Today Queen Latifah declared that “racism is alive and kicking”, well…actually it’s not! It is alive alright, but it is alive and grasping at straws. It is desperately flailing in the wind. Some people are emotionally invested in the idea of a racist country. They long to channel their inner activist. They nostalgically look at the sixties, and they yearn for an opportunity to be a part of something like that. It helps give meaning to their lives. All of the evidence that black people are persecuted is contrary to what they claim, so they dance and do a jig when these high profile cases get in the news. They rejoice at the opportunity to say “see I told you so, there is the proof”. They are quite willing to use these unfortunate situations as their “moment to shine”.

These people should change their slogan to “Black Lives Matter Sometimes” or better yet, “Black Lives Matter When Shot by White Cops-or Any Cop,” because they are quite willing to ignore the carnage that happens in the black community on a daily basis. Many of these folks are guided purely by emotion. No matter how the data contradicts there dogma, they continue to feed into the narrative that black people are under siege. No one ever questions what role the victims played in their own demise. Without the facts being known, everyone automatically defaults to the position that the police are at fault. It is sad, because as long as black people continue to be told that someone else is to blame for their problems, that the system is against them, that they are victims; the problems will persist. It may sound cynical to say that some people do not wish to see the problems solved because many of them profit from the race grievance industry. It is their “bread and butter”. Some get votes, some get money for their action committees, others get to make appearances on TV, while others get to shake down businesses to help “bring awareness to the issues”.

At the risk of being redundant, it must be said again that we do black people no favors when we refuse to hold them to the same high standards of accountability that we expect of others. Police work is dangerous by nature. The sphere in which the police must operate is precarious, and a very large number of the people with whom they interact are from the dregs of society. Many of them present a clear risk to the lives of the police, and very often; the police simply cannot afford to be warm and fuzzy with them, and need to always be alert and in response mode. One way to lessen the prospect of these unfortunate situations happening is for the police to pull back on patrols in these communities where they are likely to happen, but this will negatively affect the people in these communities whom they are supposed to protect.

It must be said again that the police are not perfect and there will be instances when the bad ones do terrible things, but the idea that the police are decisively targeting black men is nonsense. Someone needs say these things. There is no panacea where racism does not exist, there will be more negative exchanges with the police, there will be instances when the police are at fault, and the way that black people respond to adversity will help to determine how we move forward as a country. Look at the way that men like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi conducted themselves in the face of far greater challenges than these. It is time to get off the victim train, embark on a movement of reconciliation and join the community of Americans citizens.