Where would people get such a weird idea?
Posted on 11/29/2014 9:45:59 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Even as activists are organizing against police violence, many Americans continue to see blacks as criminals—and want our police to act accordingly.
Truth is stranger than fiction; it is also most certainly harder to accept.
In a nearly hour-long interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday, a day after thousands of protesters took to the streets from coast to coast, expressing outrage that yet another white police officer got away with the murder of another unarmed black person, Wilson stuck to his story: “I just did my job. I did what I was paid to do. I followed my training…. That’s it.”
Sure, there are plenty of reasons to doubt his account. If he knew Michael Brown was a robbery suspect, why did he politely stop him and Dorian Johnson for jaywalking only to “have a conversation,” as he described to Stephanopoulos? If the West Florissant section of Ferguson is “really a great community,” why did he testify that it was a not very “well-liked community” and a hotbed of anti-police sentiment?
And yet, despite all the equivocations, the shooting death of the teenager on August 9th and Monday’s grand jury decision not to indict Wilson were entirely unsurprising. They are the predictable outcomes of a criminal justice system doing exactly what it was meant to do. For all the dissecting and debating of the veracity of Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony this week, one thing seems crystal clear. He was in fact doing his job.
Indeed, by this standard, isn’t Darren Wilson actually a model police officer?
He certainly thinks so. When asked by Stephanopoulos if he could make “something good” come of this experience, he said he would “love to teach people” and give them “more insight in uses of force.” That he may have logged more time on first-person shooters—emptying clip after clip to take down demonic super-villains who “run through shots”—than actual police work is beside the point. Darren Wilson has the kind of experience that many Americans value.
Evidence abounds that the United States is the world’s most punitive nation. More people are behind bars and incarcerated at higher per capita rates here than anywhere in the world. African Americans are the nation’s prime suspects and prisoners. White police officers are our chosen protectors, enforcing the law in the name of public safety.
In a Pew research poll conducted shortly after Ferguson made national headlines this summer, researchers found that most Americans have a “fair amount of confidence in local police.” Eighty-five percent of respondents, white and black, gave a fair to excellent rating on police “protecting people from crime.” And on “using the right amount of force,” 66 percent of respondents gave a fair to excellent rating; white support stood at 73 percent and blacks at 42 percent. Though a clear racial divide exists, African Americans are only 13 percent of the population nationally. Everyone is therefore implicated in police performance writ large, if not by choice, certainly through political representatives.
Critics and protesters of police violence among African Americans and on the political left, as polling data suggests, see things differently. They are organizing against the routine killing of unarmed men and beating of helpless women on an unprecedented scale not seen since the anti-lynching movement of the last century. Even with such evidence in hand that black men are twenty-one times as likely to be killed by law enforcement than white men, as analyzed in a recent report by ProPublica, today’s movement like the one before it might fail to overcome deeply entrenched fears of black criminality without a massive shift in white public opinion and a new model for law enforcement.
Most whites do not realize they are reading from very old racial scripts. When Ida B. Wells, the world’s leading anti-lynching activist and black social worker of the early twentieth century, tried to explain to a wealthy suffragist in Chicago that anti-black violence in the nation must end, Mary Plummer replied: Blacks need to “drive the criminals out” of the community. “Have you forgotten that 10 percent of all the crimes that were committed in Chicago last year were by colored men [less than 3 percent of the population]?”
Like Mary Plummer, Darren Wilson is emphatic that the issue is not racism. Brown’s African-American neighborhood is “one of our high-crime areas for the city,” he said during the interview. “You can’t perform the duties of a police officer and have racism in you. I help people. That’s my job.” On that day, “the only emotion I ever felt was fear,” before my training took over. “We are taught to deal with the threat at hand.”
Implicit bias research tells us that most Americans are afraid of black people and subconsciously associate dangerous weapons and animals with them. They see things often that are not there. Stanford psychologists Rebecca Haley and Jennifer Eberhardt note in a study last month that the more people perceive blacks as criminals or prisoners, “the more people fear crime, which then increases their acceptance of punitive policies.”
The truth is that Wilson has no regrets. He wouldn’t do things differently. He’s looking forward to a new chapter in his professional journey as a teacher, trainer or a consultant. He’s our representative figure—a model policeman—acting on our collective fears.
Where would people get such a weird idea?
Exaggerate and obfuscate much, Muhammad?
His name is irony filled that I couldn’t stop laughing
Indeed.
The truth is young black men kill far more blacks than whites kill blacks.
Khalil Muhammad is not bothered by that at all.
He saves his ire for the police who enforce the law and keep us all safe.
According to him, America is a racist nation for locking up thugs, robbers, rapists and murderers.
Which is exactly what we do and our country doesn’t owe him - and his fellow race-baiters any apologies whatsoever.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad great grandson of:
Elijah Muhammad who led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975. He was a mentor to Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan,
All that hate must be eating you alive Khalil. Sucks to be you.
Mainly just the ones who slap around store clerks who are smaller than they are.
Actually all races kill their own more than other races because of association in life.
Blacks in general do over 600% more crime than other races based on percentage of the population. That is an issue that starts in their home IMO.
Then, after a felony you are screwed for life because outside of being a gardener or painter there isn’t employment because you are a liability.
“many Americans continue to see blacks as criminals”
Hmmm, could it be because blacks commit violent crimes, especially murder, at rates way out of proportion to their percentage of the population?
Well, that and the 100% of them who commit all that "black-on-black" crime.
“... many Americans continue to see blacks as criminals—and want our police to act accordingly.”
Uh, no. I see criminals as criminals—many of whom just happen to be black. I have nothing but contempt for anybody who thinks that they have the right to harm others (physically, monetarily, etc.) for any reason.
The author is a racist and, also, a pretentious ass for taking on the name of Kahlil Gibran. Gibran is a world-known poet, philosopher, artist, etc. He was born in Lebanon and became a US citizen.
Reminds me of some articles on FR a couple of days ago. Some idiot named himself Olajawon Ali, combining the Muslim names Lew Alcindor and Cassius Clay had changed to when they converted.
Actually, not what this "report" says at all. PP's report says this proportion occurred among males aged 15 to 19.
They were presumably going for teenagers so as to extrapolate to Michael Brown.
When looking at all ages, 44 percent of those killed by cops are white.
It is amusing that the FBI statistics are widely denounced by leftists as biased and unreliable. If you take them seriously, their primary effect is to point out an immensely greater criminality rate among black Americans.
But they're happy to use them when the stats can be used to portray America as an evil racist place.
Khalil Gibran was raised a Christian and had tendencies to Bahai.
Bad grammar, but that is probably the same ratio as the ratio of confrontations between black men and police and white men and police. It is likely that black men are 21 times as likely to commit crimes leading to confrontations with police as white men are.
I think we all have a problem with heavy handed cops, but we have an even bigger issue with heavy handed criminals that attack cops. Black racists think cops should just take their savagery and believe they are entitled to be savages.
We should have picked our own cotton.
The author can’t quite bring himself to say the true thing, that Negro men are much more likely to be violent criminals than white men are. He knows it but can’t say it. He talks about the “perception” that that is the case. With leftists perception is the word instead of fact. Truth is a mental construct and Utopia will have arrived when everyone who remains alive thinks the proper thoughts.
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