WSJ's Jason Riley: Anti-Police Narrative Harms Poor Blacks

The real tragedy in Ferguson is that the continued focus by liberal commentators and black leaders, such as Al Sharpton, on the number of blacks killed by police officers actually does more harm to the black poor they claim they want to help, says Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley.

"We now know that Michael Brown was much more of a menace than a martyr, but that won’t stop liberals from pushing an anti-police narrative that harms the black poor in the name of helping them," he writes.

Riley cites Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics which show homicide is the leading cause of death among young black men.

Despite the statistical evidence, the narrative pushed by liberals that the police are responsible for the high number of deaths of young black men survives, says Riley.

"And while you’d never know it watching MSNBC, the police are not to blame. Blacks are just 13 percent of the population but responsible for a majority of all murders in the U.S., and more than 90 percent of black murder victims are killed by other blacks," he continues.

Those statistics contribute to the tensions between black men and law enforcement and "so long as young black men are responsible for an outsize portion of violent crime, they will be viewed suspiciously by law enforcement and fellow citizens of all races," says Riley, who is the author of the recently-released book, "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed".

But many black liberals would prefer to focus on the behavior of whites, rather than on the crimes committed by blacks.

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