Black Lives Matters is a fraud. It is a contrived propaganda ploy that pretends to care about saving the lives of African Americans when in fact it pays only selective attention to incidents that account for very few black deaths every year.
The repetition of the mantra, “Black Lives Matters” is now accompanied by the kind of mob mentality and bullying that made the lynching of African Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries the calling card of Southern racists. Lynching in the 19th and 20th centuries was not a common practice, but it happened often enough to send a message of warning or terrorism to the black community. According to the NAACP:
From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched. These numbers seem large, but it is known that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded. Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched. That is only 27.3%. Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti lynching and even for domestic crimes.
The death of George Floyd while in police custody has become the latest current event cudgel to push the propaganda themes of white racism, rampant violence against African Americans and routine police brutality. Facts no longer matter. The image of one white officer choking out a helpless black man is enough to ignite global faux outrage. God himself cannot save you if you dare to challenge the conventional wisdom that the ONLY thing that matters are Black Lives and White guilty.
But the Black Lives Matter movement routinely ignores the loss of black lives. If Black lives really mattered, would Americans tolerate the mass extermination of black babies every year backed by interest groups that cater to businesses owned mostly by white people who profit from this industrial scale killing:
Abortion is the number one killer of black lives in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, abortion kills more black people than HIV, homicide, diabetes, accident, cancer, and heart disease … combined.
In 2014, African-American women comprised 13.3% of the U.S. population, but black women had 36% of all abortions.
Black lives matter?
How about the murders of young black men in the major urban areas in the United States?
Chicago–In Chicago, 191 people have been killed this year (2020). The majority of the victims of homicide in Chicago are young, black men.
Washington, DC–166 people killed in 2019, the majority are young, black men. Of the 88 unsolved murders, 84 of the 88 are black men and women (you can see the photos here).
Baltimore–Baltimore ended 2019 with 348 homicides on record, according to data compiled by The Baltimore Sun. The year had already set a grim record of 57 killings per 100,000 people, the city’s worst homicide rate on record. Over 90% of the victims were black.
If you are young, black and live in a Democrat controlled urban area, your life ain’t worth shit. More black men died in one month in Baltimore in 2019 than a black man killed by all police in the United States in the last 8 years. Let that sink in.
Black Lives Matter?
Look at the list of some of the black officers killed in the line of duty in 2019. Their lives did not matter to the falsely named, Black Lives Matter:
Sheriff John Williams, 62, was gunned down during a call to a nearby gas station. He spent more than 40 years in public safety, including 19 years as Lowndes County sheriff before his death.
Officer Rasheen McClain, 46, was shot and killed by a gunman accused of invading a home in Detroit. Police believe the suspect had tactical training before opening fire on McClain, a 16-year law enforcement veteran.
Investigator Cecil Ridley, 51, was on routine patrol when a suspect shot him outside of a convenience store in Augusta, CNN affiliate WFXG reported. Hundreds attended his two-hour funeral.
Officer Dornell Cousette, 40, was attempting to arrest a 20-year-old suspect on multiple felony warrants when the suspect shot and killed him. Cousette had served the department for more than 13 years.
Officer Andre Moye, 34, was in his third year with the department when he was shot and killed by a man whose truck was being impounded. Inland Division Chief Bill Dance said Moye considered his work a “dream job.”
Sgt. Kelvin Ansari, who served in the US Army for 21 years prior to becoming an officer, was killed when shots broke out after he and other officers were approaching a vehicle suspected as part of a robbery investigation.
Sgt. Wytasha Carter was shot and killed outside a bar and another officer was critically wounded as they responded to a report about car break-ins. The father of two had also served in the US Air Force.
Black Lives Matter could care less about the vast majority of African American people. They ignore the slaughter of unborn children, young black men inhabiting the streets of America’s major urban centers and the black men and women who serve as police officers.
I want an America where the color of one’s skin does not matter. If you are a living, breathing American then your life matters. Period. Martin Luther King had it right:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
That sentence alone merits Martin Luther King being enshrined and memorialized as a Founding Father of America.
Amen
Thank you. Your work is very appreciated.
Black lives only matter when they are killed by whites.
When they are killed by other blacks, who cares.
When you vote 92% for Democrats,you are taken for granted.
So you have have to create a story line about “White Supremacy” and “systematic racism” to allow you to spend resources on Suburban Women and Hispanics which are the swing voters of elections.
Republicans don’t even bother to give them attention.
The lie is that Black Lives Black Lives do not Matter, just get angry vote for “your interests.”
Interesting, when was the last time Republicans controlled Minnesota?
Of course the biggest problem is black and Hispanic crime against themselves.
But nobody says or does anything about these daily tragedies across America. Why is everyone so afraid to call a spade? I do not know. Certainly saying who killed whom can get you killed. It’s probably hard to talk about crime honestly when you have criminals in your extended families. But even families without any criminals seem unable or unwilling to talk about crime in a realistic way.
Now incarceration and bail are becoming popular topics but not how the people got into trouble in the first place. I think it’s true that poor minority people don’t get the same justice as whites with money but I also think the majority of our crimes are committed by poor minorities.
I am not at all sure that Black Lives Matter is a deliberate fraud. I think it’s a reflection of what people really think, as wrong as their assumptions are.
Well said Larry.
This is an important piece especially when the narrative machines are working overtime to spin agendas on both sides.
I believe we should ditch the labeling of Americans as hyphenated Americans based on their ethnic heritage. We should also ditch identity politics and political correctness and virtue signaling.
We should also breakup the cartels and evaluate the performance of our economy on the basis of purchasing power of the median household.
While the social angst is not at the levels we saw in the 60s the two tier system we have now is much more blatant. Rosenstein says he didn’t read the FISA application before signing under penalty of perjury. He will not be held to account but others lower on the totem pole will have the book thrown at them for something far less.
All those just a week ago justifying continued lockdown that disproportionately affected those on the lower end of household income, now saying there are no threats because social justice just slayed the virus.
Minnesota burning
Fires are burning,the white house black
People are hurting,there’s no turning back
A man lay dying,on the street
A broken heart,ceased to beat
They say floyd broke the law
A poor man’s last straw
But this tragedy is looped on repeat
A broken system lies under a sheet
When will change give people hope
Save them from a slippery slope
They say promises are broken
When gestures are but a token
Let fires be a guiding light
To do what is right
Together we must all stand
To bring change to this land.
McCohen
Oh, bullshit. What do you have in mind? Are you pushing for 12% of the population to form a new ruling class? Yearning for punishment are you? Sad.
Perhaps many African-American women are making an informed choice to terminate a pregnancy because they lack the economic resources to raise a (or another) child.
Also, many people cling to that one sentence from ML King Jr., and ignore his calls for economic and social justice.
DWhite
More bullshit. Go somewhere else to peddle your agitprop crap. People like you denigrate Blacks as though they had no agency in life and are mere proles. Disgusting.
Would it not be considered sinful to kneel? Myself, I only kneel to Our Lord and Savior.
Larry:
You are omitting the most important part of the scam: the black on white, black on hispanic, and black on asian-american violence. 80-90% of interracial violent crimes in the USA are committed by blacks against members of other races. Yet, blacks are considered to be the victims. I’m tired of poverty being used as an excuse because blacks are responsible for their own poverty. People come to the US from all over the world many with nothing. Some don’t even speak English such as the Vietnamese boat people. They work hard and prosper. The term “white privilege” was invented as an excuse for blacks to blame whites for the failures caused by their own behavior. Besides, “white privilege” is the result of white accomplishment. If blacks want privileges they need to earn them.
I dont get it.
BLM I mean.
I am probably, on a proper Marxist Left Right scale, massively to the left of like, anyone in the US political discourse.
While there is a good bit of racism (not just white on black btw. fun fact, the historically most severe acts of racism happened between people of mostly the same skin color) in US, and also in basically any other society, a lot of police attitudes towards blacks in the US can readily be explained because different skin colors in the US tend to display different degrees of law abeyance, which the US police obviously observes even if they arent allowed to talk about it. If anything, Black policemen shoot black people at somewhat elevated rates compared with how frequently white cops shoot black people.
Another interesting statistical factoid is that, if you break down people who have been shooting at the police by race, you have a higher percentage of blacks then if you break down people who have been shot by the police according to race.
Given that the police is legitimized to shoot you if you shoot at them most of the times, a if the US police force would be as racist as adervtized, these proportions would be the other way round.
I think I dislike identity politics for a different reason then most of the people here. I hate them because they are some typical divide et empere bullshit from the “Professional managerial class” in particular, with the aim of dividing the working and employed without authority classes into mutually loathing segments that cant combine to challenge managment.
Amusingly, the closely echo earlier attemps by essentially the same class to divide the working classes by racism, with the big “meaningfull difference” is that today it is essentially racism in the name of antiracism.
Meanwhile, I believe Turcopolier detests identity politics because they are dividing the base on which US power, success and well-being is built, and he, imho correctly, perceives that this “Professional Ruling class” will come to rule over ashes if not stopped.
Lies indeed. The official autopsy revealed toxic levels of Fentanyl, as well as meth & marijuana. Asphyxiation was not determined to be the cause of death. He likely had some kind of cardiac failure due to the drugs and the stress. Do these official statements matter? Not to those propagating the narrative. This one falls apart very quickly. He was a bad dude who was not really “turning his life around”. He was being a menace just as his history shows him to have been.
I’m just hoping that the policemen arrested receive some justice; the opposite of what the rabid mob is calling for. What they are really calling for is civil war. God help the Good. Of course, God helps those who help themselves….
Thank you, Larry. In this town where I grew up, the first Black I ever saw was a girl whose father had been given a teaching position at our local college. The second was a young man from our capital city who was attending our college here in farm country.
Just yesterday I received notice from my credit union that I should stay away today because some college students in our town, not wanting to be left out of the news, were planning a peaceful protest across the avenue in a shopping area where stores like Target, Hobby Lobby, Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, etc.,, have stand-alone stores.
I absolutely hate it when people are so stupid that they want to participate in mindless “movements” just so they won’t feel left out of the “fun”and so they will have something to brag about to their children and grandchildren.
Your essay here needs to be republished in large city newspapers and especially in those “so-called” newspaper that are considered the most important since they come out of New York.
mcohen – Floyd had money for street drugs – fatal overdose levels of meth and Fentanyl, but was willing to pass a fake $20 bill to an innocent shop keeper for cigarettes – so he was not a “poor man”. Just a man of extremely poor judgements. Hope you can work that into your swarmy prose.
Deap,
Something that is sure to come up in the trials is why he was being arrested for passing a fake $20. Unless there is probably cause to believe the person knew or had printed the bill himself then it’s rather unusual. Fake bills get into circulation. Had some old lady passed it unknowingly she would not have been arrested on the spot.
It also turns out that two of the officers were on their 4th day as cops, and the officer whose knee was on his neck was their training officer. First and last arrest all in one shot, that. One wonders why that training officer was training them with techniques which they were trained NOT to use at the academy. This will not go well for him.
Black Lives Madder
Larry, You are conflating two separate issues. Not the best argument.
Women (of all colors) exercising choice is a very separate issue involving personal agency and individual decisions. Black Lives Matters points to a systemic use of violence and discrimination against a subset of Americans based solely on color. Very different.
@ Tim S: “Asphyxiation was not determined to be the cause of death. He likely had some kind of cardiac failure due to the drugs and the stress.”
Two autopsies were performed, one by the medical examiner, the other by a prominent private examiner retained by Mr. Floy’d family. You can find both of them here: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/05/read-george-floyd-autopsy-report-with-cause-of-death-and-other-factors/
Contrary to what you wrote, one of them indicates the cause of death was “mechanical asphyxia.” The other gives the cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” Those two conditions are not incompatible, i.e., both can be true.
While both autopsies noted the presence of drugs in his body, neither describes those drugs as being at toxic levels nor attributes to them any role in Mr. Floyd’s death.
If the officers do not make a plea deal and go on trial, the questions the jury will have to examine will focus on the defendants’ acts and omissions, not on the presence of drugs in Mr. Floyd’s body. To paraphrase the statutes, did Mr. Chauvin lawfully press his knee into Mr. Floyd’s throat for over 8 minutes and did the other three officers aid and abet Mr. Chauvin when he did so? See Minn. Rev. Stat. 609.05, https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.05.
I hate to make predictions (I’d rather bet on horses than judges) but I think it likely that all four officers will enter into plea deals to minimize the amount of time they will have to spend in prison. The second degree murder charge is a bit of a stretch but will they want to risk that the jury might find them guilty of that? The penalty for second degree murder in Minnesota is imprisonment for up to 40 years.
Jack
“social justice just slayed the virus”
Well it sure did in Contra Costa County, CA. Maybe it’s something in the true blue Bay Area air, but the mere act of protesting (presumably specific to Trump) is a whole 8 times safer than just socializing in a group. They don’t say how many people can safely riot together.
https://twitter.com/prageru/status/1268967448339820544
Deap.
Come on man.swarmy prose.Someone else called it doggerel
Swarmy doggerel sounds like the name of someone’s aunty from Lahore.Surely you cannot be that stupid to not realize that the Floyd tragedy is a direct reflection of a broken system.
Just in case I will provide a refresher
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/15/world/anti-apartheid-protest-gains-ground.html
“When President Reagan imposed limited economic sanctions this week against South Africa, he was responding in part to a broad anti-apartheid protest movement in this country that barely existed 10 months ago.
The protest movement was inspired by a group of black activists whose focus is foreign policy rather than the traditional black civil rights agenda. The movement has also been embraced by a new generation of students often branded too apathetic to be stirred by social causes and it has won support from a band of young Republican conservatives who see the apartheid issue as an important opportunity to strike a new tone for their party.”
Young Republican conservatives
Oh man the karma,oh man the irony.
Old Jewish saying.Son,if you make a deal with the devil make sure you get 20% off retail.
Laura Wilson, et al.
Black Lives Matter does nothing of the sort. Upon a cursory dive into their website, Black Lives Matter appears to be nothing more than a militant black Marxist/Anarcho-Communist organization, with the requisite flavorings of 21st century intersectionality thrown in for the sake of legitimacy in the overall Marxist intersectionality umbrella. From the group’s “What We Believe” manifesto:
“We see ourselves as part of the global Black family, and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as Black people who exist in different parts of the world.
We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence
We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.
We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts [There’s that word, again!].
We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).”
So basically, they want to further disintegrate the black family structure, particularly by eliminating men from the equation (thus solving the “patriarchal practice” of mothers working double shifts? Not sure how that math works out), and replace it with some sort of commune-based ethos, but presumably without the drugs and polyamory of the hippie version. Sounds like fun.
I notice that nowhere in their manifesto do they actually even acknowledge let alone attempt to address solutions to the epidemic of black-on-black crime that has ravaged their communities for generations. Basically, they’re a bunch of Commie ideologues with some very dull axes that need A LOT of grinding, and they’ve chosen the stone of racial upheaval upon which to grind them.
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
FWIW, this wasn’t at all difficult to find online.
Paul
My understanding that he had 3 times the level of where fentanyl could be toxic. He was an ex con convicted where a gun was put into a pregnant gals belly during an armed robbery attempt. He tested positive for covid on April 3rd. He also had mutiple convictions for substance abuse.
https://thecourierdaily.com/george-floyd-criminal-past-record-arrest/20177/
https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/04/869278494/medical-examiners-autopsy-reveals-george-floyd-had-positive-test-for-coronavirus
There is still 5 minutes where I have not seen where it is posited that he was refusing/resisting to get in the car. If he had mentioned to the cops or they suspected that he had covid, what would have been the proper way to subdue someone whose breadth may be considered a deadly weapon? My first instinct on watching the video is that the officer was trying to render him unconscious. However if simply he was trying to control the head so George could not breathe on him or his co officers would that
account for his actions? Would that account for the other officer maintaining their distance?
Col.
Apologies for missing a closing tag on the bold highlights somewhere in my previous post and leaving everything in bold.
Is rampant drug access and abuse in black neighborhoods now a only ” failed system”? Or is is cause number one. Any new dollar handed to black neighborhoods can be used in two ways: (1) zero tolerance for drugs and (2) tubal ligations for both men and women when they refuse to take care of children they create.
Then we can talk about a better future for all concerned and stop shoveling more money down a rat hole. Done with this.
George Floyd chose to kill himself and this will come out in the cross-examination. He was already a dead man walking, Do not resist arrest, do not attempt to escape your lawful confinement – that too was on video. So yes, it did take four police to restrain him on the ground when he tried to escape thee police car. What happened next was fate that he had set in motion.
Autopsy report said Fentanyl “intoxication” – that is overdose levels, combined with meth and his already damaged CVS condition and cigarettes on top of that – he chose to die that day. He chose a toxic and fatal cocktail.
He made so many bad choices that day. So many. He took the overdose drugs; he stiffed the store clark, he refused to give the cigarettes back when the clerk chased after him, he set up his own police call knowing he had a string of prior violent crimes and incarcerations.
He knew it was over for him when he got arrested for passing the bad note. But he chose to do exactly that when he chose also to resist arrest and flee in his highly compromised drug induced state. Don’t blame the police for becoming unwitting players in his own deadly script.
McCohen, your poem was horrible. Why did you inflict it on us?
why he was being arrested for passing a fake $20.
I wondered about that too. There was someone else who wondered. Was that you too?
Is this routine? I mean, I am familiar with bigger bills checking routines. But considering that, I could be simply passed on a fake bill without noticing. I do not have such a tool.
thanks for asking.
The only black life I’ve seen since moving back to the county seat, my home town, in Colorado is the adopted son of my minister and his wife. They adopted him after meeting him in Africa, where they were serving as missionaries. He seems quite comfortable in our almost completely white congregation. He, along with all the children in the church, have to put up with the onslaught of hugs they receive from all the “grandmas” in the church.
My prayer for him is that he grows up with other people his age who just don’t see any difference between him and them.
We had a “Black Lives Matter” peaceful protest featured in our local paper this morning. 300 mostly white students from the local college–which started out as a “normal” school to teach teachers for the rural schools in the area.
And it’s true that the “racial” issue in our town concerns the Hispanic gangs that are being influenced by those causing problems in our capital and other larger cities.
Yet, most of us grew up with many Hispanic friends, people I could never suspect ever of joining a gang.
Deap
All true.
But he did not deserve to be killed at hands of the Law.
Babak,
See Larry’s most recent piece. You don’t know he was killed by the law. In the USA we have courts that weigh objective evidence. We don’t go on mob rule, a mob of which you appear to be an active participant.
blum,
I hadn’t mentioned that before.
I think the two rookie officers are going to walk on this, they have a heck of a good excuse.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-minneapolis-cop-told-other-officers-you-shouldn-t-do-n1225136
They tried to tell him to stop, as much as they could as rookies on their fourth day of active duty. They had been trained that maintaining a neck hold on people that long was dangerous but can’t be reasonably expected to interfere with their training officer’s actions that early in their careers. Officer to inmate in four days…I feel for those guys, and the odds are good so will the jury.
I suspect that training officer was trying to show his two new rooks that HE set the rules out here.
Eric Newhill
The Police are Officers of the Law.
The Courts could only decide if this was the case of wrongful death.
NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams [who is black] blasted Mayor Delasio’s handling of the NYC protests – accusing the mayor of using his biracial family as a political shield.
“This is me talking, like, you can no longer hide behind your black wife and children, not anymore,” Williams said during a press conference streamed on Facebook Friday.
“You’re exposed now. We are at a time when we need your leadership. It is not there,” Williams said.
Williams’ rebuke comes a day after de Blasio was booed off the stage at a George Floyd memorial in Brooklyn.
When the mayor attempted to tell the crowd, “Black lives matter in New York,” one heckler shouted, “Not to you!”
The police were not unwitting players. No one forced one policemen to place his knee on George Floyd’s neck until he stopped breathing, he chose to. No one forced the other 3 policemen to stand there and watch, they chose to. George Floyd made many very bad choices that day but killing himself was not one of them.
nancyK
Is it part of your liberal faith to believe that George Floyd could not possibly have had any responsibility for his own death? BTW you have not told me what your ex IDF husband says about the use of chokeholds on Palestinians in Israel.
Nancy K,
The police are accountable to the elected officials in Minneapolis. They have been led for 48 years by Democratic Farm-Labor party leaders. Instead of buring down thier own city the residents should have voted out those politicians who created the policies they now decry.
Col Lang, I have in the past written that my husband does not agree with Israel regarding their treatment of Palestinians. He is especially critical of Likuid, the Ultra Orthodox and the settlors. He was a 17 year old paratrooper in the 6 day war and his unit was the first into Jerusalem. He left however 4 years later and has not gone back.
You asked does he not have an opinion, have you ever met an Israeli without an opinion. He was a communication prof for many years and verbalizes well, in many languages.
I believe George Floyd was responsible for the many poor choices he made in life. I also believe he was not responsible for the poor choice the police officer made.
I am liberal, but not far left and I am not at all in agreement about defunding all police departments. But I do feel there needs to be changes.
NancyK
But he does know that the Israelis do this to Palestinians as a matter of routine.
Col Lang I’m sure it does not surprise him as it does not surprise him when done by police here. Acknowledging this is done is not the same as approving of it.