Rudy Giuliani Called a 'White Supremacist' for Saying White Police Officers Wouldn't Be in Black Communities 'If You Weren't Killing Each Other'
Rudy Giuliani is on the receiving end of a social media backlash for suggesting that a majority of black people are killed by other black people, not white police officers, for which Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson called the former mayor a "white supremacist."
"We've tried to make the police force of New York City as proportionate as we possibly can. We go out of our way to do that," Giuliani said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, when asked to respond to an analysis in The Washington Post that shows which police departments in the U.S. are not as diverse as the communities they serve — New York City not being among them.
"I think we do a pretty good job, not a perfect job. I find it very disappointing that you're not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks."
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Giuliani's statistics are based on a 12-page Department of Justice report from 2005 that shows: "About 93 percent of black homicide victims and 85 percent of white victims in single victim and single offender homicides were murdered by someone of their race."
Dyson, a sociology professor at Georgetown University, argued that "black people who kill black people go to jail. White people who are policemen who kill black people do not go to jail."
According to Chicago magazine, however, out of more than 500 largely gang related murders in that city last year, police managed to obtain a conviction in only 132 of them.
"The police presence cannot make a distinction between those who are criminals and those who call the police to stop the criminals," Dyson asserted about white police officers.
Giuliani countered: "Why don't you cut it down so [that] so many white police officers don't have to be in black areas? Seventy to 75 percent of crime in my city takes place in black communities. The white police officers wouldn't be there if you weren't killing each other."
In response, Dyson called Giuliani's continuious repetition of black-on-black crime statistics as the "definitive mechanism of white supremacy at work in your mind."
In recent months, two cases involving white police officers who've killed black males in their communities have made national and international headlines.
The most recent case to dominated the news is the death of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, after he robbed a Quik Trip convenience store and was walking with a friend in the middle of a street blocking traffic.
The Ferguson community is waiting for the grand jury to release its decision on whether to indict Wilson on any charges. The Brown family has issued several statements encouraging people to remain peaceful in the wake of the jury's decision, and government officials have called in extra police and the National Guard in an effort to maintain the public's safety.
And, in a case in Staten Island, New York, local resident Eric Garner was allegedly selling single, untaxed cigarettes last Aug. when he was restrianed by authorities and put in a chokehold by officer Daniel Pantaleo after he had broken up a fight.
Garner was laid out on the ground and died from the incident, leading to outrage and protests in Staten Island and surrounding communities. A grand jury is still deliberating whether to bring criminal charges against Pantaleo.
The grand jury in Brown's case reached its decision on Monday. The grand jury in Garner's case is expected by the end of November.
