Congressional hearings are rarely productive, so you knew exactly what to expect when it was Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s turn on Tuesday to question Attorney General William Barr.
“I ask you this question,” said Jackson Lee. “‘Does the Trump Justice Department seek to end systemic racism and racism in law enforcement? I just need a yes or no answer.”
I know that liberals and the news media now take it for granted that America is, as Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “a racist society from top to bottom,” but that’s not a sentiment that everyone shares. Not all of us are ready to shame ourselves without being confronted with proof that the vast majority of problems faced by black people in the United States are driven by policies and systems rather than personal choices and cultural factors.
Barr answered Jackson Lee by saying that the Trump administration would obviously enforce all civil rights laws, but she cut him off to ask, “So, you agree there may be systemic racism?”
Ah, there was that popular “systemic racism” catchphrase again. It’s different from “racism” because when you put “systemic” in front, it gains an intellectual heft.
“In where?” said Barr. “I don’t agree that there is a systemic racism in the police department, generally, in the country.”
Wow, what a breath of fresh air. Someone said it!
Thereafter, Jackson Lee rattled off tired stats about how blacks in Minneapolis, where George Floyd died in police custody, have more interactions with police (many of them physically confrontational) despite only representing a minority of the population. But we know why blacks (and other minorities) tend to have more interactions with police. Justice Department data show that black people are involved in more crime. Take homicide as an example: Blacks are both the victims and offenders at a rate six and seven times higher, respectively, than white people.
And the suggestion that police right now exist for the purpose of killing black people around the country is absurd. Cases such as Floyd’s should never occur, but they are not at all common, either. According to the Washington Post, slightly more than 1,000 people were shot and killed by police in 2019. Only one quarter of these were black, and only 13 or possibly 25 (depending on whose count you go by) of those were unarmed. For white people, the number shot and killed by police was nearly double.
The hearing with Barr was naturally a show. Fortunately, he wasn’t there to participate in the racism act that Democrats want.
