic studiously ignored is that the crime rate among intact black families is about the same as the general population.

  12. Jim – there’s some research (not sure how reliable) that identifiable ethnics in the US tend to have similar criminality profiles as in their old country. How strong this effect is and how long it lasts is not clear to me, however, if the old immigration of black slaves is supposed to match their region of origin, you’d almost have to expect that the hispanics would do the same, especially since they are, collectively, newer in country with significant new blood coming in every year from countries of origin.

    The problem with your theory is that reality simply doesn’t match it. It seems that the hispanic crime rate is too low for your idea to be able to explain all of the crime difference and thus, it looks like there may really be public policy choices that we are making that are hurting our black fellow citizens. To the extent that we are doing so, we need to stop it. It is only common decency to commit to such a course and to work hard to achieve what improvement can be made.

    T. Greer – I agree that there is a time component to crime. As the article you linked to makes clear in the subsequent discussion, these things don’t have to be either/or. As to your observation about christianity, I would tend to agree, though coming from an identity named Schwartz, this lack of christian virtue may not have the corrective effect you obviously intend. This is why I am not making the same argument but rather trying to draw on more universal ones. Robert Schwartz might be an atheist or a buddhist for all we know.

  13. The one statistic studiously ignored is that the crime rate among intact black families is about the same as the general population.

    The central problem is the welfare state and the perverse anti-family and anti-work incentives it creates.

    The growth of the black middle class is one of this country’s major successes of the past few generations. We don’t hear much about this phenomenon because it’s not dramatic and is difficult for pols and race hucksters to exploit.

  14. I am a man named Robert Schwartz. At least one Chicago Boyz author has meet me in the flesh.

    I am a Jew, and damned proud of it.

    The point of morality must not be speech. It must be action. You cannot assert a moral truth, and then act as if you do not believe it. Your actions discredit your assertion. That is what I meant, and that is what I said.

    I accept that “black lives matter”, because I believe that all human lives matter. I view that as something that is positively commanded in the Torah (Gen 1:26-27, Lev 19:18,34-35, Dt 30:19). The criticism of the president of Smith College for saying that “all lives matter” shows how warped leftist identity politics have become.

    However, to say that black people who want others to believe that black lives matter must act as if they believe that to be true, is not wrong, unjust, or untrue. If black people act as if black lives do not matter, their slogan is cant and hypocrisy, and it will not be believed.

  15. “The one statistic studiously ignored is that the crime rate among intact black families is about the same as the general population.”

    Don’t confuse the map with the terrain.

    “What an utterly despicable thing to say. Or think. There is no Christianity in such notions.”

    It is difficult to help those who will not help themselves. Good thing that I’m not a Christian.

  16. Robert Schwartz – There’s a very famous New Yorker cartoon on the subject of Internet identities. It reads “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. It’s a common problem to not be certain who is the flesh and blood person behind the keystrokes. You say you’re a jew and that’s good enough for me. I guessed you were off the name but didn’t want to assume. The buddhist bit was a half joke.

    The point of morality may be speech or action, depending on the situation. If someone says a falsehood, the remedy may be speech, especially if it is an unintentional falsehood.

    The leftists have set up a situation where they speak a truth, black lives matter, in the hopes of drawing opposition to their poorly crafted solutions. This reinforces the social impermissibility of blacks to vote Republican. Avoiding the trap by not saying anything leaves the impression of GOP indifference. That is an inferior strategy. Better to agree with the truth that black lives matter and apply some verbal judo to make it clear that those who focus on a tiny part of the problem, unjustified police violence, to the exclusion of any effort to solve the bulk of the problem, which is black criminals preying on other blacks, are themselves objectively anti-black. This is true no matter the melanin content of their skin.

    Paying attention to these outsized murder victim statistics and honestly seeking to identify the major causes is part of the job of GOP officeholders. They should embrace it, not dodge it. They should do so because that’s part of their job and is an obligation independent of how screwed up black political activists are. Visibly acting to do their jobs when there’s no obvious payoff for them politically or personally would, paradoxically, help them because it would create something that is currently in short supply among Republicans, credibility.

  17. At least the MAOA gene is getting discussion which is more than some other politically incorrect subjects did. My best example is the Atkins Diet which was the subject of such hatred that many on the looney vegetarian left celebrated when Atkins died. We have spent years under the baleful influence of diet theories that are wrong and and have probably led to the obesity epidemic. Although the new theory about intestinal bacterial flora and obesity is interesting.

    The MAOA gene studies suggest, at least, that testosterone, contrary to feminist orthodoxy, is not the source of aggression.

    Catecholaminergic systems are involved in the regulation of aggressive behavior; this regulation is implemented in interactions with other neurobiological mechanisms. Most of the available evidence indicates that norepinephrine and dopamine lower the threshold for an aggressive response to environmental stimuli. Two major enzymes are responsible for catecholamine catabolism in the brain: catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) and monoamine oxidase A (MAOA).

    The gene is X-linked so maybe we have an explanation of some angry females.

  18. >>My best example is the Atkins Diet…

    My former doctor was a big fan. He asked me once, what do you know about nutrition? I answered that I knew almost nothing. He suggested I read that book, starting with chapter three. He discusses how different foods are metabolized, which was fascinating.

    Things I didn’t know:

    To your body, orange juice and Coke look like the same drink, except one has vitamin C. Otherwise, they’re both flavored sugar water. This is true for all fruit juices.

    You’re much better off eating your bread with butter or cream cheese or some other fatty spread. It slows down the metabolization of the carbs because they’re combined with the fats. The sugars derived from the carbs go into your system much more slowly, and as a result you don’t spike your blood sugar.

    Bacon and eggs and fresh sliced fruit is very healthy breakfast, provided you don’t eat too many eggs per week. Steak and salad is a healthy dinner.

    Lots of interesting stuff in that book. His biggest message was that sugars are your enemy, not fats.

  19. Mr. Lutas: I think I now understand the root of our political disagreement.

    To Democrat politicians, the world consists of affinity groups, many of which are ethnic (e.g. blacks, Jews, Irish), but which may be life cycle (e,g, young people, single women, senior citizens), or economic (e.g. plaintiff side trial lawyers, teacher’s, union members). The job of the politician is to craft an appeal to each group without alienating other groups. They mostly prey on fears. They go to blacks and claim that Republicans are white racists. They go to teachers unions and tell them that school choice will destroy public school systems. They promise money out of the big rock candy mountain to their loyal followers.

    Democrats are aided in this effort by the media which shapes its budget of dezinformatsiya to fit the Democrats desired memes and is careful to mention the over the top ones out of market. Trayvon, Ferguson, and Eric Garner were stories all pushed for this purpose.

    The politician’s parasites: consultants, pollsters, pundits, and “political scientists” constantly look for marketing strategies based on the fundamental world view of the Democrat politicians. They are always too happy to tell Republicans that the Democrats have iced the game and resistance is futile.

    The need for this system is further trumpeted by the lumpen intellectuals of the American academy who have mutated cultural Marxism into victimology, and indoctrinated undergraduates with it until they can no longer see straight.

    Recommendations to Republicans to try to play this game with groups defined the way that Democrats define them are recommendations to continue to lose.

    The correct counter to the Democrat political game is not to play it. It is to redefine politics as ideas, as patriotism, as appeals to free and equal citizens.

    Black lives matter is a slogan created by victimoloigists. The President of Smith College was attacked for saying that all lives matter, because that would break the victim group narrative that the Democrat party depends on. Republicans should shun slogans like black lives matter because all lives matter. Republicans should appeal to blacks not as victim group, but as independent citizens of a free republic. Sure some ethnic and other groups will remain loyal to the Democrats, but a majority of Americans will support the party that advocates liberty and justice for all.

  20. It’s so crazy, like a slogan that “The Sky Is Blue.” Sure, OK, the sky is blue. “So we have to have a welfare state that destroys family structures and inhibits useful participation in the free market by our most vulnerable social groups, thereby denying to them the source of the greatest improvement in material wellbeing ever offered to human beings on this planet. And if you refuse to go along with that, you’re denying that the sky is blue, and you’re a hater.”

    A slogan, to be helpful, has not only to be true but to be linked to some rational combination of cause and effect that might drive a policy to improve things.

    I know, I know, no way to win an election, right?

  21. “sugars are your enemy, not fats.”

    Especially complex sugars like those in pasta and tortillas.

    “To Democrat politicians, the world consists of affinity groups,”

    Jay Cost’s book, Spoiled Rotten goes into this in detail.

    Allen West posted a link to an interesting article today, The Most Racist Article You Will Ever Read.

    It’s by a public defender and is similar to another article by a teacher I read in the “Black and Right” website. I can’t find it there but here is a link to the article, “Teaching in an all-black school.”

    I suspect that the MAOA gene is involved here, too although the pathology is more common if the public defender is to be believed. None of this, of course, will ever see the light of day in a mainstream publication.

  22. Robert Schwartz – Black lives matter, which is why we oppose Democratic efforts to divide americans into groups and play them off against each other. Is affirming that we actually do care about you and that the best deal is the american deal, not the 3 card monte special on offer from the Democratic party something that must be done without any reference whatsoever to the Democratic party talking point you’re trying to refute?

    How do you effectively teach people not to fall victim to political 3 card monte scams without teaching them the rules of 3 card monte? It can’t be done. The scamsters just change the name of the scam and you’re right back to square one. The point of this post was to dig into the facts and demonstrate that the people waving the bloody shirt ostensibly on behalf of blacks are the enemies of black people. Digging into the facts, checking to make sure that solutions proposed actually solve the biggest part of the problem, and making sure that the solution proposed doesn’t actually, on balance, make the problem worse is the only long-term tool to escape these sorts of shameful tactics.

    Texan99 – Black lives matter is a motherhood and apple pie statement. It’s only worth mentioning when somebody in the room actually disagrees which is why the Democrats are beating this drum. They hope to drive the meme that Republicans are anti-black a little bit further in order to drive turnout for the next elections.

    I would speculate that there are probably some house districts where the numbers of murder victims are not so racially out of whack. I would guess that these are disproportionately in GOP controlled districts. Doing the math and saying so would be a powerful inducement for Democrats to change the subject.

  23. An interesting post over at PJ Media about how Hollywood won’t make a “James Bond ” film with a black actor because it won’t sell tickets in Europe or Asia.

    Everybody (else) knows (or should by now, thanks to those leaked Sony emails) that movies with black leads don’t do well overseas, and the overseas market is where blockbusters finally earn back their hundred-million dollar budgets and “go into the black,” as it were. They matter more than the domestic market, which is part of the reason today’s movies are mostly flashy, empty franchise cud.

    I hadn’t thought about that since Denzel Washington did so well in Much Ado About Nothing as the prince.

    I guess we don’t know enough about racism.

  24. Mike K – We would do well to fund movies that catered to american tastes and to blazes with the overseas market tastes. Paradoxically, I think that such movies would probably have a surprisingly large overseas appeal.

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