George Floyd and the Riots

By Jeremy Hausotter

June 3, 2020

We all have heard the story how George Floyd died. A police officer kneeled on his neck for about nine minutes which resulted in his death. What we know was that he was arrested for passing a fake bill and was intoxicated at the scene. From the preliminary reports the act appeared to be another case of police brutality.

Thousands have come out and condemned the actions of the involved police officers. Society at large has already convicted the involved officers but are they guilty? We as Americans have forgotten that our law tradition states that a man is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. The public has skipped the trial and condemned the man. This is not sustainable for a society for it inevitably leads to anarchy which we have already seen with the riots.

Why did the officer kneel on George Floyd? We must remember that to be a police officer requires specialized training and that particular hold is seen as a sort of last resort to subdue those resisting arrest. Was George Floyd resisting arrest? We do not know. We do not know the circumstances beyond the video. A video however was just released that showed just before George Floyd was pinned down that he was fighting the arresting officer in the police car.[1]

George Floyd many attested to have plead that he could not breathe so why was he still pinned down in this manner? Quite frankly, suspects will say anything to avoid arrest. Police officers have all sorts of things said to them by suspects trying to flee arrest. Even my two year old knows this when she cries out that she pooped her diaper to try and escape naptime. Keep in mind now that the police in this case did call in an ambulance. Interestingly the autopsy showed no signs of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.[2]

Overall the situation is a tragedy. We should grieve over the death of George Floyd and the many others who have not made national news. But we should also remember that it is not for us to cast judgment on the arresting officers, but for the court of law. There are many details missing as to motives why that need to be investigated. Innocent until proven guilty. That is how American law operates.

Was George Floyd the victim of racism? The question has a double meaning. Many have interpreted the death as a case of racially motivated police brutality. That is a judgment for the law and investigators to make, not society at large. Many people in their emotions automatically condemned the officer as a racist which is something we do not know. It is an assumption based on the metanarrative that racism is an institutionalized problem in America and that the police in particular are representatives and enforcers of racism. Is this narrative correct however? For those interested check out the work of Heather Mac Donald who believes that this metanarrative is a myth propagated by the radicalized left.[3]

In her essay There is No Epidemic of Racist Police Shootings Mac Donald outlines several fundamental facts concerning police shootings which one needs to familiarize themselves with. She cites a study that showed that of all fatal shootings by police officers in 2015, 55% of victims were white, 27% black.[4] 90% of these cases the victim had a weapon and 90-95% of victims were attacking someone at the time. What is particularly interesting is that another study cited by Heather Mac Donald found that black police officers were 67% more likely to mistakenly shoot an unarmed black suspect and Hispanic 145% more likely than a white officer. Why is that she offers an analysis of police recruitment strategies and their deficiencies as one source of explanation. The ultimate problem Mac Donald claims however is the black crime rate.

Blacks make up about 13% of the US population, whites about 72%. Yet in the year 2016 the percentage of crimes committed by blacks is disproportionately high and if one analyzed several years this pattern is consistent. For murder and nonnegligent manslaughter whites committed 44.7% while blacks 52.6%; rape whites committed 67.6%, blacks 29.1%; robbery, whites 43.4%, blacks 54.5%; carrying and possessing weapons whites 55.9%, blacks 41.8%; prostitution, whites 55.5%, blacks 37.9%.[5] Certainly an important factor is poverty, between 2005 and 2018 the percentage of impoverished black families was 17%-24%.[6] But this does not give us a whole picture. It only describes some of the symptoms. We must look deeper.

The protests around George Floyd’s death instigated riots, arson, looting, and even shootings and the occupation of a police station. Some of these were out of town anarchists, some local opportunists, and others were simply thugs. Depending on who you ask it is the radical left such as Antifa or radical right. What is the crisis here? It is not racism as purported in the media. It is deeper. It is a crisis of humanity that traces itself back to the 1960s.

The 1960s saw the civil rights movement which ended institutionalized racism in America. There is no segregation, no separation of blacks from whites today in the public square. Are some individuals and places still suffering race problems? Definitely. Blacks make up 46.9% of the victims of race motivated hate crimes in 2018 after all.[7]

The problem is twofold. On the one hand there is the problem of perpetrators of hate crimes. The second is the eugenics program inspired by Margret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and perpetuated by the zeitgeist of the 1960’s sexual revolution continued to this day.[8] The sexual revolution was a declaration of war on the family unit and sexual morality, and conjoined with Sanger’s racist views against blacks the US black population have been the victims of decades of racism in the form of being the victims of social engineers who promoted sexual promiscuity and abortion in black areas.

Blacks today face depressing statistics in terms of being victims of hate crimes and perpetrators of several dangerous crimes. Across the board the percentage of violent crimes committed by blacks is disproportionately high. What is more tragic however are those facts concerning family and sexual practices. According to Black Demographics 50% of blacks 15 years and older in 2017 have never married.[9] In the last thirty years the percent of unmarried black men and women has increased 15%-20%.[10] Interestingly another study showed that blacks have lower divorce rates, about 33% in comparison to 40% for nonblack and non-Hispanic.[11]

In another study amongst adolescent girls 40% of black girls have had an STI, pregnant 49%, and 59% had 3 or more vaginal sex partners.[12] Another study using data between 2002 and 2013 with individuals between 18 and 35 years old showed that about half of the single black male respondents had sex with 2 or more partners in the last 12 months.[13] The values are similar for Hispanic and white men. Women had a slightly lower percentage. Blacks are also having sex younger than other ethnicities. A study by the Guttmacher Institute showed that the median age for first sex of blacks was 15.0, whites and Hispanics at 16.5, and Asians at 18.1.[14]

Blacks face greater challenges in terms of STDs. A study between 2008 and 2014 showed that there were over 100,000 new cases of blacks with HIV in comparison to about 70,000 for whites and 60,000 for Hispanics, and of these, about 80,000 was due to homosexual acts.[15] According to the CDC blacks make up about 40% of those diagnosed with herpes,[16] 40.4% of congenital syphilis cases,[17] and 34.7% of primary and secondary syphilis and 4.7 higher rate than whites.[18] For gonorrhea the rate of reported cases for black girls between 15-19 was 8.8 times higher than white girls in the same age bracket, black males 20-24 was 9.4 times higher than whites, and overall was 7.7 times the rate among whites.[19] Chlamydia overall for black females was 5 times greater rate than whites and 6.8 amongst black males versus whites.[20] Blacks also have higher infections of HPV and Trichomonas vaginalis in comparison to other ethnicities.[21]

According to the Guttmacher Institute about 49% of women who had an abortion live below the federal poverty level.[22] In 2014 about 10 in every 1,000 white women have an abortion, whereas about 27.1 black women do.[23] If we pick a random year such as 2000, blacks had 611,000 live births and 431,000 abortions.[24] This is a very high ratio of abortions, in fact about 41% of black children being aborted this one year alone. This same year blacks made up about 33% of the total number of abortions. If one dug deeper, this phenomenon is consistent across decades from the late 1970s to 2010, and it is only within the last 10 years that this trend has been decreasing. Literally one third to two fifths of entire black generations have been executed from the 1970s till today by abortion.

There have been studies conducted that have shown that the traditional family unit best guarantees economic and educational success of children. Studies have in turn shown that these factors of economic and education help lower crime rates.

We have described the symptoms and some of the major problems. The major problem is the assault on the family perpetuated by abortion and liberalized sex. To fix this requires a seismic culture change within the black community and the United States at large since this is a problem that ultimately affects everyone and no population group is unscathed from these forces.

Government sponsorship of the family alone however is insufficient. What is needed is a metanoia, a conversion of the heart. What is needed is a new evangelization of American culture, white, black, Hispanic, and so on. Through conversion of the soul the conversion of society and culture at large follows. When the souls of so many are damaged, so is the culture. Today we face the pulverization of the dignity of the human person through a variety of forces including liberalized sexuality, weaponized racism, abortion, political factions, and socialism. To rebuild our society we need to regain a correct understanding of who man is and of his eternal destiny as Imago Dei. We must relearn the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity in order to have a rightly ordered society towards the common good.

Why did the riots happen? Why did that police officer murder George Floyd (if he did)? For the same reason, being hurt and damaged by sin and needing love, mercy, forgiveness, Jesus Christ. It is ultimately the challenge we Christians face every day, to be a witness and preach Christ. Pray for the soul of George Floyd. Pray for the police officers involved. Pray for the conversion of all men and women.

Endnotes

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/video-appears-show-moments-george-floyd-pinned-ground/story?id=70986857

[2] Ibid.

[3] See her book The War on Cops, and also https://www.manhattan-institute.org/white-cops-dont-commit-more-shootings?fbclid=IwAR2itBSToRwFWbLNhDXtde5XtjiuFpTd5yvzVoC-z66j_adoY_Kif4tJqqs

[5] FBI, https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/incidents.html.

[6] https://www.statista.com/statistics/205059/percentage-of-poor-black-families--in-the-us/

[7] https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses

[8] See the docket prepared by the Life Legal Defense Foundation in Comcast v. National Association of African American Owned Media, https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1171/116542/20190920143641893_18-1171%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20ISSUES4LIFE%20Foundation.pdf

[9] Keep in mind that the legal age for marriage in some states is 14 and 15.

[10] https://blackdemographics.com/households/marriage-in-black-america/

[11] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm

[12] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2679030/