“The Talk”
14th July 2016
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline lays it out.
African-American leaders and pundits are tripping over themselves talking about “the talk.” For example, in his Dallas speech, President Obama referred to black parents giving their children “’the talk’ about how to respond if stopped by a police officer — ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir.’”
Is there evidence that black parents give their children such a talk more often than white parents? I haven’t seen any.
Nor have I seen evidence that “the talk,” if widely given in the African-American community, is having the desired effect. Michael Brown wasn’t saying “yes sir, no sir” when he twice attacked Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, first in Wilson’s police car and later on the street. Freddy Gray wasn’t saying “yes sir, no sir” when he made a scene and then threw himself about in the police van in West Baltimore.
How about the black teenagers in McKinney, Texas who crashed a pool party and then refused to disperse when the police arrived and told them to? One of the kids repeatedly disobeyed reasonable police orders. Yes, one officer badly overreacted to this incident. However, my point for purposes of this post is that the behavior of the teenagers suggests that either they didn’t get “the talk” or didn’t take it seriously.
Perhaps there ought to be a mandatory viewing of Chris Rock’s video How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police, which is on YouTube.
Mac Donald describes how, in Cincinnati, a small riot broke out in late July 2015 when the police arrived at a drive-by shooting scene where a four-year-old girl had been shot in the head and critically injured. African-American bystanders loudly cursed at officers who had started arresting suspects at the scene on outstanding warrants.
The next month in Ferguson, 18-year-old Tyrone Harris opened fire at police officers, according to law-enforcement officials, and was shot and wounded by police in response. A mostly black crowd pelted the cops with frozen water bottles and rocks, wounding three officers, while destroying three police cars and damaging businesses, Ferguson police said. Some protesters reportedly chanted, “We’re ready for what? We’re ready for war.”
The same month, in Birmingham, Alabama, an officer was beaten unconscious with his own gun by a suspect in a car stop. There was gloating on social media. “Pistol whipped his ass to sleep,” read one Twitter post. The officer later said that he had refrained from using force to defend himself for fear of a media backlash for alleged racism.
All of this is a long way from “yes sir, no sir.”
Sounds to me as if the fault is not with the police.