Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani thinks black Americans need to worry less about police violence and more about teaching their children to respect police and fear other black people.
In light of the killings of five police officers in Dallas last week, Giuliani went off on the Black Lives Matter movement, in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. He called the slogan “inherently racist” and “anti-American,” while neglecting statistics that show black people are disproportionately targeted by police.
“There’s too much violence in the black community,” he said. “[I]f you want to deal with this on the black side, you’ve got to teach your children to be respectful to the police and you’ve got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police; the real danger to them, 99 out of 100 times, 9,900 out of 1,000 times, are other black kids who are gonna kill them. That’s the way they’re gonna die.”
While the majority of people of any race shot to death in the U.S. are killed by other civilians, not police officers, Giuliani’s statement ignores that black men are disproportionately affected by police shootings. An ongoing Washington Post tally found that 40 percent of the unarmed men shot and killed by police last year were black, despite black men accounting for only 6 percent of the population.
But Giuliani didn’t stop there.
“If I were a black father and I was concerned about the safety of my child ― really concerned about it and not in a politically activist sense ― I would say be very respectful to police, most of them are good, some can be very bad and just be very careful. I’d also say be very careful of those kids in the neighborhood, don’t get involved with them, because son, there’s a 99 percent chance they’re going to kill you not the police.”
Things got heated when host John Dickerson tried to correct Giuliani’s claims that Black Lives Matter protesters encourage killing police officers.
“They sing rap songs about killing police officers and they talk about killing police officers and they yell it out at their rallies,” Giuliani said when Dickerson interjected.
Giuliani made similar comments during an appearance on MSNBC Live on Friday, when he claimed that “there’s a target on police officers’ backs ... because of groups like Black Lives Matter.”
On Sunday, Dallas police chief David Brown said the Dallas shooter, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, had no apparent ties to the Black Lives Matter movement, which calls for rooting out systemic racism and police brutality against black people. The chief added that their investigation shows Johnson was likely planning these attacks before officers killed Philando Castile, 32, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, earlier last week.
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