Riots in the USA

Listening to the BBC World Service means entering a depressing and infuriating presentation of a left of centre world view, paid for by the British Foreign Office. That's just how it is. It wasn't always nearly so bad. But nevertheless you learn things.

Yesterday an American who had worked for the Obama administration (of course) told the BBC that 1200-1500 people a year die in US at hands of police. Fewer than 20 police officers are prosecuted. This seems shocking and is what should concern Americans, not the colour of the many hundreds of people killed. 

But in fact these killings are not what concern Americans. The race question is what concerns them.

When a Somali-American policewoman killed a white women in Minnesota for what seemed like no good reason few cared. When a white policeman kills a black man riots happen.

And what is interesting is that much of what in England is called the middle class, meaning the comfortably off people with a good education, are on the side of the street and the protesters. Anti-racism is a huge social movement, but I suspect mostly among graduates.

The left-wing press misuse statistics to imply the killings of blacks are because of the colour of their skin, but the evidence is the other way.

Unsurprisingly it's people from the same milieu as the violent criminals who get arrested and sometimes killed.

Nevertheless, for every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crime, three are killed, while for every 10,000 white people arrested for violent crime, four are killed.

Vox found that blacks were 32 percent of those killed by police -- right in between blacks' proportion of the general population (about 13 percent) and blacks' proportion of homicide offenders whose race is known (52 percent).

The key variable is age: The ratio of blacks to whites killed by police is much higher among teens than among older adults. And so is the ratio of blacks to whites identified as homicide offenders, a decent measure of involvement in serious violent crime.

The Black Lives Matter movement was born on Facebook and made great strides during the 2016 election campaign until an African-American sniper at a BLM protest in Dallas on July 7, 2016 killed five police officers and injured nine others and two civilians. 

Today's protests are already violent and involve much looting. I imagine they are being planned by someone rather than spontaneous.

Back in the 1950s, when Americans pointed out the wickedness of Communist regimes, Communists had one reply which they repeated a lot and which Americans found hard to answer,

What about the negroes?

Now, once more, China, Russia and Iran are criticising the USA for its treatment of black people. Some things do not change.

Actually I think we should turn our attention to a much more important and much sadder story, the protests in Hong Kong, against a real evil, Chinese communism.