In 2016 Tony Timpa was killed as police kneeled on him for 13 minutes.
There were no protests of “no justice, no peace.” No riots to loot and burn down black and white-owned businesses. No signs to call for the defunding of the police. There were no calls to check “white privilege.“[1] No cries of “systemic racism.”[2] No chants of “white silence is violence.”
Tony’s skin, you see, was white.
To well-funded racist political groups whose only concern is the color of a victim’s skin, police brutality — on moral principle — doesn’t matter.
You can watch the video of Tony dying – as police cracked jokes — if you can stomach it.[3]
Tony’s “crime” was that he called the police for help as he “was off his medication and had used cocaine.”
Tony’s tragic death at the hands of police is one of many relevant details that those who have appropriated the name “Black Lives Matter” keep silent about.
Distinguishing the organizations from the idea
My animus is not against the idea that “Black Lives Matter” but against those organizations who use the idea to peddle dogma that is harmful to both black and white lives alike.
I refer to these non-profit corporations collectively as BLM Incorporated, or BLM Inc. for short, to distinguish the idea “Black Lives Matter” from the anti-capitalist, ideologically Marxist, “social-justice” organizers who latch on to the noble cause to push illegitimate goals.[4] [5] [6]
Why the silence over the death of Tony Timpa by BLM Inc.?
BLM Inc. was silent about Tony Timpa because his story did not suit the political narrative of “systemic racism” that the anti-capitalist tribalists, who have hijacked the “Black Lives Matter” movement, promote.
That narrative is that America is a racist country where black lives do not matter, with the corollary that the police are the greatest danger to black lives. [7] Both parts of that fable are false.
America is not systematically racist
What is racism? Racism is a species of collectivism with the policy of judging an individual not by their words and deeds, but by their skin color and ancestry.
According to philosopher Ayn Rand writing on, in her condemnation of the collectivist practice:
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”[8]
Racism should be condemned because, like all forms of determinism and collectivism, it ignores the rational faculty and character of the individual. [9]
Racism against blacks (and whites) exists in America, but it is not systemic. The rise of black Americans, in sports, the arts, business, and even to the office of the Presidency of the United States, shows otherwise.
That native-born black Americans, on aggregate, may statistically do worse in some areas (like school grades) is not de facto proof of racism against blacks.[10] It is no more proof of racism than that the National Basketball League (NBA) predominantly consists of black people makes the NBA racist against white people.
Statistics are mathematical averages based on aggregates and by themselves can only show correlations; to figure out causes, one has to examine the individual stories that make up those averages.
According to Larry Elder writing on why “Criminal Behavior, Not Racism, Explains ‘Racial Disparities’ in Crime Stats:
“A new study on racial disparities in police conduct found that differences in offending by suspects, not racism, explains officers’ responses.”
“In the study “Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force?” professors from Michigan State and Arizona State universities analyzed officer-involved fatal shootings in 2015 and 2016. The report’s abstract says: “We benchmark two years of fatal shooting data on 2016 crime rate estimates. When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects… Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings. For unarmed shootings or misidentification shootings, data are too uncertain to be conclusive.” (emphasis added) [11]
In other words, the higher percentage of fatal shootings for blacks is based on the fact that a higher percentage of crimes are committed by blacks.
As for the causes of why Blacks commit more crimes as a percentage of the population, this too cannot be blamed on “systemic racism” and the “legacy of slavery” as there was far less crime within the Black community when Blacks were under Jim Crow and in the 1950s. Writes the eminent Thomas Sowell on the fallacies behind the “legacy of slavery” argument and blaming “systemic racism” as an excuse for the rise of crime in Black communities:
“Anyone who is serious about evidence need only compare black communities as they evolved in the first 100 years after slavery with black communities as they evolved in the first 50 years after the explosive growth of the welfare state, beginning in the 1960s. You would be hard-pressed to find as many ghetto riots prior to the 1960s as we have seen just in the past year, much less in the 50 years since a wave of such riots swept across the country in 1965.
“We are told that such riots are a result of black poverty and white racism. But in fact — for those who still have some respect for facts — black poverty was far worse, and white racism was far worse, prior to 1960. But violent crime within black ghettos was far less.
“Murder rates among black males were going down — repeat, DOWN — during the much-lamented 1950s, while it went up after the much-celebrated 1960s, reaching levels more than double what they had been before. Most black children were raised in two-parent families prior to the 1960s. But today the great majority of black children are raised in one-parent families.
“Such trends are not unique to blacks, nor even to the United States. The welfare state has led to remarkably similar trends among the white underclass in England over the same period. Just read “Life at the Bottom,” by Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician who worked in a hospital in a white slum neighborhood.
“You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.[12]
BLM Inc. is silent about blacks killed by blacks
One vital statistic that the advocates of “white silence is violence” are notoriously silent about is that over the past few decades, blacks have been slaughtering other blacks in the tens of thousands. Over 90% of Black American homicides are committed by black thugs (and around 1% by a white policeman). [13]
Again quoting Elder:
“The No. 1 reason for death, preventable or otherwise for young black men, is homicide, almost always at the hands of another young black man. In 2018, there were approximately 7,400 black homicide victims, more than half of the nation’s total number of homicides, out of a black population of 13%. Of that number, the police killed a little over 200 blacks, and nearly all of them had a weapon or violently resisted arrest.”
“In recent years, the police have averaged killing about 1,000 Americans per year. Of that number, half are white and one-quarter are black, with the race of remaining suspects of another race or unknown. Of the approximately 1,000 killed by cops, less than 4% involve a white officer and an unarmed black man.” [14]
If to be “silent about injustice” is to be a perpetrator of injustice, then BLM organizers are guilty of injustice by their silence about blacks killing blacks.[15] To say that one believes that “Black Lives Matter” and to then be silent about the number one cause of black homicides, or worse to attack those who bring up such inconvenient truths as “changing the subject,” exposes the hypocrisy of the present BLM Inc. leadership.
“Black lives matter” means all black lives matter, not just those innocent lives killed by white policemen (less than 1% of black killings). If one is not concerned with the black lives extinguished by black criminals (over 90% of black homicides), then one does not deserve to call oneself “Black lives matter.”
BLM Inc. is using the tragedy of George Floyd to push racism and socialism
Even worse, BLM Inc.’s response to the so-called “systemic, institutional racism” is “anti-racism” for blacks. It turns out that this “anti-racism” is an Orwellian euphemism for racism against whites.[16] This “anti-racism,” or New Racism, cloaked in the language of the pseudo-science of “critical race theory,” is characterized by accusations of “white privilege” and “white fragility” with calls for racial quotas masquerading as “diversity,” along with calls for apologies and “reparations” from those who committed no crimes.
The New Racists are using the power from attaching themselves to the legitimate moral cause of justice for George Floyd, as a moral sanction to “cancel” anyone who dares to disagree with illegitimate parts of their racist, anti-capitalist agenda.[17]
Philosopher Ayn Rand identified this lumping together of two opposites – in this case, opposition to police brutality against blacks bundled with anti-capitalist policies, such as privileges for blacks and against whites and defunding the police — as the fallacy of the ‘package deal.’[18]
In the case of the BLM movement, it is a “package deal” of combining the legitimate cause of opposition to police brutality against blacks with the illegitimate agenda of promoting anti-capitalist, anti-policing, and discriminatory policies against whites under the banner of “anti-racism.” The package deal goes like this: “If you believe that ‘black lives matter’, then you must accept our specific policies of ‘defunding the police,’ kneeling and apologizing for your ‘white privilege,’ voting for candidates we approve of, and giving billions of dollars to our groups, else we will smear you as a racist who believes black lives don’t matter.”
“New Racism” empowers the tribalists of the “racist left” and will galvanize its twin the “Alt-right.”[19] [20] For Americans, as individuals, it benefits no one except tribal elites and their cronies. This “New Racism” will only “balkanize” Americans by forcing them into warring tribes, further alienating them from each other.
Ending police brutality requires rational reform
Police brutality is an issue for people of all colors and people from all political parties.[21]
The solution to police brutality is not to cancel/defund the police, but police reform. Some suggestions from one former Detroit Police Chief to “start the discussion” include: [22]
– Require higher aptitude and fitness standards for incoming recruits.
– Require regular mental health checkups to deal with the stress and challenges of law enforcement.
– Develop a nationwide database of all officers to prevent bad officers from jumping departments to avoid marks on their permanent record.
– Stop promoting officers to become supervisors who have multiple disciplinary complaints, particularly, to positions of first-line leaders like sergeants and lieutenants.
– Rehabilitation within police unions. Their intransigence makes it almost impossible to fire and hold officers accountable for breaking the law and the public’s trust.
[Whether one agrees or not with the police chief’s specific recommendations, the point is that] Such reform is not accomplished by protests and riots, but by all sides sitting down together peacefully and figuring out solutions based on the standard of equally protecting the individual rights of all parties involved.
Ending racism requires embracing individualism and capitalism
To end racism, we need to see the killing of Tony Timpa and George Floyd as equal evils – not because one was white and the other black – but because they are both human beings. “Black Lives Matter” because “All Lives Matter”; the two statements are not in opposition, but rather the first is the logical expression of the second.
To end racism, America needs to unequivocally embrace individualism: judging an individual, not by the color of their skin (or other group identity attributes like nationality, sex, and gender), but by the content of their character (their ideas and actions).[23]
Philosophically, the result of the application of the ethical principles of individualism to organized society is laissez-faire capitalism. Capitalism is the social system based on the equal protection of every individual’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.[24]
Under capitalism, the initiation of physical force (and fraud) is banned from all relationships leaving individuals free to deal with each other by voluntary trade in both the material and spiritual realms. The idea of a free-market does not only apply to the economic sphere of production and trade, but it applies with equal power the personal realm of ideas, association, relationships, and lifestyle as well. Freedom — as the 20th century’s greatest defender of capitalism, Ayn Rand, observed — is an inseparable whole. Or, in Rand’s words, “A free-market is a corollary of a free-mind.”
What Americans of all colors need is not more chains to government, but the freedom to act according to their own will so long as they respect the equal right of others to do the same. That those chains are now gold-plated as economic handouts from the “Great Society” welfare state does not mean that they do not come at a price. The price of economic handouts by the state is political freedom. It is this freedom that the “Black Lives Matter” organization opposes, forcing blacks who have finally been freed from one set of chains into a new set of chains, which the enemies of capitalism and freedom wish to place on everyone.
What if BLM Inc. took a non-racist approach?
What if instead of pushing the “America is a racist nation” dogma, the BLM Inc. used the example of police brutality against a white person as common ground to unite all people against all police brutality given that far more white Americans are killed by policemen? [25]
That is, instead of taking a racist, group-focused, Marxist, socialist anti-American approach, what if BLM Inc. took a color-blind, individualistic, capitalist pro-American approach? [26]
What would have been the difference if, after the death of Tony Timpa, the organization that calls itself “Black Lives Matter” — BLM Inc. — had focused on ending police brutality in the last 2016 election cycle instead of focusing on the color of victims? [27]
There is no guarantee, but perhaps individuals of all colors unjustly killed by police, like George Floyd, might still be alive today.[28]
Editor’s Note. This article was updated on 18 June 2020 with additional paragraphs on “The New Racism,” along with additional references. *On 22 June 2020 “the standard of human flourishing” was replaced with “the standard of protecting the individual rights of all parties involved.” and “Whether one agrees or not with the police chief’s specific recommendations, the point is that…” On 13 September 2020 updated title and added quote by Thomas Sowell.
Along with the references in this article, I also found these links helpful:
- Analyzing the Concerns of Black Lives Matter Protesters, 15 June 2020. (audio)
Harry Binswanger, Yaron Brook, Onkar Ghate, Greg Salmieri, and Peter Schwartz discuss what motivates the leaders and followers of the Black Lives Matter movement, and distinguish between the valid and invalid concerns animating them. - Stories and Data: Reflections on Race, Riots, and Police by Coleman Hughes City Journal, 14 June 2020.
- Making Sense Podcast #207 – Can We Pull Back From The Brink?” by Sam Harris, 12 June 2020.
Though I disagree with Harris on several philosophical and political points, there is much value in this podcast, which demonstrates the method of finding a solution: reason.
References:
[1] Williams, Walter. “White Privilege.” Capitalism Magazine, 27 May 2014.
[2] Elder, Larry. “In Search of White Privilege and Systemic-Institutional-Structural Racism.” Capitalism Magazine, 12 June 2019.
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c-E_i8Q5G0 All charges against the policemen who killed Timpa were later dropped.
[4] Credit for the use of “Inc.” goes in part to a post by Don Watkins where he used the TM symbol to distinguish the two. His writing has been clarifying on properly formulating this issue, though he is not responsible for the contents of, and as far as I know has not read, this article.
[5] A similar illustration from the “right” was the takeover of the secular “Tea Party” by religious conservatives. Binswanger, Harry. “Will Religious Conservatives Hijack the Tea Party Movement?” Capitalism Magazine, 8 May 2019.
[6] “BLM Co Founder Says She and Her Partner are Trained Organizers and Marxists”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYZvExTQQ98
[7] Bernstein, Andrew. “America: A Racist Nation?” Capitalism Magazine, 16 June 2020.
[8] Rand, Ayn “Racism” The Virtue of Selfishness, 126. Continues Rand:
“Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas — or of inherited knowledge — which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.”
“Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.”
[9] Rand, Ayn. “Collectivism” Ayn Rand Lexicon, Ed. By Harry Binswanger.
Williams, Walter. “The True Plight of Black Americans Is Not ‘Systemic Racism.’” Capitalism Magazine, 10 June 2020.
[10] Williams, Walter. “Improving Black Education.” Capitalism Magazine, 11 June 2015.
[11] Elder, Larry. “Criminal Behavior, Not Racism, Explains ‘Racial Disparities’ in Crime Stats.” Capitalism Magazine, 13 June 2019.
Williams, Walter. “The True Plight of Black Americans Is Not ‘Systemic Racism.’” Capitalism Magazine, 10 June 2020.
[12] Sowell, Thomas. “Race, Politics and Lies.” Capitalism Magazine, Capitalism Magazine, 10 Jan. 2019,
[13] Elder, Larry. “Are Cops Killing Blacks?” Capitalism Magazine, 2 Mar. 2012.
[14] Elder, Larry. “The George Floyd Riots: Where’s Black Lives Matter When You Need Them?” Capitalism Magazine, 4 June 2020.
[15] See my article, “Why I Support Justice For George Floyd But Oppose The BLM Organization.” Capitalism Magazine, 7 June 2020.
[16] Rand, Ayn “Racism” The Virtue of Selfishness, 126
[17] Rand, Ayn “Sanction.” Ayn Rand Lexicon, Edited by Harry Binswanger.
[18] According to Rand, “ ‘Package-dealing’ is the fallacy of failing to discriminate crucial differences. It consists of treating together, as parts of a single conceptual whole or “package,” elements which differ essentially in nature, truth-status, importance or value.” Quoted from Rand, Ayn, “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” in Philosophy Who Needs It. 24.
[19] Bernstein, Andrew. “America’s Coming Race War: The Contemporary American Left Embraces Racism (Part 2 of 4).” Capitalism Magazine, 3 June 2020.
[20] Bernstein, Andrew. “America’s Coming Race War: Post Modernism’s Monster Children The ‘Alt-Right’ (Part 3 of 4).” Capitalism Magazine, 3 June 2020.
[21] Especially if they are male as over 90% of unarmed people killed by police are male. (See “Fatal Force: Police Shootings Database.” The Washington Post, 22 Jan. 2020.) Which for cherry-picking statisticians, who examine the forest while ignoring the trees, would be grounds to declare that the police are systematically sexist.
[22] McKinnon, Isaiah. “McKinnon: It’s Time to Restructure Police Departments so They Truly Serve and Protect.” Detroit Free Press, Detroit Free Press, 11 June 2020.
[23] Niles, Raymond C. “Individualism, Not Group Identity Politics, Is the Answer To America’s Crisis.” Capitalism Magazine, 14 June 2020.
[24] Rand, Ayn. “What is Capitalism?” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).
[25] Bernstein, Andrew. “America: A Racist Nation?” Capitalism Magazine, 16 June 2020.
[26] Ebeling, Richard M. “Capitalism, Marxism and Black Americans.” Capitalism Magazine, 10 Jan. 2019. Comments Dr. Ebeling:
“This type of argument is merely a variation on the Marxian theme. Just as the Marxists classified a multitude of individuals on the basis of one characteristic — were they or were they not owners of the means of production? — the racial argument reduces everyone to one classification: the color of a person’s skin. The Marxist argued that if you don’t own property, you are exploited and condemned to poverty. The racial argument insists that if you are black, you are by definition discriminated against and are condemned to poverty.”
“In this brand of collectivist mythology, all blacks are victims, whether they know it or not. And all whites are oppressors or the beneficiaries of racial oppression, whether they know it or not.”
[27] Briley, Aaron. “‘Black Lives Matter’ Is Focused on the Wrong Culprit and the Wrong Solution.” Capitalism Magazine, 30 November 2016.
[28] Cunha, Mark Da. “Why I Support Justice For George Floyd But Oppose The BLM Organization.” Capitalism Magazine, 15 June 2020.
Editor’s Note. This article was updated on 18 June 2020 with additional paragraphs on “The New Racism,” along with additional references. *On 22 June 2020 “the standard of human flourishing” was replaced with “the standard of protecting the individual rights of all parties involved.” and “Whether one agrees or not with the police chief’s specific recommendations, the point is that…” On 13 September 2020, the title was updated and a quote by Thomas Sowell was added.
