Do Black Lives Really Matter? It Depends on Who You Ask...

Do black lives really matter? Apparently it depends on who you're asking. In what seems counter intuitive in 2021, the answer from conservatives is generally yes, in that they believe all lives matter, regardless of color.  They will tell you that society and government should strive to be colorblind and that someone should never get less or more based on the color of their skin. The goal is to get government out of the way and let all citizens pursue freedom and opportunity equally, regardless of color.

For liberals however, the answer is quite different.  They say “Yes! Black Lives Matter!” But like the man who kisses his wife goodbye and tells her he loves her before he flies off to Miami for a “business meeting” that’s really just a premise for a romp with his mistress, it’s a lie. And it’s not even close.  Liberals don’t care about black Americans – other than their votes.  Three issues demonstrate it clearly.

First:  Murders.  The “Defund the Police” movement took center stage last summer.  The claim is essentially that police are killing innocent black men across the country, that white cops are hunting down black men and killing them. That is of course a fiction.  It’s not an exaggeration, it’s not hyperbole.  It’s fiction created out of whole cloth.  In 2019, there were a total of 1,089 people killed by police in America, 877 of which race was known. Of that 877 number 259, or 29% were black, 9 of whom were unarmed – although unarmed is not synonymous with innocent.  Given that blacks make up 12% of the population that 29% seems disproportionate.  At the same time however, given that black men make up 6% of the American population but are responsible for approximately 55% of all murders, the 29% of those killed by police doesn’t seem so disproportionate after all. 

But facts be damned!  So Black Lives Matter, Democrats and Antifa got together and pushed the Defund the Police movement.  Across the country police forces faced budget cuts, manpower shortages and the Ferguson Effect where officers subtly pull back from enforcement activities because they’re worried about being scapegoated by administrations that don’t have their backs.

The result of this insanity?  Crime is up around the country and, surprise, more dead black people… How many?  A lot.  Murders increased by 25% in the United States in 2020, more than double the increase in any year since at least 1960.  The total was 20,480, an increase of 4,056 over 2019, and given that blacks generally make up approximately 60% of murder victims, the leftist attack on American policing cost the lives of 2,474 black Americans.  That’s 2,474 funerals, families devastated and opportunities lost.  Those 2,474 black lives didn’t seem to matter.

On October 1^st the New York Post ran a piece about the 21 children who have been murdered this year, triple the number from both 2019 and 2020.  The cover image was heartbreaking… but one notices that of the 18 faces shown, at least 17 of them are black.  Apparently those black lives don’t matter. 

Nor for that matter do the average citizens of urban communities who for years decried the lack of services in their neighborhoods.  Given the rampant crime in cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of small businesses who serve those communities have closed and large businesses are following suit.  In San Francisco the shoplifting has become so rampant that Walgreens has just announced it’s closing 5 more stores, which comes on the heels of 17 already closed due to shoplifting.  That will no doubt make life easier for the elderly black Americans who need to get their medicines or citizens looking for snacks or Band Aids or Halloween candy.  Their black lives don't seem to matter.

Second:  Schools:

Education is one of the most important elements of the lives of Americans.  School is often where young people learn to socialize, follow directions, work hard, pay attention and maybe be part of a team.  Of course all of that is secondary to the primary object of schools, which is teaching math, reading, writing, science and history.  On all of that, public schools in America are failing black students miserably.

Here’s proof.  Below are the 2019 scores in math and reading for black 8^th grade students in eleven of the largest school districts.

Black 8th grade students proficient in:
	Math	Reading
Atlanta	10%	15%
Baltimore	6%	10%
Chicago	15%	16%
Dallas	10%	7%
Denver	13%	14%
Detroit	4%	5%
Los Angeles	8%	9%
Miami	12%	13%
New York	10%	14%
Philadelphia	8%	13%
Washington, DC	11%	14%

Source: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/districts/scores/?grade=4
(Scroll to bottom of page and select the city then 8^th grade)

What are these numbers?  They are the number of black 8^th grade students who are PROFICIENT or above in math and reading.  The average rate of achievement of proficient or above is 10% for math and 12% for reading.  That means that literally 90% of the black 8^th graders fail math and 88% fail reading. 

This is a staggering level of failure on the part of schools.  Education is one of the most fundamental elements in equipping a young person for success in life and the public schools across the country are failing black students, criminally.  And just to be clear, it doesn’t have to be that way.  Watch Stand and Deliver or Lean on Me – both based on true stories – to see that it doesn’t have to be that way.  Or read about the Harlem Success Academy in New York or the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta.  Sadly, in most of America’s school systems young black lives don’t seem to matter. 

Third:  Open Borders

Employment is the single biggest driver of prosperity and financial success. Many, if not most Americans start out working at entry level jobs, often making minimum wage or somewhere close to it.  From there generally, as they gain work experience, confidence and skills, most people advance to different jobs or get promoted in ways that see their incomes increase. 

To the degree that many of the ill educated black students America's government schools are producing can get jobs, those jobs are likely to be entry level jobs.  But for decades the opportunities for those entry level jobs has been undermined by unfettered illegal immigration.  The result is that many of those entry level jobs are filled by illegal immigrants rather than by young black Americans.  As such, the opportunities for employment leading to advancement and financial and social success for those unskilled and uneducated black youth are curtailed dramatically.  Without such entry level jobs, the kind one would use to acquire the skills and experience needed to achieve the American dream, their opportunities are largely nonexistent.  Apparently their black lives don’t matter. 

All three of these areas are owned, lock stock and barrel by Democrats.  Democrats are the ones who want to defund the police.  Democrats control the teachers’ unions and almost every major city in the country where the schools are so bad.  Democrats are the ones who want open borders and refuse to enforce immigration laws.

There are other things as well, like Democrat social programs responsible for the dissolution of the black family and keeping generations of families on government handouts, but these three alone are enough to demonstrate that indeed, black lives don’t matter, at least not to Democrats. 

They want black votes and they use black faces and black stories to increase budgets, grow their bureaucratic ranks and strengthen their regulatory power, but they don’t actually care about black men and women and children.  And that’s the irony here. The worse conditions get for black Americans, the more black Americans vote for Democrats, the very party that played such a central role in the destruction of the black American family in the first place.  It reminds one of the ironic saying: “The beatings will continue until morale improves”.   

First They Came...

With a respectful nod to Martin Niemöller, I present First They Came...

The Driving While Black Meme And Other Fictions Fueling The Burning of Cities

Ever since the protests of the killing of George Floyd began, the phrases “America is a racist nation”, “Institutional Racism” and “White Privilege” seem to have become ubiquitous. The sad thing – among so many others about all of this – is that these seem to be considered the end all and be all for some who are engaged in the debate. The reality that cops are 18 times more likely to be killed by a black man than they are to kill an unarmed black man… Doesn’t matter. Institutional racism! The fact that the poorest 20% of Americans are more prosperous than the average European… So what! America is a racist nation. That blacks make 8% of America's millionaires… Obviously white privilege.

We’ve been hearing for at least the last 30 years that America needs to have a conversation about race. But how are we supposed to have such a conversation when one side is not interested in facts? How are we supposed to address real problems if rather than focus on facts and data one side only wants to focus on anecdotal evidence? For example, cops and race. one can certainly appreciate that different people have different experiences with cops. Race is no doubt one of many factors that impact how those experiences play out. But everything else does too. Everything from height to girth to behavior to dress to politeness to language and countless other variables, verbal and non verbal all play a role. Race may even be one of the major factors, but it is far from the only one or even likely the primary one. Most – though not all – of the videos we see where someone is hurt or even killed by cops, whether the person is black or white, involves some level of conflict such as resisting arrest, ignoring warnings or things of that nature. Cops can and do make mistakes, but most interactions not only don’t end up with someone dead on the sidewalk, they don’t even end up with an arrest.

Not sure about that? Here’s the data. According to the FBI, in 2015 of 250 million Americans, 53 million of them had contact with police, one half of those initiated by police the other half by citizens. Of police initiated contacts 11.2% of whites had some interaction with police, while 11.3% of blacks did. The numbers remain consistent whether the person earned $24,000 or less a year or $75,000 or more a year.

We’ve often heard about the phenomena of the extraordinary perils of “Driving while Black”. The data don’t support that charge either. The percentage of white drivers who experienced a traffic stop: 8.6%. The percentage of black drivers: 9.8%. The percentage of stopped white drivers to receive a ticket: 46.4%; black drivers: 49.9%. The percentage of white drivers who were arrested as the result of a traffic stop: .3%. The percentage of black drivers who were arrested as the result of traffic stops: .5%. What these numbers mean is that out of 1,000 white drivers, 86 could be expected to be stopped by police and 3 could expect to be arrested. Of a similar number of black drivers, 98 could expect to be stopped by police and 5 could expect to be arrested. Further, of those traffic stops, 96.1% of whites believed that police had a legitimate reason for stopping them while 94.5% of blacks did. Finally, FBI data from 2008 show that of those who had contact with police, the average number of times a white person interacted with police was 1.7 times while for blacks it was 1.6 times.

These numbers tell a vastly different story than the one being told on the streets and in the media. These numbers indicate that most Americans, regardless of color have no contact with police during any given year, and even if they did, they face a tiny chance of being arrested. The differences in being stopped by police while driving, getting a ticket or getting arrested as a result of said stops varies only slightly between races. The number of multiple contacts between police and citizens is almost identical between races and is slightly lower for blacks.

Of course any conversation on race police would include other data like the fact that black males make up 6% of the population but represent 53% of known homicide offenders and commit about 60% of robberies.  And a wider conversation would include factors such as income and wealth gaps would be part of any such discussion as well as the impact education and unwed motherhood have on poverty rates. But it's the relationship between race and police that are animating the events of today.

As such, the overarching question is, do these numbers tell a story of a nation policed by an army of inherently racist storm troopers where blacks are oppressed by virtue of the color of their skin? No they don’t. Differences in the data do exist, but they are staggeringly small… but differences exist everywhere between people of different sexes, heights, weights, skin tone, amount of acne, hair and simple beauty. Not to mention religion, education, income as well as less distinct things like assertiveness, shyness, personality and level of politeness… The cornucopia of characteristics that impact our daily lives is almost infinite and race is but one of them, and a small one at that.

At the end of the day the data indicate that there is no significant bias on the part of police contacts with citizens based on race. Certainly nothing sufficient to warrant the burning of cities and neighborhoods across the country. Given that, one has to ask, what else might be going on here?  That something else is the media’s hatred for Donald Trump and BLM and the rest of the victim industrial complex’s desire for power. For them, burning the country to the ground is just another means to their ends of extinguishing individual liberty, crushing capitalism and most of all, getting rid of Donald Trump.  That's the real story that the data tell.

Vietnam War Playbook Repeats Itself In American Cities...

Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize that history is being written while you are in the middle of it actually taking place. Such is I think the situation we are in the middle of today with the riots associated with the murder of George Floyd.

Probably no sentient person in the country would have condoned what we saw on that video as the breath was literally pressed out of Mr. Floyd. On the contrary, almost every single person who responded, black, white, police, civilian, politician or guy on the street expressed revulsion for the officer’s conduct. Thankfully, from the moment that video was shared, the wheels of justice were indeed turning, with all four officers being fired immediately and culminating in the primary officer being arrested within days.

Despite this, protests began, followed by looting and then riots. None of those things are surprising given the media’s glee at any opportunity to use anecdotal evidence to try and convince blacks that they are victims and that the police are out to get them.  It's all in furtherance of media / Democrat’s default narrative that America is a racist nation. Mix Black Lives Matter with the Bernie Bros of Antifa and you have a rather predictable combustible setting. Anytime you have large groups of young people who feel the government is their enemy, it's difficult to keep the Molotov Cocktails in their bottles.

None of that is new… but what is new is police chiefs and officers and mayors kneeling with and embracing protesters, as if the idea of “If we just understand their pain” will turn everything down to simmer and will bring about peaceful coexistence. I doubt it. This is a moment in time not unlike the watershed event of the capitulation of the administration of Columbia Univ. in 1968 which ushered in students taking over universities and turning American colleges into progressive propaganda factories.

If the chiefs et al think that embracing the protesters is going to bring about harmony, they will soon be disabused of such notions. While the media continues to proffer the fiction that the protests have been mostly peaceful, the reality is obviously different. For an entire week Americans have been watching blue cities across the country go up in flames, seen bottles and bricks thrown, police cars set ablaze and businesses big and small get looted and destroyed. Just last night, exactly one week since Mr. Floyd’s death, a police officer is shot in the head in Las Vegas, four officers were shot in St Louis, a car rammed into officers in Buffalo in the Bronx a cop was beaten while onlookers videotaped and egged the assailants on.

The people causing this mayhem have no interest in being heard or understood. Their goal is not a better neighborhood, city or America. They want to loot, they want to destroy, they want to cause chaos, and fundamentally, they want to start a revolution because they have no vested interest in things like private property, rule of law, capitalism and freedom.

Given the decades long endless undermining of such ideas from the media, from Democrats, and the education machinery at all levels, it’s no surprise that millions of young Americans, both black and white are happy to not only stand by and watch as their cities and the country burn, but more, they want to participate in it. This all reminds me of something I read 25 years ago in a biography by Peter G. MacDonald of North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap. In reference to the Vietnam War in general and the Tet Offensive in particular Giap said something to the effect that “We didn’t have to win the war on the ground, we only had to win over the American media and they would do the rest.” Probably not an exact quote - it's been a quarter century after all! - but the truth of his sentiments can be seen in the widespread notion at the time that the United States was defeated in the Tet Offensive. Completely wrong. After the initial surprise the North Vietnamese were not only repelled, but their army was so badly destroyed that Giap considered surrendering. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to... The American media did their job and the tide eventually turned against the war.

Today on a much different playing field the leftist media and their Democrat partners are playing the same role and but it’s not on some far off field where Americans are dying, it’s here in the United States and the enemy of freedom the media and Democrats are supporting is not some foreign army, but rather the looters and anarchists who seek to burn the place to the ground and start a real revolution. By lying about the peaceful nature of the protests, by lying about the prevalence of police brutality, by lying about America being a racist and fundamentally unjust society, they are tearing at the frayed threads that already keep young people connected to the nation and its values.  In doing so they are encouraging the destruction you see across the country today.

As Rudy Giuliani demonstrated when he saved literally thousands of black lives by simply enforcing the law, the only way to stop this chaos is to actually enforce the law and arrest or shoot if necessary the rioters who are destroying American cities and threatening the lives of police and civilians alike. Unless governors and mayors step up and decide to win this war for America's soul rather than hold hands with and tolerate the terrorists, 2020 looks like it might just be another long hot summer.

Helter Skelter: Black Lives Matter trying to succeed where Charles Manson failed…

Not in the literal sense. Charles Manson wanted to incite a race war because he thought that after a race war that saw blacks kill all non blacks (Manson and his “family” would survive however…) that he would return to rule them. You can be pretty sure that the Black Lives Matter guys aren’t seeking to start a race war so they can be ruled by a white guy… But they certainly seem to want a race war.

Just as Charles Manson was not connected with reality, the ideas behind the Black Lives Matter movement are equally disconnected to reality. Remember “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!”?

Black Lives Matter peddles the fiction that black men across the country are in mortal danger from police. That is simply a lie. An interesting study was just reported in the New York Times that showed that although black men are approximately 20% more likely to have a physical confrontation with police when compared with white men, they are also approximately 20% LESS likely to be shot by police when compared with white men in similar situations… A few years ago the Washington Post reported similar findings.

What is not a lie however is the fact that the lives of black man are indeed in danger, but that danger comes from other black men… not the police. To put that in crystal clear perspective, according to the CDC, the number one cause of death among black men between the ages of 15 & 34 is homicide. Literally, 43.7% of the young men in that cohort who die each year are murdered! The equivalent rate for white men in the same cohort is 7.3%. And regardless of the lies BLM tells you, most of those thousands of young black men are not being killed by police, they are being killed by other black men.

And it is thousands… In 2014, according to the FBI, 5,209 black men were murdered in the United States, 90% of those by other black men. During that same year 268 black men were killed by the police… that number includes criminals in shootouts with police, those resisting arrest and others threatening citizens. In addition, typically only 10% of those killed by police are unarmed, although unarmed doesn’t mean they weren’t a danger to police or others.  So, as a thought exercise, let's imagine that 50% of the fatal shootings of black men were unjustified.  That would mean that 134 innocent black men were killed by police that year.  At the same time, we know that 5,209 black men were killed, 90% of them by other blacks.  That equates to 4,688 black men killed by other black men.  So... do the math absent the BLM calculator... even assuming that 50% of all police shootings of black men are unjustified - when the real number is likely in the low single digits - black men are still 35 times as likely to be killed by other black men than they are by the police.

There are no doubt instances of innocent black men being killed by bad cops. But that number is literally a tiny fraction of the encounters black men have with cops annually. And that's the problem with the BLM. It's a race pimp movement that focuses massive amounts of attention on a problem that is infinitesimally small when compared to real dangers that black men face... i.e. murder at the hands of other black men, violence perpetrated by other black men, unemployment, lack of positive role models in the home, etc.

BLM makes it out as if America in 2016 is the same as it was in 1950 and maybe not so different than it was in 1870... But that's simply not true. We've probably come 95% of the way in eliminating racial barriers in this country and while more still needs to be done, BLM proffers the fiction that the problem keeping so many black men from succeeding in America is white cops and institutional racism. Neither is true, and to the extent that BLM and Al Sharpton and Barack Obama focus on that they aren't focusing on the real, substantive issues that could give young black men real opportunities to succeed in life like a good education, a good entry level job to learn marketable skills and a nuclear family where a mother and father are able to provide good moral values and teach him to work hard, have respect for others and basically how to grow up to be a successful man.

But those things are hard and there’s no press or money in it while protesting and snarling traffic are easy… and they generate lots of press and big checks from liberal white guys like George Soros. And that’s the key to understanding the BLM movement… It’s fundamentally just another liberal group seeking money and power. Facts don’t matter. Results don’t matter. BLM is little different than the government’s war on poverty. Americans have spent $40 trillion “fighting” poverty and we’re exactly where we were when we started. The program is a failure, but lots of people are making lots of money off it. Same deal with the ethanol boondoggle.

Liberals aren’t in the business of solving problems. They are in the business of getting money for pretending to try and solve problems. Facts and outcomes are simply irrelevant. Success is measured by how much money or TV appearances can be generated, not how many people can actually be helped. And so it is with the Black Lives Matter movement. Create the illusion that black men around the country are being hunted down and killed by an army of rouge racist white cops then step in and take up the position of defender of the innocents… This is pure propaganda for the purpose of gaining attention, money and finally power. So what if the fictional “Hands up! Don’t Shot!” meme set Ferguson, MO aflame? So what if protests ignite a powder keg in Baltimore that results in a sharp uptick in murders – most of the victims being black? So what if black men are so incensed by the BLM fiction that they start shooting cops from New York to Texas to Louisiana? Not really good for anybody, but at least the Black Lives Matter leaders get a lot of cable TV airtime.

It’s maybe no coincidence that race relations today seem to be as bad as they were in the 1960’s when Charles Manson was seeking to start his own race war. On the backdrop of a president who has been making race an issue for eight years we have Black Lives Matter out in the streets trying to incite unrest and acting as the spark for violent protests. When times are difficult and there is much angst among the citizenry there will always be charlatans who try to inflame tempers for their own gain. Charles Manson and the Black Lives Matter movements may have had very different long term goals, but the blood spilled in their names is very much the same. The only difference is that with BLM the amount of blood is much larger, and Charlie was never invited to the White House…

The Black Lives Matter Movement: The Preening of Petulant Millennials vs. Actually Accomplishing Anything

I remember once hearing a question posed by some would be philosopher: “If you could do something that cured all of the ills of the world, but only if someone you despised would get the credit, would you do it?” It’s an interesting question with a number of elements to it. Are you really a humanitarian or do you just want to be seen as such? What’s more important, your legacy or the lives of others? Are you able to overcome petty jealousy for the “greater good”? Of course as it’s a hypothetical question you can answer and gain all of the approval without actually having to do anything.

I couldn’t help but think about that question when I read about a group of Black Lives Matter protesters shutting down Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping district on Black Friday. The protests were in response to the killing of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. Shouting “No Justice, No Shopping” the protesters were demanding the resignation of the mayor, the police commissioner and the prosecutor. Their crimes? Not releasing the dashcam video earlier and taking too long to charge Van Dyke. He had been charged earlier in the week. Whether there was obstruction somewhere, we will see. Justice may be moving slowly, but the system is working.

But of course that doesn’t matter to the BLM protesters. The goal of the BLM movement is not to save black lives but rather to give protesters a feeling of making a difference while actually doing nothing. If the goal of the BLM movement was to save black lives, they would be protesting the murder of 9 year old Tyshawn Lee by a black gang member who targeted him because his father was in a rival gang. If the goal of the BLM was to save black lives they would be protesting the murder of another 9 year old, Jamyla Bolden, who was doing her homework at home when she was killed by a black man with a history of violence. If the goal of the BLM was to save black lives they would be protesting the drive by shooting of 10 year old Marlon Eason by two black gang members. But of course they’re not. We don’t see attempts to close down highways in Washington or restaurants in Atlanta to protest those killings.

Why? Because focusing on those kinds of things would take courage, would require more than facile sloganeering. The thing that distinguishes the BLM movement from real civil rights heroes of the last century is that men and women like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, John Lewis and thousands of others did what they did in the face of real racism and threats of real violence… when police were spraying them with fire hoses, siccing 100 lb dogs on them and beating them with clubs. And those were just the government officials in front of the cameras. With the killings of Medgar Evans, Wharlest Jackson, four little girls in a Birmingham Baptist church and many others it became clear that it wasn’t only racist police that had to be feared but Klansmen and others seeking to stop the march of civil rights at any cost. Despite all of that, there were tens of thousands of people across the country who marched and sat in and sued for equal rights. That was courage. And it made a difference.

What we see today from the BLM movement and much of the left is not only not courageous, it’s nonsensical… in addition to being a disgrace to the memory and history of real civil rights heroes. It’s easy to picket a store where people are just trying to do their Christmas shopping and few are going to bother trying to cross your lines when they can simply choose Amazon. It’s easy to sit down in a bucolic Ivy League library and spew epithets until the targets simply go away. It’s easy to go on strike if your football team is so bad it doesn’t have anything to play for in the first place. While these are all courageous “civil rights” actions in the eyes of the lefties, most importantly, they can get activists seen on TV, pretending to make a difference. But make no mistake… They’re not making a difference. They’re not fighting for the right to vote. They’re not fighting for equal access to schools and universities. They’re not fighting to remove Jim Crow laws. No, these “civil rights” activists are fighting for “safe spaces” where they won’t get their feelings hurt. They’re fighting for “justice” for Michael Brown, an 19 year old black man who was killed while attacking a police officer after he had committed a robbery. They’re fighting to take names off buildings of men whose lives did not comport to modern values.  They're fighting to remove flags they find offensive.

Which brings us back to the initial question… Do BLM protesters truly want to do things of consequence that might actually help improve the lives of black Americans or do they simply seek glory? Count one for vanity. Picket gangs who are killing hundreds of young black men and women and children each year? Nope. Organize voters to dump leftist Democrats whose progressive policies have victimized urban communities across the country and saddled them with failing schools, high taxes, staggering crime and stultifying unemployment? Nope. Fight to repair black families where 72% of all children are born to single mothers? Of course not.

We don’t hear much of that, if any, because the BLM movement isn’t about finding solutions to the challenges that many blacks face in America. No, the BLM movement is an attempt by petulant millennials and other SJWs to find their inner Kim Kardasian so that people will pay attention to them and they can pretend that they are making a difference. They are making a difference, but it’s not the one they think it is. Take a look at Baltimore, Ferguson, Chicago and New York and see what’s happening with crime in general and murder in particular after the movement demonized police. The majority of the victims of those crimes are black men and women and children, many of whom are just trying to make their way through their daily lives of work or school or raising a family. They are doing so do so in crime riddled Democrat communities enabled by “activists” like those from BLM who focus attention on easy targets where they know they will encounter little resistance, but in the end accomplish less than nothing.

They do have one thing right however. There are problems in black communities across the country. The problem is not police however. The problem is not white racism or institutional racism. While those problems will crop up now and again, the real problems of black communities have much more to do with family breakdown, failing schools, black on black crime and individual responsibility – problems shared by the larger population but which seem to disproportionately cripple black communities. And of course government strangulation of freedom and opportunity.  But those are tough issues which don't lend themselves to empty headed sloganeering like "Hands Up!  Don't Shoot!".

Fittingly, the patron saint of the BLM movement is Barack Obama, the king of obfuscation, misdirection and failure. Perhaps when he is a “retired statesman” the country will finally have had enough of the tyranny of “community organizers” and “activists” who seek not to make real change, but rather to wrap themselves in the cloak and glory of “civil rights” as they seek to loot the public treasury and silence opposition. Something good from Barack Obama... finally!

Do Black Lives Matter? No, Apparently, Not Unless They're Good For The Race Pimp Business.

For the last two years the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has been a rallying cry for those who suggest black lives don’t in fact matter to whites or to the police. In seeking to make sure that no one misses the point, across the nation citizens just trying to go through their everyday lives have been subjected to restaurant sit ins, manufactured traffic jams and various other protests. As annoying as those activities are, the movement has become entwined with a more sinister trend, delegitimization of police.

From Barack Obama’s “The police acted stupidly” to Bill de Blasio’s suggestion that the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” program was racist to Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby’s invoking the thug mantra “No Justice, No Peace” as she indicted six police officers for the death of Freddy Gray, black Americans have been endlessly warned that the police are the enemy. They have been told that the police are racist and that the criminal justice system will provide them with no justice at all.

The consequences of this indictment of the police and the criminal justice system are exactly what you would expect. Police have been targeted, literally and lethally, across the country. From getting shot while sitting in their patrol cars, to getting attacked with axes as they stand on the street, to being swarmed as they try and make arrests, police today have targets on their backs like never before. Such is the obvious outcome from government officials and race pimps telling blacks that the police are the enemy.

That, however, is not the only outcome that was predictable as the false narrative behind the Black Lives Matter movement took hold. There is another, even more sinister tragedy that gives lie to the words themselves: skyrocketing crime and the flowing of black blood in the streets in places like Ferguson, New York and Baltimore. And, most of that blood is shed neither at the hands of whites or the police, but usually at the hands of other blacks.

As police have their authority and legitimacy challenged, the citizens of the neighborhoods they police have become targets and victims. Murder rates have jumped in NYC under de Blasio as police feel neutered. In Baltimore, as police have become fearful of doing their jobs, black citizens are paying the price as shootings and murders skyrocket and anarchy reigns.

Conservatives don’t typically suggest that every cop is a Boy Scout. The killings of Walter Scott and Akai Gurley are certainly troubling and rightly raise flags. And there are still many questions that remain about the circumstances of Freddie Gray’s death. But, thankfully, those deaths are news because they are so rare. Of the tens of millions interactions police have with black Americans each year, only a tiny fraction of them result in wrongful bloodshed or inappropriate behavior. Indeed, most of those interactions are with blacks who have been victims of crime or who are citizens seeking help from police.

But when police become the enemy, they cease to be able to provide the basic service they are intended for… fighting crime and preserving the peace. As crime victims are disproportionately black, when police become less effective, blacks disproportionately pay the price. To put that in perspective, following the April riots in Baltimore, where Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told police to stand down so that rioters could have space to “destroy”, May saw an unprecedented jump in violent crime, with shootings up 72% from the previous year and murders reaching 43, more than any month since August, 1972. And most of those victims were black... and the hands of other blacks… but those lives don’t seem to matter to the liberals and the race pimps who are using the extraordinarily rare deaths of black men at the hands of police to decimate the entire criminal justice system.

While we’re told that “Black Lives Matter” what apparently is really the case is that only some black lives matter… those who give liberals and race pimps a platform upon which to enrich themselves or increase their power. The black lives of men, women and children who die at the hands of black criminals emboldened by the neutering of the police… not so much. And unfortunately, the latter outnumber the former exponentially.