Ferguson And The Search For Truth

unhealthy times;”>Gregory J. Welborn

Louis Farrakhan

By now, I would have hoped the misplaced anger and attendant inexcusable violence in Ferguson would be behind us. Sadly, those on the Left are doing all they can to fan the flames of anger and victimhood in order to keep alive the narrative on which so much of their personal power depends. Without the sense that blacks are overwhelmingly the victims of white racism, Al Sharpton, Marc Morial, Louis Farrakhan, et al. would have to look for productive employment, and so they take to the podiums in spite of the evidence now released from the grand jury deliberations to deny the obvious.

What we now know, based as much on testimony from black as from white witnesses, is that Michael Brown committed a robbery, resisted arrest, attacked a police officer, attempted to take his gun (the violent purpose for which should be obvious), and chose to come back at the police officer rather than flee. These are not the actions of “an innocent victim”. The fact that Michael Brown was unarmed is irrelevant. Unarmed people can commit serious assaults, even murder. It is their actions which are relevant, not their method. Sadly, the primary responsibility for Michael Brown’s death lies with Michael Brown, just as much as it would with a white person who acted in a similar fashion.

This is not the truth the Left wants to acknowledge. With Michael Brown’s death no longer an example of injustice or racism, shouldn’t this focus our attention on the real crime in Ferguson: the absolutely lawless violence committed against property owners in the aftermath of the grand jury decision? The shopkeepers whose stores have been looted and burned are the real innocent victims. Equally so are the employees –largely black – of these stores who now are unemployed. And yet, I haven’t heard Al Sharpton, or any others of his ilk, stand up for them.

To do so would present them with a core problem. They would have to confront this truth – blacks looted and burned their own neighborhoods – along with the truths behind the wider problem of violence against blacks. To their discredit, the Left has always focused on outcomes, not on causes. While the outcomes to which they object might be very legitimate, the causes of the problem are often made up from whole cloth in order to fit their narrative that race, class, and sex explain society, rather than values.

Let’s take the outcome that black arrest rates are higher than white arrest rates. That’s an outcome I don’t particularly like, but it is not evidence of racism or profiling. As the Wall Street Journal has reported, research shows that blacks are arrested at the same rate at which victims describe the perpetrator as black. The police might be spending more time in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods, but this is a good thing, not a bad thing. There is more crime in black neighborhoods, and the victims are overwhelmingly black. Were the police not to patrol those neighborhoods more closely, that would hurt the black residents who have a right to expect police protection.

Michael Brown, a black man, was shot by Officer Wilson, a white. That’s an outcome, which doesn’t tell us anything. To use it as evidence that blacks should fear white police officers is ridiculous. National statistics clearly show that 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks. Some have pointed to the fact that whites are also killed by whites, but this misses the point. It is the rate of killing in each community that is the salient fact. Blacks (overwhelmingly, young black men) commit violent crimes at approximately 8 times the rate that whites commit violent crimes.

There is something occurring in the poor inner city neighborhoods which isn’t explained by issues of racism or economic conditions. If racism or economics determined the deplorable outcome, we would expect to find that black crime rates were worse back in the 1940s and 1950s. This was the time period when racial discrimination was practiced widely and black poverty much higher. But the statistics tell us the opposite is true. During these tough social and economic times, the black crime rate was dramatically lower.

So, what’s going on? Blacks being incarcerated at higher rates than whites is a bad outcome. Blacks being killed at higher rates than whites is a bad outcome. All of us (white and black) can agree on that. So, perhaps there might be something to the studies which have shown that values are the deciding factor in behavior. Perhaps there’s something significantly causal from out-of-wedlock births, fatherless homes, or disdain for education. This does not in any way argue that all blacks are born to single moms, don’t have relationship with their fathers or don’t like school. But, the statistics show that way too many of them do, and the values that create this environment are not healthy. Lest I be called racist for writing this, keep in mind these aren’t my statistics and conclusions. Do an honest Google search and you’ll find a number of well-respected black sociologists and economists who have documented these deplorable conditions. These are the true causes of the outcomes we all hate to see plastered on the front pages of our newspapers or television screens.

Bad outcomes are bad outcomes, but to actually solve the problems to which they point means we have to realistically and honestly look for the causes. Sticking to a narrative which perpetuates a sense of victimhood will not help the true victims; it just increases their pain.

Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken to several civic and religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 children and is active in the community. He can be reached [email protected]/5l.com

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