Kmele Foster said during a Tuesday appearance on “Fox News Primetime” that it was “absurd” for President Joe Biden to say black people are “perpetually afraid” of being murdered by police when out of their homes.
Foster, host of “The Fifth Column” podcast, made the claim while responding to Biden’s address to the nation following the guilty verdicts in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd. Foster also expressed his concern over the way the country is talking about and addressing issues of race. (RELATED: Brooklyn Center Mayor Says He Doesn’t Think Police Officers ‘Need To Necessarily Have Weapons Every Time They’re Making A Traffic Stop’)
Host Ben Domenech began by noting Biden’s comments in his address that black Americans “fear” interactions with law enforcement, and “wake up knowing that they can lose their very life in the course of just living their life.” He then asked Foster if he thought it was an accurate depiction of the country.
Foster responded by stating it’s appropriate to scrutinize the use of force by the state, because they have a monopoly on it. He added that it’s “uniquely problematic” when civilians are killed while interacting with “government agents,” but it’s “important to keep things in perspective.”
“I think talking about people being perpetually afraid of being murdered on their way to the gas station or while their shopping at the supermarket effectively by members of law enforcement, that was the ostensible intimation on the part of the president during his remarks, and I just think that’s absurd. I don’t think people actually live in fear in that way,” he continued.
Foster went on to argue that law enforcement is involved “in a vanishingly small” amount of shootings relative to the number of civilian interactions they have. He said those shootings matter and should be investigated, but he doesn’t think we’re being serious if “we’re ignoring the actual circumstances that genuinely make people afraid to leave their houses,” citing the rise in murder rates in various cities across the country.
“We have to really scrutinize the forces that are at work here in the way that we’re talking about race in this country, and I am delighted to see some of the criminal justice reform efforts happen,” he continued. “I am very concerned about many of the ways that we’re talking about race, and the various cases in which it seems to be disconnected from the facts.”
“There is more than a year later, still, no piece of evidence related to this particular case, the case of George Floyd being killed, that gives us an indication that if he were a white man and all other things were equal, he would be alive today. There just isn’t. And that is absolutely critical for us to keep in mind,” Foster concluded.