During a House Judiciary Committee on policing practices, with emphasis on some of the racist policies like Broken Windows policing, two witnesses clashed during opening statements, with Fox News' Heather Mac Donald's lies and bigoted statements being taken apart and taken down by UCLA Professor Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff.
Mac Donald is the author of a book called The Diversity Delusion, and a frequent commentator on Fox News. Most recently, she's appeared to blame Democrats for white nationalist violence, she's also defended men who harass women, complained about the College Board's "adversity score," and complaining that the Black Lives Matter movement was going to inspire more police violence. She's also a "fellow" at the deeply conservative and often intellectually dishonest Manhattan Institute, which is why she's summoned to Congressional hearings when Republicans need a bigot.
During her opening statement, Mac Donald praised Broken Windows policing, cited a 2015 Quinnipiac poll with the intent of backing her claim that Blacks were enthusiastic about that style of policing, invoked the usual "black on black crime" trope, calling it the "real civil rights issue of our time," and concluded by saying there was "no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that Black lives matter than the police."
Watch it, if only to see Dr. Goff's increasingly frustrated and incredulous side-eyes at her absurd and racist claims.
When it was his turn, he put aside his prepared remarks in order to address her...misstatements.
After pointing out that the drop in crime was not simply in response to policing, he turned to her comments about Broken Windows policing.
"To suggest that Black people enjoyed the treatment in New York or anyplace else, of Broken Windows policing is what scholars Vesla Weaver and Elizabeth Hinton referred to as selective hearing," he admonished pointedly. "Hearing only what is convenient to an ideological narrative and not the fullness of what those communities are calling for, which is safety and justice at the same time. Surely not too high a bar for law enforcement."
The conclusions in the study she cited, he said, have been shown to be unsupported by the data and are factually incorrect. "This committee hearing should not be a dumping ground for bad faith arguments," he said.
Concluding the correction part of his opening statement, he said, "I do not like to be part of something that becomes a laundromat for junk science and I apologize for stepping out of my character to say so."
I've included the full transcript in PDF format here. But really, just watch and especially watch Dr. Goff, who just isn't having Mac Donald's Fox News brand of white supremacy.
