You know what? I’m 48 years old and this morning I was switching channels and started watching a television show on MSNBC that told about how black men are killed at such an alarming rate by white men, especially in the south.
So I started thinking about that since I was born and have always lived in the south. I asked myself how many times I can remember a white person killing a black in my home county in a racist crime. The answer…..NONE.
So I started just thinking about interracial crime in our county in general and thought I’d take President Barack Obama’s advice and have an open and honest discussion about race. I agree that being open and telling the truth and letting the cards fall where they may is a good thing.
Now, I’ve never been a homicide detective but I did work for many years in law enforcement in the state most typical liberals and yankees in the United States believe to be the most racist state in the union, Mississippi.
Here’s what my experience has been in the county where I live and worked. Now, what happened prior to 1966 when I was born I cannot speak about. Admittedly, I am fully aware that there were racial based white attacker on black victim killings during and prior to that era. But that was a hell of a long time ago and that time is over and most of those people involved are dead now.
But during my childhood I do not remember any racist killings or lynchings happening. I do remember as a child that a black teenager went into a local rural grocery store and shot and killed the elderly white store owner killing him. I never remember a white kid going into a store and shooting a black store owner.
I remember as I got older I read accounts in our local newspaper and was personally told by bereaved relatives of killings such as when a black female befriended an elderly white neighbor of mine I went to church with and once she gained his confidence she entered his house and strangled him to death with an extension cord. I never remember a white woman going into an elderly black man’s house and strangling him with an extension cord.
I remember right after I went work at the fire department a young white female was alone in a washeteria in Pike Center Mart washing clothes and she was attacked by a black male, beaten severely and raped. I don’t ever remember a white male going in a washeteria and severely beating and raping a black girl.
Then after my time began in law enforcement I remember a black teenager shooting and killing a white sheriff’s detective and also the former sheriff with a shotgun after being cornered in a shed after breaking into a house. I surely don’t remember a white teenager shooting and killing one of our detectives nor one of our sheriffs.
One February day in the late 1990’s 911-dispatch received a call reporting a nude white female under a bridge. I was first to arrive and the girl described to me how a group of black males had abducted her taken her to the secluded spot under the bridge and gang-raped her for hours before discussing killing her but instead took all her clothes and threw her into the freezing cold river. I don’t ever remember a group of white males abducting a black female and gang raping her and throwing her into an icy cold river to possibly freeze to death.
I remember when a black youth had gone into a convenience store to rob it and a totally innocent white gentleman customer walked in and went to the drink cooler unaware that a robbery was in progress and the white non-involved customer was shot in the head and killed in a cold blooded murder. I don’t remember a white teenager going into a convenience store to rob it and killing an innocent black man who just happened to walk into the store.
I remember a white woman by all accounts who was one of the nicest and most loving women our county and her family were ever blessed to have. She was working alone at night in a check cashing business when three black males decided to rob the store and kill her by beating her to death in the head with a piece of angle iron. I certainly don’t remember a group of three white males conspiring to rob a check cashing business and once inside the building beating the black woman running the business to death using a piece of angle iron.
While I was constable I recall being held at gunpoint one night by a black woman with a shotgun pointed at my nose while she told me she was going to kill me. I remained held at gunpoint until another officer talked her into calming down and surrendering the shotgun. I suppose the woman who held me at gunpoint and told me she was going to kill me and leave my four-year old son fatherless could have been Asian or White, but she wasn’t.
Also in my duty as a lawman I did justifiably fire my weapon at a young black male who had stolen a car and who was armed with a 9mm pistol. After I had disarmed his partner this one took off running with me chasing him and he was in the process of reaching back, pointing his gun to shoot me when I got off a quicker shot than he while running. I missed my mark thank goodness. Because the dynamics of the situation would have placed my bullet in his back because he was running away from me but reaching back with one hand pointing his gun at me. At my shot he threw down his gun deciding that he didn’t want to be in a gunfight after all. But I know what a legal battle I would have faced trying to explain why and how I (a white officer in Mississippi) shot a black male in the back. Again, I suppose the perpetrator here who stole the car and tried to shoot me could have been Asian or White. But statistics tell us that would not be the norm. Yet black community organizers and Reverends cannot understand why police officers are more careful or “on edge” when dealing with black males.
Yet, I can recall only one incident of a white police officer (a deputy sheriff) in our county actually shooting and killing a black man and it wouldn’t have mattered that day nor would the end result have been any different if the criminal had been an Eskimo. When the career criminal finally met his fate that day he was a heavily armed prison escapee, a convicted cop killer and he had just robbed a bank and taken a woman hostage. Had this bad guy with a gun not been confronted with a hero good guy with a gun he would certainly have continued his crime spree across the country and killed anyone he felt he had to in order to preserve his freedom and illegally fund his life on the run.
So actually it is proven by statistics and by real life events that the false narrative of white lawmen or even white civilians (especially in the vilified south) committing relentless crimes against black victims or shooting and killing them on a regular basis while their hands are raised in surrender is just that…FALSE.
If I sat here and really put my mind to it I have no doubt that I could recall even more incidents of black offenders killing, assaulting or raping white victims in the area where I was born and raised and currently reside.
However I have racked my brain and I cannot recall a single case of a white man raping a black woman, attacking a black person for simply no reason or murdering a black person in my county of residence in south Mississippi in the post-civil rights era for as long as my 48 year old mind can remember.
And yet all we hear nowadays on the news is how white people are the enemy of the black man and how white people just kill blacks with impunity.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it and I don’t see it because it’s not there. In fact I see the exact opposite.
FBI crime statistics state that blacks consist of 14% of the population in the United States, but they are responsible for 55% of the murders. (of both black and white victims)
I saw quite a few black men who had been killed during my law career but each and every one of them was killed by another black person. I also saw quite a few white people that were killed by other white people also. But the black on black murder rate was disproportionate as was the black on white crime rate.
The words and sentiments I am writing here is just a small part of the honest conversation the President and the Attorney General said we needed to have about race. However a truly honest conversation on any subject needs to include viewpoints and facts from both sides and not just be a one-sided conversation where the black side has a bully-pulpit to only tell the white side what they feel is so wrong with America and white people in general.
I don’t know how the current riots and protests will end and I don’t know what the protesters will be satisfied with.
But I am basing my column here on my personal experience and my own observations.
The assertion that white people are killing blacks at an alarming rate is refuted by the FBI crime statistics.
In fact it is an outright lie.
But the worst thing is, those rioting and protesting do not care about facts.
After the recent cold blooded killings of NYPD police officers in some sort of mis-guided revenge it is apparent that our country is as polarized in regard to race as we’ve ever been. For that great divide we can thank Barack Hussein Obama.
The Justice Department has a division that all they do is send protester specialists to organize rioters in the event of a police self-defense shooting. They do not go to encourage peace. They go to encourage civil disobedience and foster anti-police sentiment and to convince young angry blacks that white privilege is why they aren’t all driving new cars, living in luxury condominiums, have credit cards with unlimited credit that they don’t have to pay and why they actually have to work to get ahead in this world.
It is time for people to be armed with the facts and not be afraid to speak the truth because they don’t want to be called racist. I don’t want to be called racist either but all it takes nowadays to be called that word is to speak the truth. So I guess I’m about to be branded “that word” because I am tired of biting my tongue and from here on out I’m going to tell it like it is.
So bring it on. The above article is truth and no matter how much somebody doesn’t like it, it’s still the truth.
