Whoopi Goldberg asked whether “we need to see white people” beaten and killed by police before reforms can happen, then immediately denied she suggested that.
Speaking on The View, Goldberg and her fellow co-hosts discussed the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old black man who died earlier this month after Memphis police officers repeatedly punched him while attempting to detain him in a traffic stop.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a white policeman or black policeman. It is the problem with the police, in the policing itself, you know,” Goldberg said. “Seems things don’t seem to make sense to people unless it’s somebody they can feel or they can recognize. But how many times do we have to… do we need to see white people also get beaten before anybody will do anything?”
Immediately, Goldberg declared that she wasn’t “suggesting” what she seemed to suggest ahout white people being attacked by police. “I’m not suggesting that. So, don’t write us and tell me what a, you know, racist I am,” she continued. “I’m just asking is that what people have to see in order to wake up and realize this affects us all?”
Goldberg further suggested that the first things on the mind of police officers when they arrest somebody is “murder,” and that the “other side” on television, seemingly Fox News, talk about blac people “like we have no humanity,” and that they are “some kind of monsters.”
Videos of white people getting beaten and killed by the police do exist, despite Goldberg’s claims. As journalist and author Wilfred Reilly noted in his 2020 book “Taboo,” while around 25% of the victims of all police shootings are black, those cases receive 80-90% of the media coverage. “There is a zero per cent chance that this lack of coverage is a coincidence,” Reilly argued.
These cases include Daniel Shaver, who was shot and killed by police in Arizona in January 2016, while attempting to respond to a variety of different orders on the ground, and Tony Timpa, who died after being restrained for 14 minutes by police in Texas of August that same year.
Overall, white detainees are 23.5% more likely to be shot by police than black detainees, according to Harvard’s Roland Fryer.
This news and commentary by Jack Hadfield originally appeared on Valiant News.