Cops vs White Guys or Hispanic Guys?

[DemonTree]

Or you can stick to the BBC news, but that’s susceptible to influence from the government.

[MikeF]

@eschereal

The media is a business. Its primary business model is to obtain revenue by means of advertising. They do this by presenting material that will attract readers/viewers: the content is a means to get you to notice ads, which are their revenue source. You are not a client of the media, you are the product that they deliver to their advertisers. If you want to complain about the media, complain to their sponsors.

The media is a business. No question about it. But we often hear media types claiming special rights or expecting special treatment because they are there for a noble purpose. (Presumably, telling the truth.) But you can’t have it both ways. Either you are in it for the money so the heck with unbiased or non-slanted reporting. In that case, you don’t get to go where others can’t. Or you are claiming some higher moral position that grants you certain privileges. In that case, you have a duty to remain reasonably objective in your reporting. Mere opinions (I’m looking at you, Fox) should be clearly identified as such.

In the case at hand it seems that the media, in general, makes a much bigger deal out of white cops killing blacks/browns than when they kill whites. Even though, statistically, that latter happens twice as often. When was the last time you heard race mentioned when a cop was killed? Or anybody, for that matter. It gotten to the point where race and other descriptive information isn’t even mentioned when the cops are actively looking unidentified suspects. Why is that?

[RitterSport]

@DemonTree

I’m talking about the media, not what people talk about in the pit, which could be much more wide ranging for all I know.

The cites you provided were from the media.

[eschereal]

@MikeF

In the case at hand it seems that the media, in general, makes a much bigger deal out of white cops killing blacks/browns than when they kill whites. Even though, statistically, that latter happens twice as often.

This has been addressed. There are six times as many white people as black people in the US, so if twice as many whites as blacks as killed, that would still be three times as many blacks killed.

When was the last time you heard race mentioned when a cop was killed?

There is one legal justification for killing a person: self-defense – although sometimes latitude may be granted if the shooter is defending a third party. The police are granted thousands or millions of proxy selves to defend, so they have much greater latitude when it comes to killing people. Add to that the fact that investigations of a citizen killing someone or an officer killing someone are handled by the same organization, which has a particular interest in protecting the officer. Killings of police do get covered, usually just locally, but they rarely rise above the prominence of a regular murder, because, in receiving the proxy defense charter, police consent to place themselves in harm’s way.

When police use of regular or lethal force looks unjustified, it is a matter of questioning the application of the charter that we have granted them. This is a significantly different thing than basic criminality. We do not want to be handing our proxies over to criminals.

It gotten to the point where race and other descriptive information isn’t even mentioned when the cops are actively looking unidentified suspects. Why is that?

When the description includes “black man”, suddenly every black man is a suspect. It can say “6-foot-4 bald black man” but most people miss all the qualifiers and a 5-foot-7 black man with corn rows fits the description. Add to that the fact that, despite all the efforts of the antimisceginists, race is rapidly becoming a much blurrier characteristic in this country.

[Kimstu]

@eschereal

There are six times as many white people as black people in the US, so if twice as many whites as blacks as killed, that would still be three times as many blacks killed.

Another relevant issue is that news media have traditionally overreported black perpetrators, and underreported black victims, compared to white ones, as this 2010 (i.e., pre-BLM) article discusses.

We did not find evidence of a significant difference in the number of portrayals of White perpetrators relative to Blacks in our base models. To us, this suggests a relative overreporting of Blacks compared to Whites. […] Support for power structure and privileging arguments is also evident in the significant positive effect of index crime news stories on the reporting of Black perpetrators. […]

Our basic analyses reveal that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to be portrayed as victims than Whites. Notably this finding is consistent with: (1) racial privileging arguments that greater attention is given to the victimization of Whites than to non-Whites; (2) power structure claims that White owners of media are more interested in presenting news about White victims; and (3) the normal crimes perspective that White victims are more likely to be reported because they are more unusual (particularly White female victims) or because news is about more powerful groups […]

The “whiteification” of victims in popular “true crime” genres is even more disproportionate.

So it may be that the existence of a significant number of unarmed black people being killed by police is seen as “news” in a “man bites dog” sort of way, because it goes against standard narratives of disproportionately black perpetrators and disproportionately white victims.

[MikeF]

The whole idea of using nationwide demographics as proof of “unfairness” in a non-random event is flawed. Just because a certain percentage of the entire population is x doesn’t imply that the same percentage of all people arrested or shot by police should be the same or anywhere near the same.

If we were to substitute income level for race we’d probably find that police arrest, use force and kill poor people far more than upper middle class and rich people. Does that indicate that police are biased against poor people or is that people in financially dire straights are more likely to commit crimes which leads to more police contacts which leads to more arrests which leads to more uses of force? The fact that minorities make up a greater percentage of low income versus high income people isn’t the fault of the police but of society, as a whole.

More and more people are calling for the police to be like firefighters. “Don’t come until we call for you. Don’t enforce laws for traffic or other minor infractions”. More and more cops are saying “Fine. Let us know how that works out”. It would be a mistake, in my opinion, but would make for an interesting experiment.