My qualms with the Black Lives Matter movement

And yet the emphasis remains on a revision of police behaviour, with BLM activists calling for "Pigs in a blanket, we love bacon" and shouting "What do we want? Dead cops!"

Sadly enough, this is exactly what happened in Dallas, as five policemen were shot dead shortly after, with nine left wounded.

Now admittedly, 1184 people did in fact die in the US at the hands of police in 2015, which is an issue in need of increased scrutiny and a more thorough screening process for police employment.

But when looking at the statistics, this number actually represents less than 0.0004% of the US population, and within that fractional percentage, 30% is comprised of black individuals, with whites at 42%. Ironically, Caucasians appear to be the ones met most frequently with deadly force by police, despite the disproportionate crime rates within black communities, which contribute nearly 50% of the country's crime while only constituting 19% of the population.

Some attribute this misrepresentation in incarceration statistics to the increased prevalence of police within the black community, often citing that whilst black and white males may consume roughly the same amount of marijuana, a larger percentage of blacks are arrested. This is an unjust scenario, as the war on drugs ostensibly does more harm than good, and is not itself clean of racist origins.

However, this is more or less an unfortunate by-product of the increased necessity for police within those areas, as edified by the higher, more condensed rates of crime.

The number one cause of death for a young white man is a car crash, while conversely, the number one cause of death for young black men between the ages of 15-24 is homicide, more often than not at the hands of another young black man.

Having heard this fact, would you then suggest a removal of law enforcement in those areas? Would you submit the law abiding citizens in those areas to lawless anarchy and gang rule?

If one instead believed that the issue was due more specifically to Caucasian police officers, or the lack of Black police officers, an inference one could infer from the name of the Black Lives Matter movement, then we should not be ostracising or demonising law enforcement. If we wish to expand the racial diversity of police, then we must instead glorify the idea of law enforcement and attempt to strengthen the image of police held by civilians, in order to entice others into the occupation.

Of course a discussion desperately needs to be had regarding the issues felt by black communities, such as staggering rates of single parenthood, unemployment, low commitment to education and disproportionately high rates of incarceration, but these conversations must be had internally and objectively within the community, without the current digressions onto supposed police brutality or white supremacy that the Black Lives Matter movement espouses.

In fact, if one considers rates of incarceration, education and income to be valid metrics for one's position within a society, then we may see that white supremacy is not as tangible as some may have you believe. Instead, it is in fact Asians who sit atop the podium, constituting only 1.5% of US prisoners, making up 49% of the US college graduates, and having the highest median household income of any racial group at $66,000.

Now knowing that blacks make up a minority of those killed within the 0.0004% US police homicide rate despite committing a majority of the countries crime, I believe it's safe to say that the US does not have an epidemic of racially based police killings.