The link is a sample sized survey of less than 5,000 College undergrads, do you think college kids these days are more or less likely to do drugs than the general populace? Maybe find a sample of the general populace.
Look, I can understand that what you say makes a bit of sense to me, but in a nation of laws vigilantes aren’t help up as the example we aspire to need or want.
If the black community does BELIEVE (and I believe this to be true) that they can’t rely on the police, then that is indeed a failing that needs to be addressed.
Whether or not the statement is true, we need to address their belief.
But too many people want to argue that that statement of belief is TRUE.
Here, it looks like drug use by blacks is 13.1% vs. 11.6% for whites (1.5% difference). However, looking at only marijuana, which is a subset of those numbers, blacks are 1.8% more likely to use it. So, if you back out marijuana usage (which, by 2017 was well on its way to being decriminalized), you again see higher usage by whites. For example, if you look at the prescription drug misuse, whites are higher.
So, I’ll retract my previous cite and let’s call it a tie for illegal drug usage. Do you think whites and black are arrested, hassled, incarcerated at equal rates for drug crimes?
The protests are all about this. It’s what Black Lives Matter is about – mistreatment of blacks by police officers. Given this post, I think our opportunity for productive debate has concluded.
I have always agreed that any mistreatment (the actual mistreatment) of black people by the police needed to be addressed.
I mean I’ve said that many many times.
But the debate goes far beyond that, and that is what I have been attempting to debate which no one really wants to address.
Ok, let’s call the drug usage even then. I’m on board, now what? The prosecution of different drugs have different legal ramifications, Id be interested in seeing the statistics that show white drug users of the same nature are being treated differently.
Originally we started out asking why police are more heavily in the black communities. I answered , crime. TOTAL crime. Violent crime
You have responded with but drug crime is equal, ok but what does this tell us about why the police are in the black communities more? (or too much, or disproportional to the need)
Fair enough. But then you can’t really claim “no one wants to address” the larger aspects of the debate, when you ignore posts as being not interesting enough that attempt to do this.
They’ve always been in the black communities more. They were in 1850; they were in 1900; they were in 1950, and 1975, and they still are now. Why isn’t it plausible to you to suggest that they’re still there disproportionately for the same or similar reasons that they were for all of American history?
It isn’t that it denies plausibility, but TODAY, the data suggests that they are NEEDED there more.
If the data showed otherwise then you’d score points and people would rush to believe you.
That is the debate we are having today. If the police are racially motivated, you’d never be able to tell because the black community does themselves no favors by being more crime ridden. According to the data.
Did you read #55 ? That should show a clear systemic bias which ends up racist (even in the unlikely event the policy wasn’t deliberately racist to start with).
IIRC the racist disparity mentioned in #55 was addressed by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, but only partly — a big disparity still exists just in charges for cocaine use.
I don’t know enough about either of those drugs to make an educated guess as to why they would view them differently, do you?
Is one more addictive? More dangerous? More or less any differences between the two that would result in the law makers viewing them differently?
Because if the only difference is that one is more predominant in black communities, then yes I agree.
The data that is affected by police behavior. If these statistics are as they are because the cops act with systemic racism, then it’s not anything wrong with “the black community”, it’s something wrong with police. And considering that for all of American history, black people were targeted more, these seems highly plausible. And there’s data – that’s certainly what data like the Ferguson report, and polls that show half of all black Americans personally reporting mistreatment by cops, suggests.
Police departments collect data about crime and arrests, and they could be biased because they are targeting black neighborhoods and ignoring white neighborhoods. If that were true it would mean that white neighborhoods are being systematically ignored by police and either white people are fine with it and don’t complain or their complaints are being ignored. Given the stereotype that white women are quick to complain and are prone to calling cops, does either sound likely to be true.
There is more than one way to collect data. The surveythe BOJ does of crime victims can not be biased by police departments and yet it shows the same thing as the police department’s reports. Black people are much more likely to be the perpetrator and of crime.