Van Jones: Five Black Officers Who Beat Black Memphian Tyre Nichols Might’ve Been Motivated by Racism
“…unfortunately, African-Americans can also be guilty of hatred and bias and bigotry against other African-Americans. Sometimes you go into a store owned by an African-American, they’re nice to the white folks and suspicious of you.”
Unfortunately, racism still exists in this world, and we see examples of it in the news and sometimes in real life nearly every day.
But also unfortunate is the need for political commentators and other prominent public figures to cry “racism” where none exists as if every slight (perceived or real) experienced by a person of color and every act of violence committed against a person of color happened because the person was black, Hispanic, etc.
Predictably, we’ve seen that exact scenario play out in response to the Tyre Nichols case out of Memphis, TN.
Nichols, who was 29 years old, was pulled over in a traffic stop on January 7, 2023 by Memphis police on grounds that he was allegedly driving recklessly. At some point after he was pulled out of his car and officers attempted to subdue him on the pavement with a stun gun, Nichols attempted to flee but was severely beaten by police officers after they caught up with him.
He was hospitalized and died three days later. Videos showing parts of what happened were released Friday.
Nichols was black. All five now-ex-officers, who are now facing a host of charges including second-degree murder, are black:
BREAKING: Five Memphis police officers have been terminated for their involvement in the arrest of #TyreNichols.
29-year-old Nichols died following multiple “confrontations” during a traffic stop with MPD on Jan 7. https://t.co/VOZAhwPVwu pic.twitter.com/FFKmquEoDk
— Bria Jones WREG (@BriaJonesTV) January 21, 2023
You would think that after learning earlier this week that the officers involved were the same race as the victim The Usual Suspects would find an avenue other than “racism” to travel down in this particular case.
But that’s not what happened at all. Shortly before the video was released, CNN commentator and former Obama environmental advisor Van Jones penned a piece published on CNN’s website which declared that the officers “might still” be guilty of racism even though they were black and Nichols was black:
How can @TheBabylonBee compete with @VanJones68? pic.twitter.com/Rqg09bpYXc
— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) January 27, 2023
In the piece, Jones suggests—incredibly—that “at the end of the day, it is the race of the victim who is brutalized — not the race of the violent cop — that is most relevant in determining whether racial bias is a factor in police violence.”
Further, Jones claims that black police officers can sometimes be influenced and conditioned by the behavior their white colleagues sometimes show towards black suspects and certain communities and then react in a similar fashion when they’re face to face with black suspects:
Black cops are often socialized in police departments that view certain neighborhoods as war zones. In those departments, few officers get disciplined for dishing out “street justice” in certain precincts — often populated by Black, brown or low-income people — where there is a tacit understanding that the “rulebook” simply doesn’t apply.
Cops of all colors, including Black police officers, internalize those messages — and sometimes act on them. In fact, in Black neighborhoods, the phenomenon of brutal Black cops singling out young Black men for abuse is nothing new.
Jones made a similar argument during a segment on CNN Friday night where all involved including the supposedly objective host agreed that when it came right down to it, rogue black cops could be just as racist towards black people as rogue white cops could:
LAURA COATES [host]: Five black officers charged in the killing of an unarmed black man. Now, we often have conversations, Van, about the element of race and the racial dynamic in policing, but I think we all know quite well that when it comes to the power, blue trumps black. The idea of the race of the person who is victimized often more telling than the race of the aggressor. What is your reaction?
VAN JONES: Yeah, I think it is really important because there’s this very simplistic notion that says, well, if a white cop is doing something to unarmed black person, then that’s racism, but we sometimes forget, unfortunately, African-Americans can also be guilty of hatred and bias and bigotry against other African-Americans. Sometimes you go into a store owned by [an] African-American, they’re nice to the white folks and suspicious of you. It’s not that only one group can harbor anti-black bias. It is so pervasive and so the other thing that happens, certain neighborhoods are just considered almost by some police departments, war zones, anything goes over there, just do what you have to do.
Watch:
Van Jones reacts to the horrible video of Tyre Nichols by trying to inject racial politics into it, "we sometimes forget, unfortunately, African-Americans can also be guilty of hatred and bias and bigotry against other African-Americans…. race is an element here" pic.twitter.com/e0sg1lF9kP
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) January 28, 2023
Absolutely no one reading this will be surprised to learn that this narrative is also being pushed by other woke leftists, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maxwell Frost, former Congressman Mondaire Jones, and serial race-baiter Jemele Hill:
If you think the Memphis police officers had to be white in order to exhibit anti-Blackness, you need to take that AP African American Studies course Ron DeSantis just banned.
— Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) January 28, 2023
Doesn't matter what color those police officers are. The murder of Tyre Nichols is anti-Black and the result of a system built on white supremacy. 🧵
— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) January 28, 2023
The effort to separate the officers who murdered Tyre Nichols from the system of policing that produced them is palpable.
Police killings in the US reached a record high in 2022. That has only been rewarded with more funding at the expense of schools, hospitals, housing, & more.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 28, 2023
“How can it be racist if the police are Black?”
BECAUSE THE INSTITUTION OF POLICING ITSELF IS RACIST
— Bree Newsome Bass (@BreeNewsome) January 28, 2023
I need so many people to understand this regarding Tyre Nichols. Several of the police officers who murdered Freddie Gray were Black. The entire system of policing is based on white supremacist violence. We see people under the boot of oppression carry its water all the time. https://t.co/H11cuzHPxC
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) January 27, 2023
In another tweet, Hill—who has many times been “stuck on the faces” when it comes to white people—complained that a Twitter user was “stuck on the faces” in the Nichols case:
Just as women sometimes carry the water for misogyny and the patriarchy, Black people have definitely done the same for white supremacy. You’re stuck on the faces. I’m looking at the system and why it was created. https://t.co/010GROq6aK
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) January 27, 2023
Anyone who says the killing of Tyre Nichols can’t be about racism because the cops were also Black really doesn’t understand how white supremacy or anti-Blackness work
— Tim Wise (@timjacobwise) January 27, 2023
Some fed up black social commentators pushed back forcefully on the notion that this had anything to do with “white supremacy” or “racism”:
I did a presentation on critical race theory today at a Christian school today.
Someone asked me how critical race theorists would react to black cops beating Tyre Nichols (a black man) to death.
This Van Jones article is almost word-for-word what I said in my answer. pic.twitter.com/785QvByPZm
— Samuel Sey (@SlowToWrite) January 28, 2023
Come TF on @VanJones68?!?! Seriously? Can't people be bad people motivated by their lack of maturity, self-awareness, and inability to discern? Does every incident involving police and black men have to revert back to being an issue in race? I understand this is the rave right pic.twitter.com/mFX9pbvJTA
— Barrington Martin II (@_BarringtonII) January 27, 2023
Honestly, if this tragedy can be blamed on white supremacy than literally anything bad that happens in America to a person of color can be blamed on it because to “progressives” like Van Jones, AOC, Jemele Hill, and others—including 1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones, America’s foundations are rooted in white supremacy and “systemic racism” can be found in every corner.
Considering the sources pushing the “white supremacy” narrative in the Nichols case, I think these two tweets sum things up rather perfectly:
Ok so five black police officers in the majority black city of Memphis, with black people in every position of leadership murder Tyre Nichols, a black man, and the Democrats and media paint it as white supremacy.
It is not incompetence. It is with a purpose to divide people.
— Carmine Sabia (@CarmineSabia) January 28, 2023
5 Black officers murder black man. Happens in a city where 65% of the population is black, majority of police force is black, police chief, black, mayor, black.
But it’s white supremacy? 🤔
If this isn’t some Marxist level programming BS… y’all certified crazy.#TyreNichols pic.twitter.com/mi1GgLLjWQ
— Justin (@JustInHere2021) January 28, 2023
‘Nuff said.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
The biggest white supremacists are young black men who murder hundreds of thousands of young black men every year.
Black lives don’t matter to other blacks. Those BLM signs should go up in black neighborhoods with the addendum: Only You Can Save Black Lives.
Don’t know why thud got a dislike because, according to the depraved logic of fools like Van Jones, the biggest white supremacists are blacks who kill other blacks.
According to the CDC the 4th leading cause of death for Black men is to be murdered by (mostly) other Black men.
Oh, my God!
You’re the first person to have actually proven Brandon’s and Garland’s assertions that the biggest threat to America today are white supremacists!
We’ve totally been forgetting to count the black ones!!
Black white supremacists? Would that make them gray or just zebras?
Curious: how many people do you suppose understand your pen name?
Pen name?
🪣🐖🐖
I understand your sentiment, but the numbers are more in the 3000 to 4000 range. Still, going from the uniform crime report data (I am sure that someone at some point will call that data racist, being math and all), of the 3000 blacks murdered each year, 2700 are murdered by other blacks. Factoring in relative presence in the population, it works out to a black person being murdered by another black person at about 27X that of a black person being murdered by a white person. These are the data which will make a liberals head explode, because in their world view every single black that is murdered is the victim of a white cop. Oh, and this really isn’t murder data, but homicide data, and when parses out the number of blacks “homicided” by white cops, it works out to about 30 a year, or 1% Yes, that 1% is the problem that everyone needs to focus on. The only way this works is to stop teaching any understanding of math in the public schools, and they are well on their way to achieveing that goal. Math is racist because math doesn’t support our feelings.
And better yet, as the newer data is being assembled and thus not yet available, the net effect of BLM is the massive increase in the murders of black men by other blacks in those cities where the po po have been reduced. BLM has managed to accomplish a task that real white supremacists have been attempting for decades.
Evil comes in all forms and isn’t restricted to any single skin pigmentation, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation or religion. The vile and stupid Dumb-o-crats are incapable of comprehending this basic truth.
Rosanne Boyland = Tyre Nichols
It’s not “white supremacy” it’s tribalism. People are tribal by nature – they look for their “place” in the world among social groups The police officers I have known very much have a sense of “us vs. them” when they look at the world- you are either one of theirs, or you are suspect/enemy. There is no real in-between. Some just mask it better than others.
Exactly. The tribalism is exacerbated by the shift in policing to an aggressive, reactionary methodology from the prior tactics of patrol beats which emphasized proactive presence and a more intimate knowledge of the people in the patrol area.
It’s a foreseeable consequence. It’s not the LEO fault for the shift though. Lax sentencing upon conviction, demands for understanding about every aspect except the impact of the crime and insisting upon compassion for the criminal instead of the victim didn’t originate in LE. Those are the result of a shift in our societal culture. My grandfather and father were LEO and they were disgusted by the change. That probably colors my opinion.
The bottom line is the willingness of political leaders to choose to be soft on crime ironically creates a heightened tension between LEO and their communities. The volume of crimes caused by this results in an end to proactive policing and the aggressive, reactive tactics. Their goal is to complete their shift and go home uninjured. If that means they rough up a suspect or in this instance, beat someone to an early death their blue tribe will, at the scene, close ranks and defend each other whether or not it is justified.
Even tempered, emotionally mature, physically capable Police Officers are becoming a thing of the past. Their numbers dwindle, replaced by aggressive, thrill seeking folks with an enforcement mindset. It doesn’t help that we have a new dynamic of resisting displayed by suspects which seems to be encouraged by bad faith actors looking for grift. If this guy had complied with the first commands to lay on his stomach, place his hand behind his back we would have nothing to discuss b/c it would have been over.
I saw this trend change in the late 1960s even in my modest size NC hometown. It wasn’t that long ago that a veteran cop would retire after many years and would state that his fondest achievement was never having to draw his side arm.
Police went from being peace officers to law enforcement. From walking a beat to hiding in patrol cars. From “Good morning, Mister Smith” to “What are you doing here?”
Yes they did but in many respects b/c that’s what society left them as an option. When we allow our political leadership to basically ignore low level criminals we encourage more. Those graduate to bigger crimes. Couple that with the sheer numbers of drug addled folks allowed free rein on the streets. Add elimination of bail requirements and early release from prison.
Those societal failures combine to overwhelm the peace office methodology. The replacement is special units with aggressive missions and tactics. The service of a warrant which used to be performed in daylight by one cruiser becomes a dynamic entry predawn by multiple cops.
It’s a negative feedback loop. The more difficult and dangerous we make the job of a police officer the more the police officers become a group apart from the community. They act like occupiers because that’s what they are in many respects; especially so for the most dangerous precincts. The older generations retire and the replacements are trained in a very different methodology. Even then the personal risks have become unbearable for many. The gaps are filled by recruits who are not well suited to keeping the peace, only enforcement of arbitrary rules and temporary control of the ground they occupy.
Yeah, as is standard with The Screaming D’s and their coalition, they twisted something real that could be better, into something insane and made it worse. We don’t need “police reform”, we could use some “policing reform,”
“Policing” has changed radically, for example when special high-kinetic sub-groups are commonplace in policing, and everybody has them. Policing has changed:
Peace Officers –> Law Enforcement
Local — > Bigger
Maintain Space; Hold Comfortable Current — Occupy Space; Impose Change
Oh, yeah:
Protect the People –> Protect the institutions.
The fact that your comment as an anonymous citizen is wiser and more intelligent than a CNN talking head’s nonsense is both unsurprising and really depressing.
It gets clearer every day that the function of CNN assholes like Jones and other corporate news pimps–many of whom are ex-DC bureaucrats and political apparatchiks like him–is to make $ by fostering outrage and to pimp establishment cant like “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.”
Thanks. We have too much discourse framed into absolutes so simplistic as to render them useless when the issues are far more complex. At least IMO.
Everything is due to racism even if it isn’t between members of different races.
CRT in a nutshell
Everything is Whitey’s fault.
Uncle Tom’s Carabinieri
Damn, we’re good!
Lighter furred brown bears are considered white for CRT purposes.
Perhaps what is really going on is that people have an innate sense for who is decent and who is an untrustworthy dirt-bag. Maybe people don’t like to be around untrustworthy dirt-bags, regardless of the color of their skin. Just a thought.
Right. Maybe this guy didn’t get his ass kicked because he was a “Negro” — maybe he got his ass kicked because he was a scumbag who deserved to have his ass kicked.
Or neither. What I saw on all 4 videos in no way is justified for a simple traffic stop. They rolled up and treated him as if he’d assassinated their boss.
… or somebody they cared about.
I’m just guessing that what we saw on the video was preceded by a bunch of history we never got to see. Justification and legality aside, just an explanation of why.
“Black cops are often socialized in police departments that view certain neighborhoods as war zones”.
That’s because they are. Racialists like Van Jones are bending over backwards so far they will eventually swallow themselves. This is how racial identity politics ends.
At least they will swallow themselves via the proper orifice.
I guess it’s therefore reasonable to assume that the two recent mass shootings of Asian Americans committed by Asian Americans were also based on Anti-Asian White Supremacy?
Ok, so is it ok if I hate blacks who hate blacks, or am I still a racist because those blacks who hate blacks only hate those blacks because of white racism?
It depends on who knows you know they know you hate those blacks.
A certain black comedian had a schtik where he said he loved black folks but hated (insert “N” word here),
As long as a large proportion of the black community has a default setting of “being black” means you can’t steal or crib from “white” (or, heck, Asian) strategies to succeed in life – that you’re no longer “authentic” – there WILL be a black “underclass”.
Take schooling seriously? Oreo.
Don’t have multiple Baby Mama’s while staying single? Oreo.
Think you CAN succeed despite difficulties? Oreo.
Don’t tolerate or excuse bad self-destructive behavior based on color?
Double Stuff Orio.
Be Ben Carson, Case of Oreos.
Now he is a whole vault fulla Oreos.
I hope they keep going down this (racist) road. The more insane they get – and crying “Racism!” with this is insane – the more support they (the Left) will lose over time. Black victim, black officers, black Police Chief, in a predominantly black city. Sure sounds like racism. Whitlock was great on this topic.
“I hope they keep going down this (racist) road”
They will. It’s the only road open to them.
And eventually, it will be cool to be actually racist.
This doesn’t end like they think it does.
It’s more likely that they’re gang members in a rival gang.
There is gossip on twitter about a connection with a Memphis gang, the Vice Lords. Seen if a couple times. SMH
What, and with the cops? I’d not doubt it.
“…we sometimes forget, unfortunately, African-Americans can also be guilty of hatred and bias and bigotry against other African-Americans. ”
Mr. Jones believes that the institution of racism is so oppressive, so intimate, and so pervasive that it co-opts black men to hate other black men. If that is true, then by extension a large number of black men are weak, empty, cowed men who can’t stand and think for themselves.
If Mr. Jones really believes that, he’s the racist in the room.
I strongly suspect that before this month, those five police officers saw themselves as pillars of their own community, and strong, good men who worked to look after their people. Did they commit a crime? Sure looks like it but I’ll withhold final judgement until the trial and a jury vote. Are they racist? Only if Mr. Jones is right, and racism has beaten everyone down.
That’s what you have to believe to think Mr. Jones is right — that racism is so strong that it bends the back of good, strong men (except himself, of course). I think he’s wrong.
the simplest answer is usually the most systemically racist. That’s Sharpton’s razor.
Anybody with at least a minimum of intelligence understands that cops own the street, that’s their turf.
On their turf, do what they tell you to do.
Toot sweet.
Then, hire an attorney and fight the cop on your turf, the courts.
This dead guy insisted on resisting, got tazed, still resisted.
That doesn’t mean he deserved what he got.
But that does mean he should have anticipated what he got.
jones is an ignorant one-trick pony–what’s really disturbing to me about this video is how clearly the officer’s lack of training is displayed–don’t care about the colors, there were several points throughout the video where one of the officers should have stepped-in and said “that’s enough,” snapping everyone back to real time–why the hell didn’t that happen?–so the guy resisted arrest, is that something to be unexpected?–and then he tries to flee?–another unexpected occurrence?–come on
lack of training and discipline were the issues in this event not racism/white supremacy/blah,blah,blah
Shark feeding frenzy
Well, Van, what’s the solution?
Reparations, right?
Of course!
Blacks, never slaves, should receive “reparations” from whites, who never owned slaves.
Isn’t that obvious?
He got. A 100,000,000 from Bezos, for being Black
As did mechelle
Unbelievable
Huh?
I heard he was having an affair with the wife of one of the officers.
Sources?
Twitter. Nothing has been confirmed yet.
Also from Twitter: 3 of the 5 were Vice Lord gang members and this beating was on purpose for whatever reason. The gang has been infecting law enforcement in Memphis because they’ve lowered the standards in order to hire people.
Of course until any of this is confirmed I’m not believing it. It’s probably typical Twitter bullshit.
Diversity,Inequity,Exclusion,Distancing (DIED), perhaps rabid, maybe.
Hutu vs Tutsi. Xhosa vs Zulu. Transnationals vs natives. Elite vs deplorables? Perhaps.
Bag limits. Prosecutorial discretion. Redistributive change. Ethical religion. Affirmative discrimination. Frustration. Likely.
Segregation now.
It would not have help the “vic “, if I may employ LEO-speak.
True, but at least we wouldn’t have to listen to Van Jones lie about it.
Jones is pushing the agenda, not truth. The results will cause more division.
At some point, the disingenuous race-baiters of the radical, transformative Left will have to acquiesce to the fact that it’s not a “racism” problem, it’s a “crime, violence, and arrogance in the Black community” problem…
““…unfortunately, African-Americans can also be guilty of hatred and bias and bigotry against other African-Americans. Sometimes you go into a store owned by an African-American, they’re nice to the white folks and suspicious of you.”’
MAYBE it’s not “hatred and bias and bigotry”, dawg. It’s EXPERIENCE The
Whites are far less likely to shoplift, or pull out a gun and demand the contents of the till and then still shoot the clerk.
It’s like walking down the street at night with Jesse Jackson and hearing footsteps behind you. Jesse’d be the first one to tell you.
“Jones claims that black police officers can sometimes be influenced and conditioned by the behavior their white colleagues…”
Unbelievable. In a situation in which there are zero white people involved,..it’s still the white man’s fault.
Don’t forget Trump. He’s guilty of something here.
My membership card from the North American Emmanuel Goldstein Look-Alike society should get here sometime this week. I’m so pumped.
Cop color did not matter, nor did racism. Put any group together, give them guns, apply a name like “Scorpions,” and the same result will eventuate.
It would be interesting to see how a TV show called “Scorpions” would be received were it to follow the same model as “The Shield.”
It would have to be better than the recent “Scorpion” series, which was pathetic. A show revolving around a group of STEM geniuses, and the writers couldn’t afford a technical advisor who could get simple science shit right.
“Sometimes you go into a store owned by [an] African-American, they’re nice to the white folks and suspicious of you. It’s not that only one group can harbor anti-black bias.”…….
That’s not racist; that’s called LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE…
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
― Jesse Jackson
Classical conditioning,
My apologies to The Gentle Grizzly; I missed your comment and would have simply upvoted you. Which I did.
Certainly, no apology necessary.
Ya gotta really feel for these leftists – they have lost their sense of absurdity.
Hey Van Jones, is your (now ex) white wife racist? Are your 1/2 white children racist? Must be very confusing for your children to hear you blame and demonize white people when they are half white.
“…Nichols attempted to flee…”
Nichols did flee. He made it about a half-mile before he was caught.
Fleeing from police and resisting arrest seem to be the common theme. More white males are killed by police each year but we never hear or see these stories.
Ha ha! He did flee, but he did not escape.
Reminds me of the anecdote about lexicographer Noah Webster, caught in a dalliance by his wife. The wife cried out, “Noah! I am surprised!” Noah corrected her, “It is I who am surprised. You are astonished.”
Perhaps the lowered hiring standards which put these dim witted thugs on the streets as cops is to blame?
Some people have missed the boat.
It seems this country has a problem with “systemic equality”.
These black cops are equal to white cops.
Like any good communist, can’t let a good blood letting go to waste.
But we can never ask about the culture that causes the schism between black folks and police. Don’t even start on why people think it’s okay to run from or fight with the police.
I think the officers were motivated by their oath of office and duty as police officers to use as much force as necessary to arrest a suspect. The suspect determines how much force is necessary to take him into custody. If you watch the video you will see that the use of force stopped as soon as the officers were able to get the cuffs on him. The suspect determined how much force was required to arrest him by his physical resistance to being cuffed. Why the suspect required the officers to use the force they used is something we may never know, but we do know he is the person who required them to use it.
The book about the future is becoming less “1984” and more “A Clockwork Orange.”
So, the black police officers beat up a black guy because of racism?
Are we supposed to believe the black officers beat a black guy to show they weren’t racist by giving him special treatment because he was black?
Van Jones, is brain dead and racist.