Tired of lies about racism

By Henry Fowler, Stevensville

I’m tired of being lied to by the media, academics, Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes, and Democratic politicians who say we live in a country of widespread “systemic racism.” To claim that one bad act by a bad cop is a symptom of a pervasive nationwide problem is absolutely wrong.

Although a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by police in 2015, this figure is well within what would be expected given racial differences in crime rates and likelihood to resist arrest.

From 2005 to 2014, blacks accounted for 40 percent of police killings. Since blacks are approximately 13 percent of the population, that means they were 4.46 times more likely than non-blacks to kill a police officer. During that same period, police killings of blacks accounted for about 4 percent of homicides of blacks. Police killings of unarmed blacks accounted for approximately 0.6 percent of homicides of blacks.

From 1980 to 2008, 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other blacks.

Police shootings of unarmed blacks is a very small problem compared to black-on-black murder within the black community. Facts matter. See Heather MacDonald’s “The War on Cops” and Taleeb Starkes’s “Black Lies Matter.”

 And where is the evidence of “systemic racism” in Minneapolis or even in Minnesota? Minneapolis is an overwhelmingly progressive city that has been led by successive Democratic mayors for decades — mayors that, under the city’s charter, have total power over the police department. The current mayor is a far-left Democrat. The City Council is Democratic. Minneapolis Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is one of the most liberal Democrats in Congress.

Minnesota is a Democratic state led by a Democratic governor. Like Omar, the state’s Democratic attorney general is a black Muslim. Both US Senators are liberal Democrats. Minnesota has not voted Republican for president since 1972. Are we expected to believe that this citadel of liberalism is a bastion of “white supremacy”?

The entire “woke” Left and their allies are liars. They lie because they hate this country and want to destroy it. They actively cheer for the destruction caused by antifa, BLM, and the mob, or make excuses for it. Antifa, the anarchist-communist terrorist group, left this graffiti on a wall in Minneapolis: “When our turn comes, we will make no excuses for the terror.” See Rod Dreher, “Weimar Minneapolis.”