The demonstrations and disorder over the murder of
George Floyd have ceased on British streets. What we are left with is the
National Trust investigating who paid for country houses, Edinburgh University cancelling
David Hume and a controversy over a dance act on an ITV talent contest. Is this
what the demonstrators in May and June wanted to achieve?
But in the United States demonstrations, riots and
disorder have taken place all summer. The latest is in Louisville Kentucky
because of an incident on March 13th, 2020 involving police offers entering the
apartment of Breonna Taylor while exercising a search warrant. Taylor’s
boyfriend Kenneth Walker shot at the police who returned fire killing Taylor. There was a court case on 23rd September where the grand jury
indicted one of the officers for wanton endangerment, but no one was indicted
for Taylor’s death.
The case is tragic. It is clear that an innocent person, Taylor, died. The facts are disputed. But this is why there
are courts of law to judge about what happened. The United States has one of
the best legal systems in the world. If people disagree with laws, they can campaign
in elections to have them changed.
But for the demonstrators and rioters this isn’t
enough. They are rioting because they didn’t like the verdict of the court.
They wanted one or more of the police officers to be charged with killing
Taylor. Because the court did not decide this, they accuse the court decision of
being racist.
But there is a pattern emerging in these cases. The
police were called to Taylor’s apartment because they suspected criminal
activity taking place there. They thought someone was selling drugs. No drugs
were in fact found. But the police didn’t just pick this apartment at random
and they didn’t pick it because the occupants were black. If that had been
their motivation, they could have picked any apartment with a black occupant.
It may be that the police were mistaken, but it is reasonable to assume that
the police were following a lead.
If you were a police officer with a warrant to search
an apartment and someone shot at you what would you do? Firstly, you would
assume that the suspect had something to hide. Secondly you would defend
yourself. All of this would happen in a split second. The police officers would
fear for their lives. One of the officers had been hit by Walker’s shot.
It may be that it was a tragic error on Walker’s part
to shoot the police officer. He may have thought the police were intruders. It
may also have been a tragic mistake of the police officers to return fire
killing Taylor. But the chain of events that led up to the
death was that the police suspected criminal activity and they were fired upon.
The police have a much harder job in the United States
than the police have in Britain. Even in London British police officers would
not expect to be shot at immediately after forcing entry into a property. But
in the United States police officers frequently have to risk their lives when trying
to arrest criminals.
In the United States Black Lives Matter grew out of a
large number of black people being killed by the police. It has always been
assumed that these killings occur because of police racism. There is no doubt
that some police officers are racist. Racism is a part of all societies and
especially American society which has a long history of racial conflict.
But why are there no Korean Lives Matter, Jewish Lives
Matter or Indian Lives Matter movements. Why are there no demonstrations complaining
about the huge numbers of brown (Indian and Pakistani Americans) people who
have been unjustly killed by the police?
Is it that the police are racist about Blacks but not
racist about Browns? Why would that be? Does police racism involve shades? A
little darker and we will shoot you, a little lighter and we won’t? No of
course not.
There are numerous races in America. There are people
from every part of the world, but there is only a Black Lives Matter. Why?
Large number of people from Indian backgrounds, Korean
backgrounds and Jewish backgrounds are not shot by the police, because they rarely
come into contact with the police in the first place. If they do come into
contact with the police, they cooperate, and the incident is peaceful.
Black people in the United States who are completely uninvolved
in criminal activity and who cooperate with the police have no more reason to
fear being shot by the police than anyone else. The police do not ride around
in their cars taking shots at random black people. There is no deliberate police
policy of killing black people, not least because police officers know there is
a good chance that they will be charged with murder.
The pattern of cases that people in the United States
are rioting about almost invariably involve someone resisting arrest who the
police suspect of committing a crime. Sometimes these people are killed
unjustly. Sometimes they are killed by mistake. An incident gets out of hand. A
policeman fears he will be hurt or killed and rather like in a combat situation
the policeman sometimes judges poorly. He does so because of stress.
But if Black Lives Matter were really concerned with
saving black lives, they would not encourage people to demonstrate and riot.
This merely reinforces the idea that some black people are violent.
Two things would save more black lives than anything
else.
1. Don’t do anything that will make the police suspect
you of being involved in a crime.
2. If you come into contact with the police don’t act
in a threatening manner but rather cooperate politely.
Of course, Black Lives Matter is uninterested in this.
It treats black people as passive victims rather than moral beings who can make
good and bad choices. Only police officers are capable of doing evil. Black
victims are always innocent. This idea dehumanises black people and is of
course racist. Only moral beings are human beings.
In the months since Breonna Taylor was killed there
have been any number of murders in the United States. Black people have killed
black people and black people have killed white people and those of other
races. There have been good and bad decisions in court cases where victims have
agreed and disagreed with the verdicts. But none of these other cases have
attracted any attention and no one has rioted, because a black suspect was not
convicted for killing a white person.
Black Lives Matter is only interested in the deaths of
black people when they are killed by white people. No one riots when a black
person kills another black person. No one riots when a black person is let free
even though he should have been convicted. But what do we call judging morality
and legality based on skin colour? We call it racism.
