Some media talking heads and journalists, such as CNN's Van Jones, are seizing on the killing of George Floyd while in the custody of police officers in Minneapolis, and the slaying of Ahmaud Abery by a father and son in Atlanta, as proof that white racism is as virulent as ever in the U.S.
The claim is nonsense, but before I explain why, I'm afraid I need to say what should not need saying: Anyone, police officer or private citizen, whether white, black, Hispanic or Asian, who murders another person or commits any act of unlawful violence against another human being, whether the victim is white, black, Hispanic or Asian, should and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
It should also go without saying that justice demands that no one should be condemned without having received due process and proven guilty in a court of law, not in the court of public opinion.
I'm defending neither the officers in Minneapolis nor the men in Georgia who shot Mr. Abery. Excessive use of force by police has been, and continues to be, a serious problem whatever the race of the officers and their victims. The individuals in these and similar cases should be tried and, if found guilty, punished.
Having said all that, it's absurd to cite these interracial killings that go viral on national media as proof of an inherent racism among whites. If interracial violence is to be the litmus test for racism then the attempt to make racism an exclusively white "disease" fails to achieve the purpose. The FBI's statistics show that, in fact, many more whites are the victims of black violence than vice versa.
Consider the statistics for interracial homicide. According to the FBI's crime statistics for 2015, the most recent year for which I could find data, whites murdered 229 blacks and blacks murdered 500 whites. Moreover, according to the US Census Bureau, non-Hispanic whites comprise approximately 61% of the population while blacks make up about 13%.
That means that although there are roughly only a fifth as many blacks as there are whites, blacks murdered more than twice as many whites in 2015 as whites murdered blacks. If interracial violence is an accurate indicator of racism then in members of which race is racism most prevalent?
The point of this is not to make a "who's worse" argument, but rather to urge that we get over our obsession with racism. Let's stop looking for racism in everything and everybody and start giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume the best of every individual until that individual demonstrates unequivocally that they don't deserve that assumption. Let's assume that most Americans are good people who want to get along with their neighbor and want the best for everyone, whether white, black, Hispanic or Asian, until we're presented with solid, empirical reasons to abandon that assumption. Let's start judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
After all, the alternative, our national fixation on racism, is getting us nowhere.
