Here we go again. Violence and destruction of property over a white police officer acquitted of killing a black man. There are certainly those cases where a white officer murdered a black man, such as with Philando Castile, where the murdering officer was acquitted but was fired by the police force as he should have been, and the senseless shooting of Walter Scott, where the officer pleaded guilty in a plea deal and will serve time as he should.
In this case, as in virtually all cases where black men are shot and killed, a crime had been committed or was in the process of being committed. Anthony Lamar Smith was dealing drugs, and when caught, used his car as a weapon against the police. When he was cornered and refused to get out of the car, he was shot and killed. I’m not saying this was the right thing for the police officer to do, but as with the Michael Brown case, it’s never a good idea to make a threatening move against a cop. You will most likely get shot and killed. It’s kind of common sense.
Consider the fact that blacks are 13% of the population. Blacks account for almost 48% of all murders, 55% of all robberies, 34% of all aggravated assault, and 31% of all burglaries, according to 2012 FBI statistics. The fact is that blacks simply commit considerably more crimes than other race groups as a percentage of the population. That cannot be disputed. And thus, since blacks commit more crimes, they will come into contact with law enforcement more often and there will be more opportunities for blacks to be shot by police officers. Still, blacks are killed at one-half the rate by police officers compared to whites even though we commit an inordinate number of crimes as a percentage of the population.
These people in St. Louis are violently protesting the rare case where a black man is shot by a police officer, and completely ignore the high crime perpetrated by blacks in these urban communities, which is the problem (as in the 800-pound gorilla, the elephant in the room, you get it). But they don’t want to face that simple fact. Instead of protesting, they should be looking within and they will find that the fault is almost entirely their own.
To get down to it, the problem in urban black communities is the lack of quality education and poverty due to lack of economic opportunity. These are the key drivers of crime. And in virtually all cases, these urban areas are run by Democrat politicians who have promised the moon over the past five decades and delivered nothing but misery. Yet their policies that make blacks ever more dependent on government are never challenged and even heralded.
Now, this is not an endorsement of Republicans. Republicans, in the rare cases where they bother to speak to urban black communities, don’t promise more checks from the government, but to bring school choice and economic opportunity to the poor in these communities so they can begin to rise up the economic ladder for themselves. But these messages have always been rejected because Democrats, who want to protect their votes and stay in office, will say Republicans are racists because they don’t have anything tangible to argue otherwise. This is an intellectually lazy and cowardly way to stay in office, and clearly, it has worked quite effectively. They care more about staying in office than actually finding a way to end the cycle of poor education and poverty in their urban districts. But then again, black communities keep voting for these people without demanding more. And that is why they keep getting the same result. The very definition of insanity.
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