Let's throw out a few numbers so we can put in perspective the
NFL players taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. Many say
they are protesting against police treatment of blacks and racial
discrimination. We might ask just how much sense their protest makes.
According
to The Washington Post, 737 people have been shot and killed by police this
year in the United States. Of that number, there were 329 whites, 165 blacks,
112 Hispanics, 24 members of other races and 107 people whose race was unknown.
In Illinois, home to one of our most dangerous cities — Chicago — 18 people
have been shot and killed by police this year. In the city itself, police have
shot and killed 10 people and shot and wounded 10 others. Somebody should ask
the kneeling black NFL players why they are protesting this kind of killing in
the Windy City and ignoring other sources of black death.
Here
are the Chicago numbers for the ignored deaths. So far in 2017, there have been
533 murders and 2,880 shootings. On average, a person is shot every two hours
and 17 minutes and murdered every 12 1/2 hours. In 2016, when Colin Kaepernick
started taking a knee, Chicago witnessed 806 murders and 4,379 shootings. It
turns out that most of the murder victims are black. Adding to the tragedy is
the fact that Chicago has a 12.7 percent murder clearance rate. That means that
when a black person is murdered, his perpetrator is found and charged with his
murder less than 13 percent of the time.
Similar
statistics regarding police killing blacks versus blacks killing blacks apply
to many of our predominantly black urban centers, such as Philadelphia,
Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland. Many Americans, including me,
see the black NFL player protest of police brutality as pathetic, useless
showboating. Seeing as these players have made no open protest against the
thousands of blacks being murdered and maimed by blacks, they must view it as
trivial in comparison with the police killings. Most of the police killings fit
into the category of justified homicide.
NFL
players are not by themselves. How much condemnation do black politicians,
civil rights leaders and liberal whites give to the wanton black homicides in
our cities? When have you heard them condemning the very low clearance rate,
whereby most black murderers get away with murder? Do you believe they would be
just as silent if it were the Ku Klux Klan committing the murders?
What's
to blame for this mayhem? If you ask an intellectual, a leftist or an academic
in a sociology or psychology department, he will tell you that it is caused by
poverty, discrimination and a lack of opportunities. But the black murder rate
and other crime statistics in the 1940s and '50s were not nearly so high as
they are now. I wonder whether your intellectual, leftist or academic would
explain that we had less black poverty, less racial discrimination and far
greater opportunities for blacks during earlier periods than we do today. He'd
have to be an unrepentant idiot to make such an utterance.
So
what can be done? Black people need to find new heroes. Right now, at least in
terms of the support given, their heroes are criminals such as Baltimore's Freddie
Gray, Ferguson's Michael Brown and Florida's Trayvon Martin. Black support
tends to go toward the criminals in the community rather than to the
overwhelming number of people in the community who are law-abiding. That needs
to end. What also needs to end is the lack of respect for and cooperation with
police officers. Some police are crooked, but black people are likelier to be
victims of violent confrontations with police officers than whites simply
because blacks commit more violent crimes than whites per capita.
For
a race of people, these crime statistics are by no means flattering, but if
something good is to be done about it, we cannot fall prey to the blame games
that black politicians, black NFL players, civil rights leaders and white
liberals want to play. If their vision is accepted, we can expect little
improvement of the status quo.
Walter
E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
