by James A. Bacon
Speaking yesterday, Governor Ralph Northam gave his thoughts about the wave of protests and rioting that followed the death of George Floyd by the hand of a white Minneapolis policeman.
Floyd and others, he opined, were wrongfully killed “simply for being black.” People across the country are “hurting and angry, and rightfully so,” he said. “The fear that is so common in the hearts and lives of many is real — will someone I love be next?”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do in this country and in our Commonwealth,” he said. “As Governor of Virginia, I make the commitment to ensure that we continue to address these issues head on, even when it is uncomfortable and difficult because I believe our diversity is our greatest strength.” Read his full remarks here.
The overwhelming majority of Americans would agree that what happened to George Floyd was a tragedy, and an overwhelming majority want to see the policeman who killed him, Derek Chauvin, brought to justice. Seemingly forgotten in the chaos of the past week, he is being brought to justice. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.
I take exception to Northam’s remarks on several grounds, but I fault him more for what he did not say even more than what he did say.
Northam said nothing about the hundreds of protesters around the country who were arrested for vandalism, looting and violent assaults. What do we conclude from his silence? Does he find vandalism, looting and violence to be a justifiable response to injustice, as some have argued? Or is he reluctant, perhaps for fear of political blow back, to mention the subject?
The Governor expressed no sympathy for victims of the riots — people like David Dorn, the black police chief of Moline Acres, Missouri, who was killed by looters who broke into a pawn shop…. People like a yet-to-be-named Las Vegas policeman who was shot in the head by a rioter and remains in critical condition.
Northam offered no words of condolence in his statement for the store owners, many of them black, who have seen their life’s work destroyed by looters. Store owners like Greg Mileski, whose Balance Bicycle Shop on Richmond’s West Broad Street was thoroughly looted…. like Jasmine Jahangiri, operator of Coliseum Deli near Virginia Commonwealth University, where looters broke a large window, stole cash and soda, and sprayed soda everywhere…. businesses like businesses like Waller & Co. Jewelry Store, where looters stole watches and jewelry, and shoe and housewares shop Need Supply Co., which was broken into and looted. (See the Virginia Business article here.)
Is it not possible to decry racial injustice while also criticizing those who spread violence and mayhem? Apparently not.
I also fault the Governor for feeding the proposition that black people are justifiably fearful of being killed for “being black.” As I noted a few days ago, there were only 28 officer-involved in shootings in Virginia last year. Half resulted in deaths. Nationally, about one-fourth of the people killed by police are black. (Virginia doesn’t track the race of police-related killing victims.) If that ratio held true in Virginia, it would translate into four or five incidents of blacks being killed by police last year. And in almost every instance, such killings occurred when the victims were resisting arrest or posing an imminent threat. Here in Virginia at least, police do not randomly seek out unarmed black people to brutalize. If African-Americans fear such victimization, that’s not a reflection of reality but of the national media’s proclivity for giving massive play to extremely rare and unrepresentative cases and portraying them as if they were an epidemic.
Likewise, contrary to the impression created by the widely publicized Georgia case in which a black jogger was gunned down by two white men, there is no evidence that blacks are disproportionately the victims of inter-racial crime. To the contrary, African-Americans are less likely than whites to be victims.
The 2019 Crime in Virginia report breaks out the number of “victims” and “offenders” of violent crimes. It does not provide numbers for black-on-white or white-on-black crimes specifically, but the numbers are telling.
Last year 8,051 African-Americans were the victims of violent crimes; 8,769 were known offenders. In other words, while black criminals preyed primarily upon members of their own race, they afflicted other races as well. By contrast, there were 9,968 white victims and 6,655 offenders. In other words, while whites were most likely to be victimized by other whites, a large percentage were victims of attacks from other races. (Asians and “other” races account for an infinitesimal share of violent offenders — 150 — last year.) If any racial group has an empirically grounded justification for fearing violence at the hands of someone of another race, it is white people.
When opining on such topics, Northam has a responsibility to share the facts rather than magnify misleading impressions created by an ideologically driven national media. If he wants to promote racial healing and reconciliation, his remarks do not help.
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