Well – yes. In one analysis, in 569 cases, 48 officers had shot or killed someone before (8.4%). A dozen had multiple prior shootings.[1] More troubling is that, “Black people were more likely to be killed by police, more likely to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed.”[2]
That sounds like a problem. It appears to be reinforce the narrative so prevalent in news coverage and so popularly believed. No upright and fair citizen wants to live a police state, or a place where prejudice blinds either the police or the population.
In a review of data, spanning almost three decades, “blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders.” [3] The report placed the homicide victimization rate for blacks at 27.8 per 100,000, “six times higher than the rate for whites, which was 4.5 per 100,000. “Blacks accounted for slightly more than 51 percent of all gun homicide victims… despite representing only about 13 percent of the U.S. population.”[4] Fifty-four percent were age 24 and younger, overwhelmingly male (91.1 percent),” usually dying of a gunshot wound (84.1 percent).[5] Perhaps more revealing from Massachusetts data is that 78 percent of the black homicide victims and 90 percent of homicide offenders were known to the state criminal justice system.[6]
But there is more to the story. The Black Lives Matter narrative seems to be – defund the police, and make them go away, and the problem will go away – the problem of black crime, black-on-black violence – that problem. The one that is not being addressed. To the point. Take away race, and ask, is it reasonable that most arrests are of lawbreakers? If, sadly, crime disproportionately rises from one sector of the culture, whatever the profile, then, it is reasonable that arrests in that sector are disproportionately higher. We refused to allow the backstory of higher rates of crime from, by, and in the black community, and complicity, cover-up, the refusal to inform on their own.
So wait – not everyone feels that the police are a problem, ‘the problem. ‘Not even everyone in high crime areas believe the police are the problem. But, you would not believe that when the media is shouting down the entire nation by echoing Black Lives Matter advocates. Overwhelmingly, one study indicated that people from high-crime neighborhoods wanted more, not less police surveillance. They complained about the failure to make arrests, of an apparent caution by police, of being too soft on crime, of not taking actions in such areas, where a different, tougher standard was enforced in richer neighborhoods.[7] Police, it turns out, in these areas and in certain populations, are less reluctant to use force, to act, because of the need to avoid, and change the narrative. The distressed neighborhoods, often black, consistently “reported higher levels of dissatisfaction” and blamed “the police for persistent crime and disorder problems.”[8] This is precisely the opposite of the voices that call for police units to be defunded and disbanded. Instead, “… 85 percent of Hispanics and 88 percent of African Americans favored more police surveillance of high crime areas.”[9]
This is not the story being told – and the current narrative is being repeated so frequently, so loudly, so aggressively, that the facts no longer matter. The media showcasing only selective voices has trapped the nation in an echo chamber – and the result is madness.
Consistent studies do not indicate police bias. Ah, but television, did you see the news? The micro-events, shown over and over, “prove” otherwise! They become catalytic, a cause for reaction – but not a reaction against reality. They are a reaction against the narrative – and serve to reinforce it. The fixation, a kind of national baptism, on George Floyd’s death, and that of others, is traumatizing. Like being trapped in a theater, the whole nation has been forced to watch the same horror film repeatedly. Such a pervasive and repetitive video and audio narrative has not only traumatized the national psyche, it has bent and warped it. It skews reality. Like a picture out of focus with a bad lens, it cannot capture reality. Perspective is indecipherable. Like an optical illusion, you cannot envision another image, another reality. You are conditioned, programmed, indoctrinated into the national narrative – and driven to act in accordance. In fact, the reporting seems to suggest, subliminally, an anticipated negative reaction and then justify it, encouraging cultural hysteria, which it then feeds on with frenzied levels of reporting.
After almost two months of riots, finally, ordinary citizens are beginning to organize, according to Tucker Carlsen.[10] Mayors have cowered and made accommodations. Police have been ordered to stand down. In some cases, as private property was invaded, residents took up arms. When they appealed for police protection, no police came. In St. Louis, such a couple who dare to defend their property against an invading mob was threatened with a lawsuit by the district attorney – for armed defense of their property, on their property. Charges for resisting the mob? And defending their property – this is the law, now completely upside down. Self-defense is now a crime, and the state will use its power to crush those who resist mob violence? What nation are we now in? The Washington Post and New York Times characterized the protesters as peaceful and the white, and sometimes black defenders of their property as being guilty of a hate crime. Videos show otherwise – but no one cares for the facts.[11]
The Fruits of Liberal Education
For decades, university ‘studies’ departments have been initiating students into the philosophy of identity politics. Now the ideas are spreading through high schools and even into middle schools. The world is divided into two halves – the oppressors and the oppressed, which includes race and class oppression, sex and sexual orientation, gender identity. Differences in physical ability, age, weight – are all things that are used to identify us and separate us. The goal is to eliminate the oppression of those in these groups – the overweight, those with dark skins, women, etc. Whites are not counted, especially not counted, are white males – they are the oppressors, par excellence.
The problem with heresy is fundamentally a problem with the heretic himself. Ideas can be exchanged, compared, examined, and even combated, at least, when two people submit to a set of values and ideas that are transcendent. But when all values and transcendent truth is cast aside, there is no meaningful dialogue. Only rants. On demands. On grasps of power. Rational discussion demands a rational construct, a grid for dialogue. We can’t find our way without a compass. If one determines north to be this way, and another, that way – we are on the ground utter relativism and subjectivity. We can only separate and go our own ways – and, sadly, without a national spiritual awakening, this is the crossroads at which we find ourselves.
We can all grow and change when we stand before the revelation and the insight of Scripture. In the light of the Spirit, we can find truth, out of a matrix of truth. But a heretic, will not change. He is not interested in change. His ideas are only a means to power. They may represent bad theology, or sociology or a distorted view of history, but the greater problem is his entrenched attitude. And that makes his ideology even more deadly.
Healthy reason rises out of the rationality, logical constructs at the heart of big ideas. It comes from concepts that are whole and balanced. When stories and personal accounts drive a movement, and it lacks an overarching rational construct, a big-picture concept that informs the movement, efforts are misguided. Revolutions may occur but they do not produce lasting, stable cultures or governments. In the end, they fail. The stories that drive these movements may be true and may contain truths, but they are not holistic. They have passion at their center, not reason. They are reactions, not reasoned action. They tend to stand against, not for. They are tied to the way things are, or were, and often fail to contemplate the way things will be after the change that they demand comes to pass. They deliver their people to an unintended destiny.
The ideas of Identity Politics are at the heart of the Black Lives Matter group. Those ideas are borrowed from a century ago when Marxists ideologues wanted the capture the globe, but particularly Western Europe and the USA, and felt that its ideas were resisted and progress was too slow.[12]
In Identity Politics, the noble vision of the individual, created, endowed granted inalienable rights, is lost to the collective. The Founders had a grand vision of humans as a rational, thinking, reflective people – read the founding documents. The view today is that individuals need class identity – and that helps them think, thus group-think, it helps them sort out their morality and confirm truth. As Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer note, the “experience of reality, our evaluation of evidence, our access to truth, our moral status, and our moral obligations are all largely determined by our membership in either a dominant oppressor group or a subordinate oppressed group.”[13] Relativism champions individualism – my views and perspectives, my values and truth, my moral choices, and my loyalties. Marxism, Post-Modernism, Black Lives Matter is relativism written large. It is collective relativism – our views, our perspectives, our values and truth, our moral choice, and our loyalties. And from these views, no one is allowed dissent. Have you noticed, in Washington, how so many votes by the Congress and Senators are block votes and how infrequently, members of the Congress and Senate cross the lines? The new classism is everywhere. Individual dissent is disallowed, and when it occurs, it is met with violent social ostracization, shaming, labeling. This is not America. This is not liberty. This is ideological totalitarianism, hegemonic power, by which one group imposes its values on another group. Unaddressed, unabated, it will manifest as political totalitarianism. This is no longer a set of ideas and ideals by which we ‘consent’ to be governed. This is a set of ideas and ideals, offered as demands, in exchange for, ostensibly, peace by the demanding group, if, and for as long as their demands are met.
Each identity group in the nation draws its values from a different well. We are not drinking the same water – and our understanding of freedom and liberty, of social justice, of equality, are varied. We are not on the same page. In true liberty, individuals speak, and often passionately so. There is reasoned agreement and disagreement. The sparks are sometimes hot and and yet, among believers, laced with grace. On the other hand, identity politics makes group-think assumptions. No one is seen as morally independent. Whatever dissenting opinion is offered is considered to have a power motive and to be biased in favor of that motive. There is no true truth, only your truth, and my truth, both a means of power.
“Obey the government, for God is the one who has put it there. There is no government anywhere that God has not placed in power. So those who refuse to obey the laws of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow. For the policeman does not frighten people who are doing right; but those doing evil will always fear him. So if you don’t want to be afraid, keep the laws and you will get along well. The policeman is sent by God to help you. But if you are doing something wrong, of course you should be afraid, for he will have you punished. He is sent by God for that very purpose. Obey the laws, then, for two reasons: first, to keep from being punished, and second, just because you know you should. Pay your taxes too, for these same two reasons. For government workers need to be paid so that they can keep on doing God’s work, serving you.” Romans 13:1-3.
Lawlessness despises order. And authority. And when lawlessness is excused, for whatever reason, including economic disparity, or oppression, chaos follows disorder, and disorder is bred by a contempt for power. Oppression is never justified. Never. Police are to act as servants – not as power brokers. But parents, in any community, must raise godly, children, who are held accountable for their actions. That begins in the home, and moves to the community, and then the city and the nation. Parents, whether single moms or broken families struggling themselves to communicate and be amicable, must not excuse, in their children, or the young adults still under their influence, illegal and immoral activities. A just nation demands just people and families. Righteousness, written large, gives birth to and demands justice. Sadly, our culture wants justice without righteousness. Equity without morality. Love without ‘Truth.’ Power without moral restraint and responsibility.
[1] See: https://policeviolencereport.org/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Anthony A. Braga and Rod K. Brunson, “The Police and Public Discourse on “Black-on-Black” Violence,” May, 2015. Cited – Study by Cooper and Smith, 2011. The National Institute of Justice and the Harvard Kennedy School. See: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/wiener/programs/pcj/files/PoliceandPublicDiscourseBlackonBlackViolence.pdf.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid. See notes on Klinger, 1997.
[8] Ibid. See notes on Weitzer and Tuch, 2006; Weitzer, 2010, 16; See: “New Perspectives in Policing Residents of crime-plagued neighborhoods often call for greater police presence,” Weitzer (2010: 121).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Tucker Carlsen, “Ordinary Citizens Stand Up as Politicians Cower to the Rage Mob,” June 29, 2020.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse sought to extend classical Marxism. National factories and work environments, for them, were only a variated form of slavery – and only be class identity, against owners and managers, the bourgeoise, would they be ‘free.’ The revolution was at one level economic, and at another, against structure, culture, and repression. It favored economic socialism – guaranteed incomes. This is related to what has been called “Critical theory,” and it defines most leftist movements. It has been called, due to the mind games it plays, the “politics of psychology,” and due to its social goals, that of “cultural revolution.” It is the gospel of the New Left, of identity politics, and of Black Lives Matter. See: Bonner, S.E. Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011, p. 2-4; Joe L. Kincheloe and Peter McLaren, “Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research”, in Key Works in Critical Pedagog y, 2011, K. Hayes et al (eds.), Sense Publications, 2011, p. 286.
[13] Dr. Neil Shenvi and Dr. Pat Sawyer, Engaging Critical Theory and the Social Justice Movement, A Ratio Christi ebook. 2020. See: ratiochristi.org.
