It is smart to avoid the police. Few good things come from drunken or drug-addled traffic stops, confrontations in bars, angry disputes with spouses, or petty crimes like vandalism and shoplifting. Tempers flare. People do rash, spur of the moment things. Violence erupts. People get hurt. Sometimes they die.
Many Americans have had few if any dealings with the police. It’s not because of the color of their skin. It’s how they manage their lives. They don’t do things that attract law enforcement. That’s not to say that racial profiling doesn’t occur or that police cannot be overly zealous when dealing with persons of color, but common sense tells us that people who don’t commit crimes have a lot less chance of being shot by the police than people who do illegal things.
We can’t rationalize away what we saw over and over again as the news media replayed the video from the South Carolina police shooting. We can, however, make a generalization that makes more sense and is more truthful than assuming that black lives don’t matter: honest lives last longer and have less chance of ending with a shooting, whether by criminals or the police.
Who decides whether a life matters?
We have heard it many times and in many different guises. This came from the floor of the House:
Black lives matter. But both our law enforcement system and criminal justice system don’t reflect that.1
That’s a pretty sweeping generalization considering the black community hasn’t done a particularly good job of making sure that black lives matter, either. The truth is some lives matter more and last longer than others not because of law enforcement or the government, but because of those who are living those lives.
There is only so much that spending on community development, education, intervention programs, and other social support props can do. When we don’t take charge and choose to skirt society’s rules bad outcomes are a lot more likely to happen, especially when that failure to take charge happens early and becomes a lifestyle.
Do black children’s lives matter to the African American community?
Blame it on whatever you wish. The numbers on crimes committed by African American kids are troubling:
The Violent Crime Index arrest rate in 2012 for black juveniles (575) was 5 times the rate for white (111) youth, 6 times the rate for American Indian juveniles (94), and 12 times the rate for Asian juveniles (47).2
Minorities in general commit more than their fair share of youthful violent crimes:
Minority youth accounted for more than half (54%) of all juvenile arrests for Violent Crime Index offenses and two-fifths (41%) of all juvenile arrests for Property Crime Index offenses.3
The violent crime numbers in the black community are five times higher than for whites:
In the 1980s, the Violent Crime Index arrest rate for black juveniles was 6 times the white rate. This ratio declined during the 1990s, holding at 4 to 1 from 1998 to 2004. Since 2004, the racial disparity in the rates increased, averaging about 5 to 1 in the last 10 years.4
Does a record of arrest predispose a police officer to take fewer chances with a suspect? Of course. Can a youthful arrest record reduce your chances of seizing the opportunities in life that liberal government officials insist are being denied because of racial disparities and unfairness? Most definitely. Is the police violence issue a law enforcement problem or a minority community problem? Ask the president’s task force on overhauling law enforcement.
Policing task force doesn’t address the whole truth
The Task Force on 21st Century Policing came up with a few ideas on how to deal with the problems between law enforcement and minority communities. Suggestions include police training in cultural diversity,5 social interaction skills6, the Constitutional basis for authority,7 trust building,8 and health and wellness programs because “Hurt people can hurt people.”9 These suggestions may have merit on some level, but there is a larger truth they ignore.
One way to make sure black lives matter is for people to stop doing things that invite confrontations with the police. Don’t engage in the behavior we saw on the Michael Brown convenience store tape. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you are underage and run afoul of Alcoholic Beverage Control enforcement, as in the University of Virginia incident. Don’t run from the police. Don’t swear at the police. Don’t hit the police. If you do, whether you are black, white, brown, or green, bad things are going to happen.
Racial profiling exists. There is still racism in America. Police in many areas probably approach African Americans differently than white people. None of this has anything to do with one simple fact: not exposing yourself to the police reduces your chances of being arrested, shot, beaten, or otherwise abused. So does taking charge of your life, something the African American community still relies too heavily on others to do for them.
Updated June 11, 2016: links.
Worst Political News Story This Week Published April 11, 2015.
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