Last week, all of us were shocked and appalled by the untimely death of a young man named Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police. While all fair-minded Americans are waiting for the investigation to reach its conclusions and for due process to determine that the culprits face justice, the media went into their predictable “sentence first, verdict later” mode.
Cue “blame the white people” crew:
Whoopi is not “suggesting” that white people get beat up, folks. She is “just asking.” No incitement of violence or anything.
You may think that blaming white people for an incident that did not involve white people would be a stretch, but they gave it a try anyway.
Van Jones of CNN shares this piece of wisdom:
“One of the sad facts about anti-Black racism is that Black people ourselves are not immune to its pernicious effects. Society’s message that Black people are inferior, unworthy and dangerous is pervasive. Over many decades, numerous experiments have shown that these ideas can infiltrate Black minds as well as White. Self-hatred is a real thing.”
On that, Van Jones is correct. “Self-hatred” is a real thing. That, however, has nothing to do with racism.
Self-hatred is not limited to race or any other group. Self-hatred is, in most cases, a personal issue, which stems from low self-esteem, abuse, or mental illness. It is a deeply emotional problem. Racism, on the other hand, is an ideology. It deems one race superior to all others. Absent a “superior race,” there is no “supremacy.”
“Supremacy” implies being victimized by someone else. “Self-hatred” comes from within and cannot be blamed on the actions of others (although you can make an indirect case when the victims of abuse are involved.)
“Black cops are often socialized in police departments that view certain neighborhoods as war zones. In those departments, few officers get disciplined for dishing out “street justice” in certain precincts — often populated by Black, brown or low-income people — where there is a tacit understanding that the “rulebook” simply doesn’t apply.”
Another valid point from Van Jones (that’s two in a week, folks – that’s a record for him.) Police officers view “certain neighborhoods” as war zones – because they are. Memphis, TN, is considered the most dangerous city in the US. The Violent crime rate there is three times the national average. On the streets of Memphis, children are killed by stray bullets. Police officers confront life-and-death situations every single minute. Yet, Van Jones wants you to believe that the sole reason the police “doesn’t play by the rules” is because they don’t like “black and brown people.”
“At the end of the day, it is the race of the victim who is brutalized — not the race of the violent cop — that is most relevant in determining whether racial bias is a factor in police violence. It’s hard to imagine five cops of any color beating a White person to death under similar circumstances.”
It’s hard to imagine cops killing a white person in similar circumstances for only one reason: because it’s hard to imagine cops killing any person in similar circumstances. Despite what the media wants you to believe, police killing unarmed men (of any race) are extremely rare occurrences.
Here are statistics for 2022 (courtesy of Statista):
You may want to show this graph to Whoopi Goldberg to let her know that police do kill white people on occasion (389 white people were killed in 2022, vs. 224 black people). The reason Whoopi does not know this is that the media doesn’t “jump” on police incidents involving white people with the same excitement as when black victims are involved.
The media trained themselves to approach every police incident involving a black man with one assumption: “another innocent young black life untimely taken by a racist pig.” They run with the story and play it on repeat until it’s proven beyond any doubt that the story is bogus. Then they pat themselves on the back for “bringing attention to the issue” because “even if this story isn’t true, there is one somewhere that is” and they move on to the next one. This is how the myth of “police are exterminating black men” is perpetuated in liberal precincts.
There is a quote attributed to Sigmund Freud: “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Paging Van Jones: sometimes a murder is just a murder. Not every murderer is a racist.
