4 Reasons Liberals Deliberately Overhype White on Black Crime

Answering Elon Musk’s question

Elon Musk created yet another stir last weekend with a seemingly innocuous comment on a graphic the Left finds to be horribly embarrassing.

This graphic highlights a very real phenomenon.

Most crime in America is intra-racial. In other words, the vast majority of crimes committed by white Americans are against other white Americans while most crimes committed against black Americans are perpetrated by other black Americans.

However, while the liberals in mainstream media show very little interest in black-on-black crime or black-on-white crime, they absolutely love to cover white-on-black crime. This is so obvious that it’s almost impossible to deny. Certainly, no one would have ever heard the names Jordan Neely, Mike Brown, and George Floyd if any of them had been white or they had died in a conflict with other black men, instead of whites. Even the most famous case of this sort, Trayvon Martin, would have never made the news if he were white or George Zimmerman, who was Hispanic, had not been initially falsely identified as white (Incidentally, after the mainstream media realized Zimmerman wasn’t white, that was the first time many of us ever heard the term “white Hispanic” used).

So, is the mainstream media deliberately distorting people’s perceptions of crime in America with its coverage? Absolutely. But, why is the mainstream media doing this?

There are at least four reasons that come to mind.

1) To excuse Democrats and keep black Americans away from Republicans: Successful activism used to be about getting people to see things your way so you could make changes. Today, “successful activism” is finding a wedge issue that the “right people” like and the “right people” hate that will draw attention. In other words, it’s not about accomplishing anything, it’s about enforcing tribalism (“We” support this! “They” don’t!”) and building your brand.

This is relevant here because most black Americans live in areas that have been run by Democrats for a long time, in many cases, even black Democrats and they’ve delivered nothing to their constituents. So, Democrats use this as a wedge issue. Conservatives are pro-law and order and they hate to falsely be accused of racism. So, Democrats highlight these cases over and over and deliberately misrepresent it to black Americans as, “See? These racists want you to die because you’re black! Even if you agree with them, you can’t support them.” It’s a really obvious con, but since it’s a con that works, they keep repeating it.

2) Because it sells: Back in my Right Wing News days, we used to run “Dr. Pimple Popper” videos, which are exactly what they sound like — videos featuring a doctor popping large growths. Personally, I found them repugnant and had zero interest in them, but they got great traffic. Why? I don’t entirely know, but one of my staffers who liked them said she found them “relaxing.” Here’s one that I didn’t watch all the way through because again, it’s disgusting, but feel free to judge for yourself.

The reality is that no matter how you slice it, these stories “sell.” A story about black gangbangers shooting each other doesn’t usually hold anyone’s attention for five minutes, but on the other hand, people will follow the story of a Jordan Neely or Trayvon Martin for weeks or even months at a time. Every new detail or analysis draws eyeballs. In other words, it’s “Doritos Journalism” at its worst. These sort of stories paint a false narrative, poison race relations, and create tremendous amounts of antagonism between people, but if the public is buying this toxic garbage, the mainstream media is selling.

3) Hyping up black Americans to vote: Falsely convincing Americans that they’re in terrible danger from the police and white people, which statistically, is undeniably false, helps hype up black Americans to vote. The votes never change anything because again, this narrative is obvious bullsh*t if you look at the statistics, but it helps get black Americans to the polls.

But, what about police officers, you may say?

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.

The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

In other words, this issue, like the Black Lives Matter movement, which was a profitable and violent scam, is all meant to be part of the get-out-the-vote effort for Democrats.

4) To portray America as racist: Liberals are heavily invested in the idea that America is a racist nation.

It justifies their usage of big government policies and allows them to think of themselves as the “saviors” of black Americans even as it excuses the devastating failure Democratic policies have created in black communities. The problem with that is that America pretty obviously isn’t racist. You could easily write a whole article on this topic (See, for example, “The Idea That America is Overrun with White Supremacy is a Conspiracy Theory”), but short of repeating that whole article, let’s just note that the liberal demand for racism to condemn far, far outstrips the supply. So, liberals find ways to create it – and this is one of them. Convincing people that black Americans need to be terrified of being killed by police or white Americans is absolutely horrible for everyone concerned, but it does help further the Left’s precious “America is racist” narrative.

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