by David Clarke
The great Thomas Sowell pointed out that this phenomenon is not new or even unique to America:
In France between the two World Wars, the teachers’ union decided that schools should replace patriotism with internationalism and pacifism. Books that told the story of the heroic defense of French soldiers against the German invaders at Verdun in 1916 despite suffering massive casualties were replaced by books that spoke impartially about the suffering of all soldiers—both French and German—at Verdun. Germany invaded France again in 1940, and this time the world was shocked when the French surrendered after just six weeks of fighting—especially since military experts expected France to win. But two decades of undermining French patriotism and morale had done their work.10
Why are American schools undermining our nation’s greatness? I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that today’s black Americans are in a similar position as Frederick Douglass when he was a kid. An inept government has once again made it all too difficult for black people to learn. It’s time for us to focus on improving education with as much passion as the abolitionists had when fighting to eliminate slavery. Failing, misguided schools are entrapping black children into a lifetime of missed opportunities and mediocrity.
As Douglass wrote, “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
It’s time to demand better, America.
6
How Lies Turned Isolated Deaths into National Scandals
A BLACK MOTHER put a Harvard bumper sticker on the back of her son’s Toyota Corolla.
“You must be proud,” another woman said.
“Oh he goes to the local community college,” the black mother said. “This is so the cops won’t rough him up when they pull him over.”
For the past few years, whenever you’ve turned on the television or looked online, one narrative has constantly been hammered into our minds: black people better watch their backs because racist cops are just around the corner waiting to entrap them. To combat this fear, black moms and dads sit their kids down and have “the talk.” Since innocent traffic stops can get black kids killed, they have to know a few tricks: keep your hands on the steering wheel, don’t reach for anything inside your pockets, say “yes sir” and “no sir,” let the police officer know he’s in charge.
The only problem? This notion is based on a myth.
In chapter 3, we learned that most people who died during a police interaction were wielding weapons, suicidal, mentally troubled, or running when officers told them to stop. In other words, an innocent black man most likely won’t be killed by a racist cop. Period. That’s not my wishful thinking. That’s a reasonable conclusion based on evidence.
So why are parents scaring their children and creating distrust of the one group putting their lives on the line for their communities every day? Because the stories about race that dominate the news are, more often than not, utter fabrications. Yes, even the most famous cases. By now, the names of black people killed by whites are household names—Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice—but the real stories are much more complicated than what you’ve read or heard. Let’s take a closer look beyond the headlines and hashtags at what’s really happening in America.
Trayvon Martin
On February 26, 2012, a seventeen-year-old black high school student named Trayvon Martin was walking through the neighborhood where he was temporarily living when he crossed paths with twenty-eight-year-old neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman. Even though the kid hadn’t broken any laws and was unarmed, he wound up dead.
This incident didn’t involve police, yet it became a modern parable of how hard it is to be a black man in this nation. This is why a mother puts a Harvard bumper sticker on her son’s car and why a father sits his son down for “the talk.” As images of a young hoodie-wearing Trayvon started showing up all over the media, President Obama famously said, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
This story was already tragic, but the media wanted it to be more—a hate crime, an incident that would further inflame racial tension in America—and here’s how they did it.
First, they muddled Zimmerman’s race. “George is a Spanish-speaking minority with many black family members and friends,” said his Jewish father in describing the son he fathered with a Peruvian woman. Most would call Zimmerman Hispanic, but CNN described him as a “white Hispanic.” You can call him half-Jewish maybe or half-Peruvian, but you can’t call him white unless you’re colorblind. If you saw him in real life instead of on TV, you could see that his skin is brown. However, his brother complained to NPR that many photos of Zimmerman making their way around the Internet mysteriously showed George with lighter skin than he actually has. The media intentionally tried to make him look whiter because it’s hard to sell a racial narrative without an evil white man attacking an innocent black man.
Second, they muddled Martin’s age. At the time of his death, Martin was just seventeen. As soon as the media began reporting the incident, however, they used a photo of him around the age of twelve. Though the death of a teenager is just as tragic as the death of a preteen, the media were desperate to shove the details of this real-life event into the mold of the racial narrative they wanted to tell. The younger the victim, the better. Reality didn’t matter.
Third, they purposely made it look like racial profiling. When NBC aired the 911 call, the viewers of the Today show heard these words: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black.” But what did those three dots represent? What was left out? The 911 operator asking Zimmerman, “Is he white, black, or Hispanic?”1 Only then did Zimmerman mention race.
Fourth, they put on trial the “stand your ground” principle, which liberals hate because it authorizes people to protect themselves against perceived threats. When discussing this case, the media reported that Zimmerman wasn’t arrested because of the “stand your ground” principle, but that was not true. Even when Zimmerman had his day in court, his lawyers argued traditional self-defense.
Last, they made Martin into a martyr. If you read any coverage of this case, you may have seen the comparison between Martin and Emmett Till, a black man in Mississippi who was viciously murdered for whistling at a white woman during the 1950s. That was an absolute assault on history. But it was not as crazy as MSNBC personality Al Sharpton (no, I won’t call him reverend) comparing the death of Trayvon Martin to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.2
The media wanted a racial parable, so that’s what we got. Rarely has such an incident penetrated the minds and hearts of Americans in politics, the academy, pop culture, and even sports. For example, the entire Miami Heat basketball team—including Dwyane Wade and LeBron James—posed for photos wearing hoodies, with their hands stuffed in their pockets. #WeWantJustice was one of the hashtags captioning the photo.
The only problem was that the story wasn’t true. Zimmerman said Martin “sucker-punched” him and broke his nose. Witnesses testified that Martin was attacking Zimmerman before the shot was fired. A neighbor said Martin was attacking Zimmerman like a mixed martial arts fighter. A forensic expert testified that the end of his gun was right against Martin, which indicates that Martin had gotten on top of Zimmerman.3
You may not have heard these details espoused by a legal pro like LeBron James, but Zimmerman was ultimately found not guilty in a court of law. The verdict sent shock waves through this nation. The NAACP posted a petition asking the Department of Justice to open a civil case against Zimmerman, and within three days 1.5 million people had signed it.4 Zimmerman’s parents weren’t able to return to their home because they feared for their lives. When the telephone number of a woman in Winter Park, Florida, was erroneously published as Zimmerman’s number, death threats inundated her. The Seminole County Sheriff’s Department could commiserate because
it was receiving four hundred threats per minute via social media.
But that was just the beginning.
Michael Brown
On August 9, 2014, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot an eighteen-year-old black man. The story about the shooting was seemingly custom made for the shame-the-police narrative. Michael Brown had robbed a convenience store of small cigars before a white cop found him and ended up shooting the unarmed man in the back. The media stories told us repeatedly that this kid had his entire life before him. He was preparing to go to college in the fall. Even worse, he was reportedly killed when he had his hands in the air, in a gesture of helpless surrender.
“Hands up, don’t shoot” became a mantra for protestors on the street and social media. Violent protests, vandalism, and looting erupted in the mostly black city for more than a week. Police had to set a nightly curfew as beauty parlors and convenience stores burned to the ground. Americans turned on their televisions at night and saw images of tear gas, police in riot gear, sirens blazing, fires burning—all this evoking the race riots of the 1960s. Missouri’s governor called in the National Guard and implied that the “prosecution” of the officer was the only way to achieve justice in this situation.
“Ferguson” became shorthand for all that is wrong with America. Political activists and politicians converged on the city like vultures on a roadside carcass. If you had taken a map of Missouri and asked these activists to point out the city of Ferguson, I bet 95 percent of them wouldn’t have come close. But after the shooting, the town became ground zero, the epicenter of the police use of deadly force.
Again, there was a major problem. The story was not true.
Michael Brown, who’d robbed a convenience store just moments before his fateful run-in with the police, was no “gentle giant.” When the store clerk tried to stop him from taking cigarillos, he shoved the clerk in a not-so-gentle way.
Then when Officer Darren Wilson saw Brown and his friend walking down the middle of the street, he blocked them with his vehicle and told them to move to the side. This interaction got violent fast when Brown and Wilson struggled for control of the officer’s weapon until it fired. When Brown and his friend took off, the officer pursued them. Brown then turned around and came at the cop.
The autopsy revealed Brown had enough tetrahydrocannabinol, the main ingredient found in cannabis, to cause hallucinations and paranoia. Furthermore, Brown was not shot in the back. Blood splatters show that Brown was coming at the officer, not running away from him. By the way, his hands weren’t even raised when he was killed. Several black witnesses confirmed what the autopsy and forensic evidence proved, but they had to remain in hiding because of the violence.
Let these details sink in. Almost everything you heard about that case was a lie.
Eric Garner
This might be the most heart-wrenching story of them all. In August 2014, the forty-three-year-old was illegally selling single cigarettes on the street in Staten Island. When New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo approached him, Eric Garner waved his arms and said, “Every time you see me you want to arrest me. I’m tired of this, this stops today … I didn’t do nothing … I’m minding my business, officer …”
That’s when Pantaleo put Garner in what has been described as a headlock. Millions of Americans shuddered in horror as they saw the video of him lying on the ground, surrounded by officers. “I can’t breathe,” he said eleven times before having a fatal cardiac arrest.
Once again, America was thrust into national grief. #ICantBreathe trended on Twitter, and protestors shouted it on streets in major cities across America. NBA stars LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Kyrie Irving, Deron Williams, and Derrick Rose warmed up in black “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts to show support for Garner’s family. (The NBA decided not to fine the players for not wearing Adidas, which contractually provides the pregame warm-up clothing for players.) Of course, the perpetually aggrieved charlatan Sharpton descended to protest and lead a candlelight vigil.
Eventually the police were not indicted. The medical examiner said the cause of death was “compression of neck (choke hold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” The autopsy said that his acute and chronic bronchial asthma, heart disease, and obesity were other factors (Garner weighed four hundred pounds) and that his windpipe had not been damaged.
When the officer was not indicted, cries of racism rang out through the nation. Again.
Tamir Rice
In November 2014, a citizen called 911 because he saw a person who scared him by waving around a gun in a Cleveland park. He told the emergency operator that the weapon was “probably fake,” and the gun wielder was possibly a juvenile. The police responded to the call but were told only that it was a “code 1” situation—which meant it was of the highest priority and possibly posed significant risk to the public—and that there was a black man “wearing a camouflage hat and a gray jacket with black sleeves” waving a gun around and pointing it at people in the park.
When they pulled up, they saw Tamir Rice. He was not a man waving a gun, but a twelve-year-old boy waving a gun replica. It was an airsoft gun from which he had removed the orange tip that would’ve indicated it was fake. The video that immediately was seen by millions of Americans shows the cops pulling up and one of them shooting Tamir within seconds. Both police officers said they told him to put his hands up. Instead, Tamir reached for the gun in his waistband. He died the next day from the wounds.
“White police officer shoots and kills black child with a toy gun” was the dominant media narrative, and the cries of racial injustice only intensified when a Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict the officer. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went to a microphone and insinuated that the NYPD is full of racists. De Blasio, who has a biracial kid named Dante, said that he warned his son to “take special care” when interacting with police.
A Few Important Things to Note About Cops
I could go on. By the time you read this chapter, more racial incidents involving the police may be dominating the news. I hope not. But there are important lessons to be learned from these four incidents that the media certainly won’t tell you.
Lesson 1. When a law enforcement officer gives you a lawful command, obey it even if you disagree. Whatever problem you are experiencing is not going to be settled on the street. People with complaints need to use the process established for that purpose. Though the cops don’t have the final say, they have the final say in the moment within the law. Think about how this basic principle could’ve affected the outcome of each case I just discussed.
Eric Garner didn’t think he had to obey the police. “You’re under arrest. Put your hands behind your back,” they told him. All he had to do was turn around and put his hands behind his back. That one motion would’ve saved his life, and he’d be telling his story today about how he was hassled on the street by NYPD.
Michael Brown didn’t think he had to obey the police when Officer Wilson told him, “Get out of the street.” Is walking down the middle of the street a huge deal? No, and had Brown just gotten out of the street—even if he mumbled under his breath his disdain for the cop—he would be alive right now.
Tamir Rice didn’t think he had to obey the cops when they yelled, “Put your hands up.” Instead, he reached for what turned out to be a fake gun. Tragically, that decision cost this young boy his life.
Now, can some cops be overbearing and rude? For sure. But the bottom line is this: do what the officer tells you to do and then file a complaint if you need to.
Lesson 2. Take politicians’ words with a grain of salt. President Barack Obama’s first message to black Americans should’ve been this life-saving principle: don’t attack a police officer on the street or resist arrest because you think you’re being hassled. Instead, what did I hear? The president said that our police officers are poorly trained and have a fear of people who don’t look like them.
He said our police need more training to “be aware of their biases ahead of time.”5
Disgusting.
United States Attorney General Eric Holder was also unhelpful when he chimed in, “We’re gonna end racial profiling once and for all.” Then he went to Ferguson and started making comments that communicated he already had his mind made up before a trial had commenced. He said, “This is a racist police organization.” While he was in Ferguson, he visited with the grieving family of Michael Brown. That wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but might that visit have colored his judgment? And I probably don’t have to tell you that he didn’t meet with Officer Wilson.
You expect race hustlers like Sharpton to talk stupid. But it really chapped my rear end when our nation’s president, its attorney general, and even the mayor of New York City started spewing such incendiary rhetoric.
I was in Milwaukee when I heard about Mayor de Blasio’s careless comments to his biracial son, and I had to take a moment to collect myself. Men and women in this profession put on their uniforms every day, go out on the streets to make their communities better, and 99.9 percent of them provide law and order for black people. The overwhelming majority of people living in these ghettos are good, law-abiding black people just trying to get through life without getting shot or having their kids killed by drug dealers controlling the streets. Think of what would happen in these cities if the police pulled back. Mayor de Blasio should have to experience New York City for just forty-eight hours with no police. The city would disintegrate into utter chaos.
Instead of speaking truth into the situation for all Americans, these politicians seized the opportunities to score cheap political points with certain demographics.