Our intense national debate over race is not an honest discussion. The cancel culture has effectively silenced one side.

Politicians and commentators can defame conscientious police officers, claim America is a cesspool of bigotry, and even call for the assassination of the President without consequences.

In contrast, those who disagree with Black Lives Matter have been shamed and fired for asserting “all lives matter,” “the president may use federal force to quell domestic threats,” and “it’s disrespectful to kneel during the national anthem.”

Most reasonable Americans endorse these views but now they’re shouted down as somehow racist. So they get left out of the debate while hypocrisy and outrageous slanders are endlessly repeated. Let’s go over a few.

First, do all black lives really matter to those who sanctimoniously claim what to people of goodwill seems obvious? Maybe.

Last year over 7,000 black men were homicide victims. Of those, over 90 percent were killed by other blacks. Ten were unarmed blacks killed by police.

The ten are endlessly celebrated as examples of endemic police brutality. But the other 7,000 don’t seem to “matter“ much. There’s no demand for action on their behalf, no protests, hardly any media notice.

They don’t fit the bigoted police narrative, so they’re just numbers. The hypocrisy is beyond obvious.

Here’s another issue. George Floyd was killed not by “institutional racism” but by a rogue cop. Bad actors can happen in all professions, but it’s an open secret that, like other government employees, bad police are hard to fire because their union protects them.

Oddly, Democrats are in power in nearly all cities where racial discord is rampant. Rectifying the bad cop problem would require that they butt heads with a public employees’ union, which happens to be a major political support.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. But there should be public accountability for Democrats blocking needed reforms where they are in charge.

Equal treatment under the law, an American bedrock, took a beatdown during the prolonged protests/riots. The mob was accorded special legal privileges not available to others. They weren’t charged for multiple crimes as police forces were ordered to stand down instead.

The mob also assumed novel political powers. As the price of ending their marauding, they demanded defunding the police, releasing certain classes of prisoners and other public policy changes.

But that’s not the way we make decisions. We are a democratic republic where people are elected by consent of the governed and authorized to decide.

Yet petrified politicians refused to defy the mob and the left-wing media applauded them. It was sickening to see our leaders literally bend the knee and promise to accede to the mob’s demands. New York City’s decision to disband an entire plainclothes unit, because BLM wanted it, sets a horrible precedent. The mob won’t be placated. It feeds on weakness.

BLM and Antifa showed that violence and intimidation work. They were able to identify deep sources of volunteers for protesting, burning, and looting. They avoided accountability for destroying millions of dollars in property.  Best of all, they were praised, not despised for their trouble.

The real losers are America’s black minority community. Not only did they bear much of the property damage, little if any benefit to them will result from the riots. Defunding the police, the great bright idea of the protests, will punish those who most need the protection of law enforcement.

Protesting is easy. Hating hate and chanting for social justice may feel good, but it does little to alleviate the actual causes of income and social inequality. Restoring the black family and improving black education are the real keys.

That takes hard work. It takes people like Bob Woodson and Star Parker who tirelessly help black families and communities to become stronger and more self-reliant. It takes an Eva Moskovitz to show that school choice can enable disadvantaged children to have better educational outcomes.

Racism exists. It always has, but we can and will do better. But BLM Isn’t interested in black homes and schools nor in actually improving living conditions for black Americans.  They insist on racial victimhood as justification for mob rule.