I Can't Breathe
Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune provides a thoughtful analysis of how to talk about race and crime.  He points out that the typical black response to Trayvon, Ferguson and Eric Garner and more focuses on a pattern of treatment at the hands of law enforcement that varies on the basis of the color of our skin.  And the typical white (conservative) response is to ask why blacks do not do more to reduce black-on-black crime.

Chapman’s argument would be improved if it were more informed by New Jim Crow and included the ways race accounts for the differential crime statistics themselves, but his piece is worth reading, as far as it goes.

“The Giuliani view omits some vital facts. The epidemic of unarmed blacks being killed by police comes not when black crime is high but when it is low. Homicides committed by African Americans declined by half between 1991 and 2008.

Since the early 1990s, arrests of black juveniles have plunged by more than half. In New York City, where Eric Garner was killed by police, the rate of homicides by blacks is down by 80 percent. In Chicago, where most murders are committed by African Americans, the number last year was the lowest since 1965 — and this year’s could be lower yet.

What is also easy to forget in the denunciation of black crime is that the vast majority of blacks are not criminals. In any given year, less than 5 percent of African Americans are involved in violent crime as perpetrators or victims. The fact that blacks make up a large share of the violent criminal population gives many whites the impression that violent criminals make up a large share of the black population. They don’t.

Why don’t more blacks living in bad neighborhoods learn to behave like sober middle-class suburbanites? One reason is the shortage of stable families, steady incomes, good schools and safe streets.”

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post helps us see the opportunity here.  The president’s call for body cameras is a good move, but the opportunity is larger, because many conservative voices are now also outraged after the Eric Garner grand jury did not indict.

“There are any number of bigger things Obama could do, including alternatives to grand juries. This year, Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker — no liberal — signed first-in-the-nation legislation requiring an outside investigation whenever anybody dies in police custody and a public report if charges are not filed. The president could use his pulpit to push for similar laws in the other states. He could at least demand a national count of police killings, which, scandalously, we still don’t have. Or he could take a broader approach to racial matters and revive a rewrite of elements of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court; there is already bipartisan support for such action.”

While Milbank sees opportunities to problem solve and build national unity at the same time…ESPN framed LeBron and others wearing “I can’t breathe” t-shirts as ‘polarizing athletes’ weighing in on a ‘polarizing issue.’