On Race, Cops, Fake News, and the True Inconvenient Truth: An Anti-Racist Manifesto

John F. Gaski
Mendoza College of Business
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

The racial/police violence issue in the U.S. just won’t go away.  Ever since the George Floyd episode, however, a troubling corollary adheres, even though not yet widely recognized.  

The public information environment has been corrupted by those who politicize tragedies such as Mr. Floyd, Jacob Blake, and Breonna Taylor, a tactic that has the perverse effect of diminishing the traditional civil rights cause.  Here, the proximate issues and also the larger societal reality are eclipsed as over-zealous or cynical race hustlers have been aggressing hyperbolically and relentlessly regardless of the opaque full truth.  The worst side-effect is that propagandized minorities who feel victimized then resort to more violence as antidote.  Purveyors of the fraud, prominently including the mainstream news media, are literally inciting mass violence via false narrative (e.g., Crump 2020; Ross 2020; Waxman 2020).  Another fake news hoax this is, but with mortal consequences.  We have blood in the streets because of a monumental misunderstanding as the United States suffers through a frenzied Jacobin spasm.  Mired in this roiling irrationality, America may benefit from one further word on the subject from a different perspective. 

What of the broader race relations issue?  It took zero lag-time after the Floyd incident for opportunists of the racial grievance lobby (also known pejoratively as the racial victimhood industry, and formerly as the civil rights movement) to accuse our country of engendering a climate of racist danger for black citizens.  This qualifies as not only substantively wrong but anti-American slander of the first magnitude because the facts are to the contrary. 

By now you may have heard the real numbers—unless you consume only those “news” sources that ignore or suppress the data.  Compared with ten million arrests, roughly 1000 fatal police shootings occurred in the U.S. in 2019, about 40 of unarmed perpetrators or suspects (Washington Post 2020; as then-candidate Joe Biden creatively expressed it, some of the unarmed may be “coming at them with a knife.”)  All or mostly black victims?  No, 20 white, 10 black, 10 other, among the 40 unarmed, with nearly all occurrences found to be justified (MacDonald 2020).  Among the 1000 total fatalities, likewise, most are white.  (Ninety-five percent are male, so might police be sexist?).  And did you know that black cops are more likely to pull the trigger on a black perpetrator or suspect than white cops are (Johnson et al. 2020)? 

Also, about 100 police are killed in the line of duty in a typical year.  Which demographic category commits the most crime in this country?  Young black males, I am afraid, happens to be the ineffable answer.  Indeed, cops are five times more likely to be killed by black suspects than white suspects.  Moreover, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by police.  (Data come from the National Violent Death Reporting System: CDC 2020; also, MacDonald 2019; 2020; Morgan and Oudekerk 2019: U.S. Department of Justice, “Criminal Victimization, 2018.”) 

But the total shooting-by-police numbers have been declining over the past four years.  So, why weren’t rioters in the streets over this issue during the Obama presidency?  You know the answer.  A certain brand of Democrat politician and the allied media were not inciting, or sending, their shock troops into the streets for political effect back then.  Those millennials vandalizing statuary, looting stores, and throwing bricks at cops certainly are not Young Republican or Federalist Society members. 

What about the widely reported statistic that blacks are three or four times more likely than whites to be shot by U.S. police (e.g., Washington Post 2020)?  Misleading and deceptive, it is.  It signifies proportion relative to share of the general population, which is not the population police deal with.  Based on the relevant population of police interactions, shooting of blacks is disproportionately low.  Controlling for such police contact incidence by using county crime rate as proxy, blacks are three to four times less likely than whites to be fatally shot by police (Cesario et al. 2019; MacDonald 2019). 

More food for thought:  In view of the mega-millions of public encounters by police each year, largely with an unsavory segment of society, the U.S. may already be at or near the minimum realistic residual level of police brutality that a vast, diverse, complex nation could hope for.  Support for this grounded hypothesis is found in international police violence statistics.  The rate of police killings (by gunshot or otherwise) for the U.S. as of Y2019-20 is 28.4 per ten million of population.  Nearly all the few countries below that metric threshold are among the more homogeneous societies of Western Europe or parts of the old British Commonwealth (World Population Review 2020). 

Still, is there not an established tendency for blacks to be victims of interracial violence in the United States?  Has that not been the recent media message?  Message, yes; truth, no.  Here are the suppressed and inconvenient facts: 

• About 90% of black/white interracial violent crime in our nation is committed by blacks against whites.  Really.  That is not a misprint. 
• The black-on-white murder rate in the U.S. exceeds the white-on-black rate by about 2½ to one. 
• The black-on-white assault and battery rate exceeds the corresponding white-on-black rate in this country by at least ten to one. 
• I would rather not report what is known about U.S. interracial rape statistics because it could be taken as incendiary, but the previous numbers in terms of black/white proclivity are dwarfed.  (See Department of Justice, Criminal Victimization in the United States, “Victims and Offenders”—if not scrubbed from the Web; Morgan and Oudekerk 2019.)  Politically correct, intersectionalist feminists need to reflect on that one. 

If these interracial crime ratios were randomly based, they would be uniform, i.e., one to one, for the two racial groups.  In other words, the population segment with six times as many potential victims also has six times the pool of perpetrators, so the effects of that disproportion should be perfectly offsetting arithmetically.  QED.  Sure, the relative crime statistics would be marginally moderated if adjusted for socioeconomic status (from astronomical to merely stratospheric), but by no means inverted.  The baseline conclusion is straightforward, even if surprising to readers who are victims themselves—victims of racial and racist propaganda.  The hysterical public mantra of epidemic white-on-black violence is thus exposed as fraud. 

One must ask why more observers have not noticed all this.  Instead, we have seen the race mongers rushing to judgment and forming their own overwrought mob, figuratively and literally, to impose vigilante vengeance upon our country.  Ironic?  Worse than that:  By applying a false, adverse racial stereotype to the nation, this phalanx of demagogues has committed an objective act of mass racism, revealing themselves to be as bigoted as anyone.  For some inscrutable reason, they did not react the same way to the O. J. Simpson acquittal.   

An old political adage says, “You can’t reason with liberals—because they ‘think’ emotionally, not rationally.”  The Floyd incident dramatized this reputed tendency at its zenith, to wit: “One cop in one city kills a man.  Therefore, America is racist and all police throughout the country must be eliminated.”  Further comment is hardly necessary, but a bonus point can punctuate: 

One heroic assumption pervades the George Floyd fallout, but under the radar.  Why must everyone assume that the Minneapolis cop who snuffed the life out of Mr. Floyd had a racist motive—out of an infinite number of possible motives?  Those who do make that assumption forfeit the debate by default.  Now we hear that the cop and victim may have had a history of knowing each other.  Again, the nation is coming apart over a “Big Lie”-based misunderstanding, but conspicuously augmented by poor logic. 

Finally, to those who complain that less value is attached to black lives in the United States, as the racial demagogy has alleged, please ponder the national outcry over one fatality in the Floyd incident.  In fact, the entire country was united in outrage for once.  Compare that fervid reaction with the total lack of attention given the multitude of white citizens murdered by blacks year after year.  So, which lives do not seem to matter as much?  Let us get real, as they say. 

Interim summary 

My main purpose, if not already obvious, is to expose an instance of 1984 doublespeak wrapped into contemporary gaslighting:  Many in our country are agitated because of a propaganda-induced misperception about white-on-black and cop-on-black violence.  I hope this revelation of the real record provides them relief.  Perhaps more universal awareness of the contrary facts I report will contribute to national healing and mitigate reciprocal violence.  Yes, isn’t it great news that the prevailing condition in the U.S. is epidemic black-on-white racial violence?  Not exactly, but recognition of the truth can at least serve as a starting point for further understanding, renewal, and harmony. 

Broader Corollaries 

Let the record show that for the past 45 years or so, the only legally sanctioned, even legally mandated, racial discrimination in the United States has been in favor of blacks (and some other minorities), against whites.  Codified as so-called affirmative action, this is the first time in world history that an ethnic majority group intentionally disadvantaged itself to benefit another domestic tribe, purely out of a sense of justice (sometimes derided as “liberal guilt”).  In effect, reparations have already been paid through this enduring, generations-spanning reverse discrimination.  The beneficiaries then express their gratitude for this particular macro-magnanimity by not only defaming the group responsible but chronic mass violence, frankly, while projecting the opposite.  No altruistic deed goes unpunished—and no one alive today had anything to do with slavery or even Jim Crow laws, but everyone alive today had ancestors who were slaves.  If you have never thought of it this way, sorry to have to break the news. 

From some of history’s other revolutionary episodes and how they descended into horrendous excesses, it should have been foreseen that the civil rights movement’s passion to eradicate anti-black racism could ultimately transmogrify into anti-white racism.  That is where the U.S. and some other nations are now, evidently, as underscored by the extremes played out in recent times.  For example, how often have you heard the demonizing but unconsciously self-contradictory accusation, “All whites are racist”?  (Simultaneously and suddenly arises the reverse-racist campaign against “whiteness.”)  Two wrongs do not make a right, to coin a phrase, and if you do not believe that racism is categorically wrong regardless of the demographic identity of the target, you share that view with the Third Reich.  On very rare occasions, the otherwise taboo Hitler/Nazi comparison is warranted, and we are experiencing a very rare occasion.  The violent, radical Antifa and BLM groups, and maybe even the Democrat National Committee, wear the designated comparison audaciously.  Perhaps this was the aim of “the audacity of hope” all along.                

If there is one subject that is a sure conversation stopper in today’s America, it is race.  Following decades of interracial upheaval, the issue of race remains delicate, charged, thermo-nuclear, an untouchable third rail, and a red-hot potato in so many polite circles.  Racial political correctness, it could be called.  People walk (and talk) on eggshells, in effect, when it comes to race, out of fear of saying the wrong thing and being falsely labeled a racist.  Being called a racist nowadays is the ugliest scarlet letter one can have attached, perhaps even worse than being called a murderer, so the sensitivity is understandable. 

This racial p.c. counter-trend phenomenon, however, actually may be a backhanded signal of how non-racist and anti-racist the nation’s majority culture has become, occasional contrary cases notwithstanding and in contrast to our more primitive distant past.  Anti-minority racism, in particular, has become totally unfashionable, passé, and socially unacceptable—openly practiced only by numerically insignificant fringe elements such as self-proclaimed white supremacists, and an even smaller number of retrograde police officers—so there is considerable good news on this front.  By world and historical norms, the United States is not a very racist country.  According to a respected poll of 27 national populations worldwide, Americans ranked fifth highest on preference for ethnic and racial diversity (as a proxy for opposition to bigotry)—in a virtual tie for third with Canada and the U.K. (Pew 2019b, p. 5).  Some polling evidence even reveals that black Americans perceive more black anti-white bigotry than the converse (Rasmussen 2013; cf. Pew 2019a).  And any reader now provoked by the immediately preceding material is confirming and illustrating the point about race’s incitive power. 

Can we really posit minimal institutional and systemic racism in the U.S. today?  Actually, not quite; there remain two dominant forms of it.  One, however, as mentioned, is the pro-minority reverse discrimination qua “affirmative action” explicitly designed to damage a different race, the majority race, but for benevolent if misguided reasons.  This policy is invidious racial discrimination straight-up and has always been as inherently immoral as the anti-minority kind, per the standards of deontological ethics, because of reliance on unjust means.  As even Chief Justice John Roberts has said, trying to cure racial discrimination with more racial discrimination is senseless. 

Offsetting any putative benefit such patronizing, debilitating, preferential treatment via lower standards might deliver for minorities, which is questionable, is the profile of government policies designed to crush the underclass.  These would be the liberal / “progressive” policies that incent (1) 75% of black children born into broken homes, (2) deficient public schools leading to a high minority dropout rate, and (3) a slack morality and justice system yielding widespread addictive substance abuse among minorities.  Up against this three-headed albatross, no wonder aggregate black socio-economic achievement lags so badly. 

Why “designed to crush”?  Not a bald presumption but a conclusion, it derives from this rhetorical punch line:  What would happen to U.S. Democrats if the entire black underclass suddenly became millionaires?  They would never win another election, that’s what—and partisan Democrat politicians recognize it.  Therefore, we should suspect that the Democrat Party intentionally sabotages black opportunity.  Democrats need a perpetually dependent underclass of disaffected but loyal voters.  (This base political motive also may account for the Democrat infatuation with recruiting more illegal aliens into the country.) 

Somewhat surreptitiously and at variance with their carefully cultivated public image, the Democrats have always been the party of racism, i.e., slavery, the Confederacy, Jim Crow segregation, Woodrow Wilson, eugenics, Bull Connor, and the Ku Klux Klan.  More contemporary examples include (1) tepid congressional support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act compared to Republicans, (2) a very recent Senate Majority Leader named Robert Byrd who actually was a KKK Grand Cyclops (or whatever they call it), and (3) the resurgence of anti-Semitism among liberal Democrats (Abramson and Ballabon 2020; Daniels 2019).  So, why expect the Dems to be less cynical about race now?  After all, from the preceding tutorial, a number of supposed “facts” on race are found to be illusory.  It may even be no coincidence that virtually all Democrat-run major U.S. cities leave black neighborhoods in shambles.   

Apart from any systemic or structural racism, what about the more personal level, or presumed micro-aggressions such as police stopping motorists for “driving while black”—which surely is far more than micro-annoying for the victims?  That phenomenon actually should be considered more empiricism than racism, though—the same as the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s acknowledgment that he, like many whites, will cross the street rather than pass near a group of young black males on the sidewalk.  This empirical tendency, along with similar ones, will continue as part of human nature (i.e., the self-preservation instinct) as long as young black males are known to be the most crime-prone demographic in America.  It may not be an elevated or attractive tendency, but let us not tag normal human nature with the “racist” slur.  (Generalizing from such an established pattern is obviously much different and more legitimate than stereotyping from a single instance, as was commonly done in the George Floyd case.) 

Concluding Reflection 

Former Attorney General Eric Holder once demanded that Americans have the courage to address the subject of race.  I’m an American and the issue here, regrettably, is race.  Is this enough courage for you, General?  I trust you appreciate my commentary.  By relying on objective evidence, the content embodies the true anti-racist spirit of fundamental indifference to race—the way it should be à la the M. L. King ideal.  In fact, it grows tedious to even have to use the words “white,” “black,” and “race” so often, but such are the wages of today’s pandemic racial confusion.  This essay’s heterodox perspective is offered to help balance the orchestrated disinformation—a balance that is badly needed but in short supply presently. 

References 

Abramson, Bruce and Jeff Ballabon (2020), “Why Won’t Joe Biden Repudiate Anti-Semitic Democrats?” Newsweek (October 14) https://www.newsweek.com/why-wont-joe-biden-repudiate-anti-semitic-democrats-opinion-1538639. 

CDC (2020), National Violent Death Reporting System.  Washington: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <cdc.gov/violenceprevention/datasources/nvdrs/index.html>. 

Cesario, Joseph, David J. Johnson, and William Terrill (2019), “Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force?  Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015-2016,” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10 (No. 5), pp. 586-595. 

Crump, Ben (2020), “Racism once again dismisses George Floyd’s life,” USA Today (September 17) <usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2020/09/17/crump-racism-once-again-dismisses-george-floyds-life/3479730001/>.   

Daniels, Fletch (2019), “Democrats Continue Normalization of Anti-Semitism,” American Thinker (August 23) <americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/democrats_continue_normalization_of_antisemitism.html>. 

Johnson, David J., Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and Joseph Cesario (2019), “Officer Characteristics and Racial Disparities in Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (No. 32, August 6), pp. 15877-15882.   

MacDonald, Heather (2019), “False Testimony,” City Journal (September 26) <city-journal.org/police-shootings-racial-bias>. 

MacDonald, Heather (2020), “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism,” The Wall Street Journal (June 2), p. 16A. 

Morgan, Rachel E. and Barbara A. Oudekerk (2019), “Criminal Victimization, 2018,” in Bureau of Justice Statistics.  Washington: U.S. Department of Justice   <bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv18.pdf>. 

Pew Research Center (2019a), “Race in America 2019,” Pew Social Trends (April 19) <pewsocialtrends.org/2019/04/09/race-in-america-2019/>. 

Pew Research Center (2019b), “A Changing World: Global Views on Diversity, Gender Equality, Family Life and the Importance of Religion,” Global Attitudes & Trends (April 22) <pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/22/a-changing-world-global-views-on-diversity-gender-equality-family-life-and-the-importance-of-religion/>. 

Rasmussen (2013), “More Americans View Blacks as Racist than Whites, Hispanics,” Rasmussen Reports (July 3) <rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/july_2013/>.   

Ross, Kihana Miraya (2020), “Call It What It Is: Anti-Blackness,” The New York Times (June 4) <nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opinion/george-floyd-anti-blackness.html>.   

Washington Post (2020), “Fatal Force: 1,009 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year” (December 10) <washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/>. 

Waxman, Olivia B. (2020), “George Floyd’s Death and the Long History of Racism in Minneapolis,” Time (May 28) <time.com/5844030/George-floyd-minneapolis-history/>.

World Population Review (2020), “Police Killings by Country 2020” <worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-killings-by-country>.