Last week on Comedy Central, Trevor Noah the host of "The Daily Show" featured the young conservative host of "The Blaze," Tomi Lahren. The conversation ranged from Donald Trump's presidential win to recent political protests to the Black Lives Matter movement to Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. You can find the full debate here.
I was reading some of the reactions to the debate when I came across one that argued that white people were "a little too damn happy " about the results of the debate. I opened the article and I wasn’t too surprised with the arguments that I have been hearing from the BLM movement. Usually, I don’t get involved in these conversations — but this time I did.
To David Dennis, Jr., the author of the op-ed,
You bring up some excellent points that I can relate to somewhat. My father is a retired NYPD sergeant and would often tell me horrific stories of how cops would treat black people, or as he would say, “perps.” That violent reality has existed for a long time.
When you state in your article that “Noah holds his own,” I would say that his arguments were spotty at best. You underestimate the fact that Tomi Lahren went on his show with the odds stacked against her. Granted Trevor had some good digs, such as when he said, “You don’t see color, how do you see a traffic light?” However, if he was on a conservative show he would have been hit with statistics (Noah revealed none in this debate) and would have been eviscerated. Whenever Trevor was hit with facts such as "black people are 18 times more likely to kill police," (according to commentator and journalist Heather Mac Donald — sources: DailyWire, The Washington Post) he had no response, stuttered, and then changed the topic.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Police officers — of all races — are also disproportionately endangered by black assailants. Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40 percent of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are are killed by police.”
All of this data took me a quick .02 second Google search, which makes me question how hard anybody in the black community is looking at the facts. The problem is that people are failing to recognize the facts, and are choosing to instead to believe the media, who wrongly perpetuate BLM for their selfish interests; not for the real struggles within the African-American community.
If the BLM movement wanted to gain my respect and the respect of the rest of the country as a significant movement towards peace and equality, then they should look at the statistics and analyze the reasons why some numbers are disproportionate, such as black-on-black crime rates or numbers of black people involved in shooting police. For example, a study done by the University of Toledo concluded that it would take 40 years to kill as many black men as have died at the hands of other black men in 2012 alone.
On average about 4,500 black men are killed by other black men annually between 2009-2012 while 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police killings during the same period. Until the BLM movement addresses the problems and hatred that exist within their own community, then the movement will never have my respect, nor the respect of anybody who believes the facts.
Some state that Tomi Lahren spouted violent propaganda, while Noah was just trying to get her to value his black life. Again, this is the wrong way to view BLM. The problem is that the black community has failed to convince themselves to value their own lives. According to the Department of Justice Statistics, black people, despite making up 13 percent of the population, committed half of the homicides in the US for thirty years. BLM, however, continually tries to convince white people that black lives matter.
Therefore my question is the same question Tomi posed in the debate, “Who is your war with? Police? Government?” And I would add the question of who should your war be against?
In my opinion, the whole movement started with good intentions but has lost their message. The inherent flaw with the movement is that there is no central body of governance or leader, which makes it hard for the public to fully understand their message. Recently BLM on Twitter displayed a little too much affection for former Cuban president Fidel Castro after his death by praising individuals to whom Castro gave asylum. One of the people mentioned in the article is Assata Shakur, otherwise known as Joanne Chismard, of the Black Panther party who was convicted in 1984 of killing a police officer and currently on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list. This sort of praise for a cop-killer exposes the BLM underlying intentions of getting back at those that they feel they were wronged by, in this case, the police.
I understand that the information I have presented is controversial, but this does not mean I don't treat black people any less than anyone else. I believe black lives matter. I understand that poverty is a big influence on the statistics I presented. I think we can start dropping these numbers by investing more in the black communities to build bridges, highways, parks that allow the black community more opportunities, something president-elect Trump has vowed to do. Generally, I believe that white people understand that black lives matter, but I believe the focus of BLM should be the question: do black people understand that black lives matter? If BLM made this adjustment in their philosophy and received more funding for their communities, then I believe they can start to find the change they are looking for.
