I agree with much of what you said in this post and want to call out the above. To me the most troubling aspect of our society is that black men have such a high rate of criminality when compared to other sub groups.
I understand iiandyiiii’s focus on the racism of the police but to me that’s the end of the problem. The start of the problem is determining why society is channeling so many black men into encounters with the police.
How could one possibly measure this? We know that black men are more likely to be convicted of crime. But if the system is biased, that’s what we’re going to find even if the actual real crime rate were perfectly flat.
Heh. I encountered police in my 20s, 30s, 40s, while hanging out with other white guys smoking weed. Each of the encounters ended with the police “warning us” as we disbursed. I have a strong suspicion we would have received more than a warning had we been a group of black guys.
Back in the “day”, I drove way too fast, and often had some kind of contraband on me.
I always got my ticket talked down to something easier to deal with (from 35 over to 19 over), and never got searched.
To be clear I think there is ample evidence to show that police react differently to white and black perps, which is why I understand iiandyiiii’s concern. If we could somehow solve the high incidence of black male crime then I think a lot that bias goes away, or at least is mitigated because it happens less often.
Once again, is it that they are committing crimes more than white males, or is is that they are caught, arrested, and convicted more than white males?
Good question and I don’t have the answer to that. It would be part of understanding and “solving” (for whatever that means) the problem.
Don’t be a black man near a Walgreen’s drug store when any other black man is nearby doing something wrong.
That’s pretty fucked up.
Even if he were the one they wanted, they still escalated to force unnecessarily, causing injury. The fact that they just picked a random black guy on the street to detain just adds insult.
As I’ve said in these sorts of threads before, it’s not just the threat of being killed that makes people rightfully fear encountering the police.
I doubt that this is the first time that officer bear hug has body slammed someone while they were offering no threat or resistance.
My experience exactly. I’ve also been pulled over for expired tags, speeding and an illegal left turn – the last of which occurred at 2:00 a.m. with a quarter pound of weed in the back seat. Never once had the car searched.
Me as well. Never once searched, had drugs on me A LOT.
This may be a good time to bring up Lexington Ky again.
Where blacks are far more likely to be pulled over and searched than whites, although whites were more likely to have contraband when searched.
The department’s description of the incident:
A friend of mine was once pulled over for speeding. He had weed in the center console. The cop had him step out of the car, and then asked if he would grant permission for him to search the car. My friend said no, and the cop left him alone. Yeah, we’re white.
I got pulled over for doing over 80 in a 55, on my way to a hemp festival. There were 4 other people in the car, all of us had something on us, not to mention buttloads of paraphernalia.
I was wearing last year’s hemp fest T-shirt, fortunately, my passenger mentioned it, and I zipped up my jacket as the cop was walking up to the car.
I talked to the cop about camping and dogs for a bit, he wrote me up for 74 (which meant it wasn’t reckless op, just a ticket), wished me a good day, and told me to drive safe.
You do not seem to be taking this data you revealed into account for later parts of your post. You say that the data shows that police shoot black people 2.5 times as often. But later on, you claim that, for every black person killed, you can find a white person. But, according to your data, you would in fact find that there are 2 white people for every 5 black people.
When numbers are high, like they are with police brutality, it may look like both sides are roughly equal. That’s why getting actual data, rather than going by comparing anecdotes. This is what it meant by saying that anecdotes are not data–human brains don’t handle larger numbers well.
You can argue about why the disparity exists. But the data you gave shows the disparity is there, and your defense that there are just as many white victims does not hold.
You’ve already made a serious error. You are assuming the only reasons Black people can be engaged in interactions with police are legitimate reasons.
Why should I believe that?
Even if every interaction is legitimate, there’s no reason to believe police don’t use their discretion to eschew legitimate reasons to interact with white people in favor of interacting “legitimately” with black people.
This is important. We don’t know that black people factually commit more crimes, and have data to back up that black people are more likely to be punished and punished more severely than white people who commit the same crime. For example:
However, I’d like to make a different point. At the very least, not everyone agrees that black people commit more crime. Yet, you, @WalterBishop stated this entirely uncritically, without examining it, and without attempting to prove it.
That sort of thing suggests a subconscious bias. It’s something you just assume is true, and thus it didn’t occur to you that it might not be, or that many of us would not agree at all.
And the claim that black people are more inherently criminal is a common racist claim—one you may have heard and internalized without realizing it. That sort of thing is exactly the problem. There’s this cultural assumption that black people are more likely to be criminal.
That is an assumption that must be challenged. It cannot just be accepted.
Also in Minnesota:
A white man beat a store clerk with a block of wood after being told he had to wear a mask. Once the cops showed up, he tried to flee, and rolled up his truck’s window, leaving the cop with his arm trapped, as he drove away at 40 mph. The cop pulled out his windshield hammer and broke the side window to get his arm untrapped. The guy grabbed the hammer and beat the cop in the head with it.
He was not tased or shot. One guess what color he is.