August 17, 2015
Source: Shutterstock
Tamir Rice was shot after he drew on police officers while carrying an airsoft gun in an area where airsoft guns had been used to rob convenience stores. His mother had illegal gun charges. He wasn”t a good little kid playing with a toy gun. He drew on a cop. How was the police officer to know that the airsoft gun without the orange tip wasn”t a real gun?
Sandra Bland was a mentally ill race-obsessed activist whose friends let her languish in a Texas jail before fellow prisoners say she took her life. She wasn”t a model employee with a “brand-new job,” but she had at least 10 encounters with the police in Illinois and Texas.
You won”t hear about gangbanger (and Michael Brown friend) Tyrone Harris, who opened fire on two black cops in Ferguson, because the media doesn”t want to talk about black crime committed against whites or other blacks. It’s boring. The Washington Post uncritically reported that Harris was “pulling it together” a day before the police released the video showing him pulling out his gun to kill cops. #BlackLivesMatter supporter David Ray Conley III murdered eight, including children, but you won”t see that hashtag trend. The black thug who killed two NYPD cops was a practicing Muslim who worked for Muslim organizations and even attended Muslim funerals with extremist imams, but you won”t hear that on the news because Islam is a religion of peace.
The exception to the so-called trend where white cops kill blacks indiscriminately”that of Officer Michael Slager shooting Walter Scott”is pretty complicated. Subsequent inquiry shows that Slager shot Scott twice with a stun gun to little effect after a bloody scuffle before opening fire on him”not quite the new Jim Crow or the Klan rising again. The Charleston authorities, though, were quick to throw him in solitary confinement. His pregnant wife was broke and is now on welfare. Ultimately the forensic evidence will help to clear him and touch off another round of violence. His attorney is preparing to release it all later this summer.
#BlackLivesMatter, but black votes matter much more to the continued future of the Democratic Party, which has serious structural problems getting white votes. No one believes that inner-city blacks are going to show up to make dreams come true for white suburban liberals. Blacks know that they can increasingly dictate events just by showing up and stealing the mic. White, aging socialists like U.S. senator Bernie Sanders have nothing to say to young black radicals who don”t know what to say other than the lies they”ve been told in 140 characters or less. But they know one thing is true: They are calling the shots and people are listening. Maybe they can”t define how Black Lives actually matter, but they”ll matter”or else.
