President Joe Biden delivered a commencement speech at Morehouse College, an all-male, historically black school in Atlanta. The America into which these graduating students now enter, according to Biden, reeks of “systemic racism” and “the poison of white supremacy.”

“What is democracy if black men are being killed in the street?” said Biden. “If black men are being killed on the streets, we bear witness. For me, that means to call out the poison of white supremacy, to root out systemic racism. I stood up for George—with George Floyd’s family to help create a country where you don’t need to have that talk with your son or grandson as they get pulled over.”

Where do we start? George Floyd, a career criminal, was full of fentanyl and resisted arrest. There’s no evidence Floyd’s treatment had anything to do with his race. The lead prosecutor, a black man, in his opening statement emphasized that police, in general, were not on trial, and that the Minneapolis Police Department was not on trial. He argued the officer defendant was on trial for his behavior. Nor was the officer charged with a hate crime. In fact, the prosecutor commended cops, most of whom he said behave lawfully under stressful circumstances.

“Black men are being killed in the street”? Biden implied black men are being mowed down by cops or by white supremacists or by a combination of both.

Policemag.com asked those who self-described as “very liberal” how many unarmed black men did the police kill in 2019. Fifty percent thought police killed 1,000 or more. Eight percent thought police killed 10,000 or more. What did those who self-described as “liberal” think? Thirty-nine percent thought the police killed 1,000 or more. Five percent thought the police killed 10,000 or more. The actual number, according to the Washington Post database, was 12. And the police kill more unarmed whites than unarmed blacks.

Most homicides are same-race homicides. Nearly half of homicide victims in the country are black, with an estimated 90 percent killed by other blacks. As for whites, roughly 85 percent of white victims are killed by other whites. In recent years, there have been approximately 750 black-white or white-black homicides. Nearly 500 whites are killed by blacks, who are about 13 percent of the population. About 250 blacks are killed by whites, who are about 60 percent of the population.

What about non-homicide violent crime between blacks and whites, including attempted murder, rape, robbery, simple assault, and aggravated assault? In recent years, there have been approximately 500,000 such crimes. In 85 percent to 90 percent of these crimes, the perp is black and the victim is white—only 10 percent to 15 percent the other way around.

As to white supremacists, the Anti-Defamation League tracks the number of people killed by “extremists.” Last year, out of over 18,000 homicide victims, 17 were killed by extremists. When it comes to hate crime, the New York Post editorial board, citing researcher Heather Mac Donald, wrote: “‘From 2016 to 2020, blacks nationally were twice as likely to commit a hate crime as whites’ among ‘suspects whose race and ethnicity were known. … In New York City, from 2010 to 2020, blacks were 2.42 times as likely as whites to commit a hate crime.’ Los Angeles blacks last year ‘committed anti-Asian hate crimes at 4.8 times the rate of whites,’ anti-gay ones at seven times, anti-Semitic ones at 2.4 times and anti-Hispanic ones at 13.5 times the white rate.”

Biden failed to mention the nearly 50 people shot in Chicago the very weekend of his speech. In 2017, WBEZ Chicago wrote: “The percentage of (Chicago) homicide victims who are black has been trending upward for more than 30 years. In 1985, African-Americans accounted for 66 percent of the city’s homicides. In 2017, 80 percent of homicide victims have been black.”

In case these graduates were insufficiently depressed, Biden offered this pick-me-up: “What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?”

Assume a 40-hour work week. Blacks have to work 400 hours a week “to get a fair shot”? With only 168 hours in a week, this means no sleep, no eating, no shower—and still not enough time to “get a fair shot.”

So, Morehouse graduates, after Biden’s pep talk, get out there and take on the world!

COPYRIGHT 2024 LAURENCE A. ELDER

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