Racializing Crime

A little publicized 2021 public opinion survey by the Skeptic Research Center asked respondents to self identify as very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal or very liberal.  The researchers then asked “how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019?”  20.28% of very conservatives believed that between 1,000 and 10,000 or more black men were killed by police.  13% of conservatives believed this.  25.8% of moderates thought so, while 38.7% of liberals and 53.5% of very liberal agreed.  In 2019, twenty-five unarmed black men were killed by police. The same survey asked “what percentage of people killed by police were black.”  The responses ranged from 60.4% from very liberal to 37.8% from conservatives.  Even the very conservatives thought 44.5% of those killed by police were black.  The actual percent was 24.9%.   How could so many people from all political stripes have been this wrong?  The fact is that for decades the public has been fed a steady diet of lies by liberal politicians and the mainstream media characterizing the police as racially-obsessed bigots randomly slaughtering innocent black men.   In an article from today’s City Journal, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald painstakingly deconstructs this propaganda.

The most recent example was the April , 2023 Kansas City shooting of a teenager who went to the wrong house to pick up his brothers.  The teen was black, the homeowner was white.

On April 13, 2023, at around 10 p.m., 16-year-old Ralph Yarl went to the wrong address in a Kansas City residential neighborhood to pick up his younger brothers. Yarl rang the doorbell, summoning the 84-year-old homeowner, Andrew Lester, from his bed. Lester, who lived alone and who appears from photographs to be in the early stages of dementia, grabbed his handgun and went to the door. He became “scared to death,” he told the police, when he saw the larger Yarl pulling at the exterior storm door handle. (Yarl denies trying to open the door.) Lester shot Yarl, once in the head and once in the arm, through the storm door. Thankfully, Yarl will likely survive the horrifying attack.

Every news outlet that covered the shooting led with the race of Yarl and of Lester. Yarl was inevitably identified as a “Black” teenager and Lester as a “white” homeowner. The Kansas City district attorney validated the race narrative. The shooting had a “racial component,” the prosecutor said, without offering evidence. (The DA has charged Lester with assault in the first degree because the potential maximum sentence—life in prison—is higher than that for attempted murder.)

President Biden weighed in with his usual trope about black parents living in daily fear for their children’s lives in racist America. “Last night, I had a chance to call Ralph Yarl and his family,” Biden tweeted. “No parent should have to worry that their kid will be shot after ringing the wrong doorbell.” For once Biden left out “black,” but his formula by now is so routine (“Imagine having to worry whether your son or daughter came home from walking down the street, playing in the park or just driving a car,” as “Brown and Black parents” have to do, Biden asked in his 2023 State of the Union address) that he doesn’t need the descriptor to get his racial message across. Biden invited Yarl to visit the White House when he had recovered.

The media covered the shooting as a hate crime and protesters in Kansas City pushed the same narrative.  The city’s Mayor told reporters the Yarl was shot because he was black by someone who “clearly, clearly fears Black people,” Lucas said. The incident shows why “Black people and Black parents” are concerned that merely “existing while black” can get you shot by a white person.

Even a Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University joined the party, telling the Atlantic that millions have protested the “premature deaths of Black innocents,” without having any effect of the suffering of “Black folks.”

White Americans have installed black mayors, police chiefs, Governors, judges, members of Congress and a black president.  We have black news anchors, multimillionaire entertainers, celebrities, sports figures and business owners, but if you believe the media and democrat politicians the country has not moved an inch since 1950.

MacDonald walks us through the recent history of politicians and the media’s obsession with the fraction of incidents where blacks are killed by whites, while ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of murders of blacks are at the hands of other blacks.  She also cites the highly publicized 2020 narrative about violence against Asians, which died away when it became clear that most of the perpetrators were black.

Most Americans get their news from the major national television networks along with CNN and MSNBC.  These news sources routinely misrepresent reality by choosing not to report what does not fit their collective narrative and pushing stories that support it.  The public deserves better.