"Yet again, we're seeing evidence of what happens to Black and brown people from simple traffic stops." -- Ben Crump, attorney for Tyre Nichols' family
"It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and brown Americans experience every single day." -- President Joe Biden
"[V]iolence like what happened to [Tyre Nichols] is about how some bad cops use their power over Black and brown victims." -- CNN's Van Jones
Hey! Where'd all the "browns" go?
George Floyd, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and on and on and on -- all black people, generally "justice-involved," who resisted the police and ended up dead. Name a civilian killed by cops of any other race that led to international protests, billboards, renamed streets, hashtags, memorials, NBA jerseys, murals, busts, tribute songs or O magazine covers.
Only black people reflexively defend their own criminals. The "blacks and browns" scam is an attempt to rope Hispanics into the black community's dysfunction.
Hispanics don't champion their criminals! (Asians don't even champion their A-minus students.) When 13-year-old Adam Toledo was shot by a cop in Chicago, "activists" did their best to incite worldwide protests, but Hispanics weren't interested. Why are we going to take off work?
To the contrary, the residents of Toledo's overwhelmingly Hispanic neighborhood blamed his mother, complained about gangs and demanded more policing. Journalists hoping for anti-police rage instead got quotes like these:
"We are tired of gang violence; it's sad what happened with the young boy, but he had a gun with him and his friend had been shooting, so the officer responded to the threat."
"We can't even go out safely because there are random shootings everywhere and you never know if a stray bullet might hit you."
"The only reason people are talking about (killings) now is that it was a police officer who shot and killed the kid."
Meanwhile, normal black people are made to feel like race traitors if they ever say something like, I don't know, the guy was kind of a scumbag.
No matter how much the activists push, Hispanics simply will not rush out on the streets to protest whenever a Latino is killed by a cop. (In places like Los Angeles, Hispanics are the cops.) Journalists are beside themselves that the "browns" refuse to be more like black people.
NBC News: "Police killings of Latinos lack attention, say activists"
Los Angeles Times: "What will make people care about police shootings of Latinos?"
The Washington Post: "Latinos are disproportionately killed by police but often left out of the debate about brutality, some advocates say"
And, no, black people are not killed by the police at a "disproportionate" rate. Every single study claiming otherwise is comparing the percentage of blacks killed by police to the black percentage in the population. This, obviously, is absurd. Lots of people never have any contact with the police. (Obey the law -- you'll see!)
It would be like accusing grizzly bears of systemic racism against Alaskans because 29% of all grizzly attacks are against Alaskans -- a mere 0.5% of the population -- whereas grizzlies kill zero Texans, and they make up 22% of the population! (There are no grizzlies in Texas at last count.)
Police don't stop people at random. They stop people whom they believe to be breaking the law. Judging by the pantheon of black martyrs, they're often right.
George Floyd was a fentanyl addict (which, of course, contributed in no way to his death) who'd just passed a counterfeit $20 bill -- not to mention the armed home invasion robbery he'd committed back in Texas; Michael Brown had just knocked over a convenience store and gratuitously roughed up the small Asian owner on his way out; Freddie Gray was a heroin dealer in possession of an illegal switchblade; Breonna Taylor was the bag woman for a fentanyl dealer; Daunte Wright was driving with an expired registration and had a warrant for his arrest stemming from his choking a woman during an attempted armed robbery.
For any meaningful comparison of civilians killed by cops, the denominator needs to be "percentage of contacts with the police." Maybe officers are searching out black people to harass for no reason whatsoever, but another explanation for the high number of police encounters is that, compared to other groups, a relatively large cohort of black people are violent criminals.
Although only 13% of the population, black people commit more than 50% of all murders, more than 50% of all robberies and more than 30% of all aggravated assaults. And yet blacks remain about one-quarter of the thousand civilians shot by police every year, the vast majority of them armed.
Instead of unveiling more George Floyd murals, how about some refresher courses on "The Talk"? (Which apparently makes much more sense in Spanish.) All these black luminaries would be alive today if they'd done one simple thing: Obey the police. It's not that hard.
Guys, we want to help! But you've got to abandon this impulse to turn any member of your group who fights a cop into a beatified saint.