Quote of the Day:
BlackLivesMatter, the slogan of the movement that began in earnest after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, is a lie. Taken at face value, the phrase is a truism, since obviously all lives matter. But the people who use it as a shibboleth don’t care about black lives per se so much as scoring points against the police.
—Rich Lowry in Politico
In Baltimore thirty-five people have been murdered this month. The dead include a mother and her seven year old son, shot in the head. These are African American deaths but so far neither Al Shapton nor President Obama has seen fit to speak out about these deaths. Rich Lowry writes:
Let’s be honest: Some black lives really don’t matter. If you are a young black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost certainly no one will know your name. Al Sharpton won’t come rushing to your family’s side with cameras in tow. MSNBC won’t discuss the significance of your death. No one will protest, or even riot, for you. You are a statistic, not a cause. Just another dead black kid in some city somewhere, politically useless to progressives and the media, therefore all but invisible.
The use of the deaths of young black men to stick it to the police is in itself evil. It is also destructive to other young black men to demonize the police while lionizing the likes of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin. It has been established as far as the law can that the policeman who shot Michael Brown acted in self defense. We can ardently wish that George Zimmerman had stayed in his car instead of going to investigate what Trayvon Martin was doing. But a jury was unable to find sufficient cause to convict Zimmerman of murder. Freddie Gray is dead and we need to know how he died. The atmosphere in Baltimore, created in part by elected officials, is not conducive to finding the answer.
There is a shrine to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. There is no shrine to the mother and son killed in Baltimore this month. Their deaths are not useful to progressives and indeed not at all helpful to the narrative of police brutality. The riots and destruction of property obscure rather than highlight their deaths. Michael Brown’s death is unspeakably sad, but a shrine indicates that he is a young man to be emulated. What does this say to young black men?
Newspapers are reporting that mobs gather around police officers if the officers stop their cars mobs gather around them. I am wondering how long it will be before cities simply can’t find young men and women who are willing to work in law enforcement. When the President of the United States only tepidly sticks up for law enforcement, preferring to side with lawbreakers, civil order is threatened.
I leave you with the deaths of Jennifer Jeffrey and her 7-year-old son:
The most recent killings claimed the lives of Jennifer Jeffrey and her seven-year-old son, Kester Anthony Browne. They were identified by Jeffrey’s sister, Danielle Wilder.
Jeffrey and her son were found dead early Thursday, each from gunshot wounds to the head.
As family members cried and held each other on the quiet, leafy block in Southwest Baltimore where they lived, Wilder said she felt as if “my heart has been ripped out.”
Wilder said a neighbor called their other sister early Thursday, concerned that she hadn’t hear any noise coming from Jeffrey’s house: no footsteps, Wilder said, no voices, and no gunshots. But when her brother let himself into the house to check on the mother and son, he discovered their bodies.
“She was in the living room,” Wilder said. “The baby was upstairs, in the bed.”
Wilder said police told her there were no signs of forced entry, and that whoever killed Jeffrey and Browne were let into the house sometime yesterday. Wilder said she thinks whoever killed Jeffrey, who also lived with her niece and grand-niece, wanted to catch her alone and the boy was collateral damage.
Thursday’s deaths continue a grisly and dramatic uptick in murders across Baltimore that has so far claimed the lives of 38 people. Meanwhile, arrests have plunged: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they pulled off the streets last year.
No word yet from Baltimore’s elected officials on arrests in the deaths of Jennifer Jeffrey and Kester Anthony Browne. Don’t these black lives matter?