For the past week I have been watching the spectacle of mainly young, Black men across the nation jumping up and down on my TV screen and shouting that "Black Lives Matter," while others are waving signs in my face expressing the same sentiment. But is this really true -- do Black lives really matter? If they do, shouldn't this be reflected in Black communities across the country? Shouldn't we see a level of love and concern for those of their own race in the parts of town where they live? Let's take a look at the facts.

When Stacey Abrams lost her bid for Georgia governor last November, she explained away her loss with the common liberal talking point that racism deprived her fellow African-Americans and other minorities of their fundamental right to vote. Her campaign was largely focused on turning out the minority vote.

In contrast, her silence was deafening concerning a far more potent factor holding down the Black vote: namely, the staggering number of abortions in the Black community. The inconvenient truth of “Black genocide” significantly decreased the potential black population of Georgia over the past fifty years. According to recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics, while African-Americans constitute 32.2 percent of Georgia’s population, 62.4 percent of abortions in Georgia are performed on African-American women. By contrast, whites constitute 60.8 percent of the Georgia population, but only 24.7 percent of abortions were performed on white women. Even pro-abortion groups like the Guttmacher Institute admit that “black women are more than 5 times as likely as white women to have an abortion.”

The situation is even more grim in New York. Sixty-seven percent of African-American teenagers’ pregnancies end in abortion in that state. New York has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, and one of the highest abortion rates. Forty-one percent of all babies conceived by residents of New York are aborted.

According to New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan:

"If 41% of New York babies are aborted, with the percentage even higher in the Bronx and among our African-American babies in the world, it is downright chilling."

What about nation-wide? The national disparity in Black abortions is even more staggering. Overall, African-American women account for 36.4 percent of all pregnancy terminations in the United States, although Blacks make up only 13 percent of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency attributes the higher abortion rate among Blacks to a higher incidence of unintended pregnancies.

According to an article in The Daily Caller, African-American teenagers have an abortion rate of over double the national average. Black teenagers (in the 15- to 19-year-old age group) have an abortion rate of 41 per 1,000. The national average is 18 per 1,000 among 15- to 19-year-olds. White teenagers have an abortion rate of 10 per 1,000 women, which means that African-American teenagers are having abortions at a rate that is four times that of white teenagers.

These abortion numbers have curtailed population increases in the African-American community. Michael Novak calculated in 2002 that without the incidence of abortion, the African-American population would show at least a 36-percent increase. Even this number does not take into account the number of children who may have been born to those who were aborted.

In its endorsement of Abrams, Planned Parenthood referred to her as an “unwavering champion for reproductive health and rights.” In proudly accepting their endorsement, Ms. Abrams emphasized that she would “not whisper” her campaign’s pro-choice position, proclaiming that abortion would be a “proud and central facet” of her campaign and governance. By aligning herself with Planned Parenthood’s agenda, Abrams ignored the warnings of community pastors such as Clenard Childress, Jr., who warned, “If the current trend [of abortions in the Black community] continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant.”

Abrams’s strong support of Planned Parenthood highlights either her hypocrisy or her lack of knowledge concerning abortion’s devastating effect on the African-American population. This is also true for the myriad Black-led liberal groups (such as the Congressional Black Caucus) that unequivocally endorse Planned Parenthood, the number-one killer within the African-American community. In spite of overall falling abortion rates in the U.S., numbers released in 2018 by the CDC reveal that in certain time periods studied, for example 2007 to 2010, abortion ratios actually increased among Black women as compared to white women. The abortion ratios of the latter decreased. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control point out that nearly half of all pregnancies among Black women end in abortion (472 per 1,000), while among white women only 16 percent of pregnancies are aborted (161 per 1,000). In New York City, where Planned Parenthood is headquartered, more Black babies are aborted than are born alive (1,180 abortions for every 1,000 live births).

Culture and the Supreme Court

When the sexual revolution took off in the 1960s, the federal government -- and especially the Supreme Court -- began to help dismantle the traditional family structure. In 1960, the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive (Enovid), leading to an increase in sex without parenthood. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down laws against contraception for married couples by creating a constitutional “right to privacy,” premised on a previously unknown “penumbra” of constitutional rights. In Baird v. Eisenstadt (1972), the Court extended this right of privacy to any individual, without regard to marital status, by legalizing contraception for all persons. However, to overcome any failures of contraception, the Court shortly thereafter determined that abortion would become a viable second option to avert the birth of a child.

Recognizing that contraception alone would not necessarily prevent conception, in the very next year, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (1973) fundamentally deconstructed human sexuality by separating procreative behavior from procreation. The Supreme Court further extended the right to privacy by striking down state laws against abortion. The Court thus either reinforced or created a cultural momentum toward the deconstruction of marriage and family (to which the creation of “no-fault divorce” in 1970 also contributed.)

Of course, the idea of abolishing the procreative family as a social unit is an ancient one, going back to Plato’s Republic and reappearing at intervals throughout history. However, it has truly gained momentum since the 1960s. Sex became a recreational activity thanks to people like Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who helped radically change the social values and mores of America. “The percentage (of American adults) who believed premarital sex among adults was ‘not wrong at all’ was 29 percent in the early 1970s, 42 percent in the 1980s and 1990s, 49 percent in the 2000s, and 58 percent between 2010 and 2012.” The resulting narcissistic cultural climate became one of absolute individuality.

The single life has now become preferred to marriage (as has marriage without parenthood). Unmarried women now outnumber the married, and the idea of self-marriage or sologamy has begun to be reported. “Last year, the U.S. marriage rate reached a 93-year low,” reported a 2015 Archives of Sexual Behavior study. “With more Americans spending more of their young adulthood unmarried, they have more opportunities to engage in sex with more partners and less reason to disapprove of non-marital sex.”

Abortion’s Impact upon the African-American Community

Interestingly, as journalist Jason Riley (who happens to be Black) points out, at the time of Roe v. Wade “blacks were less likely than whites to support abortion.” However, a 2017 Pew Research Center survey now shows Blacks as the leading proponents of abortion rights, with 62 percent favoring legal abortion.

According to Riley,

"Social scientists aren’t sure why black attitudes toward abortion have changed. One theory is that as more blacks migrated out of the conservative Deep South and settled in other regions of the country with more liberal views on reproductive rights, their attitudes changed accordingly. Another possibility is that people with higher incomes and more education tend to be pro-choice, and since the early 1970s the socioeconomic status of blacks has increased dramatically."

Most liberals reject these explanations, countering that Black women are more likely than women of other races to live in poverty. Citing poverty as the driving factor, liberal advocates for abortion, such as the Guttmacher Institute, point to inadequate access to health care in the Black community as a consequence of its poverty and the cause of its high abortion rates.

Pro-life leaders in the Black community disagree. Observing that “the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb,” they argue that abortion (often referred to as “population control”) is “the most institutionalized form of racism” in America. The Rev. Walter Hoye, founder of the Issues for Life Foundation, points out the ominous implications of the high Black abortion rate. He warns that because the Black fertility rate is well below the replacement rate of 2.1, “within a few decades, African-Americans may well be an endangered species.”

Indeed, pro-life advocates have consistently argued that Blacks have been specifically targeted by the abortion industry. After all, in 1939, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, stated her desire to “exterminate the Negro population.” Margaret Sanger has a dubious racial record that includes speaking at KKK meetings and permitting racist authors to contribute to her publication. Part of her motivation to legalize birth control was to cut down on births among the “unfit,” which included the Black population.

In one of her publications, she said, “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”

She plotted to market birth control to the Black community in order to lower their birth rate:

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

African-American pro-life groups also seek to raise awareness of Planned Parenthood’s racist roots.

In fact, research done a few years ago by the Life Issues Institute found that “79 percent of abortion-offering Planned Parenthood facilities are within walking distance of black or Hispanic neighborhoods,” and “62 percent are near black neighborhoods.”

Defenders of Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, counter these statistics by arguing that Planned Parenthood “runs as a business so that the motivation is to locate abortion clinics most strategically.” Monique Chireau, a professor at Duke University School of Medicine, argued that this location disparity was not motivated by racism but by supply and demand, explaining that Planned Parenthood is “going to locate themselves where their business model is going to thrive.”

But that still does not answer the question: why is demand for abortion greater among African-Americans? Statistics do seem to show that African-Americans have more sexual interaction than Caucasians. According to a report in the Daily Beast, “African-Americans have 8.2 percent more sex than Caucasians,” and other research finds that many Blacks “object to the use of condoms” as a contraceptive device. Yet an 8.2-percent disparity in sexual activity alone cannot account for a five-fold difference in abortion rates between Blacks and whites.

Msgr. Charles Pope argues that “the breakdown of the black family” first identified by Daniel Patrick Moynihan has also increased abortion in the African-American community. Although he notes that “the breakdown of the Black Family is complicated,” he points out that “A huge factor is the welfare system, which has and continues to reward single parent scenarios and punishes marriage.” To support his thesis, he cites the “astounding fact” that only 37 percent of Black women have ever been married. However, as noted above, rising rates of singlehood are not restricted to the Black community

Importance of Shared Traditional Values

When it comes to abortion, the shared values of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are clear. The foundational principles of the Noahide Code declare that prenatal life cannot be disposed of at will; every unborn child is fashioned in the image of YEHOVAH God. There is a clear biblical prohibition against killing a fetus based on the injunction in Genesis 9:6 against shedding the blood of a person. Even apart from biblical revelation, reason leads to the inescapable, absolute truth that it is always wrong to kill intentionally an innocent human being. Clearly, no one is more innocent than an unborn child.

These universal values -- accessible via both reason and revelation -- make the protection of all human life paramount, inside the womb or out, regardless of race.

Other Issues in the Black Community

Aside from the abortion question, are there other indications that might put into question the slogan that "Black Lives Matter"? President Barack Obama has no problem making disgusting, untrue assertions about cops being racist at a funeral for murdered cops, yet does not give major speeches on the epidemic of Black-on-Black crime. Here are seven statistics about Black-on-Black crime that the president will not address.

1). Data shows that 93 percent of Black homicide victims are killed by other Blacks.

The left’s rebuttal is that that 84 percent of white homicide victims are killed by other whites, but The Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Riley points out that the white crime rate is “much lower than the Black rate.”

2). According to Riley, “Blacks commit violent crimes at 7 to 10 times the rate that whites do.”

Blacks committed 52 percent of homicides between 1980 and 2008, despite composing just 13 percent of the population. Across the same timeframe, whites committed 45 percent of homicides while composing 77% of the population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Here are some more statistics from the FBI:

In 2013, the FBI has Black criminals carrying out 38 per cent of murders, compared to 31.1 per cent for whites. The offender’s race was “unknown” in 29.1 per cent of cases.

What about violent crime more generally? FBI arrest rates are one way into this. Over a recent three years of data -- 2011 to 2013 -- 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were Black.

3). Black crime is even more prevalent in the country’s largest cities and counties.

Heather Mac Donald writes in her book The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe that in Chicago, IL, Blacks committed 76 percent of all homicides, despite composing 35 percent of the city’s population. Blacks also accounted for 78 percent of all juvenile arrests. Whites, who compose 28 percent of the city’s population, committed 4 percent of its homicides and 3.5 percent of its juvenile arrests. Hispanics, who compose 30 percent of the city’s population, committed 19 percent of its homicides and 18 percent of its juvenile arrests. (Another eye-opening fact from Mac Donald’s research is that only 26 percent of murder cases were solved in Chicago.)

Blacks are 10 percent of the population in Los Angeles, CA, but commit 42 percent of its robberies and 34 percent of its felonies. Whites make up 29 percent of the city’s population, and commit 5 percent of its robberies and 13 percent of its felonies.

In New York City, Blacks committed “75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime,” despite only composing 23 percent of the population, said Mac Donald in a Hillsdale speech. Additionally, 2009 Bureau of Justice Statistics numbers show that in 2009, “blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties.”

4). There were almost 6,000 Blacks killed by other Blacks in 2015.

By contrast, only 258 Blacks were killed by police gunfire that year.

5). The percentage of Blacks arrested for crimes is consistent with police reports.

This is according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, as well as this 1985 study:

“Even allowing for the existence of discrimination in the criminal justice system, the higher rates of crime among black Americans cannot be denied,” wrote James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein in their classic 1985 study, “Crime and Human Nature.” “Every study of crime using official data shows blacks to be overrepresented among persons arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for street crimes.” This was true decades before the authors put it to paper, and it remains the case decades later.

“The overrepresentation of blacks among arrested persons persists throughout the criminal justice system,” wrote Wilson and Herrnstein. “Though prosecutors and judges may well make discriminatory judgments, such decisions do not account for more than a small fraction of the overrepresentation of blacks in prison.”

This data disproves the notion that racism is what drives higher rates of arrests among the blacks than among whites or broader America.

6). According to Riley, “Black crime rates were lower in the 1940s and 1950s, when black poverty was higher” and “racial discrimination was rampant and legal.”

If it’s not racism and poverty that are blame for the high Black crime rate, then what is?

7). According to Mac Donald, “A straight line can be drawn between family breakdown and youth violence.”

As economist Thomas Sowell points out, before the 1960s “most black children were raised in two-parent families.” In 2013, over 72 percent of Blacks were born out of wedlock. In Cook County -- which Chicago belongs to -- 79 percent of Blacks were born to single mothers in 2003, while only 15 percent of whites were born to single mothers.

“Until that gap closes, the crime gap won’t close, either,” writes Mac Donald.

The George Floyd Incident

The Floyd killing has been injected into the bien pensant narrative of innocent, unarmed Black men murdered by cops. But the number of unarmed Black men killed by police is vanishingly small. As Mac Donald notes, there were 7,407 Black homicide victims in the United States in 2018, the last year for which final numbers are available. Assuming a comparable number in 2019, the nine unarmed men killed in police shootings would represent just 0.1 percent of Black homicides.

In stark contrast, she asserts, “a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

The media, the bipartisan political class, the academy, and the commentariat concoct their “systemic,” “institutional,” “unconscious” racism fiction by statistical tunnel vision: We must conclude that African Americans -- in particular, young Black men -- are being targeted by police because the percentage of killings of Blacks significantly over-represents the Black population. It makes no sense, however, to look only at the percentage of Blacks involved in police shootings, as if it were the only attribute that mattered -- as if it were the only attribute by which Blacks are overrepresented compared to their percentage of the overall population.

While African Americans are involved in two times more police shootings than their percentage of the population would seem to warrant, they commit 53 percent of murders and 60 percent of robberies -- well over four times their percentage of the population. The political establishment would have you assume this statistical disparity is caused by institutional racism that myopically beams police attention onto Black men. This is a lie because we know the statistics accurately reflect reality because crimes get reported by victims -- a large percentage of whom are Black (also outstripping their share of the overall population).

If you just focus on interracial crime, though, Mac Donald (writing this time in the City Journal) has crunched those numbers. “Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations.” This, she qualifies, excludes interracial homicide. Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff fills in that blank: “Blacks commit around 70 percent of black-white interracial homicides.” For this, he draws on FBI crime statistics for 2016. They show that, of 776 Black–white homicides, Blacks committed 533 and whites 243. Neither of these numbers, by the way, nor their combined total, comes anywhere close to the number of Blacks killed by Blacks: a staggering 2,570 -- the overwhelming majority male. That makes the "Stop Killing Us" signs in the demonstrations meaningless. To have any meaning at all, the signs should be turned around to face the demonstrators themselves, because it is their own people that are killing them, not the police, not whitey, not the establishment -- their own people.

So, with these irrefutable statistics in mind, let me ask the question again, do Black lives really matter? Apparently not -- according to the Black community itself! If the lives of their own people mattered you would see a community effort to face and recognize the inherent problems within their populace. They would be looking at themselves in a collective mirror and posing the questions, "Why is there so much violence in our community?" "Why has any form of self-control and self-discipline disappeared from among the youngsters in our community?" "Why is there such an horrendous abortion rate in our community?" "Why are so many young men being raised by single parents?" "Why are so many Black men murdering each other in cities such as Chicago and Detroit?" All you get are Black leaders, such as so-called Baptist minister Al Sharpton, making divisive speeches and comments, and pushing the blame off on to the shoulders of anyone that comes into his deluded mind. (Incidentely, Sharpton's net worth is a reported $500 thousand, which hardly places him in the same economic level as probably 99% of his Black countrymen!)   

Unless and until the Black community actually faces and attempts to find solutions to these problems, do not get in my face and chant that Black Lives Matter, and then go out and riot, loot, burn down stores and attack the police and innocent people. Your mantra is then absolutely devoid of any meaning.

 

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