In January 2011, a deranged man shot and killed six people in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords. Media pundits on the left tried to connect the murders and the wounding of the liberal Democrat to the Tea Party. A few years earlier upon the election of President Barack Obama, some liberal commentators believed that the ascension of the Tea Party was driven largely by secret racism. There were reports about racist signs at Tea Party rallies which allegedly gave more proof that the movement was only there to diminish one of America’s greatest socio-political triumphs, rather than advance the group’s ultimate goal of reigning in big government.
An ‘anti-police’ culture?
Now pundits on the right have the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in their collective crosshairs. One commentator said the movement is racist and “… promotes the execution of police officers.” Bill O’Reilly, never one to bit his tongue in regard to social commentary, boldly declared this summer that the movement is a “hate group.” Presidential contenders Chris Christie and Ted Cruz each went a step further in citing the group as evidence of a new “anti-police” culture fostered by the Oval Office.
But while observers feel pundits on the left were wrong in trying to dismiss the Tea Party as a racist Republican mob bitter about the election of a Black president, so are those on the right who believe that the BLM movement exists only to hurt law enforcement personnel—in their many shades, sizes and shapes—all of whom swore an oath to uphold the law.
Activists within the BLM movement say their objective is to draw attention to police misconduct and the lack of police accountability. Members point to a disproportionate level of police brutality against African Americans, no matter if any crime has been committed … no matter what age or sex … no matter if armed or unarmed.
America’s oldest narrative
Most American babyboomers have heard it before. It’s an old story. Fifty years ago similar resentment arose over the term “Black Power.” Ninety years ago their grandparents would remember Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association being categorized as a subversive organization because it encouraged Black self reliance. Going even further back—175 years—opponents of the mostly-White American Anti-Slavery Society accused the organization of encouraging an abridgment of “property rights.”
The opposition to BLM, which has 26 chapters across the country, may contend that there is no organizational structure, that it lacks a clear objective and that no specific leader has stepped forward to field questions about its purpose. An older generation which preached, marched, lobbied in court and had friends beaten, jailed and killed may have given impetus to Black millennials who are advancing the latest measure of American civil rights in new and innovative ways via social media, and with tried-and-true methods like old-fashioned street protest. And as more and more outspoken members of the old Civil Rights Movement are today labeled by some as “poverty pimps” or “race hustlers,” an new generation is taking on that historic mantle of Black liberation without allegiance to any political party or [assumed] liberal support.
‘True changes requires real struggle’
“We do not now, nor have we ever, endorsed or affiliated with the Democratic Party, or with any party,” the group said in a Facebook post this summer. “The Democratic Party, like the Republican and all political parties, have historically attempted to control and contain Black people’s efforts to liberate ourselves. True change requires real struggle, and that struggle will be in the streets and led by the people, not by a political party.”
Many opponents on the socio-political right are said to object to not only BLM’s focus on police misconduct, but even the name of the movement. In their view, saying “Black lives matter” implies that people of other races don’t face challenges. Also, opponents point to the fact that if police decide to curtail their patrols of Black communities, it could ultimately lead to more “Black-on-Black” crime because officers don’t want to be accused of police brutality.
Peter Moskos, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York, took figures between May 2013 and April 2015 from the website Killed by Police and found that roughly 49 percent of those killed by officers were White, while 30 percent were Black. Adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown of the U.S. population, Moscos said that Black men were 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than White men.
“If one adjusts for the racial disparity in the homicide rate at which police are [murdered on duty], Whites are actually more likely to be killed by the police than Blacks,” Moskos stated in his report. “When adjusted for the homicide rate, Whites are 1.7 times more likely than Blacks to be killed by police.”
What is ‘Campaign Zero’?
Why do news reports point to more Black people dying at the hands of police, thereby discounting his findings? Marcos offered an explanation:
“Cops in minority cities face more fallout when they shoot, and thus receive better training and are less inclined to shoot,” he stated. “Also, cops in more dangerous neighborhoods are more used to danger. So, other things being equal, police in high-crime minority areas are less afraid and thus less likely to shoot.”
BLM activists have proposed policy reforms through a unique position paper called “Campaign Zero.” Reforms they suggest include curbing the excessive use of police force, “demilitarization” of police departments, use of body cameras, an end to racial profiling and “stop-and-frisk” tactics, addressing over-ciminalization (and the resulting “school-to-prison pipeline”), and improved training for law enforcement personnel. Activists have said they sincerely believe that reasonable people can debate the particulars of the group’s policy reforms and that any opposition to the group’s collective platform should be heard. Activists contend that the most frustrating aspect of media coverage stems from the words of a few boisterous activists being tied to the entire movement, or the erroneous connection of unrelated violent acts to suppress their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly.
Latest social movement
BLM is a social movement. And like most social movements, it is comprised primarily of decentralized heterogeneous coalitions. The group admits that there are different opinions about strategy on the East Coast, more action needed in the South, necessary changes in the North etc. with each region of adherents demonstrating that different types of people can be drawn to the same movement, sometimes for entirely different reasons. The opposition to BLM has been accused of labeling the entire movement by the comments and actions of a handful of activists. The central thrust of BLM is reportedly its focus on police abuse in the United States.
Therefore, the controversial topic of race will naturally foment such “over-the-top” rhetoric as “pigs in a blanket, fry em’ like bacon” heard last month during a BLM march in Minneapolis. BLM spokespersons there said no evidence exists connecting their movement to the recent murder of Texas police officer Darren Golforth nor any other fatality among law enforcement which was perpetrated by a person(s) of color.
Cases of police killing unarmed Black persons such as Ezell Ford in Los Angeles, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Eric Garner in New York City or Rekia Boyd in Chicago resulted in no legal repercussions for the actions. BLM activists believe there is a glaring double standard taking place because, first: officers of the law are heavily protected by the legal system; second, they are authorized to use force in ways civilians are not; and third, most people are reluctant to second-guess an officer’s decision to use deadly force—even in a courtroom setting.
This year there have been a reported 41 officers indicted on murder or manslaughter charges for killing civilians in the line of duty, yet an analysis conducted this summer by the Washington Post found that of the thousands of fatal shootings by the police since 2005, only 54 officers have been charged. Far fewer have been convicted.
Police ‘stand-down’ in inner city?
The rise of BLM has resulted in increased debate about a nationwide police “stand down” in communities of color. One of the reforms within Campaign Zero is an end to the “broken windows” philosophy of policing which contends that low-level community disorder will generate and sustain more serious crime. The policy, largely hailed by New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, is believed by many to have saved Black lives. From 1990 to 2014, murders in Los Angeles were said to have declined from 957 to 251, from 943 to 413 in Chicago and from 2,262 to 333 in New York City.
The BLM movement and the resulting focus on police misconduct has reportedly created a divide that is not just along traditional partisan lines. Police chiefs in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Md., and in Chicago, Ill.—overwhelmingly Democratic cities—have found themselves caught between officers who feel they are being stigmatized and activists who say police unfairly discriminate against Black people.
Heather McDonald, a Manhattan Institute scholar, stated last month that “… there is a reluctance to act [that] is affecting police departments across the country, as virtually every tool in an officer’s tool chest—from traffic stops and public-order maintenance—is vilified as racist.” She cited the rise in murders in Milwaukee (60 percent), St. Louis (56 percent) and in Baltimore (44 percent) since the onset of the BLM movement as evidence that law enforcement personnel have decided to pull back on their sworn oath to “protect and serve.”
After the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, opponents of BLM have pointed to the mass protests as impetus for officers to abandon active patrolling. Arrests there are reportedly down 60 percent below 2014 rates (10 more murders through April 2015 than the previous year). BLM activists again say that there is no connection between the summer rash of murders and crime in the inner-city and their demand for police reform, despite the findings of a Rasmussen poll conducted on Aug. 31 which found that 58 percent of Americans believe there is a “war on police” taking place today.
According to numbers taken from the Officer Down Memorial Page—an independent nonprofit that tracks on-duty deaths of police officers—24 officers have been killed nationwide this year, with 29 killed during the same period last year. The website revealed that 2015 has actually seen fewer year-to-date shooting deaths of officers than in nearly every other year in the past two decades. The lone exception was in 2013 when the FBI reported that killings of police had hit a 50-year low. Half of the police shot and killed this year were African American.
Blame the messenger
Periods of African American protest has revealed that, often, when a movement is countering the dominant narrative with truth—in the case of BLM an unapologetic truth—it tends to get blamed for inciting violence.
There has been considerable surveillance of BLM. On July 24, the website The Intercept reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been monitoring the movement since the summer of 2014, when anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Mo. The news outlet received documents through a Freedom of Information Act request and discovered that the DHS—and the FBI—frequently obtained information about the group’s location, activities and events in the cities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and in New York City by simply monitoring social media accounts of unsuspecting BLM members. Sophia Cope, staff attorney for the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that government surveillance can create a “chilling” effect on lawful protesters.
“When people are fearful, they fail to exercise their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” Cope said. “That definitely harms the democratic system.” Cope added that such surveillance without just cause is similar to what occurred in the 1960s when U.S. law enforcement monitored the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
In an attempt to prevent any misrepresentations of BLM, the Los Angeles chapter this month took the unusual step of barring the media, elected officials and law enforcement from a meeting held in Inglewood. Members discussed the targeting of BLM and its activists, reviewed the actions of the L.A. Police Commission vis-a-vis the Ezell Ford shooting, and discussed the LAPD shooting in August of South L.A. resident Redel Jones, who was mortally wounded by Officer Brett Ramirez of the Southwest Division who said the woman lunged at him with a knife. Ramirez has since been returned to active duty.
What is the value of a Black life?
Explore the calculations
By William Covington
OW Contributor
In theory, a human life is priceless and a recent campaign, although not placing a monetary value on Black lives, is attempting through social media to get the message out that Black lives are not worthless.
Our Weekly has attempted to see if researchers have categorized “human life value” based on ethnicity. While we discovered that there have been cursory investigations on the value of “Black Lives,” nothing exists in academic circles.
Howard University economics professor Gaminie Meepagala, Ph.D., believes it would be impossible to get funding for such research based partially on ethics and world embarrassment. Both third world and industrialized countries would show a devalued human.
He goes on to describe that you could use organ transplant policy towards African Americans, access to adequate education, unemployment, as well as statistical parameters to calculate the human life value of an African American. But who would want to do this, asks the researcher?
Gaminie remembers the case recently of a Princeton Professor, Peter Singer, who offered a conservative estimate to determine the value of Africans from the sub-Sahara. Singer calculated that by donating $200 to a charity that fights starvation and disease in sub-Sahara Africa, you can save one human life for a year.
Singer compared the life-saving $200 given to Africans to a ransom paid to kidnappers to save the life of Mamoru Konno, an executive at the Sanyo Corporation. The ransom was $2 million and was paid in 1996. The $2 million given for his life was worth as much money as 10,000 African lives—a crude calculation but reality.
According to the National Institutes of Health, the current the international standard of “human life value” is $50,000. That is the amount of money most private and government-run health insurance plans worldwide use to determine whether to cover a new medical procedure. More simply, insurance companies calculate that to make a treatment worth its cost, it must guarantee one year of “quality life.”
Gaimine agrees that this figures is a benchmark based on healthcare expenditures but ask yourself how many Africans, African Americans or other minorities will successfully obtain the highest level of life-saving treatment in a hospital.
Gaimine also believes new research shows standard is far too low. He describes how one recent researcher, Stefanos Zenios and his colleagues at Stanford Graduate School of Business used kidney dialysis as a benchmark to determine that human life should be valued at $129,000.
