(Image: The Ben Shapiro Show)
In the year and a half since black teen Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in the streets of Ferguson, Mo., the Black Lives Matter movement has managed to grow from a neighborhood riot to a multi-university crusade and, most recently, the race-driven theme of a Super Bowl halftime show performed by one of the nation's most famous pop stars.
But not everyone has been buying into the narrative that racism lurks around every corner.
Last May, Ben Shapiro participated in a civil debate about race and racism in the U.S., and he absolutely skewered all counter-arguments.
Shapiro, who is the editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire and editor-at-large for the Breitbart News Network, participated in the public debate hosted by Seattle radio station KTTH.
The panel was equally diverse with two black debaters, one white debater and one Hispanic debater.
Shapiro was joined by other debate guests including Dr. Sheley Secrest, development director of the Seattle Chapter of the NAACP, conservative activist and entrepreneur Dr. Monique Venezuela Trudnowski, and Seattle Stranger columnist Charles Mudede.
Shapiro argued against the rampant racism that the media and groups like Black Lives Matter promote to the general masses.
Shapiro on the Baltimore Riots:
I’m offended by the uprising of black people breaking into other black people’s stores and looting them. This is a lack of values. People who are destroying private property, destroying cop cars in an uprising against what exactly? Against the black police chief? Against a mostly minority police force? Against the black mayor? Against the black president? Against the black attorney general? Against a city council that nine of 15 are black and all elected Democrats? What is the uprising against? What is it seeking to achieve?
Shapiro on income inequality:
Because it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture. (Laughter from the black panelists.) You explain to me why black kids aren’t graduating high school? Explain that one to me. Explain to me why black kids are shooting each other in rates significantly higher than whites are shooting each other? Explain to me why 13 percent of the population is responsible for 50 percent of the murder?[…]Is America more racist now than it was in 1960? And if so, explain to me how that happened?
Mudede at one point tells Shapiro that “there has to be racism.”
“I’m talking about human beings. Human beings are most likely going to have racial prejudices,” said Mudede.
Shapiro responded, “I wanna ask you a question, Charles. So your default is that when there is no evidence, racism is the deciding factor?”
Shapiro on the Black Lives Matter Movement:
The idea that you can craft a narrative based on no racism because it just must be somewhere out there in the ether, that doesn’t solve problems for anybody. It creates more problems for people, because now they grow up in a milieu and an environment where they are told that every obstacle they face is from some shadowy, nameless, faceless group who is out to get them simply because of the color of their skin.
For the full debate, click here.
For the Shapiro debate highlights, view below: