There has been a lot of media hype over the recent Tomi Lahren and Trevor Noah interview on The Daily Show. Most of the articles I have read from various sites have praised Noah for his ability to calmly ask questions without becoming too emotional, while others have stated that this brings light to a huge problem with political discourse in the age of the Trump Administration. For the sake of this article, I will be addressing an article published by a fellow Creator writing for Odyssey.
This article is in direct response to “Yes, This White Person Is Happy Tomi Lahren Called Out #BLM Hypocrisy.” The main thrust of this piece is highlighting one line from the interview between Noah and Lauren: the statistic that "Black people are 18 times more likely to kill police." The author states that Noah singlehandedly lost this debate on this statistic alone. So, let us unpackage the source of these statistics. The author cites Heather Mac Donald, who is a fierce American political commentator who describes herself as a secular conservative. Mac Donald has a huge track record of defending the police at all costs, which is largely attributed to her widely-used statistics.
Sadly, statistics are not always valid, nor can they be necessarily generalized to the general population. In fact, I would argue that in this case they are designed to instill a more insidious form of racism. As Nathan J. Robinson points out, “Heather MacDonald should not be taken seriously when she discusses race and policing, because she has shown a tendency to ignore the facts that complicate her argument. Her shady argumentative tactics reveal her to be a dishonest idealogue.” What Robinson is trying to say here is that Mac Donald’s statistics and logic are not always objective, but are fueled by her conservative ideology.
If you still are having trouble believing my argument, just think about the numbers. These statistics must be adjusted towards their respective populations. For instance, since more white folks live in American than black folks, it would not be fair to say that cops kill more white people than black people. As the Washington Post states, “As data scientists and policing experts often note, comparing how many or how often white people are killed by police to how many or how often black people are killed by police is statistically dubious unless you first adjust for the population.” The article goes on to talk about the adjusted rates, which indicate that Black Americans are 5 times more likely to be shot and killed by a police officer.
Furthermore, “police have shot and killed a young black man--- such as Michel Brown--- 175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed.” This means that folks like Tomi Lahren, or other Odyssey writers who publish unfiltered statistics, are doing a disservice to our Democratic principles. These lies do not go unnoticed but are the sole reasons why we do not reform our police systems and instead maintain the status quo. These statistics could have been effectually responsible for the indiscriminate murder of black folks all over America.
Finally, I want to address one more line in this article, which is: “The problem is that the black community has failed to convince themselves to value their own lives.” This is a very troubling line, especially coming from a privileged white person going to a private university in Pennsylvania. This quotation is literally saying that Black Lives Matter is troublesome because they do not value their own lives. The whole point of this movement is to show people that they should be valued. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullers, all brave women of color know their inherent worth. They know that they are of VALUE. They want the rest of America to know it, too. They want to rest of America to show it. The whole purpose of this movement was in direct response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, which was understood as a devaluation of black lives. It is rhetoric like this that continually justifies things like police brutality because it reduces people to a bare, even animalistic quality.
Violent alt-right propaganda will be vast in the coming years, because as Trevor Noah put it, “You won.” But do not think that will stop progressives from checking your biased claims. Next time, check your privilege and read your “statistics” for more than .02 seconds.
