can you explain why you think it is rubbish ?
The source is the Gaudian (home of the wokes) and the figures in wikipedia can easily be found elsewhere.
the rest is just understanding numbers.
Let's have a look at this in a bit more detail, shall we?
If we take a look at how many people the police kill in the USA
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...un/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
I have used the 2016 figures that show the police killed 266 black and 574 white so the police are killing 2.16x more whites.
According to the 2020 United States Census, 61.6% of the population are white and 12.4% black.
So if we look at the figures per 1m inhabitants it's 2.81 for whites and 6.47 for blacks - therefore blacks are 2.3 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than whites.
Now what we need to know is who is coming into contact with the police. And to do this I will take a look at the prison population as a guide, where 34% is Black and 29% white
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incar... the U.S. Bureau,18% of the female population.
so can we assume black people are coming into contact with the police for serious crime 17% more often than whites?
No, as there is a considerably smaller total black population, so the figure above would imply that actually black people are many times more likely to be in prison per million inhabitants.
But, of course, it could also be that the figures are skewed by the fact that black people are much more likely to be arrested, charged, sent to trial, and ultimately convicted of the same or similar crimes?
so there we have it, black people are likely to be coming into slightly more contact with the police and yet the police are killing twice as many whites? From that basis may be the police are more than twice as likely to kill someone white.
I am more than happy to accept the argument that systemic racism in the US is likely to cause more crime within that community, (being poor always leads to more crime). But I am not convinced that black people are being treated more brutally by the police than whites?
I think there is an element of both. I don't think it's helpful to imply that every death of a black person at the hands of a police officer comes down to police brutality and systemic racism within the American police force. There are many cases of deaths of white people in similar circumstances to that of George Floyd (look up Tony Timpa as a very good example).
I think we need to recognise that American police kill both black and white civilians during an arrest, and often when in no danger themselves (by the way, past convictions are not relevant as we don't live in a Judge Dredd society where the police are judge, jury, and executioner).
If BLM could recognise that the issue is not limited to black people it may go some way to bringing more white people on side with their cause (which, in principle, is a worthy one).
So maybe there are multiple issues here, only one of which
may be systemic racism within the American police force.
- Crime is generally higher in black areas
- Black people are more likely to live in poverty due to a long history of slavery, segregation and discrimination
- Poverty can also lead to a host of issues such as kids being brought up in single parent households, alcohol & drug problems, low attainment at school, lack of opportunity, gangs etc etc
- There is a strong correlation between poverty and crime levels
- Black people may be more likely to be arrested, charged, and convicted of the same crime than white people (after being charged this is no longer the responsibility of the police, but of the judicial system)
- There may be issues with systemic racism within the American police that skews arrest figures and officer / black civilian shootings
- A higher police presence in poverty stricken black areas may lead to higher numbers of arrests for crimes that would go unnoticed in white areas
- There is a problem with training in the American police where they aren't sufficiently trained to de-escalate threatening situations (with people of all races)
- There is insufficient firearms training (British firearms police get much better training than American cops despite the much lower chance of ever using a gun)
- There is a fear of being shot that leads to the use of lethal force where it may not have been necessary (this leads to the deeper issue of gun rights and laws in the USA)
I don't know the answer, but in order to find it, we would need to drill down deeper into the statistics and control for a number or factors to determine whether more black people are being killed due to systemic racism or not.
The fact remains though that per head of population, more blacks than whites are being killed by the police, and therefore it's understandable that many would like to see this change.
Ideally, there would be no deaths of any race at the hands of police, but maybe simply aiming to get closer to zero is a commendable (if optimistic) target??
