"White Cops Aren't Victimizing Black Youth" Summary and Critique

                Jack Kelly wrote an intriguing article for Real Clear Politics entitled "White Cops Aren't Victimizing Black Youth."  He discusses how blacks are victimized by the media and the government, especially in the cases of white cops shooting black criminals.  Ezra Ferrerri, an Italian journalist, is quoted in the article stating, "black deaths matter only if the killer is a white cop."  Kelly also lists some statistics of murder victims in St. Louis, Missouri and across the United States.  In St. Louis, 1,138 of the 1,265 murder victims between 2003 and 2012 were black, and 90% of those were killed by other blacks.  Compare that to the statistics across the United States, and we see how similar the rates are.  94% of blacks killed between 1976 and 2011 were killed by other blacks.
 
              Young black men are also twice as likely as young white males to be shot by police officers, and are also more likely to resists arrest.  Kelly argues that these reasons are quite logical when you take into account that more than two thirds of the police officers in America are white, and about one half of violent crimes are committed by blacks.  Thus it is only natural that white cops will shoot black criminals so often.  Finally, Kelly looks at the incidence of police brutality, especially in the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  He claims that even black witnesses swore that excessive force was not used against Michael Brown by the white officer, which was consistent with the physical evidence.  He also mentions the mod violence that was committed by the protesters following that case, in which they looted mostly black-owned businesses in the area and burned down a black church.

                I agree with his statement that these people "aren't 'protesters' who were 'trying to make their voiced heard.'  They're criminals."  I completely agree with this statement.  If we look at the statistics that Jack Kelly presented, it is logical to conclude that the majority of police shootings would involve a white cop and a black criminal.  This does not undermine the brutality of many police officers, which is a problem all of its own, but it does show us that the media blows these cases out of proportion.  We are not presented with all the facts, and therefore the cases that make the "big news" tend to be more biased and racially discriminating in coverage.

It's Not About Race

              In her article on the CNN website entitled, "The Real Reason Ferguson Has Military Weapons," Kara Dansky condemns the militarization of local police forces and the supposed racism of white police officers toward the black community.  She insists that "the weaponry has changed, but the target is still the same."  Dansky uses examples from the protests in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of the black Michael Brown by a white police officer to illustrate her point, stating that in the images on the news one sees "white police officers beating black protesters" and "young black men lying face down in the street with police officers standing over them with assault rifles."  Later on she claims that "54% of people impacted by the paramilitary searches were people of color." 

             While she definitely makes many thought provoking claims throughout her article, I believe that she greatly simplifies and misjudges the situation.  What she fails to address is the fact that these protests in Ferguson were planned and organized well before the trial, and the destruction that they have caused in the community has been devastating.  She does not mention the fact that these protesters, both black and white, broke into stores and businesses, looted their goods, caused destruction right and left, and even shot and killed multiple police officers.  This issue, therefore, is not one of race, but rather one of respect and common decency.  While I do not agree with the militarization of the police force, the police officers were simply trying to control the masses and protect the safety and lives of themselves and the civilians in the area from the barbaric actions of the mobs.  Their actions, though obviously extreme when taken out of context, were justified. 

             Unfortunately, because our society is so concerned with matters of race, a simple case of a police officer being threatened by a criminal and forced to shoot to preserve his life is blown out of proportion because it was done by a white man against a black man.  The issue of police officers taking extreme measures in order to maintain this control is obviously a topic that needs to be addressed, but let us not turn this into a matter of white supremacy.  Rather, let us look at the motivating factors behind these people's actions and address the issues therein.