#AllLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter, and now #MaleLivesMatter? It seems people are coming up with anything to undermine the fact that #BlackLivesMatter.
Former Arkansas Governor and Fox News host Mike Huckabee interviewed with Fox on July 9 (shortly after the deaths of two Black men killed by police officers: Alton Sterling and Philando Castile) where he said “more white people have been shot by police officers this past year than minorities,” and The Washington Post didn’t take that alleged statistic lightly. In fact, they fact-checked it.
The results? Inconsistent.
Although the technicality of the statistic is correct, Huckabee failed to consider other important factors.
The Washington Post cited 990 fatal police shootings in 2015, 948 of which were male, 494 were white, and 258 were Black. Thus, making the former governor’s claims true—in a sense. However, there are fewer minorities than there are white people, therefore the numbers have to be adjusted to the population of the place where those shootings took place.
After considering those factors, Blacks were three times as likely to be killed by police considering they make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, with Black men comprising six percent of that, per Washington Post reports.
Huckabee responded to The Washington Post finding inconsistencies in his statement, stating:
“It’s not me that needs to be ‘fact checked.’ It’s the Post–I only said exactly what YOU reported. My comments were 100 percent factual. The pure facts also reveal that 94 percent of those killed by police are men, so by your ‘proportional’ standards, the real movement in America should be ‘Male Lives Matter.'”
Had the former governor focused on the issue at hand, which was the continuation of a pattern of disregard for the lives of Black men by police officers, maybe he wouldn’t have talked himself into such an inaccurate and callous statement. But now, hopefully with full knowledge of the reality of the situation, Huckabee will understand the significance and absolute necessity for the Black Lives Matter movement.
