Dr. Brown shares his thoughts on last night’s sniper killings of Dallas police along with the shootings of black men by police earlier this week, also taking your calls and answering your questions. Listen live here 2-4 pm EST, and call into the show at (866) 348 7884 with your questions and comments.
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Yeshua said that the light of the body is the eye, if thine eye is clear the whole body will be full of light, but if the eye is evil the whole body will be full of darkness. There is no light apart from Christ, and we the church should give expression of that light through the Holy Spirit. We cannot allow ourselves to be ensnared in the doctrine of the republican and democratic party, the philosophies of men complicate that which is simple. I am an african american man whose life is not governed by my ethnicity, but by the light of Christ that dwells in me. Another law will not stop any of the unjustified violence that we are witnessing from civilians as well as law enforcement, these incidents transpire because we fail to follow the laws Christ gave us, LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF!
GeekAesthete explains:
Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!
The problem is that the statement “I should get my fair share” had an implicit “too” at the end: “I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.” But your dad’s response treated your statement as though you meant “only I should get my fair share”, which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.
That’s the situation of the “black lives matter” movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.
The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn’t work that way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn’t want footage of a black or latino person dying, she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That’s not made up out of whole cloth — there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it’s generally not considered “news”, while a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate — young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don’t treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don’t pay as much attention to certain people’s deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don’t treat all lives as though they matter equally.
Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: it’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means “only black lives matter,” when that is obviously not the case. And so saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.
When we lose respect for law enforcement;
we become lawless !!
Gregory Grant,
According to https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/ police killed 258 blacks in 2015.
Is even one such death one too many–would it be better to see the figure at zero? Absolutely.
Is this an epidemic? Not even close.
Here are the CDC’s 2013 vital statistics to help give a little more perspective on what an “epidemic” might look like:
Heart disease: 614,348
Cancer: 591,699
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 136,053
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 133,103
Alzheimer’s disease: 93,541
Diabetes: 76,488
Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,227
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 48,146
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 42,773
Going back to the police shooting stastics, you’ll notice that police killed 494 whites–nearly twice the number of blacks.
“Well, there are a lot more whites than blacks, so even if police killed twice as many whites blacks are overrepresented percentagewise.”
Could that have anything to do with the fact that blacks are overrepresented in terms of violent crime–because they are more likely to find themselves in the kinds of encounters with law enforcement that end in their deaths? In 2015, according to a Breitbart article (http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/28/5-devastating-facts-black-black-crime/), “…black people–at just a fifth of the size–committed almost 1,000 more murders than their white counterparts.”
“Are you saying there is NO racial component?”
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that, at some point, the issue of “race” becomes a distraction. Resources could otherwise be being invested in addressing concrete problems–the statistics speak for themselves–before we deal with some nebulous “sentiment” some white officers may or may not have. Note: even if you said every single black who was killed by police in 2015 was an instance of white-on-black hatred (this is not a possibility–it is not possible that all 258 blacks were shot and killed by white officers), then “racism” among police officers nationally wouldn’t have inspired as many slayings as what ever had inspired blacks to kill other blacks in the same amount of time in a single city (Chicago).
I’m also of the opinion that this constant beating on the “race” drum is just stirring up more racism (and reverse-racism)–e.g., one of the Dallas shooters said he was inspired by the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter, and wanted to kill whites (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpJWrvDqxw). The guy was angry at whites over the past week’s two incidents–but Minnesotan officer responsible for the death of Philando Castile was Asian! The man was brainwashed with this baseless “white versus black” racism rhetoric! Black Lives Matter, and everyone else responsible for constantly stirring up the racial enmity and strife that led to the massacre, have blood on their hands.
258 blacks were shot by police in 2015–and it is certain they weren’t all unjustified–and we’re supposed to turn against one another and tear the country apart over it? Excuse me? If only those involved in the horrific massacre in Dallas could have channeled their energies into something productive (they accomplished nothing good–they became puppets of deception, and their actions brought more darkness into the world and not more light)–but that would have required dealing in reality instead of in the kind of race-baiting propaganda behind the words of the man (GeekAesthete) you cited.
Good points Dan1el.
If blacks are way more prone to commit violent crime than whites , and the statistics do indicate that this is true, then there is a reason why police are more edgy or more prone to escalate the situation. It is not prejudice as much as it is self preservation. I drive more alertly in city traffic than on a country road because there is more danger of an accident. I am not prejudice of city drivers.
All that said, the latest incidents that were caught on video are alarming. Not so much because of the supposed racial prejudice, but because police officers are too quick to draw their guns…and use them too soon.
What would be wrong with backing away from someone you think is reaching for a gun instead of shooting him. The police are trained to shoot and hit what they are aiming at and most other people can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a hand gun in these sorts of situations. The officers wear protective vests. They took their jobs knowing that it ia dangerous work.
From my vantage point, and it may not be very accurate, the police officers were not protecting the public…they were protecting themselves before it was necessary. Their job is to protect the public. I’ve seen this sort of thing first hand in my small town. The abuse of power and “us against them” is very problematic and it is becoming more prevalent. The targeting people and looking for things more things to uncover instead or the serving of people to the benefit of us is outrageous.
The police are supposed to be our servants, not our masters…black, white, brown or tan. I do not see the problem as against black people as much as the abuse of office and authority.
Shalom
I can’t add to the well spoken words at the end of the show and those written . But I must add this I have herd so called Christian’s throw that “I Am a believer ” around. Well, if all it takes is to know JESUS is the SON of GOD and SAVIOR of this world then the devil must be a Christain also . I know JESUS is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long suffering, gentleness and self control. The devil is a lier, hater murderer and full of unforgiveness. Make no mistake, Judas is not saved nor in heaven.
Re Post Dan1 IS this an epidemic? What is an epidemic? You listed causes of death here, and 100 percent of humans die of something. Here is your list below.
Here are the CDC’s 2013 vital statistics to help give a little more perspective on what an “epidemic” might look like:
Heart disease: 614,348
Cancer: 591,699
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 136,053
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 133,103
Alzheimer’s disease: 93,541
Diabetes: 76,488
Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,227
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 48,146
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 42,773
An epidemic occurs when an infectious disease spreads rapidly to many people. For example, in 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome Sars epidemic took the lives of nearly 800 people worldwide. A pandemic is a global disease outbreak.
Is this the best metaphor to use ? Perhaps not-
But an pandemic of SARS was well within range of the gun violence that you pointed out above. Identifying gun violence as a disease or epidemic, in this context, is perhaps helpful.
The hope of America is found in the Church, not the politicians or the president. With bended knee we must cry out to G-d for the winds of His Spirit to blow upon us. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and rulers of the darkness of this age. It is a ploy of the devil to pit races against one another, because the real enemy is satan and that is who we must come against. Let us pray, and when we are finished, let us fall on our knees and pray again – until we hear from heaven in sending revival to our land.
Shalom
Bo,
1. “I am not prejudice of city drivers.”
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…. After all we have been through. Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.” -Jesse Jackson
I didn’t really want to go here, but we can do it: based on the situation we presently find ourselves in, do law enforcement officers have a legitimate reason to be on more of an alert when they are dealing with young black men? Of course they do! Even Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader, a defender of blacks, is afraid of black youths–and his encounters with them are not those high-intensity ones officers are dealing with!
That said, I should point out that, from what I understand, things weren’t always this way (e.g., the levels of illegitimacy in the black community used to be lower than those in the white community)–this is a product of things like the government destroying the black family through incentivizing fatherlessness by subsidizing single black mothers decades back; and of blacks being sold a culture (e.g., hip hop) that makes spending time behind bars something to boast about.
2. “All that said, the latest incidents that were caught on video are alarming.”
Devastating–especially the Philando Castile video.
3. “Not so much because of the supposed racial prejudice, but because police officers are too quick to draw their guns…and use them too soon.”
I’ve heard this as well–that where officers have said things like, “It’s my job to get home safely,” they would logically be less hesitant to use lethal force. Notwithstanding, if you look at the numbers, the odds of dying in an encounter with the police are incredibly low.
4. “The abuse of power and ‘us against them’ is very problematic and it is becoming more prevalent. The police are supposed to be our servants, not our masters…black, white, brown or tan. I do not see the problem as against black people as much as the abuse of office and authority.”
Misconduct really could be a legitimate problem with a few bad apples (e.g., in Miami–where I lived–it was known that police officers would use and sometimes sell confiscated drugs and drug paraphernalia); but if we’re talking about encounters that end in death, according to a 2007 CBS News report (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-examines-police-use-of-deadly-force/), between the years of 2003 and 2005 there were about 2,000 deaths out of about 40,000,000 arrests. To say, as I’ve heard it said, that officers are “hunting” blacks is utterly ridiculous.
I think that, all things considered, law enforcement officers are actually doing a very good job (in terms of arrests that end in death)!
Jon,
I don’t really want to spend more time here so I’ll leave this comment and call it quits.
1. You should know that epidemic can mean different things; what I meant was “a rapid spread or increase in the occurrence of something” (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/epidemic?s=t)–maybe using those figures muddled the issue (I cited them to show you how miniscule the numbers of fatal police encounters were in comparison–not to give an example of a medical epidemic). Not that it matters, but SARS was an epidemic, not an pandemic (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92479/).
2. Why are we now talking about the general topic of “gun violence”? That’s not the issue.
If anything, what is “epidemic” is the disproportionate amount of crime being produced by black youths who are sadly influenced by all the wrong things–not their being killed by police in the encounters they are themselves too frequently bringing about.
Brian R.
Amen!
Re Dan1 comment below If anything, what is “epidemic” is the disproportionate amount of crime being produced by black youths who are sadly influenced by all the wrong things–not their being killed by police in the encounters they are themselves too frequently bringing about.
This is profoundly true. You need to understand the issue before one can change it. The truth is absolute essential in the black lives matter protest. Sadly the movement is off target and will not achieve the results that could be dome in the way Martin Luther King had success with his movement.
This president had quite a good opportunity to make a profound change in our culture on how races could advance in race relations. Sadly this was off the mark in his first foray in the beer summit. That was an abject failure, and today he is reaping from the errors in his understanding and lack of wisdom.
The hope for all people is as the Bible says JESUS no man comes to The FATHER only through CHRIST JESUS not by the Church We invite people we the bride. The spirit says come to GOD. GOD the Father Changes people not the church . Thinking like that is why we find are selves in this situation. We the church, are not GOD.
I’m not investing more time, just sharing a link because I believe Giuliani hit the bullseye on CBS’s “Face The Nation” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8cUAb3df0M).
http://lawofficer.com/2016/07/follow-commands/
Daniel I think you missed the point, all I was suggesting is that the phase Black lives Matter, is not racist but simply implies that Black Lives Matter as well. I see all the numbers and the statistics, and you make a very convincing point. Notwithstanding your statistics does not square with my reality, I mentor young men from the inner city. I drive them to classes for extra help with their school work, to their basketball games, and sometimes out to eat. I have never been arrested, never been in trouble with the law, I have been a fully committed Christian since age of 16 (currently 39). Yet we have been stop at least 7 times (that’s a very conservative estimate), no broken tail lights, was not speeding, license and registration up to date, and still I am stopped. I suspect that a car filled with young (black) men looks suspicious. For whatever reason we ( black men ) are viewed and approached differently by law enforcement officers, not all the time, but more often than is palatable. See link below, and trust me I could send you volumes of links that demonstrate the same bias.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKGZnB41_e4
Gregory Grant,
I’d said I wouldn’t respond here anymore, but I will make an exception for you because of the sensitive nature of the discussion and because of the fact that we have not interacted.
You had a completely different issue (general treatment of Blacks) in mind when you read than I did in my mind when I wrote: I never said cops treated Blacks 100% like everyone else, or that the treatment of Blacks (whether taking actual treatment, perceived treatment, or both into account) was perfect (so that Blacks had no reason to be indignant); rather, what I said was that there was no epidemic of officers killing Blacks, and that when lies like “hands up don’t shoot” (Mike Brown was not a gentle giant shot with his hands up, he was a thug who had just finished robbing a store and who was reaching for an officer’s gun–eyewitness accounts of the event and forensics support this) are propagated racial tensions are unwarrantedly stirred up to the great detriment of the nation.
You must have thought what I said about BLM was strange, so you should be aware that many BLM supporters took to Twitter to celebrate the cop-slayings–this revealed what was always in their hearts: hatred and vengeance (it is no wonder, either: BLM was founded by convicted cop-killer–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assata_Shakur–Assata Shakur). There is so much more that could be said about BLM but I am not going to spend my time (I’d have to look articles up, etc.,).
Correction:
“[M]ust have thought” should have been “might have thought”.
In case anyone’s interested, Professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr.’s “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force” (http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf) found Police were biased (even when adjusting for context of interaction) in their use of force against, but not in their shootings of, Blacks.
NYT: Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html
By QUOCTRUNG BUI and AMANDA COX
July 11, 2016
A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police.
But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.
“It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California.
The result contradicts the image of police shootings that many Americans hold after the killings (some captured on video) of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
The study did not say whether the most egregious examples — those at the heart of the nation’s debate on police shootings — are free of racial bias. Instead, it examined a larger pool of shootings, including nonfatal ones.
The counterintuitive results provoked debate after the study was posted on Monday, mostly about the volume of police encounters and the scope of the data. Mr. Fryer emphasizes that the work is not the definitive analysis of police shootings, and that more data would be needed to understand the country as a whole. This work focused only on what happens once the police have stopped civilians, not on the risk of being stopped at all. Other research has shown that blacks are more likely to be stopped by the police.
Mr. Fryer, the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard and the first to win a John Bates Clark medal, a prize given to the most promising American economist under 40, said anger after the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others drove him to study the issue. “You know, protesting is not my thing,” he said. “But data is my thing. So I decided that I was going to collect a bunch of data and try to understand what really is going on when it comes to racial differences in police use of force.”
He and student researchers spent about 3,000 hours assembling detailed data from police reports in Houston; Austin, Tex.; Dallas; Los Angeles; Orlando, Fla.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and four other counties in Florida.
They examined 1,332 shootings between 2000 and 2015, coding police narratives to answer questions such as: How old was the suspect? How many police officers were at the scene? Were they mostly white? Was the officer at the scene for a robbery, violent activity, a traffic stop or something else? Was it nighttime? Did the officer shoot after being attacked or before a possible attack? One goal was to determine if police officers were quicker to fire at black suspects.
In shootings in these 10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force.
But police shootings are only part of the picture. What about situations in which an officer might be expected to fire, but doesn’t?
To answer this, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The Police Department there let the researchers look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include encounters with suspects the police subsequently charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.
Mr. Fryer found that in such situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot if the suspects were black. This estimate was not precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But in various models controlling for different factors and using different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.
The study, a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, relied on reports filled out by police officers and on police departments willing to share those reports. Recent videos of police shootings have led to questions about the reliability of such accounts. But the results were largely the same whether or not Mr. Fryer used information from narratives by officers.
Such results may not be true in every city. The cities Mr. Fryer used to examine officer-involved shootings make up only about 4 percent of the nation’s population, and serve more black citizens than average.
Moreover, the results do not mean that the general public’s perception of racism in policing is misguided. Lethal uses of force are exceedingly rare. There were 1.6 million arrests in Houston in the years Mr. Fryer studied. Officers fired their weapons 507 times. What is far more common are nonlethal uses of force.
And in these uses of force, Mr. Fryer found racial differences, which is in accord with public perception and other studies.
In New York City, blacks stopped by the police were about 17 percent more likely to experience use of force, according to stop-and-frisk records kept between 2003 and 2013. (In the later year, a judge ruled that the tactic as employed then was unconstitutional.)
That gap, adjusted for suspect behavior and other factors, was surprisingly consistent across various levels of force. Black suspects were 18 percent more likely to be pushed up against a wall, 16 percent more likely to be handcuffed without being arrested and 18 percent more likely to be pushed to the ground.
Even when the police said that civilians were compliant, blacks experienced more force.
Mr. Fryer also explored racial differences in force from the viewpoint of civilians, using data from a nationally representative survey conducted by the federal government. Here, he found racial gaps in force that were larger than those he found in the data reported from the officers’ perspective. But these gaps were also consistent across many different types of force.
Adjusted for type of encounter, self-reported behavior, gender, age, employment status, income, population size of civilian’s home, time of day and officer race. Likelihoods are for at least that level of force.
This is not news to the black community. It’s at the root of the “talk” that many black parents give to their sons and daughters about how to approach interactions with the police.
Mr. Fryer wonders if the divide between lethal force — where he did not find racial disparities — and nonlethal force — where he did — might be related to costs. Officers face costs, legal and psychological, when they unnecessarily fire their guns. But excessive use of lesser force is rarely tracked or punished. “No officer has ever told me that putting their hands on inner-city youth is a life-changing event,” he said.
For Mr. Fryer, who has spent much of his career studying ways society can close the racial achievement gap, the failure to punish excessive everyday force is an important contributor to young black disillusionment.
“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience,” he said. “Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It is hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment. And when I talked to minority youth, almost every single one of them mentions lower-level uses of force as the reason why they believe the world is corrupt.”
Hi Daniel I appreciate your tone in the whole discussion. To be very frank I am not suggested that there is an epidemic of police officers killing black men, but I suspect that we would both agree that one life is a life too many. Further, I am hard pressed to believe that Alton Sterling from Baton Rouge and Walter Scott from SC (they guy who was shot multiple times in his back while running away from the police), would have been killed if they were white. Possible? Yes. Probable? Hmm I think not. You are right there is no epidemic, but there have been very tragic occurrences, the images of which have invoked anger, fear and frustrations. Whether these emotions are justified or not is beside the point, that these emotions are deeply felt and potently volatile is more of an issue. We need to seek out constructive ways to talk to each other about our different experiences, and find productive ways to channel strong emotions into positive actions that brings about healing and reconciliation. Thank you for taking the time to respond, I appreciate your candor.
Gregory Grant,
re: Shot in the back
Yes, we recently saw a White shot while laying on the ground, and then there was the slaying of the mentally-impaired Kelly Thomas: we agree the Police are imperfect, being that they are fallen humans, and that it would be ideal for the Police force to consist in only exceptional humans (who are known to the trait of self-control).
re: Emotions
When there is dry wood (the soul of a good portion of the Black community), all the more reason not to play with sparks (some of the surgically chosen words of BLM). The negative emotions may have been incited by the general experience, but the overflow of wrath is being brought about through deceptive rhetoric–a multiple-tiered stumbling block / temptation. Very difficult.
We will agree on this: things are not ideal at this point. Who could claim that and inflict such a blow the already wounded spirit of the victims (Blacks)? They were taken out of Africa and brought to a strange land where they have generally been mistreated ever since. What kind f thing is that to do to someone? No, it has been a disaster, and to claim that would not be right at all. Things need to change. Where is the sweetness for these Blacks? Where is the love? Things need to change. God willing.
“As in heaven so on earth,” God. Amen.
Correction:
BLM co-founder, Alicia Garza, was ideologically inspired by Assata Shakur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assata_Shakur):
“When I use Assata’s powerful demand in my organizing work, I always begin by sharing where it comes from, sharing about Assata’s significance to the Black Liberation Movement, what its political purpose and message is, and why it’s important in our context.'”
The problem with the BLM is they do not believed they are a part of the all in all lives matter. This mind set they have caused themselves. Because it is in their own mind no one can help them they have to learn the hard way. Under no circumstance should anyone back this group it is a racist organization and on the verge of becoming terrorists.
Watch this video of them calling to get rid of the police.
https://youtu.be/T0QvPhmQOQ8