Systemic Racism: One Part Myth, One Part Ongoing Progressive Policy

Alleging structural racism, particularly with respect to police use of deadly force, is an undeniably effective method for left-wing groups like BLM to stimulate financial support and mobilize citizens to mass protests and riots. However, nearly every narrative promoted by these groups regarding modern day police racism is replete with deception and lies. Contrary to left-wing propaganda about police violence, systemic racism exists today as a bi-product of the symbiotic relationship between powerful grievance industry groups like BLM and the Democrat party.

What if I told you that white civilians are more likely to experience police initiated contact than black civilians? What if I told you that black civilians are less likely to be fatally shot by police officers than white civilians according to multiple nationwide studies conducted as recently as 2019? What if I told you that white police officers are less likely to shoot and kill unarmed black civilians than black police officers are to shoot and kill unarmed white civilians? I would be accurately stating the findings of the most recent and comprehensive studies performed on the issue of racial disparities in fatal police shootings.

But alas, it is now 2021, time is a flat circle as they say, and the primary sources to which readers gravitate are their favorite hyper-partisan propaganda agencies like CNN or MSNBC that routinely construct towering straw men and vast generalizations around extremely rare incidents such as the likely justified officer involved shooting of Jacob Blake, promoting deceptive narratives constructed solely from accounts spun by attorneys representing the alleged victims. The predictable result of spreading inflammatory deception and outright lies to a gullible public is mass left-wing violence for months on end resulting in the most damaging series of violent race riots in American history.

Not to say that political violence is limited to the left. We witnessed on January 6, 2021 that the far right are not immune from engaging in political violence when there is a conflagration of evil actors who are fed unproven theories about election fraud. The damage on January 6, 2021 was far less severe than the seven month left-wing reign of terror carried out under the banner social justice, but no less evil. Yet predictably the one brief example of right-wing political violence in recent memory — where the one person killed during the hours-long riot was an unarmed female rioter compared to nineteen (19) people killed during the first two weeks of the Floyd riots — was infinitely more exaggerated by the establishment media. Last summer Democrat propaganda bureaus seemingly ignored the fact that left-wing rioters violently overthrew five city blocks of Seattle, Washington for nearly one month to form a government independent of the United States called the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (nee, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone), complete with welcome signs declaring "You are now leaving the USA," policed by pistol-whipping SoundCloud rappers, and shut down by an otherwise fawning left-wing local government only after the zone’s self-deputized security force murdered two black teenagers and critically injured another 14-year-old black teenager.

The words "treason" and "insurrection" were uttered exactly zero times by Democrat media during the month-long overthrow and occupation of 5 blocks of downtown Seattle by violent left-wing rioters.

Deliberate misrepresentation of these tragic events by the media combined with inflammatory rhetoric from political leaders is certainly an effective way to manipulate the emotions of every-day Americans simply trying to "go with the flow" and avoid harassment in an increasingly censorious and totalitarian left-wing culture -- a culture now couched within an economy plagued by a global pandemic and ineffective yet devastating government mandated lockdowns and activity restrictions. You may not have noticed how the Democrat-controlled media does not employ this deceptive anecdotal propagandizing about deadly police brutality when unarmed white civilians are the victims. In fact, there were plenty of harrowing examples of unarmed white civilians who were killed by law enforcement officials in 2020. The following is a brief summary of just a few a few of these cases.

In a recent example, Trevor Seever, an unarmed white male, was shot numerous times and killed in Modesto, California on December 29, 2020 after his family called law enforcement to de-escalate a domestic dispute. Body camera footage captured an officer pulling up to Seever’s location outside of a church and giving him essentially no time to comply with the command to “get on the ground!” before opening fire. Once Seever was on his knees after being fired upon with his hands above his head, Seever dropped an arm and was simultaneously commanded to put his hands in the air and shot three more times, later dying from multiple gunshot wounds to his torso while writhing and calling out in pain.

In a similar series of tragic events taking place in Auburn, Washington on September 19, 2020, Joshua Sarrett — an unarmed white male — was shot and killed by law enforcement in his front yard. His sister — suspecting a domestic disturbance between Sarrett and his girlfriend — called police to de-escalate the situation. Sarrett eventually exited his home with his hands in the air, dropped one arm to pull up his pants that were falling down, and was promptly shot to death.

David Pruitte, a 36 year old unarmed white male in Kitsap, Washington was shot and killed by police on August 4, 2020. Police were called after Pruitte — who was homeless — was observed sitting with his feet dangling off of a highway overpass. When police arrived, Pruitte allegedly approached in a “threatening” manner and was shot and killed for his trouble. Channing Spivey, a 34 year old unarmed white male from Luverne, Alabama was recovering from a brain surgery after having recently been diagnosed with cancer and acting erratically according to his family, which prompted them to call for an ambulance. After resisting EMTs and punching through an ambulance window, his neighbor — the assistant police chief in Luverne — shot and killed Spivey against the protests of his family, who were waiting for other family members to arrive to de-escalate the situation. This happened two days after George Floyd’s tragic May 25, 2020 death.

Nicholas Bils, an unarmed 36 year old male in San Diego, California was shot multiple times and killed by law enforcement on May 1, 2020. He was practicing his putting in a park that was closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, and was arrested for committing assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly swinging his putter near the park rangers. He fled the rangers’ vehicle through an open window as the officers were pulling into the county jail parking lot, and he was shot four times including in the back while attempting to escape. Zach Gifford, an unarmed white male, was also shot in the back and killed while attempting to escape police in Brandon, Colorado on April 9, 2020.

Channing Spivey (Luverne, AL) - unarmed man recovering from brain surgery shot and killed by police officer on May 27, 2020.

In only one of these cases so far — Nicholas Bils — has a law enforcement official been charged. While you likely have never heard the name Nicholas Bils, who was killed just last year, chances are you have heard the name, Walter Scott. Walter Scott was an unarmed black man who was attempting to escape arrest and was shot numerous times in the back and killed by a law enforcement officer in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. The officer in Walter Scott’s case was charged with second degree murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison. Despite the police officer’s conviction and sentence, the Scott family’s multi-million dollar civil settlement, and the fact that these tragic occurrences happen even more frequently and often to unarmed white civilians, Walter Scott continues to be used as anecdotal emotional kindling to fuel the myth of “systemic” police racism by today’s race peddlers.

Objective contextualization of these tragic events requires that we briefly turn to the data. In 2018 there were approximately 6,500,000 contacts between police and black civilians over the age of 16. Put another way, 21.1% of the total black population over the age of 16 had an interaction with police in 2018. That year 23 unarmed black civilians were killed by police. Similarly in 2018, there were approximately 42,500,000 contacts between police and white civilians over the age of 16. That number represents 26% of the total white population over the age of 16. That year 25 unarmed white civilians were killed by police. Based on this data, the chances of an unarmed black civilian being killed by a police officer during a police interaction in 2018 were 0.0000035%, and the chances of an unarmed white civilian being killed were 0.00000058%. Accordingly, the chances that an unarmed black or white unarmed civilian would be killed during a police interaction in 2018 were exceedingly rare. For context, an unarmed black civilian was two-thousand-five-hundred-ninety-four (2,594) times more likely to be killed in an automobile accident in 2018 than by a law enforcement official during a police interaction, yet black civilians likely do not think twice about the utility of operating automobiles numerous times per day.

If you weren't too distracted by all of the leading zeros comprising the minuscule likelihood of being an unarmed civilian killed during a police interaction, you may have noticed that an unarmed black civilians's odds of being killed during a police interaction in 2018 were six times (6x) greater than that of an unarmed white civilian. Why the disproportionality? This is where population and crime data, along with the recent studies on disparities in fatal police encounters come into play. According to the FBI’s 2018 Uniform Crime Reporting data, black civilians who make up 13.3% of the population engaged in 37.4% of the reported violent crime involving arrests in the United States in 2018. Furthermore, considering that violent crime across all races is overwhelmingly committed by males, one can further extrapolate that approximately 6.5% of the total US population (black males) engaged in 37% of the nation’s violent crime compared to 38% of the US population (white males) who engaged in 58.7% of the nation’s violent crime. That is the 6.5% black male population in the United States in 2018 committed nearly six times (6x) more violent crime than the total percentage of the black male population would predict, and the 38% white male population committed one-and-half times (1.5x) more violent crime in general than the total percentage of the white male population would predict. Performing this same exercise for homicide statistics, the 6.5% black male population accounted for 53.3% of all homicides in 2018, or an approximately eight times (8x) greater homicide rate than the percentage of black male population would predict. The 38% white male population accounted for 44.1% of all homicides in 2018, accounting for a homicide rate of 1.2x more than the percentage of the white male population would predict.

Recent peer reviewed studies suggest that the racial disparities in rare instances of fatal officer involved police shootings -- such as the aforementioned observation that an unarmed black civilian had a 6x greater likelihood of being killed during a police interaction in 2018 than an unarmed white civilian -- are largely explained by disparities in rates of violent crime rather than police officer bias. In the most comprehensive and recent study published by David Johnson, et. al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researches found that race-specific homicide and violent crime is likely the strongest predictor of the variance of race in civilians fatally shot by police. The researches concluded that for the “typical” fatal police shooting — where the rate of approximately one-thousand fatal officer involved shootings per year across the entire 330,000,000 US population has remained constant since 2015 — “we did not find evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity.” In fact, contrary to the popular left-wing media narrative, these researchers found that white unarmed civilians are more likely to be fatally shot by police than black civilians after accounting for all of the study's regression model control values.

Harvard economist Dr. Roland Fryer, Jr. conducted a similar study first published in 2016 on a smaller set of data. He likewise found no evidence of anti-black bias in fatal officer involved shootings. However, Fryer did find that black civilians were more likely to be involved in police encounters where non-fatal force was used. Dr. Fryer noted caveats with his non-fatal force findings including that often far less data were available and less reporting was required after non-fatal police encounters, and that in many cases civilians subjectively perceive the verbal threat of force as actual use of force. Accordingly, he suggested that findings of anti-black discrimination in police use of non-fatal force may not be as reliable as the findings derived from the more robust data generated from fatal officer involved shooting incidents. Similar to the Johnson study, Fryer noted that characteristics of the encounter such as the victim’s behavior and alleged involvement in violent crime were strong predictors for the race of the victim. He likewise found that white unarmed civilians were more likely to be the victims of fatal force than unarmed black civilians according to his model.

At this point there are many in today's censorious American culture who would falsely level the “r” word at someone for simply discussing these statistics. Objective reality is the greatest enemy to progressive demagogues and corrupt social justice leaders who have achieved great wealth and influence by milking the grievance industry teat while neglecting vast swaths of those for whom they claim to be advocating. However, nothing about these statistics implicates the racial superiority or inferiority of one race or ethnicity over another. Neither should these statistics nor this discussion be read to draw any conclusions about the immutable characteristics of particular races or ethnicities. There are progressive left-wing cultural forces and policies in play that have been driving these statistics for the past half-century. Also, this writer is firmly convinced by the words of Genesis 1:27 that all men and women -- regardless of race or ethnicity -- are created in the image of God, and therefore possess equal inherent value, worth, and potential as bespoke images of God.

Nonetheless, the tendency of leftist mobs and grievance industry grifters to falsely attack anyone attempting to identify and combat the real issues contributing to cycles of poverty and violence in the United States is largely why pouring endless trillions of dollars into anti-poverty programs since the passage of President Lindon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative initiatives of the 1960s has done nothing but increase rates of poverty and violence during the last 60 years. As I will argue, it is racist ideology currently housed within large segments of the Democrat party and its modern radical neo-Marxist offshoots — previously manifested as hostility towards black Americans before the 1960s and now manifested as pity or the implicit or explicit belief that black Americans as a racialized group are incapable of human flourishing apart from resource-heavy entitled programs constructed by [mostly white] Democrat saviors — that is causing disparities in human flourishing to the extent that there are perceived disparities among racialized groups.

What is most likely the root cause of generational cycles of poverty and violence in American culture was identified as early as 1965 in a study commissioned by LBJ’s assistant secretary of labor and fellow Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan during the nascent stages of Johnson's "War on Poverty" and Great Society agenda. At this time in the mid-1960s the study identified an alarming rate of welfare applications among black women despite unemployment rates drastically falling among black men. At the same time, the country was witnessing sharp increases in crime rates and disintegration of black communities within American cities. The study revealed that the rate of children born out of wedlock within the black community at that time was 23.6%, or eight times (8x) greater than the rate of children born out of wedlock among white families (3% as of 1965). The study further revealed that child illegitimacy had a direct correlation to drastically increased rates of violence and poverty, regardless of the race of child or family. Accordingly, Moynihan identified this family crisis as the largest problem facing America.

Naturally, family disintegration -- especially within the black community during the mid-1960s -- was attributable in large part to America’s long history of racist policy targeting black men and their families. Because of bigoted policies such as Jim Crow laws promulgated by racist and anti-reconstructionist Democrats still in place as recently as 1965, many black men were severely handicapped in their ability to find competitive labor. As some men resorted to criminal activity, others to substance abuse, and many more the hardworking yet hapless victims of bigoted Jim Crow policy, black families became increasingly matriarchal. Moynihan recognized that promoting two-parent families would be one of many necessary measures to begin reversing the rates of child illegitimacy once institutionalized racist policies were eventually dismantled through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

However, by the mid-1960s, Moynihan did not have any specific family policy recommendations to offer LBJ's Great Society initiatives. Furthermore, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s peaceful Civil Rights movement was coopted by the violent Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s that brought with it the symbiosis of "white guilt" and a voracious grievance industry able to perpetually exploit a gullible populace and spark widespread race riots at a moment's notice, an impenetrable political environment emerged in which contrived and malicious accusations of racist victim blaming leveled against individuals like Moynihan by Civil Rights leaders turned grievance industry demagogues would prove obdurate to productive policy discussions on the family issues impacting marginalized communities.

Yet despite the large-scale passage and funding of Johnson’s Great Society initiatives that would eventually infuse Medicare, Medicaid, means-tested social programs, and public schools with trillions of US dollars over the next 60 years, and despite a booming economy and high rates of employment throughout his second term as president, poverty rates have continued to climb, and the child illegitimacy rate continued to balloon among both white and black American families. Today nearly 70% of black children are born out of wedlock along with 30% of white children compared to the 25% and 3% during the 1960s, respectively. A Heritage Foundation study conducted amid the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (then-Senator Joe Biden’s famed crime bill) revealed that up to 90% of children born into single parent homes that are deemed unstable and unsafe are likely to become delinquent. These children then grow up to perpetuate similar cycles of crime and delinquency among their own children and communities. On the other hand, only 6% of children born into stable two-parent households are likely to become delinquent. To be sure, no amount of government money or assistance or number of bureaucratic programs can repair a broken family, yet domestic welfare programs have continued to incentivize the perpetual fracturing of families by conditioning increased financial benefits to single mothers upon the mothers' refraining from marrying gainfully employed fathers.

Certainly institutions such as churches and schools can promote the importance of family values within American culture better than any government bureaucracy. However, it has long been the Democrat party demagogue position to oppose school choice and the federal funding of vouchers and parochial schools as such funding would undercut the power and authority of the public school teachers unions that donate overwhelmingly to Democrat politicians. Furthermore, with the modern Democratic left’s ideological embrace of atheism, secular humanism, and even openly pagan religious social justice movements, moral relativism has infused influential leftist controlled cultural institutions like newsrooms, the academy, Hollywood, big business, and big tech, increasing cultural hostility towards Judeo-Christian and other orthodox religious principles, which, in turn, has elicited a concomitant cultural hostility to the stable two-parent American family — perhaps the only cultural institution capable of reversing the cycles of violence and poverty that have worsened since the 1960s.

Indeed, mainstream cults disguised as social justice movements like Black Lives Matter Global Network are laced with Yoruban paganism and Marxist ideology and are openly opposed to the restoration of the type of healthy family structure that could reverse trends of American violence and poverty. While fanning the flames of deadly and destructive riots across 220 cities resulting in 19 deaths in two weeks — during a year when a total of 15 unarmed black civilians were killed by law enforcement officials — and promoting propaganda about systemic police racism by exploiting exceedingly rare events like the tragic death of George Floyd, groups like BLM actively ignore the fact that over 7,000 black lives are ended each year by overwhelmingly intra-racial violence that is, in part, a product of the anti-family agenda promoted by BLM and its ilk.

Marcellius Wiley, former NFL Pro-Bowler and prominent critic of BLM

Until BLM was publicly criticized by former NFL star Marcellius Wiley last June in part for its anti-family policy position, BLM included the following language in its “What We Believe” mission statement:

“…We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work ‘double shifts’ so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable…”

Nowhere in BLM’s mission statement does it mention men or fathers, which is not surprising considering that its goal is to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure…and…dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work ‘double shifts.’” Channeling money and resources into radical left-wing groups like BLM is achieving the exact opposite for black lives than what the group’s semantically overloaded name would signify. But for a left-wing media running intense propaganda interference on behalf of these deleterious left-wing movements, the proof of fraud is obvious. Indeed, more lives (including more black lives) were violently taken during left-wing riots celebrated by groups like Antifa and BLM and ignored by Democrat propaganda bureaus during the summer of 2020 than unarmed black lives killed by police during the entire year. Despite over $22 trillion in taxpayer funds leveraged to fight LBJ's "War on Poverty" during the last 60 years, the 15.2% poverty rate within the black community today is higher than it was when LBJ left office in 1969. These are just a few of many reasons why organizations like BLM are examples of grievance industry grifts - channeling intense focus and energy into mythical problems like racially motivated police violence rather than issues like broken families that are leading to far greater violence within black communities. Instead of falling for the emotionally charged messages of these false movements, American citizens and corporations could serve their communities and country infinitely better by giving of their time and resources to religious organizations and schools that promote and support healthy families.