{"id":25233,"date":"2016-07-12T11:37:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T18:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=25233"},"modified":"2016-07-12T11:37:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T18:37:37","slug":"nyt-editorial-rudy-giulianis-racial-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=25233","title":{"rendered":"NYT Editorial Board: Rudy Giuliani\u2019s Racial Myths"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By THE EDITORIAL BOARD<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"For a nation heartsick over the killings of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the ambush murders of officers by a gunman in Dallas, here comes Rudolph Giuliani<\/a>, bringing his trademark brew of poisonous disinformation to the discussion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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In his view, the problem is black gangs, murderous black children, the refusal of black protesters to look in the mirror at their \u201cracist\u201d selves, and black parents\u2019 failure to teach their children to respect the police.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve got to hear from the black community,\u201d said Mr. Giuliani<\/a>, in a Sunday morning talk-show appearance that seemed to double as a lecture to black America, \u201cis how and what they are doing among themselves about the crime problem in the black community.\u201d He added, \u201cWe wonder, do black lives matter, or only the very few black lives that are killed by white policemen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a better question: How, we wonder, will the country ever get beyond its stunted discourse about racialized violence when people like Mr. Giuliani continue to try to change the subject? Those who remember Mr. Giuliani as the hectoring mayor of New York know what he has to offer any conversation on race and violence \u2014 not a lot. In case you\u2019re unconvinced, here is what Mr. Giuliani on Sunday said he would tell a young son, if he were black: \u201cBe very careful of those kids in the neighborhood and don\u2019t get involved with them because, son, there\u2019s a 99 percent chance they\u2019re going to kill you, not the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Giuliani\u2019s garbled, fictional statistic echoes a common right-wing talking point about the prevalence of \u201cblack on black\u201d violence in America. Homicide data do show that black victims are most often killed by black assailants.<\/p>\n

(They also reveal that whites tend to be killed by whites.)<\/p>\n

This observation does not speak to the matter of racist policing and police brutality. Killings of the police have, mercifully,been on the decline<\/a> during the Obama presidency. But unwarranted shootings by police officers remain a persistent problem, ignored for generations, exploding only now into the wider public consciousness because of bystander videos that reveal the blood-red truth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Unnerved by black anger, Americans like Mr. Giuliani cling to false equivalencies. They have, for example, defamed the Black Lives Matter movement as a \u201cwar on cops.\u201d (Tell that to the protesters in Dallas who smiled for photos with officers who were protecting their march.)<\/p>\n

The debate is full of such untruths and misdirections.<\/p>\n

There is the colossal Texas lie, the one that says a \u201cgood guy with a gun\u201d can always stop a bad guy with a gun (in Dallas, where some marchers and bystanders were armed, it took a bomb).<\/p>\n

There is Mr. Giuliani\u2019s ludicrous suggestion that black people don\u2019t know they need to be careful around cops, or somehow are complicit in their brutalizing. Alton Sterling, in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile, in a St. Paul suburb, were posing no threat when they were shot. (Far from being ignorant of the ways of the police, fearful black parents long ago learned to impart the advice that Mr. Castile\u2019s mother, Valerie Castile, said she gave her son: \u201cIf you get stopped by the police, comply. Comply, comply, comply.\u201d) Eric Garner, on Staten Island, was unarmed and outnumbered by the officers who swarmed and smothered him.<\/p>\n

In 1999, when Mr. Giuliani was New York\u2019s tough-on-crime mayor,Amadou Diallo<\/a> reached for his wallet and was cut down in a hail of police bullets. Patrick Dorismond<\/a> was minding his own business on a Manhattan street in 2000 when Mr. Giuliani\u2019s undercover officers confronted him and shot him dead.<\/p>\n

In one of the disgraceful acts of his or any mayoralty, Mr. Giuliani smeared the victim\u2019s reputation and released part of his juvenile police record, as if to suggest that he deserved to be murdered.<\/p>\n

We can only hope that in the heat and anger of this wretched summer, Americans\u2019 impulse to pull together is stronger than the divisiveness of race-baiting moralists.<\/p>\n

We hope, too, that the violence calls further attention to the tragedy of hypersegregated Chicago, whose South and West Sides are beset by gangs and drugs and generations of isolation and joblessness, and where the police have long had the power to harass and humiliate.<\/p>\n

But the victims of Chicago\u2019s agonies have certainly done their part to try to end them. For years, black Chicagoans have denounced the violence, marched in the streets, pleaded with the authorities for help.<\/p>\n

Their struggle, like the one that raised the national alarm about unjust policing, deserves to be heard and truthfully confronted.<\/p>\n