Heather MacDonald (more than once), Larry Elder (more than once), and a host of others have provided mountains of evidence that prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no widespread special targeting of blacks by U.S. law enforcement. In addition to the crime statistics, consider: Of the 50 largest cities in the U.S., 30 percent have a black police chief. Of the 50 largest sheriff’s departments in the U.S., 12 percent were led by black Americans. (Remember, blacks are about 13 percent of the U.S. population, and sheriffs are usually elected.)
Barack Obama, the U.S. President and Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military—the largest, most powerful military in the world—is a black man. The U.S. Attorney General—the chief law enforcement officer and chief lawyer of the U.S. government—Loretta Lynch, is a black woman. The previous U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, is a black man. No doubt there are racists within U.S. law enforcement—as there are in almost any agency, institution, or organization in America—however there is no way a nation achieves the racial diversity detailed above if widespread, institutionalized racism exists.
In spite of this information, whenever the national conversation turns to confrontations between white cops and black suspects, the narrative at the beginning of this piece—the narrative of Black Lives Matter—dominates the mainstream media. Remember, the Black Lives Matter movement gained national attention because of a lie. Black Lives Matter was founded after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. However, the movement became known nationally after the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.
After Brown’s death, the supposed gesture and words of surrender by Brown—“Hand’s Up, Don’t Shoot!”—became a frequent rallying cry for those protesting Brown’s death. However, after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, it was concluded that Brown didn’t have his hands up and didn’t cry “Don’t shoot” when Officer Wilson shot him. Even liberal apologist Jonathan Capehart had to admit that, “‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ was built on a lie.” Nevertheless, as we see today (scroll about one-third the way down), the narrative continues.
One of the reasons the deceptive liberal narrative about black lives is so doggedly defended and regularly repeated is that the truth about the very real suffering in the American black community runs counter to modern liberal dogma. The biggest reason for the rampant lawlessness and poverty that is so prevalent in the black community is the breakdown of the family.
It has been widely reported for years now that the out-of-wedlock birth rate among American blacks is over 70 percent. Almost always, mothers are left to raise their children alone. In U.S. cities, where the violence and poverty among U.S. blacks is most pronounced, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is even worse. For example, in Chicago about 80 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Today, only 17 percent of American black teenagers reach age 17 in a family with their biological parents married to each other. In no state in the U.S does black family intactness exceed 30 percent.
Social science is finally revealing what sound morality and good common sense always told us: Children of single mothers do worse in almost every metric measured: school achievement, poverty, crime, emotional well-being, drug use, delinquency, violent behavior, and so on. These negative outcomes are even worse for black children born to single mothers. Millions of black youths—because of the frequent absence of fathers, especially black males—are growing up poorly disciplined, poorly educated, and poorly churched.
Thus, gangs and crime have become far too common in the black communities of America. Sadly, these broken and vulnerable black families typically live in the most dangerous parts of our nation. From the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, until the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, there were 4,485 U.S. casualties. The city of Chicago alone had 4,265 murders during the same time period. Perhaps the most shocking statistic of all when it comes to black Americans and violence is that black men in the U.S. are half as likely to die if they are in prison than if they are not.
However, easily the most dangerous place for a black child in America is the womb. This is horrifically sad when one considers that a mother’s womb should be one of the safest places in the universe. Since the Roe vs. Wade ruling in 1973, abortion has killed more black Americans than crime, accidents, cancer, heart disease, or AIDS. Since 1973, abortion has taken the life of more black Americans than any other single cause of death. Again, in U.S. cities, these numbers are even more staggering. In New York City, in 2012, more black children were aborted than were born.
As Mother Teresa warned us, “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” Thus, we should not be surprised that, where there is rampant abortion, there is also rampant violence. In spite of all of this, Black Lives Matter and their liberal apologists refuse to stand up for black children in the womb.
As I have often said, after our relationship with our Creator, the most important relationship in the universe is the relationship between a husband and his wife. Any other type of union is a perversion of one of the oldest truths in the history of humanity. Such a conclusion is in direct opposition to the pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, pro-big-government—which could all be summed up as the anti-family—agenda of today’s American left. For decades now, modern American liberals have waged war on the family. They have lied about sex and sexuality, about the importance of mothers and fathers, about marriage, and about life in the womb. The rotten fruit of these lies is widespread death and destruction. It is the politics, policies, and practices of liberalism that have robbed America’s black communities of peace and prosperity and turned our police officers into targets.
(See this column at American Thinker.)
Copyright 2016, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com
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