What evidence do those who accuse America of being systemically racist to blacks have? Their main piece of evidence is that there are more blacks in jail than whites in proportion to their population. They say that proves that blacks are being discriminated against. There other evidence is when the news reports that a black person has been killed by the police.
At a Democrat presidential primary debate on Martin Luther King Day in 2008, then senator Barack Obama charged that blacks and whites "are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, (and) receive very different sentences . . . for the same crime.”
Not to be outdone, senator Hillary Clinton promptly denounced the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African-Americans proportionately than whites.”
After the arrest of George Floyd, Joe Biden released a video in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home.”
Is this true? Are police who black children have to fear or other blacks? What about discrimination? Are blacks in jail out of proportion to their population because they are being discriminated against by judges and police, or because they commit more crimes than whites do?
How can we find out?
One way is to look up the details of police shootings and see what really happened. If we read the details of the stories of why police shot who they did we will find out that in many (but not all) cases the police shot in self defense and if they hadn't the person they shot might have killed them.
Heather MacDonald wrote that in 2018 blacks were responsible for 53% of the homicides in the United States. If the police discriminate against blacks than one would expect that more than 53% of the people shot by police would be black. Instead about 23% of the people who were shot by police were black.
One way would be to find out what the victims of crimes say the race was of the person who committed a crime against them. It what victims say matches up with the race of those put in jail than they are in jail because they commit crimes and not because of bias against them. Heather MacDonald wrote that it does match up.
Another very foolish way to find out would be to not lock up criminals in order to reduce the number of blacks in jail. That is happening all over the country and the crime rate is going up.
One effect of propaganda that convinces blacks that the system is racist is that they believe that the reason there is a disproportionate number of blacks in jail is not because blacks commit more crimes but instead is because judges and police discriminate against blacks. Then when people who believe this are elected (many of whom are black), they black people who the police arrest. The people who are elected that do this, never think to themselves that if America was systemically racist, they wouldn't have been elected in the first place. The black leaders who do this, never think about how the increase in crimes because of their policies could lead people to become racist against blacks. They never think about how the people hurt most by their policies are black and how most of the increase in crime that result from their policies is in black neighborhoods.
A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution after a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. After conviction, blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, but that was because their crimes were more serious and they already had criminal records.
The false narrative of systemic police bias has resulted in the burning of police stations and in targeted killings of officers.
The picture below shows people burning the Minneapolis police station. Do you think police will want to protect the people who burn down their police stations? If the police were the reason black people are being killed than taking away their money so that their are fewer policemen and burning down their police stations so they can't police neighborhoods should cause fewer blacks to be killed. The opposite is the case, more black people have been killed by other blacks since defunding of and rioting against police. It's not police that are the problem.
Larry Elder asks David Rubin for evidence for systemic racism in the video below and David Rubin couldn't come with any. Larry Elder presented evidence that the opposite is true. He presented an alternative theory as to what is causing higher incarceration of blacks than whites.
The Babylon Bee made a funny video about how it helps to be colored. It is embedded below.
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What about police brutality to blacks? Doesn't that prove that America is racist?
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