To the extent that the deaths of blacks has become an issue of race, it has been made so by race hustlers from Barack Obama on down to the usual suspects who rather conveniently fail to address the fact that blacks nationwide commit homicide at eight times the combined rate of whites and Hispanics, and that black males aged 14-17 commit homicide at ten times the combined rate of white and Hispanic male teens.
The question then becomes: Black lives matter to whom, exactly? Because the numbers show it isn’t police officers who are hunting down innocent African Americans. Rather, the awful fact is that the last face a black homicide victim is likely to see is the black face of his killer. Closing the nation’s highways, looting business in the black community, and disrupting the lives of law-abiding citizens will not change that reality even a little bit.
When Memphis’ interim police director met with Black Lives Matter protestors on the I-40 bridge Sunday evening, they all agreed to a cease-fire in the city’s ongoing homicides, which have reached more than 120 people in 2016. No more killings, they said, for the next 30 days. Less than 24 hours later, predictably, another homicide took place.
So we are entitled to ask: Do black lives matter to the thugs who prey on the innocent in their community, who steal from them and assault them? Do black lives matter to a culture that demeans and dehumanizes women in its music and its actions? Exactly how precious are black lives in Memphis, where I live, where young black males regularly swerve on their motorcycles and in their cars across busy interstate highways at speeds in excess of 100 mph, wantonly endangering and sometimes taking the lives of motorists of all races?
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