For a moment, let’s pretend that
we all are willing to set aside our emotions and look at two sets of raw
numbers. Set one: 330,000; 60,000; 1,200. Set two: 330,000; 1,100, and 1.
Each set contains the following:
first, the number of a group of people, second, a subset of those people, and,
third, the number of fatalities as a result of an activity in which the second
group has engaged. Which set of numbers
bothers you more? For what’s it’s worth
as you consider this, note that the activity in which the 60,000 engage is 1,200
times more likely to cause a death than the activity in which the 1,100 engage.
(You can do the math for yourself – I think I got it right).
What’s the point of these
numbers?
If you change the first set to
330,000,000, 60,000,000 and 1,200,000
you get the number of people in America, the rough number of women of
childbearing age in America, and the number of abortions each year. If you change the second set to 330,000,000,
1,100,000, and 1,000 you get the number of people in American, the rough number
of law enforcement officers in America, and the number of people killed by
police officers each year.
Now, let’s factor in some other
issues. Not every fatal shooting by a police
officer is of an innocent victim. I
think we can agree that some percentage (probably a substantial one) of police
shootings occur because someone shot at the police first. Not every fatal shooting by a police officer is of a black person. In fact, more white people die from police
shootings every year in the United States.
(Of course, this should be expected in light of the much larger
percentage of white people in the country).
Whatever the reasons for police shootings, no police shooting occurs
because of “convenience.”
Every abortion kills an innocent
child who has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to start the killing. No child in the womb does anything to his or
her mother to require firing back. Second,
it is well known that the abortion rate among blacks is significantly higher
than among whites – whatever the reasons this is simply true. (Again, because there are many more white people
in the United States white abortions represent a larger number of overall
abortions). Third, 93% of all abortions
occur because of convenience.
If you are serious about looking
at numbers and you are willing to leave emotion out of it, abortion is a much
more serious problem in the United States than police officers shooting
people. In particular, if we assume that
half of police officer shootings are justified (self-defense or to protect
another person from being harmed), then the number of relevant fatalities goes
down to about 500. I don’t know what the
true number of “justified” police shootings is, but having known many police
officers who spent whole careers without ever discharging their firearm at
anyone, it just seems highly unlikely to me that even half of police officer
shootings are of “innocent” victims, however defined.
My point isn’t to debate whether
specific instances of police conduct are wrong.
That is something for the justice system to work out. If a police officer shoots someone he or she
should be investigated just like anyone else would be if they shoot
someone. If the officer wantonly shot
someone for no legally justified reason, then the officer should face the full
penalty of the law.
We cannot let emotion rule the
day, however. The numbers simply do not
indicate that police are on some kind of nationwide killing spree of black
people.
The abortion numbers, however,
present a different story. Black
abortions account for more black deaths than any other cause every year.
About 4,400,000 black babies have been aborted since 1973. Even if every one of the 1,000 people killed
per year by police was a black person, that would mean 43,000 since 1973, or 1
percent of the number killed by abortion (and that assumes the number of police
shootings has held steady at around 1,000 per year – I don’t know if that is
correct or not, but even if it were 5,000 per year, it would be staggeringly
smaller than the abortion numbers).
Which of these is an epidemic?
We can rightly and appropriately
feel sorry for people shot by the police, even when they have acted in ways
that some might feel were less than sensible.
For instance, we can feel sorry for the guy who was driving 100 mph and
lost control of his car and killed himself, even though what he was doing was
unreasonable. Yet, feeling sadness
because someone was killed doesn’t justify ignoring reality for the sake of
engaging in an emotion laden but clearly false claim that young black men are
somehow being targeted for death by the police.
To listen to the news, you’d think police were shooting young black men
by the hundreds for no reason. The above
numbers show this simply isn’t true.[1]
Unfortunately, when a guy like me
makes these statements, I am often simply branded a racist and ignored. Then people who are angry about the situation
complain because we aren’t having a national “conversation” about the “problem.” We can’t have a conversation if we’re going
to ignore reality in favor of scapegoating police. Moreover, when 2/3 of the people in the
country are white, they have to be included in the “conversation” even when
they bring up uncomfortable and inconvenient facts like those above. Branding people with labels that make them
sound bad only serves to minimize conversation, not help it flourish.
If we really want to make
meaningful headway in the racial conversation, we must first start by
recognizing that all people are human beings who have dignity because they are
made in the image of their creator.
There’s a lyric from a Sunday school song that little kids were often
taught when I was young: Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in
his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world. The conversation can’t start with reprisals
or with attacks or with arguments about white privilege, or police brutality,
or even the past evils of slavery. The
conversation has to begin where God started it: human being to human being. Second, we have to actually listen to what
people are saying, even when we find it burdensome, irritating, troubling, or
disconcerting. For instance, it bothers
me when I hear some people argue that all white people should pay reparations
to blacks for slavery when I was never involved in slavery, had nothing to do
with it, agree it’s deplorable and morally reprehensible, and in all ways
reject slavery as an acceptable attitude of human toward human. Yet, if I am to truly engage in a
conversation about race, I must at least listen to those who make such
arguments. Perhaps there is something to
what they say, perhaps not, but I should at least hear them out. Only when I’ve actually listened do I have an
ability to assess the reasonableness of an argument. Finally, and as a corollary to the other two,
we’ve got to stop the ad hominem attacks and the efforts to shut down those
with whom we disagree. As a Christian
who is seeing more and more effort to simply shut down my voice by those who
disagree, I do have some small understanding of what’s it like to feel your
voice is being denigrated. Yet, as I
have argued elsewhere, the key to really, truly understanding others is to let
them speak, not shut them down. The best
way to know someone is totally whacky is to let them speak out – they’ll be
sure to show how absurd, rotten, pathetic, racist, mean-spirited, irrational,
illogical, or unreasonable their arguments and statements truly are. Thus, you don’t need to argue about the
unreasonableness of the KKK or the Nazis – they do fine job of making clear
just how insane they are. Fools need no
help proving themselves fools, they inevitably do it on their own.
The numbers don’t lie. There is no epidemic of young black men being
killed by the police in the United States.
That fact, however, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep talking. There is an epidemic of young black babies
being killed at abortion clinics. That
fact, however, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep talking. But until we treat all human life with the
respect and dignity human life deserves, it will be hard to have a meaningful
conversation about only some of those lives.
And the death toll will climb.
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