{"id":5647,"date":"2022-01-17T14:44:32","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T22:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=5647"},"modified":"2022-01-17T14:44:32","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T22:44:32","slug":"a-martin-luther-king-day-reminder-on-genuine-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=5647","title":{"rendered":"A Martin Luther King Day Reminder on Genuine Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

First a question:\u00a0 If Martin Luther King were alive today, would he be more likely to agree with the anthem that black lives matter, or with the view that all lives matter?<\/p>\n

I don’t think it’s a close question.\u00a0 The whole point of the civil rights movement was equality<\/em>.\u00a0 And in the days of Dr. King, no one thought “equality” meant “equality of outcomes”\u00a0 —\u00a0 which is what the gossamer word “equity” is trying to put over on us today (albeit typically in the disguise of intentionally opaque academic gibberish).\u00a0 “Equality” meant equal standing before the law, and an equal chance at success and living a peaceful life.<\/p>\n

Is that what black people are getting now, in the era of progressive prosecutors and criminal justice reform?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I recently saw a chart that gives the answer in one city, Chicago, with as liberal a\u00a0 mayor and city administration as there is to be found.\u00a0 Here it is:<\/p>\n

\"image.png\"<\/p>\n

This is a tragedy and a disgrace.\u00a0 The last two years’ surge in murder has grossly disproportionately burdened black people, while the white murder rate has remained about what it was before (and much, much lower than the black murder rate).<\/p>\n

The first obligation of government is to protect the lives and physical safety of its citizens.\u00a0 The story in Chicago is probably worse than most, but similar if slightly less ghastly stories are being told in Philadelphia, Baltimore and other “progressive” strongholds from coast to coast.\u00a0 Black people are far less safe than they had been.\u00a0 Overall in this country, blacks are about 12% or 13% of the population, but 54% of the murder victims.<\/p>\n

This would be reprehensible under any circumstances, but is particularly reprehensible because we know how to do better, and only recently\u00a0 —\u00a0 for an entire generation up until eight years ago\u00a0 —\u00a0 we were in fact doing better, much better.\u00a0 The murder rate was cut by more than half from 1991 to 2014, and blacks were the primary beneficiaries of this massive improvement.\u00a0 See the statistics compiled here<\/a> (which are bad enough even while missing the startling increases in murder in 2020 and 2021).<\/p>\n

What were we doing in the era of declining murder that we’ve stopped doing now?\u00a0 Hiring more police rather than defunding them; supporting the police rather than engaging in grandstanding prosecutions (see, e.g., the Freddy Gray indictments<\/a>); engaging in more proactive policing rather than bake sales and kumbaya hand-holding; and understanding that incarceration for violent criminals is the answer not the problem.<\/p>\n

If we are to give black people a fair shake, an equal chance not merely at dignity but at life itself\u00a0 —\u00a0 in other words, if we are to believe that black lives actually do matter<\/em> as a matter of sober, on-the-ground criminal justice policy rather than woke sloganeering\u00a0 —\u00a0 we already know the answer.\u00a0 \u00a0In the name of the genuine humanity we celebrate on Martin Luther King Day, it’s time to restore it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First a question:\u00a0 If Martin Luther King were alive today, would he be more likely to agree with the anthem that black lives matter, or with the view that all lives matter? I don’t think it’s a close question.\u00a0 The whole point of the civil rights movement was equality.\u00a0 And in the days of Dr. King, no one thought “equality” meant “equality of outcomes”\u00a0 —\u00a0 which is what the gossamer word “equity” is trying to put over on us today (albeit typically in the disguise of intentionally opaque academic gibberish).\u00a0 “Equality” meant equal standing before the law, and an equal chance at success and living a peaceful life. Is that what black people are getting now, in the era of progressive prosecutors and criminal justice reform?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-factors"],"yoast_head":"\nA Martin Luther King Day Reminder on Genuine Humanity - Crime & Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=5647\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Martin Luther King Day Reminder on Genuine Humanity - Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"First a question:\u00a0 If Martin Luther King were alive today, would he be more likely to agree with the anthem that black lives matter, or with the view that all lives matter? 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