It happens, but by far the primary threat to African-Americans is black on black violence. Jessie Jackson isn’t the only guy to admit that he relaxes when he sees the guy who surprised him in a dark alley was white.
Suppose that’s true.
Suppose for a second, to quite literally make numbers up from thin air, that for every time a cop murders a black man and the goes back to work and sits in the police station, ten black men kill other black men and disappear into the night.
Supposing I agree that we should encourage the police to investigate and try to arrest black murderers.
I still think that we should also investigate and (if justified) arrest the cop. For one thing, he’s easier to find.
Oh no, I agreed about cops. Cop killings are especially egregrious because it shows blacks they can’t get justice. But random white criminals are a different case. A random white criminal killing a black person should be no different than a random black criminal killing a black person. If you only care about the former, then black lives don’t really matter to you IMO. Whites matter to you.
:dubious: Shouldn’t that be that if I only care about white victims that black lives don’t matter to me?
Don’t get me wrong, we should investigate all murders, and ignoring black-on-black crime sends a horrible message. (One of several horrible messages, actually; take your pick.) But paying special attention to white-on-black murders could, in theory, be an effort to crack down on hate crimes. Or not, for all I know.
Regardless, I’m still of the personal opinion that the BLM movement should focus its efforts on on cops that kill people. It’s a more focused message, and you don’t have to waste time wondering whether you’ll catch the guy.
I don’t understand this thought. As some of you might know I live in West Virginia and practice law in some real rural counties. It is fair to say that a lot of people I deal with are not fans of black folks, and that is very unfortunate.
However, I have never seen a situation where a black client was treated unfairly by the police, the prosecutor, or the judge. Not once, not ever. I mean, yes they are overcharged just like white defendants, but I have never, even in the mountains or the coal fields, seen any disparate treatment. There are no winks and nods in the judge’s chambers.
If anything, blacks get better treatment because nobody wants the national media descending on the town so all of the rules are meticulously followed, whereas with a poor white boy nobody cares so the cops can jerk him around.
Any authorities that fit the description you gave are in fact not legitimate authorities.
Do you believe you’d have the same “not once, not ever” record if you had worked for your whole career in Detroit, Chicago, or some other large urban area?
I honestly don’t know. Why wouldn’t those places be more progressive than bumblefuck West Virginia?
Your anecdotal evidence doesn’t really tell us anything about this situation at large. Polling gives us a better idea - and a full 50% of black American adults report that they personallyhave been mistreated by police. As compared to 3% of white Americans.
I’ve posted the link before, and I’ll find out again when I’m able. But if you’ve been personally mistreated by law enforcement, then that goes a long way towards explaining why you’d seriously mistrust and fear law enforcement.
Linky: What Americans think about the Economy - AP-NORC Reports/law-enforcement-and-violence-the-divide-between-black-and-white-americans0803-9759.aspx
But then you wouldn’t have the issue of racism at play while the cops seem to ignore it.
We’re dealing with two different things here: what BLM cares about, and what specific stories become a big rallying point. And you also cannot assume that BLM is on their own responsible for what winds up trending, since it can’t trend unless people who are not part BLM also get involved.
I’ve definitely constantly heard BLM complain about how cops drag their feet with black victims. I’ve heard examples. But that doesn’t mean those examples will become some big rallying point. For that to happen, something has to stand out about the situation. There has to be an emotional resonance that will capture the public. There has to be a point of outrage. There has to be a continued controversy. And then you have to consider what else is going on and the exact mood at that point and just so many other variables for why something will go viral like this.
I looked at King’s Twitter, and I see him bringing up a lot of things that I don’t remember becoming viral. So it doesn’t seem that his bringing something up makes it become a thing in the wider culture.
My main point is that you can’t take the virality of a particular story and the lack of virality of others to determine what is and isn’t important to BLM–or any other movement.
I personally cannot give that metric a lot of validity.
Given the known culture of black children being raised to distrust law enforcement at a very early age, it is possible that a not insignificant to very high percentage of those black american adults are going to almost always say they were mistreated regardless of the officers demeanor or treatment during any interaction where the black american adult has committed a crime or violation?
I suspect that unless the officer is delivering your stolen purse or letting you go with a warning that the black american adult will say they were mistreated even if the officer was polite, patient, understanding and gentile.
If the officer was gentile, that means he was a big dick!
Black people are three times as likely to be **shot **by a cop as white people.
And I suspect that you have no real insight into the issue. Perhaps you should try speaking to some African-Americans?
This reads like a longer version of “the blacks don’t know what they are talking about”.
I tend to trust people speaking about their own personal experiences. I don’t think one race is better at this than any other race.
Is there a name for this type of flawed argument? It’s where you start with a small fact, and gradually build it up to a much larger conclusion than that fact warrants. I kinda picture it like a snowball running down a hill.
You can maybe argue that black people being taught to mistrust the police would lead to skewed numbers in borderline cases. But that’s as far as you can go with that one fact. You can’t take that further to asserting that some will always say they are mistreated, nor to your further conclusion in your final paragraph that all black Americans will say they are mistreated, no matter what.
Not trusting someone doesn’t lead to assuming they have actively harmed you. I once had a neighbor who I didn’t trust. Sometimes he would make idle chit chat while I was out mowing. If someone asked me about that interaction, would I say he mistreated me? No. He was nice then. I just don’t trust him. Well, black people are no less intelligent than I am, so why would they be any different?
In other words, you can argue that the numbers are skewed slightly, as white people are more likely to give a cop the benefit of the doubt. You can’t, however, use that to cover such a wide disparity. Even assuming 1/3 of interactions were misunderstandings, you’d still have 1 in 3 black people having had bad interactions with the police.
I believe you mean “mistreated due to race” rather than just mistreated.
Whether someone mistreated you due to race is a judgment that’s very difficult to accurately assess. In particular it relies very heavily on 1) one’s preconceived notions about racism, and 2) an assessment of how the police would theoretically have treated someone of another race in that same situation. The fact that the person being surveyed is discussing their own personal situation doesn’t give them a unique insight WRT this.
The polling numbers in aggregate do show that it is race related though. If you are arguing that there could be another explanation for that disparity, don’t you need to suggest what that other reason is?
Both factors I listed in my prior post would account for the disparity.
In addition to these, there are also far more white police officers than black ones and black people are also more likely to interact with the police in criminal situations, so there’s far more opportunity to have this belief whether accurate or not.