It is a working thesis of mine that we still have a major problem with racism in this nation, and that since conservatives (and especially Christians) perpetually refuse to address the problems of race and power with both empathetic and biblical solutions, leftists continue to gain power through Marxist, class-warfare-type tactics in regard to race.

Bret responds,

Note that Joel’s great “working thesis” is the very same “working thesis” propounded by Al Sharpton, the Black Lives Matter terrorist organization, George Soros and his multitude of paid agitators, as well as every garden variety Social Justice Warrior one cares to name.

So, Joel’s great “working thesis” is the thesis of the left and Joel is telling us that unless we adopt his and the left’s great “working thesis” the result will be that the left will eventually win. So… in order to stop the left from winning we must let them win by adopting their “working thesis.”

JM writes,

Regarding the enduring racism: I believe a good amount of this is subconscious. In other words, one can exhibit racist behavior and do racist things without being a conscious or even secret racist—although some of these certainly exist, too. But the subconscious element works on several levels, and even pervades institutions, in my opinion.

Bret replies,

1.) The whole theory of “subconscious” itself is, at the very least, questionable, but I’m willing to go with it for the sake of argument.

2.) One could easily contend that all that Dr. McDurmon has given us thus far,  is a menu of Cultural Marxism as influenced by his subconscious. I don’t think that Dr. McDurmon is a self conscious Cultural Marxist but I do think he can exhibit Cultural Marxist behavior and does subconsciously hold Cultural Marxist convictions, and all of that because there is a subconscious element of Cultural Marxism at work in Dr. McDurmon on several levels. This is so true that I have concluded that it even pervades the institution of American Vision in my opinion.

Nowhere is this clearer than in criminal justice. This week, a report was released that showed yet another small window into this problem. In the first study of its kind, the facts show that police in Connecticut employ tasers more often against blacks and Hispanics than against whites.

State and police officials noted that many of the stun gun incidents occurred in urban areas, where minority populations are higher.

According to one review, the report “found that black men were about three times more likely to be Tased than simply warned. . . . For white men, the chance of being Tased or warned were about the same.”

Indeed, when wielding Taser against whites, only warnings were given in 40 percent of cases. When involving blacks, however, the number drops to only 19 percent.

In other words, whites get off with only warnings more than twice as often as blacks. With blacks, the vast majority of incidents—81 percent—go straight to tasing.

So whites get verbal warnings first, and blacks get something more like a hair-trigger. Shoot first, and let the Fraternal Order of Police lawyers answer questions later.

Bret responds,

If you probe into this Connecticut study you learn some interesting factoids.

1.) State and police officials noted that many of the stun gun incidents occurred in urban areas, where minority populations are higher. That being true one would expect a higher incident rate of stun guns being reported in these settings.

2.) Researches said it was likely the numbers were under-reported because many police departments did not report all uses of a taser. This suggests that the study cited by Dr. McDurmon is incomplete and is not completely reliable.

Now I’m going to appeal to the work of author Heather MacDonald who has written a well researched book titled, “The War on Cops: How The New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.” I am doing so in order to dismiss Dr. McDurmon’s leaps of logic regarding racism in police forces around the nation.

MacDonald offers about this about some of this research that Joel refers to and calls it “junk science.”  Heather MacDonald offers,

The Obama Administration is now pushing a concept of implicit bias training on officers across the country. This is complete folly. It is based on junk science that has been recently completely disproven by a study, an extremely sophisticated study out of the University of Washington that found that cops actually hesitate longer to decide to shoot armed black suspects than armed white suspects and are less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects.

This recent study blows apart the pre-existing implicit bias junk science, and yet the Obama Administration is now demanding that officers get sent to this training that is a waste of time because officers want good tactical training…. 

Heather MacDonald
Author — The War on Cops: How The New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe

JM presses on,

The nature of the study is also disarming of the common retort that, well, blacks just commit more crimes than whites, so obviously they have police interactions more often. Nope. This argument is wrong on so many levels, but is busted in this report because the data are presented as percentages of interactions within each race to begin with. In other words, all else being equal, the cops were more than twice as likely to give a warning to a white man as opposed to a black, and much more quick to use tasers when engaging blacks than whites. These are percentage rates, not bare numbers.

That statistic is damning no matter how you slice it.

Thus it reveals that there is some fundamental difference in how the same group of trained professionals (even our “finest,” after all) think, decide, and act in regard to blacks versus whites. Thus, whether these decisions are conscious or not, there is a pure racist element in our criminal justice system.

Bret responds,

Heather MacDonald counters McDurmon here on his whole “That statistic is damning no matter how you slice it,” quip.

“Well, let’s look at some of the numbers…. A larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths are the results of police killings than black homicide deaths. That is, 12 percent of all whites and Hispanics who die of homicide are killed by police officers. Four percent of all blacks, homicide victims, are killed by police officers. So if we’re going to have an Anti‑Cop Lives Matter movement it would make more sense to call it White and Hispanic Lives Matter.”

Heather MacDonald
Author — The War on Cops: How The New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

If Dr. McDurmon’s statistics are correct (a big if) then it can be easily suggested that the reason that the taser is used more often on blacks as opposed to whites is so that a handgun doesn’t have to be used. Personally, I would rather be tasered than shot. Regardless, this quote from MacDonald demonstrates that the racism that McDurmon is so concerned about just isn’t born out.

JM offers,

And this is only considering one narrow window of information: the use of tasers.

Bret responds,

And MacDonald gives us a broader window of information that contradicts Joel’s more narrow window.

JM adds,

The greatest irony of all in this study is perhaps the fact that we might look down upon those who got tased, whatever their race, as criminals who deserved it, when the only sure fact about lawbreaking that jumps out is in the reports themselves: there were some police departments who either underreported, or did not keep records at all, as the CT law demands! In at least one case, a department neglected (conveniently?) to report one taser incident in which a young man who was tased and happened to die from it.

In other words, the only clear admissions of lawbreaking here were on the part of the police departments—who also face absolutely zero consequences for their failure to follow the law.

If lawlessness exists in police department behavior, what makes you think anyone is safe, let alone a less-empowered minority?

Bret responds,

If the records where not kept at all then the study is hardly scientific. One cannot come to proper conclusions without all the data. The reasons that McDurmon gives for some departments not reporting are nothing but speculation on McDurmon’s part.

As McDurmon is trying to make the case that the Police are inherently racist, being themselves part of a racist culture let us consider these stats that speak against that narrative that Joel’s trying to spin,

“If we’re going to talk about race and policing, let’s talk about cop killings. Over the last decade, black males made up 40 percent of all cop killers, even though they’re six percent of the population. It turns out… that a police officer is 18-and-a-half times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is likely to be killed by a police officer.”

Heather MacDonald
Author — The War on Cops: How The New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe

And McDurmon suggests that we have a problem with white racism?

McDurmon finishes by citing a book he’s read that supports his conclusions and then extrapolates from that book’s bad solutions to the conclusion that Christians better respond to the problems of white racism lest socialism is forced upon us by those who demand it. The problem here is that Joel is suggesting that we better give in to socialists demands or socialists will win.

If you want to read that section you can access the link provided at the begininng. Suffice it to say, that I don’t agree with the narrative that the left and McDurmon is trying to spin on this subject.

McDurmon insists that if we end up with more socialism that it will be our fault because as Christians we did not answer the problems of racism and segregation. The problem with McDurmon’s appeal is that his metanarrative is not established as unquestionable. MacDonald suggests, and other publications, like “The Color of Crime,” agree that our problem with racism is a black on white racism.

McDurmon has bought into the Cultural Marxist narrative. It is not a narrative that Christians should be buying into.