O’Reilly Battles Civil Rights Leader on African-Americans and Violent Crime
O'REILLY: “’Unresolved Problem Segment’ tonight, violent crime committed by black Americans. According to the FBI in 2013, the last stats available African- Americans committed almost 54 percent of all murders in the U.S.A. when race is cited in the police report. As you may know African-Americans account for 13 percent of the population. So you can see the murder stats are way out of proportion. Enter the president of the New York Civil Rights Coalition Mike Meyers who blames me and other Fox News anchors for demonizing black Americans. Mr. Meyers writing quote, ‘if truth be told crime is an individual act. It's an individual thing. Crime is not a racial group or a skin color. In this regard there is no such thing as the black male much less a black male problem in America any more than there is or once was an Italian male problem or an Irish male problem.’ Mr. Meyers is making a fundamental mistake, I believe. There are problems with certain groups. For example, Muslim extremists can only be neutralized by law-abiding Muslims. The jihad is solely embedded in the Muslim community around the world. The Italian Mafia was rightly defined as an ethnic problem, so much so that Pope Francis recently excommunicated Italian organized crime members as a group. Finally IRA terrorists were only stopped when Irish women demanded the violence cease. Those are historical facts. With us now is Mike Meyers. You know we love you but you are wrong on this. You have to look at the statistics about people committing antisocial act and find out, all right, where these acts are occurring and why they are occurring.”
MEYERS: “Is it my turn now? Look, statistics aside, we know that crime has been out-of-control in America. The majority of crimes in America are committed by white people, not black people.”
O'REILLY: “That's because of the population base.”
MEYERS: “Let me talk.”
O'REILLY: “All right. Population base.”
MEYERS: “Let me talk. You have a situation where you and others on Fox News keep talking about black on black violence. The problem with black on black violence is racial rhetoric. Black people are not going after black people because they are black. They are ‘killing each other’, because they live in the same segregated neighborhoods. White people by and large are killing white people. I think that Fox and others they have got to stop the racial agenda.”
O'REILLY: “Ok. I'm not going to disagree that it's a geographical convenient –“
MEYERS: “It's segregation.”
O'REILLY: “Segregation – [Crosstalk] -- It's segregation by choice.”
MEYERS: “No it's not. History speaks –“
