Black Lives Don’t Matter to BLM: Thousands More Killed by Homicide Since 2020

Written by Daniel Horowitz

It had even more corporate and cultural support than the vaccines and Ukraine. It was the greatest juggernaut in politics that even ensnared many Republican politicians. Yet never have we seen a movement that accomplished the opposite of what it was purported to do in such a short time frame. It turns out that as a result of the BLM-induced crime wave, reversing a generation-long trend of reduced crime, there were thousands of excess black homicide victims, a body count that is still climbing.

Hannah Meyers, director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News’ Emma Colton that there were nearly 2,500 excess black murders in 2020 over the previous year and the 10-year average. Here is a breakdown of the data from Fox:

In 2019, at least 7,484 Black Americans were murdered. That number shot up to at least 9,941 murders in 2020, meaning there was an increase of 2,457 Black Americans murdered over the previous year.

The number of Black murders was also far higher than White murders in 2020. The FBI data shows there 7,043 White people murdered that year, meaning 2,898 more Black people were killed compared to Whites.

Between 2010 and 2019, there was an average of 5,954 White murders, which is roughly 16% lower than the 10-year average of Black murders. During that same time period, an average of 6,927 Black Americans were murdered each year, meaning Black murders shot up by 43% in 2020 compared to the previous 10-year average.

What is evident from this analysis is that there were two periods of abnormal increases in black homicides: one in 2015 after Ferguson and Freddie Gray and then a much sharper increase in 2019 with George Floyd. In other words, every time they promote the anti-police and anti-incarceration message, it backfires, and black people are harmed the most.

Preliminary numbers from 2021 show an even greater increase in homicides. And given that major cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia set new records, it’s very likely that black victims accounted for an even greater share of the excess.

Republicans stupidly squandered the Trump years trying to outflank the Democrats on de-incarceration in an effort to pander to the black vote. They wrongly focused on the fact that blacks are disproportionately incarcerated, even though that is an unfortunate reflection of the crime rate. What they should have focused on is that black victims of crime are disproportionately affected by jailbreak policies. Despite composing just 13 percent of the population, they account for the majority of the homicide victims. Releasing career criminals ensures that the body count goes up.

Just how badly did the establishment Republicans misread the politics of crime? In a recent Pew Research poll, when asked an open-ended question about the most important issue to their community, the black respondents chose crime and violence as the No. 1 issue, even ahead of the economy. Just 3 percent chose racism! This trend persisted across most groups, with every age group over 30 choosing violence over the economy as the top issue of concern. “Violence or crime is the most mentioned issue among both those who say being Black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves (18 percent) and those who say being Black is not as important to how they think about themselves (13 percent),” concluded Pew.

Not surprisingly, income and education status played a role:

Black adults with a college degree or higher are less likely (14 percent) than those with lower educational attainment (18 percent) to say violence or crime is the most important issue in their community. Meanwhile, the top community issue mentioned among Black adults with lower or middle incomes is violence or crime (20 percent among lower income, 16 percent among middle income).

Thus, elitist Republicans and Democrats who are only around high-income college-educated white people couldn’t care less about crime because many of them live in gated neighborhoods. So they can afford to virtue-signal over incarcerating black criminals while ignoring the plight of the victims of crime.

In reality, if policymakers really wanted to help black communities, they’d deal with the most important factor leading to both the disproportionate rate of criminal behavior and victimhood among black people: gang violence. According to the FBI, “Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of crimes in many communities.” A decade ago, it was estimated that 1.4 million gang members from over 33,000 gangs “are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and up to 90 percent in several others.” Again, given that most victims of violent crime are African-American and most gang recruiting is in their neighborhoods, the gangs are the biggest security threat to black neighborhoods.

Most of these individuals are career violent criminals who are often picked up on gun crimes. Yet the same politicians who claim to detest guns will give these criminals a slap on the wrist. It is by that pool of criminals that the blood of African-Americans is spilled in big cities every day.

A group of Yale doctors recently published an article in the British Medical Journal titled, “Racism as a leading cause of death in the United States.” “The excess deaths associated with race can be understood as a toll that is in large part a result of racism in the United States,” lectured the pediatricians in what should be a medical journal. “There is no biological reason, independent of social context, that Black people should die younger than White people.”

Indeed, they are correct. It is the obsessive racism that focuses on color of skin rather than justice, deterring crime, and punishing career criminals that is most responsible for homicide being the leading cause of death for black people under 35, according to the CDC. The homicide rate for black males 18-34 was 17.7 times higher than the rate for white males the same age. How come nobody cares about that disparity? Well, therein lies the ultimate racism.

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of TheBlaze and host of the Conservative Review podcast. He writes on the most decisive battleground issues of our times, including the theft of American sovereignty through illegal immigration, the theft of American liberty through tyranny, and the theft of American law and order through criminal justice “reform.”