> elevated for blacks because the commit more crime
True perhaps, but very misleading. Consider that blacks are far more likely to end up in jail (and for longer) for the same crime a white person commits. Consider that ending up in jail and with a criminal record puts someone in a situation where they're more likely to commit crimes in the future. Sounds to me like racial bias is creating a higher likelihood of the police encounters that may result in shootings occurring.
I think your argument is wrong in several ways, but even accepting it hypothetically -- equality of far too many murders by the police is not actually what anyone is looking for.
It’s certainly not what I’m looking for, but BLM was obviously about purported racial inequality with respect to police killings or else Daniel Shaver, Tony Timpa, Justine Damond, etc would be among the Names that we’re told to Say.
So it's not monolithic, I've definitely been at "BLM"-y protests against police violence where non-Black victims were mentioned.
As far as actual policy changes we might want to advocate for or support, does it make any difference? I guess it would mean that "diversity training" for cops is not the way to go -- I agree and I think most BLM organizers would too (the ones I know anyway do). Instead ways that increase police accountability or limit police interactions are the way to go, which I again think would be agreeable.
I think the level of violence and aggression that police enact on certain communities would probably not be tolerated if it affected people with more political power -- they target people with less political power, which has racial components in the USA is why race matters, but is not exclusively "black and white", sure.
> So it's not monolithic, I've definitely been at "BLM"-y protests against police violence where non-Black victims were mentioned.
Yes, I'm generalizing. It's not possible to make meaningful statements about a millions-strong movement that apply universally, so I'm generalizing just like we generalize about "liberals", "conservatives", "progressives", "Trump supporters", etc. And I stand by my generalization--any mention of white victims of police violence was an aberration, an outlier.
> I think the level of violence and aggression that police enact on certain communities would probably not be tolerated if it affected people with more political power -- they target people with less political power, which has racial components in the USA is why race matters, but is not exclusively "black and white", sure.
I mean, I think virtually everyone agrees that police killings are classist. Of course, BLM wouldn't have been controversial if the message was merely "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)". Something like 90% of Americans in 2020 (per Gallup or Pew--I forget which--but think about how big this number is particularly in light of the polarization of American politics) agreed that police brutality was a problem and police reform was needed--this was extremely uncontroversial. But the claim wasn't "classism", it was "racism"--police target ("hunt" was even commonly invoked) black Americans because of their race.
> Of course, BLM wouldn't have been controversial if the message was merely "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)"
I'm confused why you think this is "of course"?
I'm confused why you are so caught up in whether the problem is described as "classism in a society where the poor are disproportionately black" or "racism in a society where black people are disproportionately poor."
I think in America you can't actually totally separate racism and classism as completely separate things, they are always related. Slavery, one major part of the beginning of American race relations, was, of course, a class relation -- enslaving people for their labor.
I think one reason non-poor Black people do get targeted by police is because they are perceived ("coded" to use fancy language) as poor, because in America Black is associated with poor. Like not even necessarily that the individual person is assumed to be poor -- although they may be, but it may not be that explicit or conscious. I don't think the police are even necessarily explicit or conscious about the fact that they can behave abusively toward poor people specifically (although they may be sometimes); but implicitly and unconsciously they know that certain kinds of people can be mistreated, that it's even their job to mistreat certain kinds of people -- and they are likely to read a Black person as that certain kind of person.
You can disagree with this analysis. No big deal. I don't understand why it seems to make you so angry that other people have this analysis you disagree with though; or why, if you agree that there is a problem with police brutality and abuse, as you seem to, and even agree with the problem statement "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)" -- you can't work with people who agree with you so much of the way even though they disagree on some analysis, work together on solutions that make sense to all (like no, not "diversity training" for police, literally nobody I know that's BLM or "abolish the police", and I know a lot of people, think that's useful either) -- instead of considering them somehow on another side. "you" being you personally, or anyone in this category.
> I'm confused why you are so caught up in whether the problem is described as "classism in a society where the poor are disproportionately black" or "racism in a society where black people are disproportionately poor."
Because those are different problems with different solutions, and picking the wrong set of solutions tends to exacerbate problems (as we're seeing now with soaring crime from which black communities suffer disproportionately).
> I think in America you can't actually totally separate racism and classism as completely separate things, they are always related.
I'm sure there's an element of "black == poor" (brings to mind Biden's "poor kids are just as bright as white kids" gaffe) and in that sense these things are interrelated, but it doesn't follow that we can solve the problem by ignoring what is likely a considerably classism component altogether.
> I don't understand why it seems to make you so angry that other people have this analysis you disagree with though
I think this is entirely in your imagination. I can chuck a few smiley emojis around if it helps? :)
> if you agree that there is a problem with police brutality and abuse, as you seem to, and even agree with the problem statement "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)" -- you can't work with people who agree with you so much of the way even though they disagree on some analysis, work together on solutions that make sense to all (like no, not "diversity training" for police, literally nobody I know that's BLM or "abolish the police", and I know a lot of people, think that's useful either) -- instead of considering them somehow on another side. "you" being you personally, or anyone in this category.
As is often the case in politics, agreement that there is a problem is not actually very much agreement. 90% of Americans agree that we need police reform (Gallup 2020), that doesn't mean we should pick the proposals offered by the most extreme 10% (proposals which 80% of black Americans reject). Notably, there's a lot of research that indicates that the little bit of de-policing we've done in this country seems to be driving a tremendous amount of additional violent crime. Homicides are up 60-70% since ~2014, amounting to about ten thousand additional lives lost every single year (that's about three 9/11s every single year just in homicides, not to mention all of the "mere" assaults, armed robberies, etc) in order to stop a handful of unjustified police killings. Why would I work with the most extreme 10% who are actively making things worse when there's another 80% of the country that are open to more moderate reforms which can address police brutality without enormous body counts?
Oh God, not one of these "we used self-reported statistics from metropolitan police departments to determine valid discharges of firearms to paint with broad strokes all over the country" studies.
As if they say anything about the rural parts of this country, like my hometown, half an hour from where Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down.
That data generally agrees with victim surveys about the race of offenders of violent crimes. It stands to reason that a group with a larger share of violent criminals is also going to have more police killings. Is there any data that contradict these? Is there any plausible theory about why victims might conspire with police to make it appear as though black Americans collectively overcommit violent crimes?
At first, I typed out a more long-winded reply about why one can't conflate the self-report statistics of victims with the motivations of police in violent skirmishes, but I've been reflecting a lot lately on choosing my battles.
The "but black people are more likely to be violent criminals" rebuttal is a despicable one, and if you can't see the absence of causal links that you're deliberately hopping over in an attempt to shoehorn that in, then I doubt I'm going to make you see it in a HN comment. That said, I sure hope you don't ever correct someone on "causation vs correlation", as you'd be a tremendous hypocrite.
It’s only appears to be despicable to people who don’t understand statistics on a basic level (which, sadly, describes most Americans, even educated ones) or ardent racists who believe that “the race” supersedes “the individual”.
Notably, we can correctly observe that black people commit more violent crimes per capita than other races without implying any of the following:
1. black people are biologically disposed to crime
2. a significant percentage of black people are criminals
3. any given black person significantly more likely to be a criminal than any given non-black person
I definitely think your decision to pick your battles more carefully is the right one, and I encourage you to be even more judicious.
I firmly believe that you don't understand statistics on a basic level, and you've wholly demonstrated that in this comment by throwing around a bunch of "explanations" with no basis but your own intuition. So the irony of your opening assertion has a wonderfully humorous tinge to me, a literal statistician. Take your pseudo-intellectual trolling back to reddit.
Flamewar comments like you posted to this thread will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I will, as much as I enjoyed most of your posturing, including your misunderstanding of what constitutes an ad hominem AND the feeble attempt to invoke the guidelines. Is my tone too harsh for you? Or was it that I assumed the bad faith that you wear on your sleeve?
Flamewar comments like you posted to this thread will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Read your own citation. That conclusion did not reach the level of statistical significance. The authors admit it studied a single precinct that self-reported data. They had no way to corroborate or verify the accuracy of the data they were given.
“In essence, this is equivalent to analyzing labor market discrimination on a set of firms willing to supply a researcher with their Human Resources data!”
