The many misgivings of "Black Lives Matter".

• Author: Donald, Heather Mac
• Position: National Affairs

For almost two years, a protest movement known as "Black Lives Matter" has convulsed the nation. Triggered by the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement holds that racist police officers are the greatest threat facing young black men today. This belief has resulted in riots, "die-ins," die murder and attempted murder of police officers, a campaign to eliminate traditional grand jury proceedings when police use lethal force, and a presidential task force on policing.

Even though the Department of Justice resoundingly has disproven the lie that a pacific Michael Brown was shot in cold blood while trying to surrender, Brown still is venerated as a martyr, and now police officers are backing off of proactive policing in the face of the relentless venom directed at them on the street and in the media. As a result, violent crime is on the rise.

The need is urgent, therefore, to examine the Black Lives Matter movement's central thesis--that police pose the greatest threat to young black men. I propose two counter hypotheses: first, that there is no government agency more dedicated to the idea that black lives matter than the police, and second, that we have been talking obsessively about alleged police racism over the last 20 years in order to avoid talking about a far larger problem--black-on-black crime.

Let us be clear at the outset: police have an indefeasible obligation to treat everyone with courtesy and respect, and to act within the confines of the law. Too often, officers develop a hardened, obnoxious attitude. It also is true that being stopped when you are innocent of any wrongdoing is infuriating, humiliating, and sometimes terrifying. Moreover, every unjustified police shooting of an unarmed civilian is a stomach-churning tragedy.

Given the history of racism in this country and the complicity of the police in that history, police shootings of black men are particularly and understandably fraught. That history informs how many people view the police but, however intolerable and inexcusable every act of police brutality is, and while we need to make sure that the police are trained properly in the Constitution and in courtesy, there is a larger reality behind the issue of policing, crime, and race that remains a taboo topic. The problem of black-on-black crime is an uncomfortable truth but, unless we acknowledge it, we will not get very far in understanding patterns of policing.

Every year, approximately 6,000 blacks are murdered. This is a number greater than white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks only are 13% of the national population. Blacks are killed at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. In Los Angeles, Calif., blacks between the ages of 20 and 24 die at a rate 20 to 30 times the national mean. Who is killing them?--not the police, and not white civilians, but other blacks. The astronomical black death-by-homicide rate is a function of the black crime rate. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at 10 times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined. Blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and at 11 times the rate of whites alone.

The police could end all lethal uses of force tomorrow and, it would have, at most, a trivial effect on the black death-by-homicide rate. The nation's police killed 987 civilians in 2015, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post. Whites were 50%--or 493--of those victims, and blacks were 26%--or 258. Most of those victims of police shootings, white and black, were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force.

The black violent crime rate actually would predict that more than 26% of police victims would be black. Officer use of force will occur...