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Aug. 14, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:42
3048 The Fall of Ferguson. There Will Be No Recovery.

One year after the shooting death of Michael Brown by the hands of Police Officer Darren Wilson and the rise of the Black Lives Matter activist group, Ferguson has once again erupted in protests. With Ferguson, Missouri once again under a state of emergency, Stefan Molyneux looks at the underlying social, economic and governmental factors that have led to the escalating violence in Ferguson and the surrounding St. Louis area. | Source: http://www.fdrurl.com/fall-of-ferguson

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Hello everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
A year after the shooting death of Michael Brown, Ferguson has once more erupted into protests.
There's a feeling that the problems can't be solved.
There's a weariness of these kinds of issues.
There are racial elements and tensions throughout many...
Inner cities, of course, within America and an American population as a whole.
But there's also a larger historical tenancy that we're going to talk about in Ferguson, in St.
Louis, with reference to Detroit and Chicago and other troubled and perhaps dying American cities.
We've done presentations on this channel, on Detroit and Chicago.
You can find those in the links below as well.
As the sources to this really shocking information that we're about to share with you.
Big question, how did Ferguson, how did St.
Louis, how did Detroit and Chicago, how do so many American cities end up in this kind of mess, these kind of snowballing disasters?
Since the death of Michael Brown, what has been done to deal with some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted social toxicities that so often characterize inner cities in America?
Well, these are the facts about the fall of Ferguson.
We start with population.
For those who can't see please check out the video.
1880 to 2015.
Pretty slow start.
Post-war period.
Boom!
You get this enormous skyrocketing of population into Ferguson.
And then starting in the 1970s, you start to see a massive decline that has been continuing ever since.
A lot of this has to do with race riots, with white flight, which is the lack of willingness of white people to live in neighborhoods with encroaching cities.
Blacks in particular, though other minorities it can also occur with.
You see white flight, you see, of course, public housing, you see, of course, more integration within schools, and you see the exit of whites to the suburbs, leaving a challenge.
in terms of funding, which we'll get to in a moment.
Ferguson lost more than a quarter of his population between 1972 and 2015.
It shrank from 29,000 and changed to about 21,000 residents.
This was not exactly a bichromatic equal withdrawal.
This is part of the sort of Democrat-run Neutron bomb where the city is left standing.
The building is left standing, but there's these shadows of the taxpayers, the former taxpayers, on the wall in this slow economic seppuku that goes on when you have a left-leaning series of politicians in charge of a challenge to manage city.
How is Ferguson doing financially?
Well, catastrophic would be the phrase that pops to mind.
In 2014, city revenues were $18.6 million, but the budget was $28.4 million.
That's a lot more.
On December 16, 2014, credit rating agency Moody's assigned a negative outlook to the city of Ferguson's debt.
The city has $7.3 million of general obligation bond debt outstanding and $10.9 million of appropriation-backed certificates of participation outstanding.
So this is $863 and change per Ferguson resident, including babies and toddlers and small children and other people who need to crack open their piggy banks or check behind the couch in order to contribute their share of this giant debt hole.
Long before the Michael Brown shooting, Ferguson forecasted a near $10 million budget shortfall for 2014 and budgeted for another budget shortfall of $4 million for 2015.
It seems almost certain that these numbers are going to come in far worse after the riots and the burning down of local businesses and robbing of pharmacies that occurred during and after the Michael Brown shooting.
It gets its money from $6 million from sales tax 2014, $2.2 million in fines, you know, the you can't park here and dicky-dicky, death by a thousand paper cuts, nickel and diming of the poor that so often occurs in these situations, public safety, franchise taxes, property taxes, licenses and service fees and all that kind of stuff, all of which provides a sort of annoying swimming against the current slowdown for economic opportunity in the region.
Population of St.
Louis.
Again, the decline started a little bit earlier, but St.
Louis, it wins!
Yay!
It has lost 62.7% of its population since the 1950 United States Census.
That's the highest percentage of any city with a population of 100,000 or more at the time of the 1950 Census.
It's joined by Detroit, Michigan, and Youngstown, Ohio, the only other cities that have had population declines of at least 60% during the same time frame.
And you can see this kind of pattern occurring over and over and over again.
From 1950 to 2010, Detroit's population dropped from about 1.8 million to 714,000.
It's a 61.4% decline.
Over the same period, St.
Louis' population dropped from 857,000 to 319,000.
A 62.7% decline.
So Detroit 61.4%, St.
Louis 62.7%.
We'll get into the reasons why in a moment.
So these are cities of similar size to St.
Louis, and yay, they win!
St.
Louis, a debt servicing spending per capita, $328 per resident, just to service the debt.
Kansas City, $296, all the way down to Louisville, in $87.25.
So this is, you know, bribe voters in the present by selling bonds, which future voters, future taxpayers will have to pay for.
It's a typical thing.
Burn the future in order to bribe the present is typical with these kinds of issues and patterns.
Income to debt ratio.
Oh, finally, a low graph!
Oh dear, it's the worst one you can imagine.
Income to debt ratio.
So how much money is the city pulling in versus how much does it owe?
So for every dollar in debt, St.
Louis has $3.67 in income.
And that is pretty bad.
Louisville has $35.92 in income for every dollar it has in debt.
So it doesn't look like it's coming out of this hole anytime soon.
Long-term liabilities.
Now, these are in the millions.
And as you can see, we're starting at...
$1.8 billion in 2005.
2014, we are at $2.37 billion.
Long-term liabilities, unfunded liabilities, promises the city has made to pension retirees and healthcare funds and all that, which it doesn't have the money to cover.
Won't have the money to cover all of this.
This is $7,500 per capita.
For every single citizen in St.
Louis.
So, again, ridiculously unsustainable.
So, we mentioned the white flight earlier in 1970.
The Ferguson was 99% white.
You can see 1980 that goes down to 85%, 1990 73.8%, 2044.8%, 2010 29.3%.
I'm guessing it's gone down a little bit since then as well.
From 1990 to 2010, the white population decreased 44.5%, black population increased 42.3%.
There is this displacement that occurs, of course, between blacks and whites.
And so, of course, it shifted from 99% white in 1970 to almost 67% or a little over 67% black in 2010.
And the public housing came in, of course, in the 1970s, in particular the late 1970s, which brought blacks into white neighborhoods.
And...
According to the researchers, they happen to be black, the researchers we have in below, in urban areas in 1967, blacks were 17 times more likely than whites to be arrested for robbery.
And that is not a fun thing to live besides.
Now, of course, people will say, well, that's just because the blacks were being targeted by the racist white cops.
Well, this theory has been debunked many, many times.
What you do is you compare the crime victimization survey with the arrest records.
So you phone people up and say, have you been the victim of a crime?
What happened?
Which race was it?
And you compare it to the arrest records, and they find that it matches up fairly well.
There's not a lot of people who get robbed by a white guy, phone the cops, go through all the hassle of reporting the crime, and then say, oh, he was black.
And, of course, there's not a lot of people who get robbed by a white guy who then are shown a bunch of black people in a lineup and say, oh, yeah, it was that guy.
I mean, this is just not the way it works.
So, at least in the late 1960s, a lot of blacks moving in tended to bring a lot of crime, and that drove a lot of whites away.
In 1980, when the whites were moving out in higher numbers, blacks were about one-eighth of the population, but were half of those arrested for murder, rape, and robbery, according to FBI data.
And they were between one-fourth and one-third of all those arrested for crimes, such as burglary, auto theft, and aggravated assault.
And black crime and incarceration rates, of course, spiked in the 1970s and in the 1980s in cities such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington.
And they were under black mayors and under black police chiefs.
And some of the most violent cities in the U.S. at the moment are run by blacks.
So the argument that, you know, whites just move away because they saw Morgan Freeman buying a latte or because Ben Carson or Shelby Steele were cited in the vicinity or anything like that is simply not the case.
They don't flee blacks.
They flee crime.
Now, of course, as to the why, there's all of this crime.
That is perhaps a topic for another time.
But this, of course, is one of the roots of the problem.
St.
Louis demographics, a similar pattern.
1940, 87% white.
1970, 59%.
1990, 50.9%.
2043.9% and 2010 remained stable at 43.9%.
So again, you just see this white flight and this change in the demographics.
Labor force participation rate and unemployment rate.
And again, these are the facts broken down by race that inform some of the problems in Ferguson, in St.
Louis, and of course in Detroit and Chicago and Philadelphia and some of the other cities where there are big social problems.
Now, one thing that's always talked about when racism is talked about in America, it's generally always in the context of white racism against blacks.
One of the challenges with this narrative, of course, is that Asians do very well in white societies.
And of course, if whites are just racist against everyone, then they must be racist against all other races that are non-white, which does not explain this particular pattern.
And so, Asians have a labor force participation rate of 71%.
And an unemployment rate of 5%.
Whites are slightly less.
Participation at 68.10, slightly higher.
Unemployment rate at 8%.
Hispanics participate at 62%.
And are unemployed at 13%.
Blacks, almost half of the blacks are not in the labor force, and they have 53% and 20% unemployment among blacks.
So, of course, when the blacks move in and the whites move out, you end up with a lower tax base, generally get higher crime, and so on.
Again, for reasons that are outside the scope of this presentation, but these are the facts that are pretty impossible to And this can't just be explained by racism and slavery and so on, because blacks were doing much better in the 1920s and in the 1930s.
In particular, blacks were doing much better in the 1950s.
In the early part of the 1960s, the black family was much more solid, two-parent households, income was rising, poverty was declining, and I think it would be tough to argue that blacks faced a lot less racism in America in the 1950s or the 1920s, Of course, they were much closer to the end of slavery at those times.
Slavery and racism simply aren't enough of an answer.
The unemployment rate.
The white bar here is the United States as a whole.
Ferguson is a little bit lower at times.
St.
Louis is a little bit higher.
And, of course, the unemployment is only counted to those who are looking for work, right?
So single moms or whoever is on welfare who's not looking for work is not counted as unemployed.
So that's important as well.
And there have been some dramatic economic changes in Ferguson over the recent years.
The city's unemployment rate rose from less than 5% in 2000 to over 13% in 2010 to 2012.
For those residents who were employed, inflation-adjusted average earnings fell.
By one-third, the number of households using federal housing choice vouchers climbed from roughly 302,000 to more than 800 by the end of the decade.
Since the welfare state has done so much to erode the cohesion and solidity of the black family, as was predicted at the time by various reports, including one from Patrick Moynihan, When blacks move in, in general, in modern times, you get a proliferation of single motherhood.
And single motherhood is the biggest predictor for criminal outcomes within a family.
Single mothers are, in general, the kind of environmental toxin across all races towards children, particularly towards males.
And so that has become a big problem as well.
So, manufacturing versus government.
So, the top line is in Missouri.
You can see the yellow line is declining, and that is the number of manufacturing jobs, and the red line is increasing, which is the number of government jobs.
And in the same way, you can see, you know, back in 1990 in St.
Louis, there was more manufacturing than government jobs.
Now there are more government jobs than manufacturing.
The causes for all of this are very complex and multilayered, a lot to do with increased hostility and difficulty doing business in America and the availability of overseas markets, particularly the opening up of China and India, and onerous regulations and I'm a big fan of unions as a whole,
but some of the union powers that have been granted by government don't give much of an ability for employers to negotiate, and that drives jobs away, excessive regulation and so on, and taxation that's ridiculously complicated.
And so some of the backfill that's occurring has been to try and prop up the middle class with government jobs, but that does not work in the long run.
The Missouri minimum wage is $7.65 an hour.
So if you work 40 hours a week, minimum wage employee in Missouri would make $14,688 annually prior to subtracting any state and or federal taxes.
One study examined the potential value of the benefits that a hypothetical mother of two could receive from participation in seven common programs.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, Food Stamps, the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program.
Utilities Assistance through the LIHEAP Program, Public Housing, and Free Commodities.
In Missouri, this hypothetical family would be eligible for $3,504 in TANF benefits, $6,312 in Food Stamps, $935 from WIC.
$400 in Utilities Assistance, $300 in Free Commodities such as Bread, Milk, and Cheese, $3,504.
They would also receive Medicaid benefits equivalent to an insurance policy with a premium of $7,092.
Finally, those Missouri families who receive public housing, roughly 13% of all welfare recipients, but a somewhat higher percentage of families with children and long-term recipients, would receive an average annual benefit of $8,295.
Thus, the total potential benefits package could total as much as $26,000.
$837.
You know, close to twice what you would get working at minimum wage.
And we've got a presentation on this channel called The Truth About Welfare, which talks about the welfare cliff, how difficult it is to burrow your way out from these free goodies, the drip-drip narcotic of the free goodies that come from the government, how hard it is to claw your way out from this mountain of benefits.
For a minimum wage employee in Missouri to earn the equivalent of $26,837 prior to taxation, they would need to work, which is their welfare benefits, they would need to work 40 hours at $7.65 and an additional 20.4 hours of overtime at $11.48, a time and a half as per federal regulations.
For a total of 60.4 hours every single week for a year.
No vacations.
This doesn't account for state or federal taxes, which earned income is subjected to while welfare benefits are untaxed.
So, it's really not very likely that somebody is going to say, hey, in order to get my welfare benefits, I'd sure love to work 60 hours every single week for the entire year to get exactly what I get for free through the government.
And this is one of the reasons why these situations occur.
The death of the family, which is occurring at significant rates among whites, 40% illegitimacy, among blacks, 73% illegitimacy, the death of the family...
It means that the single moms have to marry the state in general, which means that they're always going to vote for more and bigger packages of welfare benefits and support and this, that, and the other.
And it creates a huge amount of financial problems and crime problems and social stability problems and so on.
So this compares minimum wage to welfare to median salary to average salaries and wages.
The temporary assistance for needy families, only 17% of those receiving that benefit actually have a job.
That makes the state dead last among all of America.
So, family income comparisons.
Ferguson, 45 and change.
Missouri as a whole, just under 60.
United States, 64, close to 65,000.
The average family income...
It's 55 and change in Ferguson, 75 and change in Missouri, and 85 and change in the United States.
For whites, average salary is $57,000 a year.
For blacks, $33,000 and change.
What's really shocking, of course, is not just the income, but the net worth.
So this is 2010 data.
The net worth for whites was $110,000 and change.
Almost $70,000 for Asians, $7,400 for Hispanics.
and less than $5,000 for blacks.
In other words, white Americans have 22 times more wealth than blacks, and that, of course, is catastrophic.
And it's not just about the color of your skin.
Blacks from foreign countries where English is not even spoken do better in American schools than black English-speaking American students.
And that is just important.
As a well-respected black commentator said, with regards to the breakdown of the black family, having a black man in the Oval Office is less important than having one in the home.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The poverty rate.
Ferguson and Missouri as a whole, as you can see.
All families, poverty rate 22% in Ferguson, half that in Missouri.
With children under 18, 35% in Ferguson, 18%.
In Missouri as a whole, married families lower in Ferguson than it is in Missouri.
And this is the greatest anti-poverty measure is for a woman to choose a man who's going to stay with her and then find a way to make him stay, make his life great enough that you don't want to leave.
And if you can't manage that, you're going to fall into a pit of poverty nine times out of ten.
Single mom households, of course, 48% poverty rate and so on.
So marriage is the best protector for women.
Women suffer the least violence in marriage.
It's the best protector of children.
It's the best protector of your income.
It is a fantastic robot shield of poverty, illness, premature death, immunity that you can imagine.
And it has just fallen into so much disrespect these days that you can see the results.
Between 2000 and 2010-2012, Ferguson's poor population doubled.
By the end of that period, one in four Ferguson residents lived below the federal poverty line, which is 23,000 and change for a family of four, and 44% fell below twice that level.
At the start of the 2000s, the five census tracts that fall within Ferguson's border registered poverty rates between 4% and 16%.
However, by 28, 2012, almost all of Ferguson's neighborhoods had poverty rates at or above the 20% threshold at which the negative effects of concentrated poverty begin to emerge.
So this is like watching a city slide into a sinkhole.
Crime.
So we're comparing Ferguson to St. Louis, Louis to the United States as a whole.
And these are crime rates for 1,000 robbery.
Ferguson is less than St.
Louis, but almost triple that of the United States.
Assault!
Yay, Ferguson!
It is only 20% that of St.
Louis, 2 to 10.
Burglary higher in Ferguson, lower in St.
Louis, far lower in the United States as a whole.
And theft is, and this is what the whites in general were fleeing from back in the 70s and 80s, theft is 38.3 per 1,000 in Ferguson, 42.3 in St.
Louis, and 19 in the United States as a whole.
Now, this is saying, well, they say it's obvious, you know, they're poor and therefore a crime.
And that is not a valid causation to make.
You could equally say, and with a significant statistical validity, you could equally say that it is crime that causes poverty.
Because people are afraid they have to spend a lot of money securing their houses and...
It puts men into prison, which creates single mother households, which then further causes economic problems and makes learning more difficult, particularly for young boys in school.
So this idea, well, they're poor, therefore they're criminals, that's just Marxist economic determinism.
And one of the things that would be a challenge to that perspective is one of the greatest increases in poverty that occurred in America occurred after the 1929 stock crash and throughout most of the 1930s in the Great Depression.
Massive increase in poverty, also significant decreases in crime.
So I'm afraid that doesn't really work, that poverty breeds crime.
There's a wide variety of things that contribute to crime.
Poverty may be one factor, but it is by no means a causal factor, and it is a circular factor in that Crime also breeds poverty.
Businesses don't want to go there, right?
You go and rip off the pharmacy, you know, seven times in a month, and the pharmacy is going to pull up and go elsewhere.
It's not the poverty that's causing the crime in that situation.
It's the crime that's causing the poverty.
Murder rate per 100,000.
Detroit.
You kind of win.
And you can just pause on this if you like.
I'll keep moving.
But the United States is very much lower.
Of course, at the bottom, the white line, very low.
And Los Angeles, I guess that doesn't include Michael Bay movies.
Murder rate per 100,000 has been declining significantly.
It's been staying fairly low in Missouri as a whole.
Even New York doing a lot better.
But, of course, these two...
At the top, Detroit and St.
Louis are just staggering.
And again, this is what drives not just whites, but people who have opportunities.
They move out!
And you get this hollowing out of those who can provide a better example to those around them in the neighborhood.
Everybody with an opportunity will try and get out.
We'll talk about the anti-cop sentiment that's been rising lately in America.
What it means is that cops who have significant opportunities elsewhere will try and get out of the police force, and what's left behind?
Who's left behind?
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rape rates per 100,000 United States.
It has been declining since 2002.
Yay, video games and porn to some degree.
There's some evidence that says that pornography reduces incidents of sexual assault.
And St.
Louis, of course, climbing massively before even the economic crash.
And this, of course, is a huge problem.
2013, it's going up to 100 per 100,000.
That is staggering and horrifying.
And therefore, of course, people want to get out.
Robbery rate per 100,000.
I get this is a little bit of spaghetti graph, but there has been a general decline, and the reasons for this are very complex and manifold, and we've been working on a presentation about this, so we won't get into much detail here.
But as you can see, St.
Louis and Chicago and Detroit and all that remain relatively high.
The United States as a whole is lower.
Property crime rates for 100,000.
St.
Louis, again, very high.
America's been declining.
St.
Louis, many times higher.
And that's, again, this is what people flee.
And who's left in these neighborhoods?
People with few opportunities and pretty bad habits, I would assume.
Not everyone, but a lot.
Now let's talk about discrimination.
The Justice Department released a report on Ferguson which led to President Obama claiming that the nation's racial history still casts its long shadow upon us.
Despite the claims from the Commander-in-Chief, the report doesn't even prove disparate treatment, let alone racial discrimination.
So this, you know, there's an old game which is six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
You know, can you get an actor to a Kevin Bacon movie in six moves or less?
There's six degrees of separation that you know everyone in the world separated by six people.
There's also six degrees of white racism.
How quickly can we pin all social problems on white racism against blacks?
And that is a huge thing that happens.
There was a report that came out, I think it was in the 90s, about a bridge.
And you see the police were disproportionately stopping...
Blacks for speeding.
Ah, it had to be racism, even though, who knows, whether you stop a car for speeding, who do you know?
You don't know what the race is when it's so far away.
So they put out a double-blind study where they gave people blanked-out cars in terms of the pictures and so on, and it turned out that the blacks were speeding twice as much as the whites, which is why they were being pulled over twice as much.
And this happens over and over again.
It's not the only thing, and I'm not saying there's no racism in the world, of course, but this idea that social problem, white racism!
Social problem, white racism!
It just...
It's kind of old.
It's getting a bit boring.
And incredibly disastrous for those people who it excuses rather than helps with challenge.
So this report that came out from the Justice Department noted that Ferguson's law enforcement practices overwhelmingly impact African Americans.
Well, yes.
You know, hockey rules in Canada overwhelmingly impact middle-class white Canadians.
Yeah, 70% of the population is black.
Of course it impacts African Americans.
Quote, data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014 shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson's population.
But you've got to normalize by single motherhood.
You've got to normalize by levels of education.
You can't just...
don't provide evidence of racism.
As African Americans, don't commit traffic offenses at the same rate as other population groups.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' own 2011 police public contact survey, blacks nationwide were pulled over for traffic stops 31% more likely than whites, leading to, you know, people complaining about driving while black, bad Lenny Kravitz songs.
But if Ferguson's black residents were stopped at the same rate nationally, adjusting for demographics, they'd account for 87.5% of traffic stops.
Thus, statistically, Ferguson police are 2.5% less likely to pull over black drivers than the nationwide average.
And, of course, this doesn't prove...
It doesn't exactly support the case that Ferguson is a racism-laden dystopia.
And this is a general pattern you'll see, that whenever there's a disparity between population and crime statistics, you know, 50% black and 70% theft, arrests, and so on.
Ah, racism!
But unless you break down racial characteristics...
Sorry, crime characteristics by race, these things are meaningless.
And so...
This, you know, for people who really want to help the black community, they're going to talk about things like, well, keep your families together.
That's really, really important.
I mean, that's the most important thing that can occur.
But the moment that, and of course, there's not a lot of white people.
I mean, not a lot of white people, not a lot of non-white people in my day, not a lot of white people in my day.
I'm going to share with you a secret about white people.
Okay.
We don't generally wake up in the morning and before we even brush our teeth we sit down, we pull out a pad and we plot how we can break up black marriages.
That's just not what white people are into.
I'm in Canada.
It's a lot of hockey.
So, that's just not, you know, and so the solution to the disintegration of the black family, you can blame it all on white racism if you want, but I don't think that there's a white person between you and your black spouse that is preventing you from getting married.
In fact, I think most white people would set up a ragged cheer for If the black family healed itself and did a lot better, I know I would, because that would do a huge amount to prevent these kinds of problems.
Also, blacks are significantly more likely to use corporal punishment on their children, which has been shown statistically to reduce intelligence.
And that, of course, is a huge problem as well.
So, you know, just by the by, you know, develop more of a reading culture, less of a rap culture.
Get and stay married to the mother of your children, the father of your children, and stop hitting your children and negotiate with them instead.
Bingo, bango, bongo.
You've done a huge amount.
I don't know.
Maybe it would close the whole gap.
I have no idea, but it certainly would help a lot.
But instead, apparently, whites are just plotting to break up black marriages, and that's all we live for, and therefore racism equals the entire answer to all problems within the black community, and there's no such thing as a mirror.
So...
It will undoubtedly be claimed that the 31% more likely statistic proves racism among police nationwide.
You know, 31% more likely that blacks will be pulled over.
But the same survey indicates that men are 42% more likely to be pulled over than women.
So, of course, using that logic, we'd have to claim that the police are sexist and discriminate against men.
Or maybe men just drive more dangerously on average.
We're doing a presentation on South Africa, but the road statistics and dangerous driving habits are truly staggering.
To further dispute claims of sexism and racism, males disproportionately die in car accidents compared to women, and blacks die in car accidents at a rate about twice what would be expected given their share of car ownership, thus indicating that blacks, for whatever reason, tend to drive more dangerously and therefore are going to get pulled over more.
So that is important.
In the bridge example I mentioned earlier, blacks constituted 25% of all speeders and were 23% of drivers stopped for speeding.
Controlling for age and gender, blacks sped at about twice the rate of whites.
The racial disparity was even greater for drivers exceeding 90 miles an hour.
I assume that they saw white privilege in the rear view and just had to hit the gas.
It's getting closer.
The Pillsbury Doughboy is reaching for me.
A 2006 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study found that black drivers who were killed in accidents have the highest rate of past convictions for speeding and for other moving violations.
This suggests that there are, in fact, a lot of unsafe black drivers, not just that it's white racism is to blame for everything.
The report also mentions that, quote, African Americans are at least 50% more likely to have their cases lead to an arrest warrant and accounted for 92% of cases in which an arrest warrant was issued by the Ferguson Municipal Court in 2013.
The report neglects to mention, this is the Justice Department report, the report neglects to mention whether people paid their fines or appear in court as required, which would significantly increase their likelihood of being issued a warrant.
Despite having access to this information, the Department of Justice neglected to account for these factors.
Apparently, facts can be racist as well.
The report from the Justice Department also noted, Most strikingly, the court issues municipal arrest warrants not on the basis of public safety needs, but rather as a routine response to missed court appearances and required fine payments.
Okay, if it's racism, then just don't pay your taxes.
Don't pay your property taxes.
See what happens.
They'll probably be quite racist towards you, even if you're a squid-based life form from Alpha Centauri.
Another claim of direct evidence of racial bias describes seven emails from Ferguson police officers sent between 2008 and 2011, which are described as, quote, offensive to blacks, women, Muslims, President Obama and his wife, and possibly people of mixed race.
This is certainly unacceptable behavior for people in public service or private service or breathing, but of the 53 Ferguson police officers, how many were involved with the transmission of such messages?
Why did the sending of such messages end in 2011?
Could it possibly be that the messages were limited to one or two officers who were then relieved of their duties?
If you want answers to these questions, the Department of Justice didn't provide them.
Specific differences are not evidence of discrimination.
You need to bring other factors to bear on the question.
The same day that the Department of Justice released a report accusing the Ferguson Police Department of racism based on some pretty flimsy associations, they released a report exonerating Officer Darren Wilson of wrongdoing in the death of Michael Brown, agreeing with the grand jury's decision.
Remember, there was all this hands up, don't shoot.
We did a video here, which we'll also link to below, very early on, which turned out to be pretty much bang on the money that Michael Brown apparently assaulted.
Darren Wilson attempted to take his gun and was charging him when Darren Wilson attempted to save his own life by shooting Michael Brown.
Not quite the gentle giant that was portrayed in the media.
After interviewing more than 100 purported eyewitnesses and reviewing physical, ballistic, forensic and crime scene evidence, medical reports, including an independent autopsy performed by the United States Department of Defense, Armed Forces Medical Examiner Service, Wilson's personnel records, audio and video recordings, and internet postings, DOJ investigators found no credible evidence to refute Wilson's stated subjective belief that he was acting in self-defense.
The March 4th report stated, Michael Brown's hands weren't up, he wasn't shot in the back, and he committed two felonies by robbing a convenience store and assaulting a police officer before Wilson shot him in self-defense as he was being charged by the giant young man.
Marco Brown wasn't a gentle giant.
He was a criminal.
Ferguson burned.
Businesses left.
The already failing city was further hobbled.
Anti-police sentiments lead to less enforcement.
More violent crimes and more innocent people harmed.
The violent crime is exploding in the aftermath of these anti-police protesters.
The result of pouring all of this hatred in every problem is white racism, and everything that happens is the result of white racist cops.
It fuels such hatred.
In a society that most people who are black aren't willing to leave.
How can you live in a society and be so consumed with hatred for everything about that society?
How can you expect to succeed in that society?
If I move to Japan and I go around screaming and rioting and setting fire to things and stealing and saying I hate everything Japanese, how well am I going to succeed in that society?
We are all here together.
I'm tired of white people being blamed for racism.
I am.
I'm frankly tired and sick and tired of it, and tired and sick and sick and tired of it.
It's so boring, it's so destructive, and it is so disempowering to blacks.
You know, I don't have contempt for any human being enough to strip them of their moral responsibility and to take their sins upon my own flimsy activities.
The idea that we can somehow fuel an entire culture with massive hatred towards the dominant groups in society and then expect anything but disaster to result from that is insane.
It is only going to get worse.
Is there white racism?
Absolutely there is.
Is there black racism?
Absolutely there is.
You just have to look at the comments on some of my videos on Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr.
and other people like that.
Yeah, there's black racism.
I get called cracker and honky and all other kinds of stuff, too.
Doesn't make me hate blacks.
There's bad people in every community.
But this idea that somehow white people just wake up every morning figuring out everything they can do to oppress other races and other cultures, just ridiculous.
We're busy.
We've got stuff to do.
So do you.
Let's get on with our lives.
Let's get along with each other.
And let's stop the blame game.
Let's remember...
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
Yeah, black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
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