https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncRGoqNUb1w
Most Black youths in America, and in the UK, that are killed, are killed by other Black youths.
The BBC doesn’t want to know about that, their sole concern is the black men killed by white police officers or the callous disregard of society for black lives…and the BBC isn’t too interested in the whys and wherefores, just in portraying the issues in a stark black and white way that strips the debate of any real meaning. The police officer in the video is right…why is there a sudden lack of concern about those black men killed by other black men from the people who shout and scream about the deaths of people like Michael Brown in Ferguson? Why do they suddenly go MIA? Do they not think all black lives matter, or is it only those black lives that have been ‘snuffed out’ by white police officers that they think will get them on the news?
In 2013 of 2,491 black Americans murdered only 189 were killed by a white killer. Hardly seems like there is a race war going on ouot there.
The BBC chose a US journalist, Jessica Lussenhop, to write a piece on black youths being shot by police knowing that she is highly partisan on this and that she has a history of critical reports on the police.
This is in essence her view of what happens to black people on the streets of America at the hands of the brutal police….
‘More than you ever wanted to know about the police attitude to feral Blacks and how they kill them. When federal agents are picking them off from helicopters, there’s obviously more at stake than just nuisance. Between the millions of dollars in damage and the idea of the Blackman as an ‘invasive species,’ I was shocked by the serious problem (and solution) posed by these animals, who are smart but ugly, therefore fair game for mass eradication in police eyes. This is, to me, a classic, successful alt-weekly story — take something that’s under the snout of normal people, zoom in, examine. ‘Some species just don’t play nice with others.’
No, no of course she didn’t really write that about the police, it’s been slightly edited, but it is pretty representative of the undertone and narrative that the BBC seeks to present but in a slightly more measured way about supposed police attitudes with a not so subtle subtext that suggests they really do think white police officers are trying to eradicate Black youths…because it’s in their white genes.
As an example of that Lussenhop brings us a long list of Black deaths that ‘prove’ either that the Police are racist killers or that they and the rest of society just don’t care that black lives are being lost….though Lussenhop is coy about the racial identity of the killers other than when it is a police officer.
Here’s her piece……..Ferguson: The other young black lives laid to rest in Michael Brown’s cemetery..
It is an enormously long denouncement of American police whilst ignoring the real cause of most deaths. She starts off with a complete fabrication and continues in that vein.
Michael Brown, remember him….That extremely large and threatening Black thug who attacked a police officer by punching him in the face whilst he was in his police car, then tried to take his gun and who was subsequently shot as he refused to surrender and instead charged at the police officer?
This is Lussenhop’s description...’One year ago this August, former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot Brown, who was unarmed, six times.’ You get the idea.
She admits that there might be some doubt about the version that claims Brown was a completely innocent victim of police brutality but she dismisses this with the suggestion that the police officer, Darren Wilson, was subconsciously influenced in how he reacted to Brown by the racist culture of the Police…
Supporters of Wilson referenced the security footage of Brown pilfering some cigarillos at a convenience store and manhandling the clerk just prior to the incident. Opponents pointed out shoplifting is not an offence worthy of execution. [er what? Why include that? He wasn’t ‘executed’ and he wasn’t shot for shoplifting but for asaaulting and further threratening to assault a police officer]
After two separate inquiries, the officer who shot Brown was found to be acting within the law. A St Louis grand jury declined to bring charges and a US justice department investigation concluded “Darren Wilson’s actions do not constitute prosecutable violations”. They cited “no credible evidence” that Brown had his hands up, and in fact found evidence of a struggle between the two.
But another justice department report found that Wilson was working within a system plagued by inequity and unfair practices. The citizens of Ferguson, where the average per capita income is $21,000 (£13,500), were routinely and repeatedly stopped and fined for minor transgressions that filled the city coffers – and though African Americans made up 67% of the population, they constituted 93% of the traffic stops…. It painted a portrait of a city populace straining under the weight of racial bias and classism.’
She goes on to describe another young Black life lost...’Directly across from Brown’s grave is another that, according to the small stone marker, belongs to Jarris Brown. Michael and Jarris are not related. However, some quick arithmetic reveals that Jarris, like Michael, also died young, at just 16 years old. ‘
But hang on…Jarris Brown was shot by his own friend as Lussenhop admits…and many more of the deaths she is trying to exploit in an attempt to conjure up a picture of a community under some sort of siege are in fact from car accidents, suicide or ill health…she tells us the majority are shot but not who shot them…other Black youths shot them that’s who.
We get the sad statistics of Black victims…but no statistics for who shot them….
As homicide rates rise around the country, the vast majority of the victims are young black men. Blacks in St Louis are 12 times more likely to be murdered than whites. So far in 2015, there have been 116 homicides, which is at least 50% higher than it was at the same time of year in 2014.
The number of victims jumped from 120 murders in 2013 to 159 in 2014. While that may be new for the city, what has been true for years is that the state of Missouri has the worst rate of black homicide victimisation in the country – twice the national rate for black victims and seven times the overall national rate.
‘The state of Missouri has the worst rate of black homicide victimisation ‘…. What the hell does she mean by that highly misleading phrase…..‘victimisation’…by who? Who is doing the shooting, that ‘victimising’?
Nor do we get the statistics for white victims…either shot by police or killed by black youths.
We hear that black people are more likley to be poorer but then gives us a long story about ‘OJ’ who actually comes from a very respectable family but who turns out to have been a drug dealer with a very nice car…
OJ is shot by ‘three masked men charging up the driveway towards her [OJ’s mother]. When they demanded to know where OJ was, Jennifer feigned ignorance. But his distinctive car gave him away.
“Where is the money?” she remembers them screaming as they pushed her towards the basement door. When they threatened to kill her, OJ opened the door to his room and the basement exploded in gunfire.’
Why is this story relevant? Lussenhop is claiming the Police don’t bother with black deaths and don’t try to find the killers and yet they spent years trying to find ‘OJ’s’ killers as she admits…‘St Louis County Police investigated OJ’s murder, but after several years and several pushes in the local media for information with thousands of dollars in reward money available, no one has ever been caught. A letter from a tipster in jail led to nothing. OJ’s case eventually got reassigned to a different detective and Jennifer stopped calling to check on the progress.’
So a young black man, probably owing money to a drug gang, shot by that drug gang, and the police spent years trying to solve the case. and she admits that ‘the police have cleared at least three times as many cases with black victims as with white.’ So what exactly is Lussenhop’s point?
She quotes this…“This is systemic. This idea that black people are ‘less’ – that it suffuses everything in our culture in America,” says Jesamyn Ward’. Guess that’s how they got a black president.
We get to the meat of the matter at the end when you realise the police can’t win…“When people were saying, ‘black lives matter’, one of the things that made that appealing is the fact it was ambiguous. It could be related to police brutality, but it could also relate to the callous indifference with which we regard the abysmal homicide numbers,” says the New Yorker’s Cobb.
Either the police are ‘brutal’ or they are indifferent. No other choices available. Guilty of something. Guilty by virtue of being white.
Oh but hang on….Lussenhop slips this in as well….”The narrative in which someone’s morality and stereotypical ideas around morality can be deployed to invalidate their humanity or right to equal treatment – we’re very familiar with that,” says Jelani Cobb, a staff writer for the New Yorker who has written extensively about these issues. “Don’t be surprised if black people, too, don’t think those dudes’ lives matter who died in these types of ways.”
So do black lives, the lives of black criminals, not matter to black people? Seems maybe not so much. So a criminal gets killed and nobody, black or white, cares too much…they probably think he deserved it. And yet that’s not an attitude that gets reported on the BBC and in this case it goes against the stream of Lussenhop’s whole narrative…..and yet a whole campaign, a barrage of accusatory rhetoric, is aimed at white people because of that narrative, one that the BBC keeps on playing up, a narrative that is ultimately hugely dangerous in the way it whips up racial tensions using exaggerated and false claims to incite black anger at white people.
The BBC plays with fire.
roger harrabin