In Sunday’s Meet The Press, which airs on NBC, Georgetown professor and author Michael Eric Dyson got into a pretty big debate with Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani over the elephant in everyone’s room: race. To be more specific, the two debated about disproportionately white police forces serving far more diverse populations, as presented by the Washington Post.
The cities listed that have a much higher proportion of white police forces than actual white residents are: Compton, Ca; El Paso, TX; Gary, IN; Detroit, MI; Newark, NJ; and Miami Gardens, FL. Moderator, Chuck Todd — after listing the disproportionate cities — asked Guiliani, “How do you make a police force that looks like the community that they serve?”
RUDY GIULIANI: Well, I mean, starting with Mayor Koch, Mayor Dinkins, myself, Mayor Bloomberg, and now Mayor de Blasio, we’ve tried very hard to make the police force in New York City as proportionate as we possibly can. We go out of our way to do that. I think we do a pretty good job. Not a perfect job. But the reality is–
CHUCK TODD: You’re not on this list, so that’s a good thing.
RUDY GIULIANI: Right. I was glad to see that we weren’t, by the way. But the fact is, I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93% of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. We’re talking about the exception here.
Through Giuliani’s explanation, Michael Eric Dyson mentions that it’s more of a trust issue. following with, “First of all, black people who commit crimes against other black people go to jail. Number two, they are not sworn by the police department as an agent of the state to uphold the law. So in both cases, that’s a false equivalency that the mayor has drawn, which is exacerbated tensions that are deeply imbedded in American culture.”
After going back and forth for about thirty seconds, Giuliani ended, saying “White police officers won’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70% of the time.” To which Eric Dyson quickly responded saying, “This is a defense mechanism of white supremacy at work in your mind, sir.”
–Jamaal Fisher (@jamaalfisher)
