Wow, the racial reckoning after George Floyd sure has gotten a lot of black people killed!
According to the FBI, amid the extravaganza of violence following Floyd's death in 2020, an additional 2,400 black males and 405 black females were killed, compared to 2019. The post-Floyd murder surge of 2020 is, by far, the largest year-to-year increase in homicide in U.S. history.
So far this year, 615 black people have been killed in Chicago (out of a total of 767 homicide victims, 29 white); 164 in Baltimore, (out of 323 total, eight white, with the race of 144 murder victims somehow "unknown"); and 373 black people have been shot to death in Philadelphia (out of 460 fatal shootings, 35 white).
All this makes me wonder if we wouldn't be better off encouraging the violent elements of the black underclass to stop acting out, instead of ginning up their anger by relentlessly pounding away at "systemic racism." Perhaps our prestige media could help if they told disaffected urban youth that they're not heroes when they shoot up neighborhood block parties, beat up their teachers or fight with the police.
Instead, elites tell them the exact opposite. The most celebrated entry in the "White People Are Out To Get You" genre is Michelle Alexander's 2010 book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." Alexander, who is only half-black (always the loudest at the anti-racism rallies), argues that the criminal justice system "labels" black men "felons" in order to deny them basic human rights, such as the right to vote -- exactly like under Jim Crow!
The book has sold a kazillion copies, mostly by virtue of being mandatory reading in every college and high school across the nation.
Although Alexander claims that gobs of black men are in prison solely because of racism, there is another possible explanation: Black men commit a LOT of crime. Black people are only 13% of the U.S. population, but commit 33% of all violent crime (not including murder), according to the Department of Justice.
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That's not a figure whipped up by the police, with their "systemic racism": It's based on how victims describe their attackers. (On the plus side, although only 13% of the population, black people are 90% of television commercial models.)
When it comes to murder -- the most reliable crime statistic because a dead body can't be intimidated or threatened -- black people are an absolute majority of those arrested. And consider that the astonishingly low clearance rate for random shootings in cities like Chicago and Philadelphia (5% to 11% and 21%, respectively) means that a lot of murders don't lead to anybody being arrested. (It's highly unlikely that whites are committing the drive-by shootings.)
The New York City Police Department keeps more detailed criminal statistics than most. In 2020, the city's population was 33% white, 29% Hispanic and 23% black. And yet, 96% of all shootings were committed by blacks or Hispanics. More than 72% were committed by blacks alone. Just 1.4% percent of shootings were committed by whites.
Also from the report:
"Rape suspects are most frequently Black (49.4%) ...
"The race/ethnicity of known Felonious Assault suspects is most frequently Black (53.1%) ...
"The race/ethnicity of known Grand Larceny suspects is most frequently Black (60.7%) ...
"Misdemeanor Sex Crime suspects are most frequently Black (45.8%) ...
"Misdemeanor Assault suspects are most frequently Black (51.5%) ...
"The race/ethnicity of known Petit Larceny suspects is most frequently Black (55.9%) ...
"Misdemeanor Criminal Mischief suspects are most frequently Black (52.7%) ..."
And so on.
Surely, Alexander must have some killer examples of innocent black men rotting in prison solely because they are black. After all, it's her book that launched the whole "mass incarceration" craze, with zealots, idiots and idiot-zealots demanding that all black men be released from prison -- and pronto! (Trump to Biden at the first debate: "You call them 'superpredators,' and I'm letting people out of jail now.")
This is how Alexander begins her book:
"Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. ... Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."
What trivial infraction did Jarvious commit that got him "labeled a felon"? (No doubt something your typical white person does every day.)
Answer: He shot to death a 17-year-old high school kid after robbing him and his friends at gunpoint, then escaped from jail -- with help from his mother -- and fled from Mississippi to Brooklyn, where he lived under an alias for five years, before being captured again. Unbelievably, Jarvious continued living in New York for another year while left-wing groups sued to block his extradition to Mississippi, finally losing 8-0 in the New York Court of Appeals.
I wonder if Alexander realizes she left out the murder/jail break part. Maybe she just ran out of space. To be fair, her book was only 421 pages long.
Now, I can't speak to the accuracy of the stories about Jarvious' father, grandfather or great-grandfather -- though I'm starting to question Alexander's reliability as a narrator -- but as for Jarvious, I'm pretty sure he lost the right to vote not because white people are randomly locking up "black bodies," but because he murdered a teenager.
Jarvious is Alexander's case in chief, not mine. If she had had a better example, I think she would have used it.
It's time for a reckoning on the reckoning. No more woke fantasies, because black lives matter.
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