The BLM has chosen Thug Culture

Leon H Wolf has a post over at RedState that places cold blanket over statements you read that our police are generally doing a professional job.  While I believe these statements to be true, I can not discount that the black community has evidence that the police have treated them unfairly not only in the past but in the present as well.  At the same time the so called "gentle giant" was not such a case, nor was Freddy Gray.  When you break the law, you take risks that can mean you may be killed.  But you can read Wolf's essay at The Uncomfortable Reason Why It Came to This in Dallas Yesterday.  Yet, there is also this: Because I was Black?  I have had experiences like Rusty Walkers that cause me to discount some of the stories people tell. The myth of "white privilege" also does not match up well with my own experience.  My own experience is that corruption, and just plain bad luck haunt everyone, indeed, that they are the common human condition.

While I can agree with Wolf on the reasons why it happened, I can not condone the actions taken.  Is it right that because Hillary got off for crimes she obviously committed, and others went to jail for less,  that now I can go about killing just any politician I can find?  No? Or what about the murder of Nicole Simpson by OJ.  A jury found him innocent even though he was manifestly guilty as sin.  Can I now go around killing blacks at will?  No?  By this reasoning of course I can.  But this reasoning is flawed.

As anyone who has read Radley Balko's body of work knows, police corruption, police over militarization, and police mismanagement affect both blacks and whites.  As anyone who watched FBI Director Comey knows, corruption occurs even among the untouchables.  As anyone who has followed the War on Guns knows, the ATF has bad guys among its ranks.  But what we also know is that these bad guys are not the majority of the police or of Federal agents.  Most police do indeed act professionally most of the time.  Most take a great deal of abuse from the public, and I applaud them for doing the job anyway.

At the same time, the police, at whatever level are expected to demonstrate an example that is a notch above what the average person demonstrates. This should be understood when they put on the badge, and they should be reminded periodically.  Police, like the ordinary citizen should be seen as obeying the traffic laws and other laws even more meticulously than the ordinary citizen.  What our police departments need is to be more ruthless about disciplining those who do wrong, and making such discipline more public.  It is perhaps harsh, but when the police do actually do something wrong, they should be very publicly punished.  When a police officer kills someone without justification, they should be made an example.  I also believe that more departments should be outfitting their officers with collar cameras.  While these will not resolve every case, they probably make both the officers and the public better behaved.

In choosing to highlight cases like Michael Brown and Freddy Gray, the Black Lives Matter movement has chosen thug culture as the authentic black culture.  But the average person, black or white, will never accept it.  The success of the the Civil Rights movement can be attributed to the fact that they chose the high ground, and advocated non-violence.  While the media and certain racial hustlers don't want to admit it, race relations have indeed improved since the 1950s.  Whites are not the enemy, and really never were.  Rather than start a race war, a war that BLM can not win, we all need to stand together against corruption in our police departments, and in our politicians.  All lives matter.