In Response to Milwaukee, WI
What's left of a car after riots in Milwaukee, WI
Riots continued Sunday night as more information was made available in regard to the death of Sylville Smith, 23, who had fled a traffic stop on foot and was shot after refusing to drop the stolen semiautomatic handgun he held loaded with 23 rounds of ammunition.
As protestors continued to populate the streets Sunday night, one man was shot and injured then rushed to the hospital after police rescued him in an armored vehicle. A police officer was also injured from a rock flying through the window of his cruiser leading one to question the goal of the protestors or if there even is a goal. What is the purpose of this violence?
The name of the officer involved in the shooting has not been released, but the information available states that he is a 24-year-old African American with 6 years of service in the Milwaukee Police Department.
So using the facts known about the incidents over the last few days, in a nutshell this is what happened. An African American man is pulled over for a traffic violation, runs from police, refuses to drop the stolen weapon in his hand, and sadly the African American officer who is chasing the suspect has little choice in this situation but to shoot the noncompliant armed individual who has a history of illegal possession of firearms and drug possession.
The response from the African American community? To burn down businesses, light cars on fire, and assault white people. Check out this video. One can’t help but hope for a bit of clarification from the #blacklivesmatter movement – which black lives matter? The officer who is doing his job and is put in an unfathomably difficult situation when an armed suspect flees from police and refuses to lay down his weapon after repeatedly being told to do so or the man with the stolen semiautomatic and past history of illegal firearms possession?
How is it the African American community thinks a proper response to an African American officer shooting an armed African American man who pulled a gun on the officer after running from a traffic stop is to burn down gas stations and cars and go looking for white people to assault? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
The family of Sylville Smith deserve every type of sympathy and condolence possible as losing a loved one in such as way is a horrifying and tragic experience. But imagine if it was the family of the police officer? Would there have been uprisings and looting in the name of an African American police officer killed by another African American armed with a stolen gun?
While race plays a role in predicting rates of violence, poverty is also a crucial indicator of violent victimization, violent criminal behavior and incarceration. However, the rate at which African Americans and Hispanics experience violent victimization as respective income increases doesn’t change at the rate at which white victimization does. See US Department of Justice report. What this means is that race does play a factor although it’s only part of the equation.
My goal in posting is to bring attention to the facts regarding race and policing. In the mainstream media we don’t really hear these arguments made because they are not what people want to hear. They’re not easy for people to digest. What’s worse is that the media creates this kind of left vs. right argument where each side has their own skewed facts and agenda and it’s one side against the other. Even worse, both the left and right operate as a type of echo chamber where people hear what they already believe to be true. When you take a look at what’s happening it becomes impossible to ignore race and I must respond to what I observe because there seems to be very few who speak from a place of unbiased fact and concern.
Regardless of race, living in impoverished areas increases to likelihood of one ending up in the penal system but that doesn’t tell the entire story. This Economist article sheds light on an interesting study. The study looked at families, which had started poor and got richer. What was interesting about the findings was that the younger children—those born into relative affluence—were just as likely to misbehave when they were teenagers as their elder siblings had been. While this is just one study, it found that family income was not necessarily the sole determining factor.
Another factor is education. Roughly 60% of inmates at US federal and state prison have not obtained a high school diploma as a 2002 Bureau of Justice Statistics Report shows. A 2009 study conducted by Northeastern University and published in The New York Times found that 1 in 10 young male dropouts are in jail or juvenile detention. The study also found that 1 in 4 African American dropouts were incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on average.
The problems that our country is facing with regard to poverty, race, inequality, and policing is as complex as it is dire. But there are signals of hope. Within impoverished communities there are schools that are educating students at a much higher level than the other schools in their districts.
St. Benedict’s in Newark, NJ for example graduates over 98% of their students, the majority of whom are African American and go on to earn college degrees (85%). This all done in a city where less than 50% of students graduate high school and between 80-94% live in poverty. Or how about North Star Academy, also in Newark, which has a minority enrollment of 95%, 84% of whom are economically disadvantaged. The school ranks 17th in the entire state of New Jersey.
There are many factors that contribute to violence in communities and lack of education and poverty play major roles. The point that’s imperative to consider is the disproportionate rate at which violent crime, specifically murder, occurs within the African American community and even more alarming is that the African American community is in some ways blaming that violence on white police officers and white people even in situations where the sole participants in a situation were African American. That is indisputable. It is indefensible, and it must stop. As the stats in my last post show, whites are also more violent towards other whites. That’s the point – it’s not as much about race as many would think and race is kind of the scapegoat here, but the amount of violence in African American communities is something that cannot be ignored.
There are plenty of good people out there and there are many people that break the law, hurt others, and behave in selfish, exploitative and inappropriate ways. These people come in all types of colors. They are everywhere and of every race, ethnicity, background, and demographic. Think less in terms of white and black and more in terms of people that are of strong moral character and attempt to leave the world and those in their lives better off than before. Which type of person do you want to be?
My purpose is to try and raise some important issues within the African American community and help facilitate discussion that helps all communities move forward, and take an honest, unflinching look at what is going on. Why do African Americans consider doing well in school “acting white?” Take a look at this study by Harvard Economist Roland Fryer. I do understand why is there so much talk of race and racism coming from the African American community and I am not discounting the anger and frustration within that community or saying it's unwarranted - what I'm saying is that it's worth taking inventory of that anger, recognizing it and taking steps to find better ways to deal with it that don't involve perpetuating the cycle, destroying property, or putting oneself at risk of getting arrested or hurt. Wouldn’t a better discussion revolve around how to move forward in a productive manner through better education and relations among those in the communities in which they live? There are countless free education resources available online and if you are one of the 15% of Americans who don’t have internet access there’s the public library and local coffee shop all of which provide free Wi-Fi. If you do, there's no excuse to not be further educating yourself.
links and references:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf
http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk
http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/252/pov_table3.pdf
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pji02.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/education/09dropout.html?_r=0