Responding to Toni Morrison’s racist profiling of police

• Nobel laureate’s ugly rant against whites and police
• Liberal celeb, supposed literary giant, strains the concept of “conversation.”

In some circumstances when police act criminally and deliberately in their official capacities, their punishment should be enhanced because of their special responsibilities. That said, some perspective is in order because of the accusation that there is endemic unjustified violence perpetrated by police toward black men. That accusation has been an undercurrent in protests that came about after the apparent wrongful deaths of two Black men at the hands of police during custody altercations.  Those deaths have once again “inspired” over the top statements by the usual suspects this week.

The article excerpted below provides some of that needed perspective which regrettably will not get the same attention from the leftist dominated media which skews coverage of incidents in order to stereotype police and white society. The article references a statistical study, not intended to exonerate any individual, but as a response to the broad brush with which police are being painted.

From Valerie Richardson writing at the Washington Times, (bold typeface our emphasis along with graphics and accompanying commentary) :

Police kill more whites than blacks, but minority deaths generate more outrage Analysis contradicts widespread views about racial targets

Shown: Obama hangs a medal on Toni Morrison

 Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison says she wants to see an officer shoot an unarmed white teenager in the back before agreeing that the “conversation about race” is over, but she almost certainly already has received her wish.   . . .

Her comments reflect a widespread view that blacks are routinely targeted by law enforcement while whites shot by police are a rarity. . . .

As researchers are quick to point out, FBI data on police shootings by race is notoriously incomplete, which may explain why Peter Moskos, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, decided to use figures from the website Killed by Police.

Based on that data, Mr. Moskos reported that roughly 49 percent of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 were white, while 30 percent were black. He also found that 19 percent were Hispanic and 2 percent were Asian and other races.  . . .

 “If one adjusts for the racial disparity in the homicide rate or the rate at which police are feloniously killed, whites are actually more likely to be killed by police than blacks,” said Mr. Moskos, a former Baltimore cop and author of the book “Cop in the Hood.”

“Adjusted for the homicide rate, whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks die at the hands of police,” he said. “Adjusted for the racial disparity at which police are feloniously killed, whites are 1.3 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.”

Mr. Moskos listed two possible reasons for the racial disparity. The first is that police assigned to largely black neighborhoods face “more political fallout when they shoot, and thus receive better training and are less inclined to shoot.”

The second is that police assigned to black communities with high crime rates are more accustomed to dangerous situations and thus are more likely to be able to resolve them without resort to lethal force.

Much more perspective is available in the Washington Times article and it is commended to you.   Columnist Dennis Prager adds still more from a political perspective.  This excerpt came to our attention via The Patriot Post.   Again, bold emphasis and placement of graphics by us.

OPINION IN BRIEF

While Morrison’s profundity escapes us, nevertheless we wish she could see clear to live by her words

Columnist Dennis Prager: “In 2013, of America’s 6,261 black homicide victims, more than 6,000 of them — 97 percent — were killed by people other than police. About three percent of black homicide victims were killed by police. And of that three percent, nearly every one was armed and dangerous. To label that an epidemic of police racism is a libel. In addition, more than 9 in 10 blacks murdered were murdered by another black person. Now that is an epidemic — an epidemic of black murderers. … The left is not only engaging in demagoguery and creating hysteria when it claims that ‘Blacks Lives Matter’ in reference to police killings of blacks. It is also not telling the truth. Black lives don’t really interest the left. If they did, the left would focus on all the black murderers taking black lives. The left’s overriding interest lies elsewhere: in defaming America, with its ‘legacy of slavery,’ ‘institutional racism’ and ‘white privilege,’ and in depicting white police as racists. To understand the left one must first understand that it hates conservatives more than it loves almost anything. Because if it really believed that ‘Black Lives Matter,’ its message would be ‘Black Murderers Matter.'”

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