God clearly condemns injustice. He is also clear in His condemnation of falsehood and lies. The most succinct statement of this is found in the Decalogue. The Ninth Commandment simply states, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16). However, this commandment carries more weight than one can imagine. Falsehood and lies are reprehensible because they not only harm those to and/or about whom they are told, but they also blaspheme the very character and nature of the God Who is truth (John 14:6), whose very Word is truth (Psalm 119:43, 160; John 17:17), and whose very essence is that of “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). Moreover, God is clear about His attitude toward falsehood and its implications:
There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. (Proverbs 6:16–19)
There are falsehoods in the current cultural moment that tick every one of these boxes. As such, these falsehoods must be confronted.
On September 1, 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to kneel during the National Anthem before his team’s last preseason game to protest police violence against black people.
Numerous articles lionized Kaepernick as a modern civil-rights hero, claiming that he was a “figurehead for a movement of NFL players” protesting “police killings of unarmed black Americans.”1 There had been several such stories in the news at the time. I always thought Kaepernick was protesting the killings of Trayvon Martin, 17, of Miami Gardens, Florida, in 2012; Michael Brown, 18, of Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014; and Tamir Rice, 12, of Cleveland, Ohio, also in 2014. Mind you, even if that were the case, I did not see his protest as valid for reasons I will detail in this book.
However, I was shocked and more than a little disappointed when I learned that the real flashpoint for Kaepernick was a case that had even less merit than these: In an interview with NBC News, Kaepernick explained he was protesting a deadly December 2015 confrontation between San Francisco police officers and a twenty-six-year-old man named Mario Woods.2 The fact that Kaepernick and others saw the Woods case as a legitimate cause for protest is quite telling.
Three aspects of the Mario Woods case belie the claims of Kaepernick’s crusade and reveal the true fault lines that lie beneath.
We hear over and over that taking a knee during the National Anthem is an act of protest against police brutality as evidenced by the rampant hunting and killing of “innocent, unarmed, black men.” However—like several of the other black men shot or killed by police in 2020, whom we will discuss later—Woods was neither innocent nor unarmed. In fact, when confronted by the San Francisco police, Woods reached into his pocket and produced a knife nearly eight inches long.3
Second, Woods was a threat to both the police and the public. The police were responding to a reported stabbing. The victim had been taken to a nearby hospital, where he gave a description of his assailant; police were dispatched to the scene, where they found and confronted Woods. At that point, Woods drew his knife and refused all five responding officers’ attempts to stop him from using it. According to a report released after a year-long internal investigation, “These included verbal commands, O.C. spray, Less Lethal Force options including: 40mm ERIW and the 12 gauge ERIW bean bag rounds.” None of these options achieved the desired effect; Woods continued to brandish his knife and did not surrender.
One bystander who captured the events on his phone can be heard saying, “Drop that knife,” and again, “Drop that knife, homeboy!” Someone asks, “Did they shoot him?” Another bystander responds, “They’re using rubber bullets.” Woods was hit multiple times by these “less-than-lethal” rounds, once taking him to the ground. However, he got up and continued to threaten police and civilians. In the end, “Woods continued directly towards” the five officers facing him until he was “less than ten feet” away. Only then did they open fire.
This incident was tragic, to be sure. However, to cite it as an example of police brutality that warrants national protest stretches credulity. Especially when that protest is characterized as a movement to raise awareness of the killing of “unarmed black men.” More importantly, cries for “Justice for Mario Woods” and the ensuing Kaepernick protest reveal a kind of cognitive dissonance that underlies much of the Critical Social Justice movement. Understanding the ideology that lies at the root of this cognitive dissonance is key to recognizing the fault line it represents.
Beyond confronting falsehoods in general, our pursuit of justice must also be characterized by a pursuit of truth. Much has been said recently about seeking justice, and I could not agree more. However, we must be certain that we pursue justice on God’s terms. For instance, we must bear in mind that “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established” (Deuteronomy 19:15, cf. Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1; 1 Timothy 5:19; Hebrews 10:28). This is critical in our quest to adhere to the Lord’s admonition that “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:15). How much of our current debate about justice is rooted in these principles?
My goal when I hear about “injustices” is to bear in mind that I am biased. I am a single witness with limited information, and I carry a ton of baggage. So when I am evaluating people’s testimonies and pleas, and when people are shouting, “Justice for George, Ahmaud, Breonna, Trayvon!” or anyone else, I always want to bear in mind the words of John 7:51: “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” I also want to remember that “the one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17), which is why “if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13).
Today, people are rioting and demanding justice before knowing the facts, and in most cases, without ever considering the aforementioned principles. And here is the key: People are ignoring these principles because the standard of justice upon which their pleas are built does not come from the God of the Scriptures. While that may be fine for others, those of us who claim to know Christ are held to a different standard.
In a now-famous tweet, NBA star LeBron James wrote, “We’re literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes!” (emphasis his).4
A New York Times headline proclaimed last June: “ ‘Pandemic within a Pandemic’: Coronavirus and Police Brutality Roil Black Community.” The story quoted a protest organizer who said, “I’m just as likely to die from a cop as I am from COVID.”5 Not to be outdone, the Washington Post headlined a story: “Police Killing Black People Is a Pandemic, Too,” with a subhead stating, “State violence is a public health crisis.”6 Vox echoed that claim, citing National Academy of Sciences research that suggests “one in every 1,000 black men and boys can expect to be killed by police in this country.”7 Al Jazeera even joined the chorus with an entire website called Know Their Names, which features black men and women killed by the police (apparently regardless of the circumstances).8 No wonder the chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York told Fox News, “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it!”9
All of this stems from and perpetuates the perception that police are killing unarmed black men. And if you think I am being misogynistic by excluding women from the phrase, just do a quick web search. It’s not just me.
“A search of the archive reveals that NPR has used the phrase [unarmed black man] 82 times in the past year. Five of those were headlines,” writes Kelly McBride in an insightful piece for the Poynter Institute.10 She notes that of those eighty-two uses, twenty-six came “in newscasts read at the top of the hour.” Sixty-five of them occurred in the 187 days after Ahmaud Arbery, a twenty-five-year-old Georgia man, was killed in February 2020, and McBride’s article was published on August 31, 2020. But over that same time period, the phrase “ ‘unarmed white man’ does not appear anywhere in NPR’s coverage.”11
In case you are wondering about the absence of the phrase “unarmed white man,” it was not due to lack of opportunity. Eleven of those were killed by police over that 187-day span.
Stephen O’Brien was killed by police in Floresville, Texas, the day after Arbery on February 24; Christopher Palmer was killed in Manila, Arkansas, on March 4; Kenneth Mullins was killed in Edison, California, on March 6; Brian Marksberry and Aaron Tolen were killed in Humble, Texas, and Wasilla, Alaska, on March 8; John Hendrick was killed in Linwood, North Carolina, on March 26; Zachary Gifford was killed in Brandon, Colorado, on April 9; Giuseppe Particianone was killed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 10; Nicholas Bils was killed in San Diego, California, on May 1; Tyler Hays was killed in Sale Creek, Tennessee, on May 19; and Jeffrey Stott Haarsma was killed in St. Petersburg, Florida, on August 7.
But you didn’t hear any of their names, did you?
By the way, please don’t miss the fact that while police killed these unarmed white men, they did not kill Arbery. Arbery’s murder would fall under another category that people would rather forget: intraracial violence. I’ll say more about that later.
On the morning of October 5, 2016, a female officer in Chicago was nearly beaten to death because she was afraid to use her weapon. “She thought she was going to die,” her superintendent told reporters the next day. “She knew that she should shoot this guy, but she chose not to, because she didn’t want her family or the department to have to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news.”12
This is just one example of how false narratives cost our society. There is one statistic underlying most of those narratives.
“The police are two and a half times more likely to shoot and kill a black man than a white man.” If you are like me, you have heard this number cited in sermons, read it in articles and blogs, and seen it in headlines everywhere you looked. And at first blush, it seems to make sense. More white people are killed by police (armed or unarmed), but black people make up only 13 percent of the population, so the ratio matters. Right?
Maybe.
I am not a mathematician. However, I did take and pass statistics in college. (It almost killed me, but I got through.) And one thing I took away from that experience is the maxim “correlation is not causation.” I have been reminded of this almost daily in recent years as I have been bombarded with statistics, but particularly with the oft-repeated 2.5-to-1. The implication is that this stat “proves” systemic racism. Whenever you hear this mantra, I hope you remember Proverbs 18:17: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” And this “one who states his case” must be examined in light of 1) the nature of the claim itself, 2) the individual cases that are frequently cited as evidence of the claim’s veracity, and 3) the inconvenient truth about interracial violence in America. When we examine the 2.5-to-1 stat in these ways, we discover it does not hold up.
The best research on the topic of fatal officer-involved shootings (FOIS) has been clear, as were the findings of Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. in a forthcoming study. “On the most extreme use of force, FOIS,” he writes, “we find no racial difference in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.”13 Fryer was actually surprised by his findings.
Meanwhile, a National Academy of Sciences study ignited controversy when its authors proclaimed, “We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.”14 More fundamentally, the researchers noted that “using population as a benchmark makes the strong assumption that White and Black civilians have equal exposure to situations that result in FOIS,” which is the only way the 2.5-to-1 ratio could be viewed as prima facie evidence of police bias. Instead, they noted that contrary to the accepted narrative, “If there are racial differences in exposure to these situations, calculations of racial disparity based on population benchmarks will be misleading.”15 In other words, the 2.5-to-1 ratio, taken at face value, is actually misleading.
So what is the answer? If we shouldn’t rely on a univariate analysis of FOIS, what should we do? The National Academy of Sciences points out that criminologists have known the answer to this question for some time: “Researchers have attempted to avoid this issue by using race-specific violent crime as a benchmark, as the majority of FOIS involve armed civilians.” Perhaps most astonishing is the discovery that “[w]hen violent crime is used as a benchmark, anti-Black disparities in FOIS disappear or even reverse.”16 In other words, it is white people who are actually shot at disproportionately high rates when the number of interactions with police is tallied up.
The idea of racial motivation being a factor in these shootings is further contradicted by Fryer’s finding that
[f]or white officers, the probability that a white suspect who is involved in officer-involved shooting has a weapon is 84.2 percent. The equivalent probability for blacks is 80.9 percent. A difference of 4 percent, which is not statistically significant. For black officers, the probability that a white suspect who is involved in an officer-involved shooting has a weapon is surprisingly lower, 57.1 percent. The equivalent probability for black suspects is 73.0 percent. The only statistically significant differences by race demonstrate that black officers are more likely to shoot unarmed whites, relative to white officers.17
It must be noted that these findings and others have been attacked as biased, inaccurate, and downright racist. However, they remain the best work on the topic.
But there is a more fundamental problem with the 2.5-to-1 ratio. If we apply the same logic across the board, we find systemic injustice in police shootings based on sex, age, geographic region, population, and a host of other factors. Consider two obvious and clear examples: sex and age.
According to a database maintained by the Washington Post, 96 percent of the 5,542 people killed by police since 2015 were men. If we use the same logic employed by those who claim the black/white shooting stats prove racial bias, wouldn’t we have to conclude that the overwhelming disparity in the male/female stats proves misandry? Of course no one is making this claim. Why? Because in this case we readily admit that a univariate analysis is inadequate to explain the disparity. We also know that the majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by males,18 which is the top predictor of violent interactions with police.
Another example that proves this point is the disparity in the age of people killed by police. The age breakdown of the U.S. population is as follows:
Under 18 = 74.2 million, or 24 percent
18–44 = 112.8 million, or 36.5 percent
Over 44 = 121 million, or 39.4 percent
However, the statistics on Americans killed by police don’t match up. Of the 5,542 people killed by police since 2015, 101 (2 percent) were under the age of 18; 2,736 (49 percent) were between the ages of 18 and 44; and 1,454 (26 percent) were over age 44. Note that both the young and the old are underrepresented relative to their population stats, and those in the middle are overrepresented. Is this prima facie evidence of age discrimination? Or is it a function of something else? “The relationship between aging and criminal activity has been noted since the beginnings of criminology,” note Jeffery T. Ulmer and Darrell Steffensmeier in their paper “The Age and Crime Relationship.”19 “Age is a consistent predictor of crime, both in the aggregate and for individuals.” And guess which of the three age groups is overrepresented in committing violent crime? Eighteen- to forty-four-year-olds.
The relationship of these variables is even more pronounced when looking at those killed while unarmed. Of the 355 unarmed people killed by police since 2015, the age breakdown was:
Under 18 = 14 (4 percent)
18–44 = 292 (82 percent)
Over 44 = 44 (12 percent)
In other words, in terms of representation by age, 36.5 percent of the population accounts for 82 percent of those killed by police while unarmed.
Another fact that should give pause to those who rely on the 2.5-to-1 trope is related to the killing of police by civilians. A 2015 Washington Post analysis found that “511 officers [were] killed in felonious incidents and 540 offenders from 2004 to 2013. Among the total offenders, 52 percent were white, and 43 percent were black.”20 Ambush killings of officers are nearly evenly split racially: “There were 304 officers killed in ambush attacks from 1980 to 2013, with 371 offenders involved in those deaths. The percentage of black and white offenders in ambushes were about the same: 44 percent were white, and 43 percent were black.”21
Remember, blacks represent approximately 13 percent of the population and 23.6 percent of the FOIS cases in the Washington Post database, compared to whites at 60 percent of the population and 45.3 percent of FOIS. The argument is that the overrepresentation of blacks in the FOIS data is prima facie evidence of racist police brutality. But anyone who takes that position will find it difficult to escape the implication of these numbers related to the killing of police.
Simply put, we must be careful when we hear and/or draw conclusions. We must reject simplistic, univariate analyses as a basis for sweeping accusations of bias. The 2.5-to-1 stat is an example of the aforementioned “single witness” being allowed to establish a charge. It is as inappropriate to use that stat to “prove” police bias as it is to use the stats on the killings of police to “prove” inherent bias in black people.
But what about the cases themselves? Do they prove the case for racial injustice?
Many argue that the ways in which black people have been killed by police sets them apart and, along with the other witness of statistical disparity, more than establishes the case. Here again, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him,” so we must examine this witness since “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13).
Space limitations require me to be selective and brief, which will undeniably open me up to charges of bias (as though my opponents in this debate need an excuse for that). Nevertheless, my goal here is not to adjudicate these cases, but merely to demonstrate the fact that the way they have been covered by the media is insufficient, slanted, and unjust in terms of the accusations they are used to levy. That being said, I have chosen cases that are recent, well-known, and have generated and maintained a great deal of public outcry.
Many view the now-ubiquitous George Floyd case as the part that represents the totality of police killings of unarmed black men. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frye, in response to Floyd’s death, said, “Being black in America should not be a death sentence.”
Others in the Christian camp made it clear that the Floyd case was the smoking gun in the question of racial injustice. “If you are a Christian leader and you remain silent on racial injustice, idk why you are even in ministry!” tweeted Eric Mason, pastor of Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia and author of Woke Church, on May 27. Then, assuming the posture of a social media watchdog, he continued, “I’ve peeked at some of your timelines. There are posts but not about these matters.…”
“I haven’t been able to focus on much at all since I saw the horrific video of George Floyd’s murder,” wrote pastor and Christian hip-hop artist Shai Linne in an article for the Gospel Coalition’s website. Then, making the clear connection between Floyd and every other case, regardless of merit or circumstances, he continued, “But it’s not just the video of this one incident. For many black people, it’s never about just one incident.”22
Space does not permit me to go on. Suffice to say, the idea of the Floyd case as the part that represents the whole is almost universal. But is that accurate? Was George Floyd’s killing unique? Was it evidence of a particular callousness toward black men on the part of police?
Have you heard of Tony Timpa? Like Floyd, “Timpa wailed and pleaded for help more than 30 times as officers pinned his shoulders, knees and neck to the ground,”23 reported the Dallas Morning News in August 2016. Timpa, a thirty-two-year-old schizophrenic, called the police himself, saying he was off his meds and needed help. When police arrived, Timpa had already been handcuffed by a security guard. Three Dallas Police Department officers restrained Timpa for nearly fourteen minutes as he pleaded, “You’re gonna kill me! You’re gonna kill me! You’re gonna kill me!” Eventually, Timpa went limp, at which time the officers mocked him and made jokes. In the end, when the paramedics finally came and put Timpa’s flaccid body on a stretcher, one officer said, “I hope we didn’t kill him.” But they had.
The Dallas Morning News “first reported Timpa’s death in a 2017 investigation that showed police refused to say how a man who had called 911 for help ended up dead.”24 The officers were still on duty and no disciplinary action had been taken at that time. In fact, DPD refused to release body-cam footage; that was only done after a three-year legal battle. A side-by-side comparison of the Timpa and Floyd cases is telling:
|
George Floyd |
Tony Timpa |
Year |
2020 |
2016 |
Circumstances leading to police encounter |
Police called in response to passing counterfeit bill |
Timpa called police and asked for help |
Type of restraint |
Knee on neck |
Knee and hands on back/neck |
Length of restraint |
About eight minutes |
About fourteen minutes |
Officer demeanor during restraint |
Calm and serious (hands in pocket) |
Mocking and laughing |
Officer reaction to unresponsiveness |
None |
Mocking, laughing, and “Is he dead?” |
Legal response |
All officers arrested and charged |
Officers neither arrested nor charged and footage withheld for three years |
Media/public response |
Multiple funerals, congressional recognition, police reforms, name on everyone’s lips, nationwide protests and riots |
No one knew his name and few ever heard of his case |
The George Floyd case was indeed tragic. However, it was not unique. Nor does it represent clear evidence of a particular pattern of police brutality regarding black men. No one took to Twitter demanding that Christian leaders prove their bona fides by speaking out on the Timpa case, and no one wrote articles in leading Christian publications about losing sleep over it. In fact, few—if any—of the people who mounted their moral high horses and took to the streets in protest over George Floyd even knew Tony Timpa’s name. Why?
Because he was white, and his case did not advance the right narrative.
On November 22, 2014, Cleveland police received a call about someone in a park with a gun. One report notes that “Because of multiple layers in Cleveland’s 911 system, crucial information from the initial call about ‘a guy in here with a pistol’ was never relayed to the responding police officers, including the caller’s caveats that the gun was ‘probably fake’ and that the wielder was ‘probably a juvenile.’ ”25 No one knows if that information would have made a difference. What we do know is that “what the officers, Frank Garmback and his rookie partner, Tim Loehmann, did hear from a dispatcher was, ‘We have a Code One,’ ” the department’s highest level of urgency.26 Upon arrival, the officers drove up to the gazebo where Rice was playing with his gun, and, as he walked toward them, Loehmann exited the car, weapon drawn, and shot the boy in the abdomen.
This case is tragic. However, despite the claim that “little black boys can’t play with toy guns,” or that only a black kid with a gun would be looked upon as a threat, the Tamir Rice case is not unique. In 2016 the Washington Post ran an article under the headline “In Two Years, Police Killed 86 People Brandishing Guns That Look Real—but Aren’t.” Of those killed, eighty-one were men, five were women, fifty-four were white, and nineteen were black. Four of the eighty-six were under age seventeen. While none of this changes the tragedy of what happened to Tamir Rice, it does make it hard to argue that it was particularly or uniquely heinous and motivated by race.
On July 6, 2016, thirty-two-year-old Philando Castile was shot dead in his car during a traffic stop. According to police transcripts, after being asked for his license and registration, Castile, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, told Officer Jeronimo Yanez, “Sir, I have to tell you, I have a… firearm on me.”
Yanez replied, “Don’t reach for it then,” and Castile said, “I’m, I, I was reaching for…”
Yanez said, “Don’t pull it out!”
Castile replied, “I’m not pulling it out,” at which point, his girlfriend said, “He’s not—” Yanez repeated, “Don’t pull it out!” at which point the transcript simply reads, “(gunshots).”27 Yanez fired seven times, hitting Castile with five shots. Castile’s four-year-old daughter was in the back seat.
I remember this case vividly because it shook me, especially as I viewed it through the lens of history, social media, and my own personal anxiety. This wasn’t the “racist” Deep South; this was Minnesota! Not to mention the fact that I have a license to carry and have had to disclose the fact that I was armed to an officer who had pulled me over. However, as I stepped back to look at this issue through a different lens, I had to admit that the Philando Castile case, though tragic, was also not unique.
That same summer, on June 25, Dylan Noble was killed by police in Fresno, California, under very similar circumstances. He was stopped by police, reached into his waistband, and was shot eleven times. Again, you don’t know Dylan’s name because he was white.
Nor are you likely to know the name of six-year-old Jeremy Mardis. In November 2015, he was killed when police in Louisiana opened fire on his father after he led them on a two-mile car chase. Jeremy, a first grader, was “shot several times in the head and torso and pronounced dead at the scene.”28
Sariah Lane of Phoenix, Arizona, was just seventeen when she was shot and killed by police on April 20, 2017. “Her only mistake,” according to news reports, “was taking a ride with her boyfriend in a car driven by a felon, 25-year-old Brandon Pequeno.” As officers tried to arrest Pequeno, they thought he tried to reach for a gun. However, Pequeno didn’t have one. “Three Mesa police officers unloaded 11 shots into the car, killing Pequeno and Lane, who was sitting in the backseat.”29
Even worse: All three of the officers who opened fire on Lane sported long histories of officer-involved shootings. One had two, one had five, and one had seven.
Now, just try to imagine the outrage if either Pequeno or Lane had been black. Neither was.
Rather than describe the Michael Brown case, I offer this succinct summary of the findings from the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation:
There was no evidence to contradict [Officer Darren] Wilson’s claim that Brown reached for his gun. The investigation concluded that Wilson did not shoot Brown in the back. That he did not shoot Brown as he was running away. That Brown did stop and turn toward Wilson. That in those next moments “several witnesses stated that Brown appeared to pose a physical threat to Wilson.” That claims that Brown had his hands up “in an unambiguous sign of surrender” are not supported by the “physical and forensic evidence,” and are sometimes, “materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible or otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time.”30
You may be inclined to think this summary came from the pen of some white, conservative, alt-right white supremacist. You would be wrong. It came from the pen of Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the paragons of the Critical Social Justice movement.
Michael Brown never said, “Hands up, don’t shoot!” That was a bald-faced lie told by one of the witnesses who later admitted as much. Don’t miss the last line of Coates’s recap: “[C]laims that Brown had his hands up ‘in an unambiguous sign of surrender’ are not supported by the ‘physical and forensic evidence,’ and are sometimes ‘materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible or otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time.’ ”
By comparison, “Hands up, don’t shoot!” was uttered by Daniel Shaver. And it was caught on video! Shaver, a white man who had been waving a pellet gun out of a motel window, was by that time unarmed and attempting to comply with conflicting and confusing police commands when an officer told him, “If you do that again, we will shoot you.” If you are wondering, “Do what again?” so was Daniel Shaver; the officer’s commands were unclear and at times contradictory. Shaver, on his knees with his hands in the air, said, “Please do not shoot me.”31 But shoot him they did. Mesa (Arizona) Police Officer Philip Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder, but later acquitted. (Hence, Shaver’s case dispels two myths: first, that police shootings of black suspects are unique, and second, that when police kill white people, they don’t get away with it.)
Another aspect of the Michael Brown case that got a great deal of attention was his age. Much was made of the fact that Brown was nineteen when he was killed. Compare that to another case, as reported by MLive in Jackson, Mississippi: “A county sheriff’s sergeant suffered ‘significant injuries’… during a traffic stop… and fired his weapon, killing 17-year-old Deven Guilford of Mulliken.”
Like Brown, Guilford was a teenaged male stopped by police. A struggle ensued. The teenager was shot to death. However, you didn’t know this teenager’s name and probably never heard of his case. Why? Because Guilford was white, so his story doesn’t fit the narrative.
Shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020, police bearing a no-knock warrant used a battering ram to enter the residence of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. According to the New York Times, “Ms. Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had been in bed, but got up when they heard a loud banging at the door. After a brief exchange, Mr. Walker fired his gun. The police also fired several shots, striking Ms. Taylor.”32 This case captured the attention of the entire country as cries for “Justice for Breonna” became commonplace. LeBron James devoted an entire postgame interview to raising awareness for and demanding justice in her case.33 This is yet another tragic situation that is not unique.
In January 2016, twelve-year-old Ciara Meyer was shot and killed by Constable Clark Steele in Penn Township, Pennsylvania. The officer was serving an eviction notice on the girl’s father, who produced a weapon. The officer fired at the man; the bullet passed through his arm and struck the girl. She later died from her wounds.34
In Taylor’s case, it appears the first shots came from her boyfriend, and the police responded in kind. Meyer’s father did not fire on police. However, once again, this twelve-year-old girl has not become a rallying point for social justice. No NFL players took a knee for her. No NBA stars used their access to the media to demand “Justice for Ciara.”
Why? Because she was white, and her story does not advance the right narrative.
I have had several conversations with people about these cases. Inevitably, those more inclined to view things through a CSJ lens will have one of several predictable objections. Two of them are nonsensical and do not deserve treatment here beyond exposing their nonsense and the underlying worldview on which it rests. The other two are worth our attention.
The first nonsensical idea is what I like to call the Mark Twain Objection. It was he who said, “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.” This is the response represented by the three young black men in a Prager University video. When they heard the statistics on police killings, their immediate response was, “Cap!” (an urban slang term meaning “bulls***”). Of course, this is a specious argument since the same people readily accept the 2.5-to-1 “statistic” without question.
The second nonsensical objection is the CSJ idea that objective scientific knowledge derived through data is “white” and therefore oppressive. (I’ll discuss this in more detail later.) Again, these same people are happy to rely on the 2.5-to-1 statistic, as well as other statistical disparities, as long as it supports their claims that America suffers from systemic racism. There are, however, two other objections worth mentioning.
One is that the facts of these cases are not identical. The other is appealing to America’s “racist past.”
I am actually encouraged by the first objection as it puts the discussion on what I consider proper ground based on biblical principles. I am more than happy to argue the merits of each of these cases. In fact, I see that as real progress. Most people hear about one of these high-profile killings of a black person and immediately go into “the facts of the case are irrelevant” mode. To them, the number of black people killed by police is all that matters. Hence, if there are ten shootings of unarmed black men and nine of them are later deemed justified, that is irrelevant. The tally still comes up as “ten killed,” the mantra remains “Justice for So-and-So,” and the narrative marches on. So if someone disagrees with my assessment of the dissimilarities in these cases, then we are already on proper footing, and whenever and wherever true injustice (i.e., illegality) is found, we can join hands and advocate for justice when necessary.
The second objection, “consider America’s racist history,” is sometimes offered in isolation, but usually as a rebuttal once someone has been willing to look at the facts and agrees that the similarities in these cases are indeed probative.
The objection goes like this: “I see what you are saying, and I agree. However, you have to consider the history of racism in this country.” This asserts that the only way to judge whether or not police killings of black people are acts of racism is to look at them through the lens of… racism.
This is the major fault line that lies beneath the current discussion. More importantly, this is why those who do not accept, or at least understand, the underlying assumptions and presuppositions of Critical Social Justice end up scratching their heads in bewilderment as assertions of “racial injustice”—or worse yet, that “the police are hunting down and killing unarmed black men”—become increasingly prevalent.
It is imperative that we examine the worldview assumptions that underlie this division—and we will.
1. Mark Bain, “Nike’s Kaepernick Ad Is What Happens When Capitalism and Activism Collide,” Quartz, September 29, 2018, https://qz.com/1400583/modern-corporate-social-activism-looks-like-nikes-kaepernick-ad.
2. David K. Li, “Colin Kaepernick Reveals the Specific Police Shooting That Led Him to Kneel,” NBC News, August 20, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/colin-kaepernick-reveals-specific-police-shooting-led-him-kneel-n1044306.
3. San Francisco Police Department memorandum, June 12, 2018, https://www.sfchronicle.com/file/462/2/4622-151045735-_responsive_1%20(1).pdf.
4. LeBron James (@KingJames), “We’re literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes! Can’t even go for a damn jog man! Like WTF man are you kidding me?!?!?!?!?!? No man fr ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!! I’m sorry Ahmaud(Rest In Paradise) and my prayers and blessings sent to the.....,” Twitter, May 6, 2020, 6:06 p.m., https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1258156220969398272.
5. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “ ‘Pandemic within a Pandemic’: Coronavirus and Police Brutality Roil Black Communities,” New York Times, June 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/us/politics/blacks-coronavirus-police-brutality.html.
6. Osagei K. Obasogie, “Police Killing Black People Is a Pandemic, Too,” Washington Post, June 5, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/police-violence-pandemic/2020/06/05/e1a2a1b0-a669-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html.
7. Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito, “Risk of Being Killed by Police Use of Force in the United States by Age, Race—Ethnicity, and Sex,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, August 20, 2019, https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793.
8. Alia Chughtai, “Know Their Names: Black People Killed by the Police in the US,” Al Jazeera, https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/know-their-names/index.html.
9. Meghan Roos, “BLM Leader: We’ll ‘Burn’ the System Down If U.S. Won’t Give Us What We Want,” Newsweek, June 25, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/blm-leader-well-burn-system-down-if-us-wont-give-us-what-we-want-1513422.
10. Kelly McBride, “ ‘Unarmed Black Man’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means,” Poynter Institute, August 31, 2020, https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/unarmed-black-man-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means.
11. Ibid.
12. “Chicago Police Officer Says She Feared Using Gun While Being Beaten,” ABC 7 News, October 6, 2016, https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-police-officer-afraid-to-use-gun-beaten-eddie-johnson/1543015.
13. Roland G. Fryer Jr., “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” Journal of Political Economy. Forthcoming.
14. David J. Johnson, Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and Joseph Cesario, “Officer Characteristics and Racial Disparities in Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 116, no. 32 (August 6, 2019): 15877–15882; first published on July 22, 2019. Their study was attacked immediately as racist. One researcher was demoted from his position at Michigan State University for citing it. Eventually, the authors retracted the study, though it was peer reviewed and they still stand behind their findings. Moreover, the findings mirror those of a similar study in 2015.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Fryer, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force.”
18. Örjan Falk, Märta Wallinius, Sebastian Lundström, Thomas Frisell, Henrik Anckarsäter, and Nóra Kerekes, “The 1% of the Population Accountable for 63% of All Violent Crime Convictions,” Social Psychiatry, Psychiatry and Epidemiology 49, no. 4 (2014): 559–71. Published online October 31, 2013, doi: 10.1007/s00127-013-0783-y.
19. Jeffrey Todd Ulmer and Darrell J. Steffensmeier, “The Age and Crime Relationship: Social Variation, Social Explanations,” in The Nurture Versus Biosocial Debate in Criminology: On the Origins of Criminal Behavior and Criminality (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications Inc., 2014), 377–96, https://pennstate.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/the-age-and-crime-relationship-social-variation-social-explanatio.
20. Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Are Black or White Offenders More Likely to Kill Police?,” Washington Post, FactChecker Analysis, January 9, 2015.
21. Ibid.
22. Shai Linne, “George Floyd and Me,” Gospel Coalition, June 8, 2020, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/george-floyd-and-me.
23. Cary Aspinwall and Dave Boucher, “ ‘You’re Gonna Kill Me!’: Dallas Police Body Cam Footage Reveals the Final Minutes of Tony Timpa’s Life,” Dallas Morning News, July 30, 2019, https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/31/you-re-gonna-kill-me-dallas-police-body-cam-footage-reveals-the-final-minutes-of-tony-timpa-s-life.
24. Aspinwall and Boucher, “ ‘You’re Gonna Kill Me!’: Dallas Police Body Cam Footage Reveals the Final Minutes of Tony Timpa’s Life.”
25. Shaila Dewan and Richard A. Oppel Jr., “In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One,” New York Times, January 22, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/us/in-tamir-rice-shooting-in-cleveland-many-errors-by-police-then-a-fatal-one.html.
26. Ibid.
27. Transcript of Philando Castile traffic stop, Ramsey County website, July 6, 2016, https://www.ramseycounty.us/sites/default/files/County%20Attorney/Exhibit%201a%20-%20Traffic%20Stop%20Transcript.pdf.
28. Bryn Stole, “Authorities Try to Sort Out Details of Marshal-Involved Marksville Shooting That Left Child Dead, Father Wounded,” Acadiana Advocate, November 10, 2015, https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/crime_police/article_f3269c39-5f7d-5a7c-99db-57f4ec309097.html.
29. “Recent Police Shootings Raise Questions about Use of Deadly Force,” Fox 10, October 30, 2017, https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/recent-police-shootings-raise-questions-about-use-of-deadly-force.
30. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Gangsters of Ferguson,” The Atlantic, March 5, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/The-Gangsters-Of-Ferguson/386893.
31. CNN, “Unarmed Man Begs for Life, Shot by Police,” YouTube, December 10, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ooa7wOKHhg.
32. Richard A. Oppel Jr., Derrick Bryson Taylor, and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, “What to Know about Breonna Taylor’s Death,” New York Times, October 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html.
33. Mallika Kallingal and Jill Martin, “LeBron James Uses Media Interview after First Scrimmage to ‘Shed Light on Justice for Breonna,’ ” CNN, July 24, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/sport/lebron-james-on-justice-for-breonna-taylor/index.html.
34. Barbara Miller, “Perry County DA: Investigation into Penn Township Shooting of 12-Year-Old Continues,” PennLive, January 12, 2016, https://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/01/perry_county_da_investigation.html.