In an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press earlier today, Mayor Rudy Guiliani (R-NY) fielded questions about the disproportionate numbers of white police officers in communities of color as part of the continuing conversation in the wake of the Ferguson protests of the killing of unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, by white police officer Darren Wilson. When asked to weigh in, Guiliani countered by saying:
?I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93% of blacks in America are killed by other blacks.? (msnbc)
?Watch a clip of the exchange below:
Despite fellow panelist Dr. Michael Eric Dyson’s attempts to point out the irrelevance of this as an argument when discussing police brutality, Guiliani continued his rant. ?White police officers won’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70% of the time.? (msnbc)
While this has been a popular talking point from the GOP regarding the Ferguson trial and the recent focus on police brutality against people of color, it is misguided and irrelevant within this discussion. As Dyson pointed out, citizens who perpetrate violence are not sworn to protect the public. Further, Dyson noted that the citizens to whom Guiliani refers go to jail?for their crimes, while white police officers are rarely even investigated when using deadly force against a suspect of color.
In fact, recent research by Propublica shows that men of color are 21 times more likely to be killed by a police officer, and 41 of them between 1980 and 2012 were 14 or younger. 90% of officers who use deadly force against a suspect of color are white. Police reports show that often in the use of deadly force by police, the reports filed list??the circumstances…(as) ?undetermined,? (and)?77?percent of those killed in such instances were black.?
Guiliani, along with other misguided people opining on the Ferguson case and other recent stories, ignores multiple other complex issues of race in his statements. He ignores the increased police and public scrutiny focused on communities of color despite statistics that show that ?all races share similar ratios? of violence against one another.?He ignores the systems of oppression in our country that privilege white men and paint black males as inherently dangerous. He further ignores issues of poverty, where communities of color are disproportionately overrepresented. Most importantly, he ignores the falling number of crime rates in communities of color, which underscore the fallacy of the myth of black-on-black violence (the root.com).
Arguments such as Guiliani’s are misguided and misinformed, and we can look forward to more and more of them as GOP leaders speak on issues of race ahead of the 2016 elections. Are you paying attention, New York City?
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