Staff Column:  Race and Crime, Facts and Emotion
July 14, 2016

Barack Obama II, meet Roland Fryer, Jr.  You are both highly accomplished black men who overcame difficult childhoods to reach the very pinnacle of success.

Fryer, by his own admission a 'full fledged gangster' in his youth, teaches economics at Harvard.  He is, in fact, the youngest black man ever to receive tenure at that celebrated school. 

Professor Fryer and President Obama are both intensely interested in matters of race and crime, but one deals mostly in fact, the other in emotion.

You may have heard about Dr. Fryer's startling research and its conclusion, which he called 'the most surprising result of my career.'

Along with a team of researchers, Fryer scrutinized police brutality in America.  To no one's surprise, he found that black and Hispanic men are more likely to be physically manhandled by police.  Any straight-thinking person knows that in most ways it's tougher to be black in America than white. 

But to almost everyone's surprise, the meticulously researched paper found no disparity when it comes to deadly encounters. 

Dr. Fryer's astonishing conclusion:  'On the most extreme use of force - officer-involved shootings - we find no racial differences.'

Author and policy analyst Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute is another brilliant researcher who deals in facts.  She has studied the intersection of race and crime perhaps more than anyone in America, and her findings are not exactly pleasing to the Black Lives Matter crew and their ideological soul mates.

Ms. Mac Donald contends that the entire Black Lives Matter movement is 'based on fiction' that goes way beyond the lies told in in Ferguson.  She has discovered that 40% of cop-killers in America are black and that police use deadly force against black suspects far less frequently than the racial arsonists claim.

Those are the facts, just the facts, as put forth by two of the nation's most respected scholars.  On the other hand, President Obama often prefers to skip over the facts and appeal to raw emotion. 

During a somber memorial service this week for cops mowed down in Dallas by a black killer, the president injected politics.  The man just can't help himself.

'We choose to under-invest in decent schools,' President Obama declared.  Well, in his adopted city of Chicago, the public school system spends about $17,000 per student each year.  In Washington, DC, school spending is $18,000 per student, while in Utah it's less than $7,000.  Have you noticed all the gang-bangers and drive-by shootings in Salt Lake City and Provo?

President Obama also claimed that in some communities 'it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.'

Is he for real?  Where are those communities, Mr. President?  Show us one, just one.  Hyperbole is one thing, outright deceit is another.  For the record, Chicago has 80 public library branches, and many of them are actually known to have books.  Even computers, or so we hear. 

One day after his Dallas eulogy, President Obama invited some 'civil rights leaders' to the White House for another of his countless 'dialogues.'  On the plus side, there were mayors, ministers, and police chiefs.

But, shamefully, the confab also included the notorious Al Sharpton and two co-founders of the odious Black Lives Matter terrorist group.  That entire deadly movement was erected on the foundation of 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot,' which we now know was a grotesque lie.

So here's a simple idea, Mr. President.  Next time you decide to have a meeting about race and policing, how about inviting Heather MacDonald, Roland Fryer, and others who actually deal in facts.  Yes, even facts that aren't always comfortable or convenient.

Is your goal to amp up fear and anger in order to rally the base and enhance your street cred?  Or would you rather take a sober look at an issue that is vexing America and threatening to tear our nation apart?

President Obama, it's your call.

Posted by BillOReilly.com Staff at 11:48 AM
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Staff Column:  Race and Crime, Facts and Emotion
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