Current Affairs George Floyd and Minneapolis Unrest
- Thread starter TheBigIguana
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I think it's important to note that unjust killings by governmental actors are particularly egregious, and I have no qualms with BLM telling us that black on black or black on white crime is irrelevant there. They're right.
That said, this stuff becomes relevant to talk about when people aren't truthful. Black Americans going about their business are not commonly gunned down by police in this country. People will say such things, but they're just not. The overwhelming majority of people killed by police in America...deserved it. Black people in America are not regularly subject to violence by white people, either. Statistically, that claimed threat is backwards. These are truths that can be acknowledged without undermining other truths.
That not a conclusion I have seen supported by data.
Some will argue that if we consider the rates at which whites and blacks commit crimes, these numbers make more sense. But this doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, either. In Minneapolis, for example, a 2018 Star-Tribune investigation of fatal police encounters since 2000 found no correlation between the locations of police shootings and the crime rates of those areas.
These same critics will also argue that blacks commit a disproportionate number of homicides, so we should expect a disproportionate number of blacks to be killed by police. But most deaths at the hands of police are not the result of cops responding to or trying to prevent a murder. They occur when cops are doing other police work such as taking someone into custody, making a traffic stop or raiding a home.
Moreover, there’s plenty of data showing that this argument doesn’t hold up for other police uses of force. Countless studies have also shown that black people are much more likely to be pulled over and searched for drugs, even though nearly every study on the subject also found that searches of white people are more likely to turn up contraband. (Even when force isn’t used, one study of traffic stop transcripts found that police, regardless of the officer’s race, use harsher language and are less respectful of blacks than of whites.) Black people are also much more likely to be arrested for both possession and distribution of illegal drugs, even though there’s ample data suggesting whites and blacks both use and sell drugs at about the same rate.
1 in 1000 black men can expected to be killed by police. 1 in 2500 for white men. Either statistic is horrifying, but the difference is unconscionable
Debunkology
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I'd rather take my information from the direct official source, rather than biased news outlets with an agenda.
Stats from: U.S. Department of Justice
I don't disagree with this, although I do think some of this goes back to lived experience and the like you and I referenced a bit earlier. Cops, particularly in inner cities, are aware of who commits violent crimes in those cities. I don't think there is any way to avoid prejudice/bias creeping in as a result. Does that excuse unlawful killings? Obviously not. But does it matter in the discussion of why cops are trigger happy/nervous when pulling over cars of younger black men in bad neighborhoods? I think it does.
In Atlanta, two cops were fired for tasering a couple over the weekend. The couple was black, the cops were black. I don't think this is the product of racism, I think it's the product of bad policing, overly-edgy and burnt out cops, bias/prejudice or a combination of all. It's possible these are just two awful human beings (the cops), but I highly doubt that's the case. Some will say black cops can be racist, which I find pretty silly. But they can certainly pick up prejudices and biases. Those may be unreasonable, but I don't think they're acquired because black cops want to do harm to black people. I think they're acquired because they're on the streets everyday seeing what happens on the streets.
You mean page 32 and 33 on justified homicide? I don’t see anything that breaks that down by race of the person shot - perhaps you can elaborate?
Where were you raging against the neo nazis a while back. Just bore off you tedious tiny handed Magat.
Why are you so defensive of those who'd hurt POC?
Sorry Layne, around here we actually interact with minorities. We don't just yell and scream from the security of our insular lily-white hamlets.
peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
Some depressing and scary numbers in there......
The problem of racism in the US doesn't just start and end with the police.
You are talking about a group of people that have been at the end of institutionalised racism from job & housing opportunities, education places, ghettoisation, the historic corralling of black families into poor & low income neighborhoods (the projects) and the list goes on, for a very long time.
This in itself is a route cause for higher crime rates. I live in a pretty poor part of the city and the crime rate is through the roof here as a result of the increase poverty, nothing to do with skin colour.
The killing of George Floyd might be the spark that lit the blaze, but the fuel for that fire and the motivation behind the BLM movement is far more wide reaching than the death of one person.
That is why unlawful killing of white civilians by the police doesn't get as much attention.
You either haven't bothered considering this or you are willfully ignoring it.
BLM was specifically founded on the principle that unjust killings of black people occur too often at the hands of police and the state (i.e., state-sanctioned violence, not interpersonal violence). That is their goal--you can look it up on their webpage. There are plenty of civic activists in the African American community that speak out and act against black-on-black crime. In fact, African americans view violence in the black community as a more important issue in their community...more than racial injustice in the justice system.
Oh mate.
Sounds like we agree - It really is quite baffling.
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