The Black Lives Matter movement, which is painfully impotent before Black America, has led a year of national acrimony over the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Grey. The opportunity for blacks to be brutally honest with ourselves about the corrosive culture of crime and death in our own communities has been hijacked by a horde of sniveling, self-absorbed egotists.
Here are five truths being covered up or flat-out ignored by #BlackLivesMatter.
Truth 1. Planned Parenthood is profiting from the genocide of black babies.
One would think that the exposure of a taxpayer-funded black genocide would have been the focus of furor from Black America’s new civil rights reformers.
Yet, while Cornell West and his Black Lives Matter disciples were busy getting themselves arrested for “justice,” a thousand black babies were being aborted with the help of America’s foremost provider, Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood officials were caught—several times—on camera revealing how easy it is to abort babies—many of them black—allegedly chopping up their organs and selling their body parts to the highest bidder. And yet, there were no national marches from Black Lives Matter.
At least 79% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion mills are within walking distance of black or Hispanic neighborhoods.
In New York City in 2009, 47%, or 40,798, of the city’s 87,273 abortions, were performed on black women.
Nearly half of the black pregnancies in New York City ended in abortion in 2009 and, yet, Times Square was not filled with Black Lives Matter protesters demanding the shuttering of Planned Parenthood’s doors.
Do those black lives not matter?
Truth 2. There exists a lopsided self-inflicted violence in Black America, and #BlackLivesMatter doesn’t address it.
Where was this embarrassing bunch of celebrity protesters in 2011 when we learned that black males 15-34 were 10 times more likely to die of murder than their white counterparts?
According to FBI data, 4,906 black people killed other blacks in 2010 and 2011. That is more than the total number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq over the last decade. More black Americans killed other blacks in two years than were lynched from 1882 to 1968, according to the Tuskegee Institute.
It seems that some black lives don’t matter. And it’s our own fault.
Of course black people are not unique to intra-racial murder. But a subculture of wanton disregard for human life has consigned so many black neighborhoods to a sort of ceaseless state of despair.
“You’re blaming the victims, Jerome,” some say.
The problem with that opinion is that it’s a copout. Black people, from the pulpit to the Historic Publications, often avoid turning the spotlight on ourselves. Meanwhile, caskets are filled with the bodies of America’s future. The culture of death thrives in inner cities; millions remain mired in misery.
Where there are instances—and there are many—of undeniably bad judgment on the part of police that result in death, we should pursue the facts and punish the guilty.
Truth 3. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray are not martyrs.
On the day he died, Michael Brown was a burglary suspect. After a fistfight and a failed attempt to disarm Officer Darren Wilson, Michael Brown was shot dead before he could continue his attack. That he had his “hands up” in surrender is a pernicious lie.
Had Michael Brown not resisted arrest and simply complied with Officer Wilson, he’d still be alive today.
Repeat offender Freddie Gray was suspected of selling hard drugs when he was apprehended by Baltimore police. Gray died from a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. He had a penchant for running from the police and a “history,” according to the Baltimore Sun, “of participating in ‘crash-for-cash’ schemes—injuring himself in law enforcement settings to collect settlements.”
Eric Garner was committing the “crime” of selling un-taxed cigarettes when he was apprehended by a half-dozen cops. Garner died after being placed in a chokehold by an arresting officer.
Ultimately, a Staten Island grand jury concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring a criminal indictment against the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner. Reasonable people can debate whether or not the officer’s actions were excessive; however, it’s also worth noting that the medical examiner’s report said that Garner’s bad health, including obesity, contributed to his death.
Truth 4. There is no national conspiracy of police officers to hunt black people.
The common denominator that connects the deaths of these three men is the fact that they all resisted arrest. None of them deserved death. But they all made terrible decisions that led to their demise.
None of the officers that killed these men woke up wanting to murder a black man. That’s a hard truth. Unfortunately the anti-police Black Lives Matter-led protests that resulted in the rioting. looting, and burning of businesses is desperately uninterested in the truth.
Even Eric Garner’s daughter “doubts” that her father’s death was motivated by race. Garner’s mother said she would “agree.”
Truth 5. We need to be honest with ourselves and face facts.
Our nation’s newspapers feature, with haunting predictably, headline after headline detailing the carnage that has consumed dozens of communities where black men kill each other with terrifying regularity. And there are no national rallies, no mass media coverage, and no presidential eulogies to call attention to the madness.
So let’s keep it real: Many of black America’s wounds are self-inflicted. So let’s broaden the parameters of our discussion about the issues vexing black Americans and press pause on all the political grandstanding and phony posturing about whose lives matter.