NEW YORK — Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the Black Lives Matter movement racist and anti-American.
In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Giuliani said the movement is “inherently racist.”
“They sing rap songs about killing police officers and they talk about killing police officers and yell it out at their rallies.
And when you say black lives matter, that’s inherently racist,” the former New York City mayor said. “Black lives matter, white lives matter, Asian lives matter, Hispanic lives matter – that’s anti-American and it’s racist.”
Giuliani pointed a finger at the media for paying more attention to fatal police shootings of black men than when a black child gets killed in Chicago.
“Of course black lives matter, and they matter greatly, but when you focus in on the 1 percent of less than 1 percent of the murder that’s going on in America, and you make it a national thing and all of you in the media make it much bigger than the black kid who’s getting killed in Chicago every 14 hours, you create a disproportion,” Giuliani told “Face the Nation.”
The police understand it and it puts a target on their back. Every cop in America will tell you that if you ask him.”
Giuliani explained that black parents need to teach their children to be “respectful to police.”
“So if you want to deal with this on the black side, you’ve got to teach your children to be respectful to the police and you’ve got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police, the real danger to them, 99 out of 100 times … are other black kids who are going to kill them,” he said. “That’s the way they are going to die.”
He continued, “If I were a black father and I was concerned about the safety of my child, really concerned about it and not in a politically activist sense, I would say be very respectful to the police, most of them are good, some can be very bad and just be very careful. I’d also say be very careful of those kids in the neighborhood, don’t get involved with them because son, there’s a 99 percent chance they’re going to kill you not the police.”
Giuliani said the Black Lives Matter movement needs to focus more on black-on-black violence.
“There’s too much violence in the black community,” he told “Face the Nation.” “So a black will die 1 percent or less at the hands of the police, and 99 percent at the hands of a civilian, most often another black, so if you want to protect black lives, then you’ve got to protect black lives not just against police, which happens rarely although with tremendous attention, and which happens 14 hours in Chicago, every 14 hours, and we never hear from Black Lives Matter.”
Giuliani said police departments need to implement a “zero tolerance” policy for police brutality.
“On the white side, we have to understand, whether we get it or not, there is this extraordinary fear of the police and police have to institute a policy of zero tolerance, like we did for crime in New York,” Giuliani said.
He added that white people need to understand “that African-American men have a fear — and boys have a fear — of being confronted by the police because of some of these incidents.”
“The reality is we have to look differently at race in America if we’re going to change this,” Giuliani said. “We’ve been looking at it the same way for 20 years and here’s where we are. We both have to try and understand each other.”
A fourth day of protests is taking place in New York City in the fatal police shootings of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
