> He said that black communities have higher crime rates, which should rightly deserve more police attention, hence their interaction with police on a per capita basis would increase.
"Interaction" is one thing; police killing people is another.
(An aside: if we dig deeper to figure out why black communities often have higher crime rates... welp, there we go again, it usually boils down to some form of systemic racism.)
> ... but you've chosen to only accept the racism one.
Why do you feel the need to steer people away from racism as a cause? Nowhere did I say that racism is the "only" thing; please don't put words in my mouth. But it is, by and large, the root of the majority of the problem.
I've already spent more time than I care to on this topic, so I'm not going to go digging again, but if you look at studies around general police behavior (who they are interested in, who they detain, how long they detain them, stats around escalation, arrest vs. warning rates for same offense, etc.), it's pretty clear that police target -- whether consciously or subconsciously -- non-white people, and black people in particular. You can call that "bias" or "prejudice" or whatever you want; I call it racism.
But regardless, bottom line: black people are killed by police at a disproportionately large rate when compared to people of other races. That is what the data shows, plain and simple. I'm not really interested in quibbling over vague claims that racism has little or nothing to do with it, as that's clearly false. If you want an acknowledgement that racism isn't 100% the entire picture, then sure, ok, fine. (Though you don't seem particularly interested in venturing forth any suggestions or data pointing to other causes, so I question your motives here.) But racism is a huge contributor to these disparities. If tomorrow we could magically eliminate racism from everyone's mind, I guarantee you ant disparities would be so small as to not really garner anyone's attention.
So here's my question for you: what are those other non-racism causes of this disparity? And if you can name some, do the causes of those causes not actually boil down to systemic racism in the end?
> Finally, he tries to muddy the waters by essentially claiming black people seem to "deserve it" more, because apparently black people are involved in more crime than white people? Which, again, doesn't seem to be very well supported by data.
I don't think you're being fair to what he said. He said that black communities have higher crime rates, which should rightly deserve more police attention, hence their interaction with police on a per capita basis would increase.
You seem to be implying that cops are, subconsciously or not, more interested in using deadly force against black people than white people. The data you're using from statista seems to have many equally plausible explanations, but you've chosen to only accept the racism one.
> a large body of people are convinced by their lived experiences [1] that police violence is racially biased, and this conviction is further supported by a massive number of known individual cases
Okay, we know that there's an effect. No one is arguing that black people not only feel that way, but interact with (and are killed by) police at a higher-than-white per capita rate. That certainly should be addressed, and is a major social concern.
I think we agree on how to interpret the data at least this far -- that there's an effect, originally identified anecdotally by black people but supported by data, where black people are killed by police more often per capita. (Numbers I've seen are like 2.5x per capita -- but order of magnitude, I think we can agree on somewhere between 2x and 5x.)
Where we disagree, and I think we're just going to have to disagree, is that this is evidence that there's a lot of systemic racism going on. (Think "70 cent" wage gap, not "95 cent" wage gap.)
I think we're seeing a little bit of active racism, a lot of lingering economic effects of historic racism, a little bit of active cultural maladaptation, and a lot of general police violence. (That's me "thinking about the issue with an open mind" -- that distribution is basically the prior on social issue breakdown.)
You seem to suggest that the data suggests just "a lot of racism", which is where I disagree: I don't think the evidence is anywhere near moving the needle from the prior of "complex weave of the usual issues" to "outright, ongoing, systemic racism".
> But if you think about the issue with an open mind, you're still going to feel pretty damn confident about what's actually going on.
Finally, I just want to say, that this argument supports literally anything that sounds appealing, regardless of how likely it is to be true. There's a long history of creating new problems while attempting to solve problems by adopting solutions that make no sense upon detailed analysis, but sound good or appeal to our emotions in some way.
> Moreover, many would argue that disproportionate poverty levels among black people render them more likely to encounter police officers in the first place—vastly unfair, but different from the problem being simply cops’ standing racist bias
Actually that's exactly the problem of systemic racism. Racism is at the level of the system and not the individual (though there are still individual racists out there for sure).
Cops kill and injure way too many people (of all races) (without due cause), and encounters with Police escalate much too quickly. This is a problem, and that's why a big conversation on the role and responsibility and methods of policing is happening. Though Police too exists within a system, such as the possibility of any civilian to be armed and carrying at any time, and so all that context must be considered.
Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation, and leading the charge on pushing for changes.
It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation, which was likely created as a result of the racist history of the country and the heritage and legacy (or lack thereof) it left their communities with. And that would make it a systemic racism issue.
> It is a reasonable perspective to have that if black Americans engage in more violence, it is because they have been subjected to more violence and deprived of opportunity. And that, ultimately, is in many cases, the responsibility of white Americans.
I disagree that this is a reasonable perspective at all. Adult people are wholy responsible for their actions. This fundemental fact underpins our whole society.
I would say that this statistic is primarily used to explain disproportionate encounters with (and subsequently death at the hands of) police. It's important to note that black people are also massively overrepresented as victims of violent crime. This suggests that black communities are generally more violent and therefore more likely to be policed. This fact along with others (like the behaviours of majority black police departments) can be used to construct in good faith a strong argument that there is no epidemic of police racism. This argument is not very popular, so it seems to get censored.
> Although the data doesn't show african american's are killed at a higher rate
Wait, what? Take a second look at the first 3 paragraphs, and then the "Racial Patterns" section of that Wikipedia article you linked.
When people say that police killings aren't racially motivated, they are disputing the causes of the disparity in race-based deaths, not the disparity itself.
I mean, you can just do the math from recorded police shootings yourself, and you pretty consistently across multiple years get death-per-million numbers for black communities that are around 1.5-2.5x as large as for white communities. Black men are pretty objectively killed at higher rates than white men, the studies you're talking about are questioning why that is and whether officer bias and/or systemic racism plays a role in those numbers.
> The statistics show that the murders of unarmed people of color at the hands of police officers is disproportionately higher than that of the white people.
The statistics show all kinds of things. It would show the same for men vs women, young vs old, it would even show the same poor urban areas vs rich suburbs.
It's unfortunate, but also clear that certain demographics simply present a higher threat. Perhaps the police should be blind to age, race, neighbourhood and gender, but in reality that's not going to happen. It's a survival instinct we all have and if you pretend you feel less threatened when a group of young men walk pass you in a rough area compared to an elderly couple in the suburbs, then you're lying.
What you really need to be asking is whether these stats are a product of the increased threat young black men pose to the police or whether this is simply straight up racism. But the fact these statistics are not comparable to other minority ethnic groups living in the US, nor to black women, you have to question if racism is the best explanation of the data. Indeed if it is racism, it seems to be a very unusual type of racism which has prejudice specifically for young, male, poor, and of course, black individuals.
> "Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation..."
while i actually agree with most of what you said, the focus on (disproportionate, but few) deaths by police is misdirectional. like much media reporting, it's premised on an emotional trigger meant to short-circuit rational thinking, which is decidedly a diservice to public discourse. arguments against racism can, and should, stand entirely on the merits of racism (systemic or otherwise) simply being unjust and irrational, not on outrage-bait like this.
that's to say that the murders of black folks by police should direct our attention towards racism, not the numbers of murders by police, because we'll end up trying to solve "murders by police" rather than racism, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, when it was anything but.
Citation needed. Cops visit black neighborhoods more, sure. But they do that because they commit vastly more crime. Which is the cause and which the effect?
It's also a lot more complicated than that. People throw out studies that blacks are more likely to be caught for drug crimes. But they are less likely to be caught for more serious crimes. Possibly because they trust police less and are less likely to volunteer as witnesses. E.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underpolicing-of-black-amer...
> For every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crime, 3 are killed
This is a weird way to frame the issue. Are black people arrested for violent crime more often? I don't know, but if they are, that changes the conclusion. This seems like an obvious thing I'd want to find out if I were posting that Twitter thread.
> I am showing that when you control for violent crime rate, the disparity vanishes.
No, arrest rate and crime rate are not the same. That's the whole point of the discussion about bias in policing.
If you ask a more straightforward question, like "how often are people killed when they interact with police?", the statistics look different. Here's a study that says:
> On average, there were large racial/ethnic inequities in the rates at which White and Black people were killed during police contact. Across all MSAs, Black people were 3.23 times more likely to be killed compared to White people (95% CI: 2.95, 3.54, p<0.001).
> In my estimation, the vilification of police as racist, declarations of “ACAB” and “Fuck 12”, and calling to abolish or defund the police is more likely to result in significantly more dangerous environments where the majority of black homicides are occurring.
The vilification of police as racist is political. It's always political. The police being jerks to everyone somehow seems less unfair and more acceptable than the police being jerks to only black people, so the people who want change argue that it's racism even though that's basically a lie. Because if it's racism you can get people angrier about it. (The problem is it also alienates all the non-black victims of police misconduct who would otherwise be allies, and also allows opponents to pretend there isn't a problem if they can disprove the racism, even though the misconduct and mistreatment still exist regardless of whether they're racially motivated.)
But the less extreme calls to "defund the police" aren't actually that unreasonable. Because you don't defund the murder police, only the rest of it. Reduce their number by narrowing their scope to only investigating major crimes, so that there aren't as many police needed, so that you're less likely to interact with any of them and have a bad experience.
You basically do the opposite of the "broken window" garbage -- forget about broken windows and instead concentrate on solving ~100% of the murders. Which becomes easier when you discontinue having a million BS traffic stops for revenue extraction and stop and frisk, since they only increase community resentment of the police and make them less likely to cooperate in investigations of serious crimes.
> they didn't immigrate and expect to receive special treatment because they were a member of group X.
No one is asking for "special treatment". They are asking not to get special treatment that consists of being killed by police officers.
And yes, too many white people are killed by police. The police in the US have both a tendency to shoot too many people, and have a tendency to target too many black people, which both add up to shooting disproportionately many black people.
And yeah, the problem is more complex than simple racism by police. There are problems of too many criminals being armed in the US (both black and white), meaning that the police are more prone to shoot in supposed self defense. There are problems of class and poverty, that lead people into violence. There are a lot of complex, interrelated factors that lead to this.
But all of that said, it is undeniable that there are a disproportionate number of law abiding or peaceful, unarmed black men who are killed by police in this country.
> The real race problem is that when it comes to interracial violence, and black on white vs white on black, the facts are black on white racial violence is off the charts compared to white on black racial violence. It's not even close.
Interracial violence is a pretty small fraction of all violence.
Most violence is intraracial. Source: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htius.pdf (2010, reporting data up to 2005, see page 67); about 42% of homicides are black on black, about 45% are white on white, about 8.8% are black on white, about 3.2% are white on black. If you're white, I'd be a lot more worried about that 45% than the 8.8%.
You know what's likely to be the most likely way to avoid getting killed or shot? Not having family members who have ready access to firearms. You are a lot more likely to be shot by a family member in anger than you are by a stranger of another race.
> advance public acceptance of the fact that police violence is often racially motivated
I've never been convinced of this "fact", once controlled for economic/social class and culture. I've certainly never seen the numbers controlled for economic/social class, culture, and any residual correlation between crime and race, which is what would be needed to actually conclude that the police were acting racist rather than rational.
Most of the "evidence" for the racial motivation of the violence is based on appeals to emotion and simplistic explanations, both of which are unlikely to capture the reality of the situation, coupled with lots of buzzwords intended to actually shut down conversation about the topic.
The publicity certainly hasn't been enough to prove their point: if police shootings are evenly distributed by total population, a black man should be shot every other day; if police shootings are evenly distributed by violent crime demographics, a black man or two should be shot every day. We're hearing about stories much less frequently than that, which doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it's racist, as opposed to merely militaristic and violent in general.
I think we're a far cry from showing that blacks account for >50% of fatal police shootings AND the discrepancy not being explained by cultural factors (such as being more likely to flee or resist).
Of course, people "feel" things, so why let facts and analysis intrude?
> The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates
You don't have to fully subscribe to the intrinsically-racist Black Lives Matter narrative to agree that unaccountable police are a major problem regardless of race. And IMO unaccountable police is a more fundamental issue than the newly-stoked racism.
> You said "This kind of violence affects everyone" and this is disingenuous when we look at the ratio of black vs white being murdered by police.
If you want to argue that this kind of violence affects certain races more, that's fine. But why downplay the fact that it affects all races? The percentages are higher for Black Americans, but White Americans still make up the majority of people shot by police[1]. If people actually cared about creating a broad coalition to address this, they would want to highlight both facts, not hide the latter fact.
You actually see the a similar attitude when racists attack social programs. If members of a minority group are more likely to benefit from a program, they treat it as a program for minorities, even if the majority of beneficiaries are non-minorities.
It's also interesting to see how people divide the demographic information. If you look at the breakdown by sex, you'll find that the divide between men and women when when it comes to these shootings is much, much greater than the divide between races. Yet the latter is talked about a lot all over the media, and while I don't think I've ever seen the latter treated as an issue. My guess is that we'd also see another large divide if we divided the numbers by wealth (and this article is a good example of that).
> I know policing is hard. And frankly, I sympathize with a police officer who finds himself more intimidated by a black man on the street than a white man. It is racist and wrong to respond that way...
I think the relevant point from my source's editorial is this: "While these inferences aren’t fair to the vast majority on either side [(police or civilian)], they are rational responses to fear and uncertainty. As such, neither legislation nor indoctrination can banish them."
So I'm not sure it's fair to call police officers racist. It's certainly not old-school Racist in the form of a deliberate and systematic oppression of a minority or an opinion that they're genetically inferior.
(Disclaimer. This post is meant to provide insight into behavior of people, only. No specific public policy recommendation is hereby condemned or endorsed.)
> You didn't research very hard. From the Washington Post:
Actually, that very quote was what inspired my research. I wanted to know if the quote was misleading in favor of one narrative, so I filtered out cases where the suspect was armed and otherwise viably threatening.
> It is a fact: black people are shot and killed more often by police than white people.
I don't dispute that. I'm skeptical that black people are unjustifiably shot more frequently than white people, or at least with the frequency the media would have me believe.
> What is your solution to bring awareness against police brutality
Unlawful police brutality is bad regardless of who it is being committed against. Framing this as a "black" issue and not a general issue which everyone can unite on, is divisive.
The solution is obviously to provide better training for new police officers and foster a better attitude among the police force (in general, new or old) towards their role in society.
> systematic racism
I don't believe in unfounded claims. Are there actual data to back this extraordinary claim of systematic racism today (as opposed to in the past), or is this just internet-outrage?
>By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime.
That is because they commit more violent crimes. Did you know that?
>Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed.
See the last point.
In 99.9% of cases, people killed by police are commiting crimes.
Also note that asians have the lowest rate of being killed by police. I suppose it was asians that were the real whites all along? Or perhaps you simply can't make sweeping conclusions from this data.
> Nobody is talking about the bias being spontaneous. It is chronic and cultural.
It's very counterintuitive that police officers around the country would have a homogeneous culture that diverges so strongly from the cultures of the diverse communities from which they come and in which they live and in which they work.
It's necessarily "spontaneous" that police officers around the country coming from diverse backgrounds and living and working in diverse communities would spontaneously adopt a culture that biases them against one race in particular, especially when many of those officers are of that same race.
> Do you have anything to back up your claim that African American officers are more likely to use force against African Americans than white officers?
2 separate analyses come to mind, but there are others (I don't have the time to dig up at the moment). As far as I know, this isn't disputed among criminologists.
"Interaction" is one thing; police killing people is another.
(An aside: if we dig deeper to figure out why black communities often have higher crime rates... welp, there we go again, it usually boils down to some form of systemic racism.)
> ... but you've chosen to only accept the racism one.
Why do you feel the need to steer people away from racism as a cause? Nowhere did I say that racism is the "only" thing; please don't put words in my mouth. But it is, by and large, the root of the majority of the problem.
I've already spent more time than I care to on this topic, so I'm not going to go digging again, but if you look at studies around general police behavior (who they are interested in, who they detain, how long they detain them, stats around escalation, arrest vs. warning rates for same offense, etc.), it's pretty clear that police target -- whether consciously or subconsciously -- non-white people, and black people in particular. You can call that "bias" or "prejudice" or whatever you want; I call it racism.
But regardless, bottom line: black people are killed by police at a disproportionately large rate when compared to people of other races. That is what the data shows, plain and simple. I'm not really interested in quibbling over vague claims that racism has little or nothing to do with it, as that's clearly false. If you want an acknowledgement that racism isn't 100% the entire picture, then sure, ok, fine. (Though you don't seem particularly interested in venturing forth any suggestions or data pointing to other causes, so I question your motives here.) But racism is a huge contributor to these disparities. If tomorrow we could magically eliminate racism from everyone's mind, I guarantee you ant disparities would be so small as to not really garner anyone's attention.
So here's my question for you: what are those other non-racism causes of this disparity? And if you can name some, do the causes of those causes not actually boil down to systemic racism in the end?
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