OPINION:
And you thought Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama and their whole “police are racist against blacks” mantra and messaging were gone.
Now comes a new report from the organization Protect Our Defenders suggesting that blacks are being discriminated against when it comes to the handing down of military punishments.
The group is drawing this conclusion based on its fulfilled Freedom of Information Act request that shows blacks are between 32 percent and 71 percent more likely than whites — depending on the branch of service — to face certain punitive measures than whites.
Raise red flag here.
Numbers don’t lie. But conclusions can, and do.
Just because blacks are recommended for more punishments, or for harsher punishments, or for different punishments than whites doesn’t necessarily mean racism is occurring. It could simply mean blacks are committing more crimes, or more egregious crimes, or different crimes that warrant different punishments, than whites.
Blind — racist? — defenders of the black community don’t want to hear that, of course. But it’s true. Sometimes blacks truly do commit crimes, for which they’re punished accordingly.
Sometimes justice truly is blind.
And sometimes — not to go too far out on a limb here, but let’s be real — sometimes, blacks actually commit more crimes than whites, and more heinous crimes than whites.
Just sayin.’ It can happen. It does happen.
So concluding from simple statistics that racism is occurring, or that a system of justice is biased against blacks, is a bit of a stretch.
Yet this is what Protect Our Defenders is doing.
Here are some of their findings: “Overall, black service members were at least 1.29 times and as much as 2.61 times more likely than white service members to have an action taken against them in an average year.”
In the Air Force, the group found blacks are 1.71 times — 71 percent — “more likely to face court-martial or Non-Judicial Punishment than white airmen.”
In the Marine Corps, blacks are 32 percent more likely to “receive a guilty finding at a court-martial or NJP proceeding” than whites.
In the Navy, blacks are 40 percent more likely “to be referred to special or general court-martial” than whites.
And in the Army, blacks are 61 percent “more likely to face a special or general court-martial” than whites.
The group’s conclusion?
“Racial disparities are present at every level of military disciplinary and justice proceedings … [and] these findings raise questions about racial bias and discrimination among decision-makers in the military justice system,” the group wrote.
Racial disparity does not necessarily mean racism, however.
Another way these “racial disparities” could be looked at is this: They point to discipline problems that are more prevalent in the black military communities than in the white military communities.
And that could raise the question: Why are blacks committing these offenses with greater frequency than whites?
And that could raise the followup question: Do blacks need extra disciplinary training that whites don’t need?
See? Same numbers — different theory. Different conclusion.
But perish such thought. That conclusion actually points fingers inward, at the black community, rather than outward — where leftists in politics and social services oftentimes want them aimed.
Individual accountability, after all, can be painful. It hurts feelings, challenges victim mentalities. And very often, it counters what the left so tightly clings to and circles, when it comes time for making policy, or collecting from potential donors: the notion of America as inherently racist.
The notion that addressing this racism requires social justice training.
And ultimately, the notion that government intervention is needed to address this inherent racism and train the the country in the social justice way it should go. Wait for it, wait for it. Social justice, racial justice, to the far left means more affirmative actions, more spread-the-wealth policies, more regulation of free market and free will.
This is what Obama, Holder, Lynch and their ilk pressed for the last eight years, putting the fear of God into some police in performing their duties, driving forward policies to reform jails and courts so fewer blacks would face arrests and prosecutions.
They’re gone. But apparently, their legacies are lasting. And now our nation’s militaries are under attack to comply and cower to leftist-leaning visions of what constitutes justice — which, as we all know, is actually injustice.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.