If you had to guess, how many white people would you say have been killed by the police since the beginning of 2020? Based on media coverage alone, you might think it is fewer than five, or perhaps even zero. Now, how many black people would you guess have been killed by police during the same time period? Thousands? Hundreds?
Perceptions vs. Statistics
While most people can name several black people that have been killed by police since 2020, very few could name even a single white person who was killed. Why is that? It’s not for lack of white blood. Per the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, cops have killed 580 white people since last year, compared to 314 black people. How many of those were unarmed? Thirty white people and 22 black people.[1]
If you’re not wondering why all of these unarmed white men killed by the police didn’t make national news, you should be. The media is pushing a particular narrative, namely that the police are racist and targeting black people. To that end, they choose only to feature the stories that fit (or are forced to fit) that narrative, and ignore those that don’t. Unfortunately, this media bias is causing Americans to think cops are nilly-willy gunning down black people simply because they are black. The narrative is that policing is systemically racist.
This is a myth. It’s not backed up by the data. That’s not to say there are no bad cops, or racist cops, or unjustified shootings of black people. Some people are racist, and surely some of those people are in the police force. However, these are examples of individual racism rather than systemic racism. For policing as an institution to be racist, one would need to point to specific police policies that prima facie discriminate against a particular race.
There are also unjustified shootings, and these need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent. But such events are few in number, dwarfed by the number of justified killings, and not limited to one race. And yet, people ignore these in favor of a false narrative that the police are systemically racist, and law-abiding black people need to fear the police.
Police Shootings Statistics
Emotions run high regarding this issue, and too often, anecdotal data determines what we think and how we feel about this issue. That’s why we need to know the facts – so we can put everything into perspective. First, it’s not true that cops are targeting black people.
- Cops kill those who pose a lethal threat, regardless of their race. According to a study of 650+ police departments, “the vast majority – between 90% and 95% – of the civilians shot by officers were actively attacking police or other citizens when they were shot. Ninety percent also were armed with a weapon when they were shot.”[2] There are virtually no cases of cops killing unarmed, compliant citizens, regardless of race. In almost every situation, the person gets shot because they are resisting arrest and posing a lethal threat to the cops.
- Black men are more likely to kill cops. According to the FBI, ~50 cops are killed in the line of duty each year. Depending on the year, 31-42% of those cops are killed by a black man, despite the fact that black people only represent 13% of the population.[3],[4] If black men are disproportionately responsible for killing cops, that means black men are disproportionally responsible for attacking cops, and thus we would expect them to be disproportionately shot/killed by the cops as well.
- A cop is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop.[5]
Explaining the Racial Disparity
One might say, “Yes, but you’re ignoring the fact that black people are disproportionately killed by police compared to white people.” It is true that the number of black people killed by police is disproportionate to their population. Approximately 1 out of every 1000 black men is killed by the police compared to 1 out of every 2500 white men.[6] However, is this disparity best explained by systemic racism, or by something else?
Many think it’s just obvious that racism is to blame. To see why this conclusion is premature, let’s consider the sex of those who are killed by the police. Cops disproportionately kill males. For every female killed by a police officer, 17 males are killed. Does anyone think this gender disparity is due to systemic sexism among the police? No. We know, by both experience and statistics, that male behavior is markedly different from female behavior. Males have a much higher propensity toward violence and crime than their female counterparts. If we can acknowledge that the reason men are 17 times more likely than women to be killed by cops is due to their behavior rather than their gender, isn’t it possible that black men are killed at a higher rate than other races due to their behavior rather than their race? If the sexes to not behave the same, why think all races do?
Cops don’t generally kill people. There are 700,000 cops in the U.S. and they are responsible for killing ~1000 civilians each year. That means only 0.14% of cops will kill a civilian in any given year. Cops interact with the public more than 61 million times annually[7] and only ~1000 of those end up in a fatality. That means just 0.0016% of police interactions result in civilian fatalities. Given how unlikely it is that any interaction with a cop would result in death, what best explains why cops kill black people at a higher rate than white people?
It’s unlikely to be explained by racism since cops kill whites at a higher rate than Asians.[8] If police are shooting people based on racist attitudes against non-whites, we would expect Asians to be killed at higher rates than whites. So if racism is motivating these shootings, cops are incompetent racists!
The data highly suggests that black people are disproportionately arrested by police and killed by police for the simple fact that blacks commit higher rates of crime per capita compared to other races. For example, 2018 crime data shows that blacks committed 60% of all robberies and 53% of all murders despite constituting just 13% of the population.[9] Blacks are more than twice as likely to commit multiple acts of violent crime compared to whites (22.4% vs. 10%).[10] Whites, Asians, and Hispanics are all underrepresented in the number of non-fatal violent crimes, serious non-fatal crimes, rape/sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault compared to their general population. Blacks, however, are overrepresented in every category (28.9%, 35.9%, 22.1%, 51.1%, 33.9%, and 23.3% respectively).[11]
Racist Over-policing?
Some will object that these statistics are skewed due to racist policing. They say whites commit the same amount of crime as blacks, but whites get away with crime more often because the cops over-police black neighborhoods and under-police white neighborhoods. While one might plausibly argue that this is true for particular types of crime, in general, this is not true, as demonstrated by the homicide rate. Cops must respond to all homicides, whether they are in black, brown, or white neighborhoods. We’ve already determined that black people are responsible for 53% of these homicides despite only constituting 13% of the population. Are we to believe that while black people commit murder at a rate that is three times higher than their population, they don’t commit lesser crimes at a higher rate as well? Anyone who is willing to murder is surely likely to commit lesser crimes as well. I’ve never met a moral murderer who is willing to kill people, but not willing to steal.
Cops focus their attention on where crime is being committed. If more crime is being committed in black communities, police will focus their attention on black communities. The police arrest black people at a disproportionate rate because black people are committing a disproportionate percentage of the crime. If blacks are engaged in a disproportionate percentage of crime, and blacks are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of cop killings, we should fully expect for blacks to constitute a disproportionate number of those who get killed by the police. They are not getting killed because of their race, but because of their behavior. As already noted, 90% are armed and 90-95% are attacking the police when they are shot.
Some will still object that white cops are more likely to kill a black person than a white person. Studies, however, have shown that the opposite is true. White cops are less likely to shoot a black man than a white man. Michigan State University and the University of Maryland studied 917 fatal cop shootings in 2015 from 650+ police departments.[12] They found that white cops were less likely to kill black suspects than black and Latino officers:
“Our data show that the rate of crime by each racial group correlates with the likelihood of citizens from that racial group being shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of white people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, black people are more likely to be shot. It is the best predictor we have of fatal police shootings.
…
We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race.”
The Department of Justice did a study in Philadelphia using 2015 data.[13] They found that black officers were 67% more likely, and Hispanic officers were 145% more likely than white officers to mistakenly shoot an unarmed black suspect.
Race and Crime among Citizens
I’ve been focusing on cop shootings, but the story is the same at the level of citizens. Statistically speaking, black people do not need to fear violence from the hands of white people. Most black people are killed by other black people. In 2018, blacks were responsible for 89% of all black homicides and 15.5% of all white homicides. In contrast, whites were responsible for 80% of white homicides and 8% of black homicides.[14] This means a black person is 11x more likely to be killed by a fellow black person than a white person.[15] It also means whites are 2x more likely to be killed by blacks than blacks are to be killed by whites.[16] The same is true of violent crime. White people are 9x more likely to be the victim of a violent crime committed by a black person than a black person is to be a victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a white person (547,948 incidences vs. 59,778).[17]
None of this is to say that all black people are bad, or that all white people are good. The overwhelming majority of people are good, regardless of their race. But there are bad apples of every race, and right now, black people have a higher percentage of bad apples in their communities compared to the other races. Blacks are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crime in this country, including race-on-race crime. The problem, then, is not the police, but elements of black culture that are producing (mostly) men who are given to higher rates of crime and violence. It gives me no pleasure to report this fact, but it remains a fact nonetheless. We can’t deny it simply because we don’t like it.
Conclusion
The question is not whether police are killing a disproportionate number of black people, but why they are doing so. The evidence points away from systemic racism and to personal behavior. Cops kill black people at higher rates than white people for the same reason cops kill white people at higher rates than Asian people: personal behavior. Cops target those who commit crime, and the fact of the matter is that crime rates are not the same between races. If black people choose to commit a disproportionate amount of crime, they will be disproportionately represented in arrests, incarcerations, and cop shootings. The police ought not to be blamed for this.
Does racism still exist in this country? Yes, in the hearts of some individuals, but not in any systemic way. Are some cops racist? Yes, but policing itself is not systemically racist. We ought to condemn any acts of discrimination or racism among the police, but we should not conclude that policing itself is racist due to the fact that police arrest and shoot a disproportionate number of black people. The disparity is not caused by personal or systemic racism, but the personal behavior of black citizens. There is no reason for black people to fear white people or cops. Law-abiding citizens who are respectful toward the police and comply with police commands do not get shot by the police, no matter what race they are.
The purpose of this post is not to point fingers or blame, but to let the facts shape our narrative rather than the biased media, race-baiting politicians, or even our personal experience. If the evidence supported the idea that policing is systemically racist, I would be the first to condemn it and join those who are advocating for change. That’s not the situation, however. The facts are clear.
Remember, racism must be proven, not assumed.
__________________
[1]Available from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/; accessed 29 April 2021.
[2]David J. Johnson, Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and Joseph Cesario, “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published 22 July 2019; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903856116; available from https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877; Internet; accessed 28 April 2021. Heather Mac Donald reports on this in “There Is No Epidemic of Racist Police Shootings”; available at https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/white-cops-dont-commit-more-shootings/; Internet; accessed 18 April 2021.
[3]FBI, “2019 Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted”; available from https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/topic-pages/officers-feloniously-killed; Internet; accessed 15 May 2021.
[4]FBI, “2019 Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted”; available from https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/topic-pages/officers-feloniously-killed; Internet; accessed 15 May 2021.
[5]Cited by Heather Mac Donald, “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism”; available from https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883; Internet; accessed 12 June 2020.
[6]Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito, “Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex”, https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793.
[7]Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Contacts between Police and the Public, 2018”; available from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=7167; Internet; accessed 7 May 2021.
[8]According to https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ as of May 7, 2021, there have been 1478 police killings since 2020. Only 12 Asians have been killed, compared to 320 blacks and 523 whites. That means Asians only constitute less than 1% (0.008%) of police shootings, and yet they represent ~6% of the general population. Even if we remove the “unknown” race shootings (375), Asians would still only constitute 1% of cop shootings.
[9]Cited by Heather Mac Donald, “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism”; available from https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883; Internet; accessed 12 June 2020.
[10]13.8% of Hispanics and 10.1% of Asians are repeat offenders. See Allen J. Beck with the U.S. Department of Justice, “Race and Ethnicity of Violent Crime Offenders and Arrestees, 2018”; available from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf; Internet; accessed 7 May 2021.
[11]Allen J. Beck with the U.S. Department of Justice, “Race and Ethnicity of Violent Crime Offenders and Arrestees, 2018”; available from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf; Internet; accessed 7 May 2021.
[12]David J. Johnson, Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and Joseph Cesario, “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published 22 July 2019; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903856116; available from https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877; Internet; accessed 28 April 2021. Heather Mac Donald reports on this in “There Is No Epidemic of Racist Police Shootings”; available at https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/white-cops-dont-commit-more-shootings/; Internet; accessed 18 April 2021.
[13]Department of Justice, “Department of Justice Releases Report on Philadelphia Police Department’s Use of Deadly Force”; available from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-releases-report-philadelphia-police-departments-use-deadly-force; Internet; accessed 18 April 2021.
[14]FBI data for 2018. “2018 Crime in the United States”, table 6; available from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/expanded-homicide; Internet; accessed 17 June 2020.
[15]2018 FBI statistics. See “2018 Crime in the United States,” expanded homicide data table 6, available from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls; Internet; accessed 15 June 2020.
[16]FBI data for 2018. “2018 Crime in the United States”, table 6; available from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/expanded-homicide; Internet; accessed 17 June 2020.
[17]Bureau of Justice Statistics, “National Crime Victimization Survey, 2018,” table 14; available from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6686; Internet; accessed 11 June 2020.
Thinking to Believe 
June 10, 2021 at 10:26 am
well said ……….. if George Floyd was white, even if the cops were black, you never would’ve heard of his death. also, if the cops in the George Floyd case were all black you never would’ve heard of his death.
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June 11, 2021 at 2:28 pm
I agree, but when it comes to “wokeism/wokeists” facts dont matter. Racism always happens. It doesnt matter the reason for the disparity. If equity is lacking, its racism. Its not a case of whether racism happens in any situation, its about how it manifests. Their worldview is a mashup of Marxism and post modern theory where language and meaning is subverted
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August 11, 2021 at 2:05 am
LOTS to unpack here. I’m only going to address the points that stuck out to me the most and the post wound up being a bit longer than I anticipated. Nevertheless, here goes.
“If you’re not wondering why all of these unarmed white men killed by the police didn’t make national news, you should be. The media is pushing a particular narrative, namely that the police are racist and targeting black people. To that end, they choose only to feature the stories that fit (or are forced to fit) that narrative, and ignore those that don’t.”
This statement deserves quite a bit of pushback for several reasons.
Firstly, the media coverage of incidents involving unarmed Black men that are killed by police corresponds to the extent of the outcry over the incident by the local community, which, in turn, is primarily exacerbated by three factors:
1) a particularly cruel, unusual, or mysterious killing, particularly if the incident was at least partially recorded or witnessed by several observers
2) a killing that occurs shortly after another nationally-known killing
3) a historically fraught relationship between the local community and law enforcement
The death of George Floyd is an example where all three factors are relevant. The first is self-evident; it also occurred on the heels of the death of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, GA and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY. The third factor applies as well, as it seemingly does in practically any major city these days: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/28/before-george-floyd-s-death-minneapolis-police-failed-to-adopt-reforms-remove-bad-officers
The first (not the killing itself per se, but the length of time the body of the deceased lay on the street in the hot sun before being taken to the morgue) and third factors were applicable in Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, MO in 2014. Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore in 2015 also falls under the first and third factors. A historically fraught relationship between law enforcement and the communities they are entrusted with protecting and serving is something that is almost always minimized or ignored altogether in blog posts like these, particularly when a subject as broad and complex and systematically racist policing is reduced to nothing more police-civilian encounters resulting in civilian fatalities, police *shootings* are erroneously conflated with police *killings,* and being armed is assumed to be sufficient cause for police to shoot or kill a Black civilian in and of itself, whether or not the use of a registered firearm by a legal gun owner was at least attempted, as though the Second Amendment didn’t apply to John Crawford, Philando Castile, or Kenneth Walker. Also, whenever a local community erupts in protests and unrest following an incident of law enforcement killing or seriously injuring a civilian, you can believe that it simply represents the top being blown off after a steady build-up of pressure within the container (i.e., police abuses and misconduct) over time. It’s not uncommon for officers involved in such incidents to have long rap sheets of citizen complaints, something typically disclosed after the fact and over the objections of incalcitrant police unions.
Secondly, it is not the case that every incident wherein a Black citizen is killed or critically injured by police becomes a nationally-important story. But whenever it does, it is because it involves some pretty damning footage or the community protests to a sufficient degree that the story gains national attention. Now it is true that incidents involving White citizens who are killed by police usually don’t gain national traction, but that’s because White Americans tend to view such incidents as isolated exceptions to the rule and side with and trust police, so the default position is usually that the police were justified in their actions. That’s why the only mention of such incidents tends to be in contexts like these where they are used for the sake of disproving a claim, not in an attempt to bring awareness and pursue justice. Black Americans have a much different history and experience with law enforcement and the institutions of government generally and the oft-repeated counterargument “More White people are killed by police every year than Black people” sounds more like a moral self-indictment to Black folks more than anything.
As far as systemic racism in policing is generally concerned, it should be recognized that there are broad complex racial dimensions when it comes to this particular issue that go WELL beyond a White cop/Black civilian dichotomy. Let’s not forget that the current BLM movement originated in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a Hispanic neighborhood watch coordinator, in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012. Martin’s death became extremely politically and racially polarizing when prominent conservative voices who had characterized the failure of law enforcement to charge Zimmerman as an injustice did a complete 180 after becoming outraged that President Obama spoke out about the issue and empathized with Martin’s parents, stating that if he had a son, he’d probably resemble Trayvon. Overnight, Trayvon became all of the worst stereotypes about Black men rolled into one as every unflattering social media text and picture of his was dug up and circulated and White conservatives rushed to reflexively defend George Zimmerman–who went on to become a less-than-ideal model citizen after his acquittal to put it mildly. Earlier I mentioned the death of Ahmad Aubery in coastal Georgia last year; his assailants were White male civilians attempting to make a so-called citizen’s arrest. Getting back to police/civilian interactions, in the Twin Cities, previous incidents in the recent past wherein civilians were killed by police were part of the larger backdrop upon which Floyd’s murder occurred, but with something of a racial twist. In 2016, Philando Castile, a Black man who was a registered gun owner, was pulled over by a Hispanic police officer who asked for his license and registration. Castile informed the officer that he had a firearm in the vehicle before attempting to retrieve his license and registration, but the officer thought he was going for his gun and shot and killed him at point blank range, with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter in the car (his death was captured on smartphone). The NRA was very hesitant to speak out on Castile’s behalf, which it has historically done in similar incidents. In 2017, a White woman named Justine Damond was shot and killed by a Somali-American officer after calling 911 about a possible sexual assault occurring near her home. It was dark and she walked outside to the alley when she heard police pulling up, and the officer shot towards her, thinking he was being ambushed according to this testimony. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison (and for what it’s worth, BLM actually advocated on behalf of her as it has other non-Black victims of lethal police force). Elsewhere, in 2016 a Chinese-American policeman in NYC was tried and convicted for accidentally shooting and killing a Black man in an apartment building stairwell and failing to render aid afterwards; the charge was reduced and he wasn’t given any jail time but there was resentment on the part of Asian Americans who felt that the conviction was racially motivated: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/former-nypd-cop-peter-liang-s-guilty-verdict-leaves-community-n518056
Half of the officers involved in the mysterious death of Freddie Gray, a Black man from Baltimore, in 2015 were Black, and the partner of the White officer Michael Slager who shot African-American Walter Scott in the back as he was running away (Slager lied and said Scott stole his taser and was charging towards him which is why he shot him, unaware there was cell phone footage of the incident) in North Charleston, SC was Black. And it’s important to note that in many of these incidents, investigations of the police departments involved revealed longstanding patterns of police abuses in poor minority neighborhoods as well as a tendency to repeatedly charge Black citizens for very minor and petty offenses at the least (it’s a lot worse for cities like Baltimore and Chicago). And besides all of this are the countless number of non-fatal incidents involving police misuse of authority and misconduct towards Black citizens, and yes even the ones complying as asked such as this incident which didn’t really get national traction and only because–thankfully–this brother survived: https://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/justice/south-carolina-trooper-shooting/index.html
Everything I mentioned here demonstrates the folly of using White police killings of Black Americans as the sole criteria to determine if systematic racism in policing really is a thing and how complex racial dynamics surrounding policing are important also.
Attributing the disproportionate number of police killings of Black citizens to disproportionate Black crime rates is extremely problematic for a few reasons. First and foremost, it implies that to be killed by police is a reasonable, normal, and expected thing for any Black person to experience that has ever committed any sort of crime before. Resisting arrest is a crime in and of itself; does that make someone who’s only been charged with such in the past a menace to society to be put down like a rabid dog by a cop? Secondly, it justifies police treating persons as members of racial groups first and foremost and not as individuals which is a violation of an individual’s civil rights. Thirdly, it assumes that that police kill Black citizens who are actively committing a crime or who are being engaged in some way relative to a past crime they are suspected of having committed. On this last point, there are four lines of evidence that suggest otherwise.
Firstly, most encounters between police and Black citizens occur due to traffic stops for relatively minor reasons (yes DWB is a thing), not during the commission or investigation of violent crimes. Philando Castile had been stopped nearly 50 times in the 13 years prior to his death for nothing more than misdemeanor traffic infractions and the most serious violation he was charged with was possession of small amounts of marijuana. He had no history of violence; one officer even noted his regularly cooperative demeanor. This includes Black citizens driving nice expensive cars being stopped based on a presumption of an inability to afford such a vehicle by legitimate means: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traffic-stops-driving-black.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
Secondly, most of the violent crime in poor Black neighborhoods is concentrated in a handful of crime hot spots and driven by a handful of repeat offenders, often granted bail and back out on the streets shortly after committing a violent offense (whereas those charged with minor petty offenses often cannot afford bail and are at risk of losing their jobs and getting bogged down by ever-accumulating court fees and fines): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-25/beyond-broken-windows-what-really-drives-urban-crime
Thirdly, Black Americans are falsely convicted at disproportionately higher rates, significantly so in most cases, than most other demographics for many types of crime. It’s actually quite galling when you consider the extent to which official misconduct is involved when it comes to wrongful murder convictions and the egregious nature of wrongful drug convictions. There’s no way any objective person can consider these statistics and not conclude that systemic racism is absolutely present in policing and the criminal justice system overall: https://research.msu.edu/innocent-african-americans-more-likely-to-be-wrongfully-convicted/
And fourthly, the murder clearance rate for homicides involving Black victims has been on a steady decline over the past 50 years and has been the lowest out of all racial groups for the past quarter century. Although these rates are crude and imperfect, the fact that they tend to overestimate the number of crimes solved means that a statistically and horribly low figure is even more so in real life. This strongly suggests that police aren’t solving the most serious crimes in poor Black neighborhoods which further emboldens criminals since they are convinced they can get away with their crimes. It also fuels an ongoing cycle of retaliation by friends/family of homicide victims and discourages residents from cooperating with police to solve crimes since the community lacks trust in the police to protect them or achieve justice for victims and their families: http://www.murderdata.org/2019/02/black-murders-account-for-all-of.html
And please, let’s not play the semantic shell game by switching out “Black” with “minority” as a way to sneak Asians into the argument. All non-White groups are hardly alike and Black Americans have a very particular and much longer history in this country. The only other minority group that is similar in these respects is the one we’re never compared to in these types of discussions, namely Native Americans. However, they tend to be out of sight, out of mind whereas Black Americans have a much more ubiquitous presence within and significant impact on American society. Plus we are quintessentially American and have a history of longing to become part of the mainstream of society but having been rebuffed on this front for as long as we have been and with immigrants (Irish, Italian, Eastern European, Asian, etc.) having historically been preferred by the White power structure over fellow citizens of a different hue has certainly taken its toll, on both Black Americans and society at large. This is the legacy of racialized slavery in America: a psychological racial hierarchy that makes it easy to attempt to put and keep Black Americans at the bottom based on the divergence of physical features compared to White Americans. It’s rooted in our visceral and primitive brains to the extent that even the folks who claim to be colorblind and want American society to “move beyond race” don’t even see how they perpetuate the hierarchy by normalizing the use of lethal force by police against Black Americans based on nothing more than crime rates in Black communities–but loudly proclaim their opposition to CRT because it supposedly categorizes all White people as “oppressors.” If we’re all supposed to be Americans moving past race, then exceptions for “Black-on-Black crime” and Black out-of-wedlock birth rates to be wielded for argumentative purposes simply are not acceptable.
And finally, let’s deal with the assertion that “a cop is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop.” Once I saw that it was one of Heather MacDonald’s creative statistical figures, it made sense. I can’t even stomach her extremely disdainful anti-Black content on City Journal’s website, not to mention the unabashed White supremacists who flock to the comments sections like moths to a flame. I pray one day God sees fit to replace her heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Anyway, a strong rebuttal to MacDonald’s “18.5 times more likely” statistic and its tortured methodology can be found here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/06/how-conservatives-use-made-up-nonsense-to-justify-police-killings/
I’ll wrap up by saying this. I am not denying the issue of high violent crime in poor Black communities in particular. It has long been a problem and dedicated, competent, and skilled law enforcement is sorely needed to assist in its decline. But what they get instead is local police acting as PR machines and revenue generators for local governments when they push for arrest quotas to be met for the sake of optics and issuing tickets for petty violations that come with all sorts of regressive fines and fees that overburden working-class people and winds up causing resentment when not nearly the same sort of energy and attention is directed to solving violent crimes. And you don’t have to take my word for it; the conservative Wall Street Journal says as much also: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underpolicing-of-black-america-1422049080
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