Of course it is. That is why we have a crazy bigot about to go to the White House. The media’s desire for a sensational news story (and their poor ability to call out outright lies because of an attempt to be “balanced”) helped get him elected.
But, I don’t think that means that the Blacks shot by police officers is not an important story that needs to be reported.
Sure, but I don’t see the inherent one-sidedness of that. If the story du jour is “Successful sports team fails in Championship game”, I’d expect lots of “Team are all chokers, they should have won” articles, lots of “Team were never as good as people claim” articles, lots of “Team were screwed by bad decisions” articles, lots of “Team were beaten by a perfect gameplan” articles, lots of “Team were let down by one player” articles…
The media is frequently guilty of sensationalizing stories, (and always guilty of sensationalizing headlines), in order to increase the size of their audience.
That said, how many whites have been shot in the back for running from a traffic stop? How many whites, following the instructions of a policeman to present ID, have been shot for reaching for their wallet? How many whites have been shot while standing next to their cars with their hands raised and their backs to police?
Police do kill unarmed whites. And the media should probably be reporting those better. (And police departments should be treating them more seriously and there should be a serious effort to train police to reduce such situations to zero.) However, until the ratio of police-kill-unarmed-white to police-kill-unarmed-black changes to something more in line with population statistics, claims that the media are promoting racial divisiveness through sensationalist reporting seem odd, at best.
This is the problem, in a nut shell, of the modern civil rights movement. Looking at statistics and concluding that a particular institution is racist and not simply reflecting the underlying reality of our society. Let’s use murders in Chicago as an example. The people getting killed in Chicago are disproportionately minority and happen in neighborhoods that are disproportionately minority. If you are the Chicago captain in charge of lowering the murder rate the obvious response is to increase your efforts in the areas where murders happen. The equally obvious result of that is more police = more interactions with citizens = more innocent people shot.
If you dig deeper and move beyond raw statistics then the picture looks much better. A study that sent police through a realistic simulation found that the police were slower to shoot black people. Another tracked incident reports and found that on a per interaction basis the police were less likely to shoot black people (but were more likely to use lower levels of violence).
I don’t think I can do those, but I can do:
A policeman putting on gloves and saying “[His fists] are getting ready to fuck you up” before he beat a man to death
A policewoman shooting a man laying in a prone position at her feet
A policeman shooting a man on the ground moaning from already being shot by the same policeman 15 seconds prior
Horrific police violence against white people is out there. You just have to look because it doesn’t make the front page of the NY Times.
Note that I made no effort to drag the odd spikes in violence in a rather small number of cities into the discussion. Note also that you moved the goalposts rather far. I did not suggest comparison of violent acts, generally, but of violent acts by police against unarmed citizens.
Really? You actually believe that sending in more police justifies the police shooting more innocent people rather than indicating that the shooting of more innocent people indicates a serious need for better training for police?
So, if we rely on anecdotes and hypotheticals, the situation gets better? I’m not persuaded.
I already noted that some police are killing unarmed whites. However, to identify how bad the reality is and to determine whether there is a racial component to the situation, we actually need those statistics you so cavalierly dismissed.
Don’t you have to identify [list=A][li]If there really is a problem, and [*]What the problem is[/list]before you try to fix it? [/li]
Black people are killed by the police in disproportionate numbers primarily because black people commit crimes, especially violent street crimes, in disproportionate numbers, anecdotes notwithstanding.
Is it a problem that the police occasionally shoot violent criminals? Well, I guess you could see it that way, but that has nothing to do with race. What do we do about black crime? I don’t think it can be very well addressed by blaming it on police.
Regards,
Shodan
But that’s just an opinion. We have very little data on most police shootings for the past few decades (and probably essentially no data before that). There could be a significant problem with many of these shootings and we wouldn’t know.
I think it’s at least possible that Sheriff Bull Connors wasn’t particularly unusual as far as 60s sheriffs go, and that flavor of sheriff didn’t go away immediately after the 60s, and there still might be some small but significant number of senior law enforcement folks like him (or like him but a bit less, perhaps a 6 or 7 on the Bull Connors scale) in power scattered throughout the country, in addition to possible systemic and institutional problems like those revealed by the DOJ’s Ferguson report.
The part about blacks committing a disproportionate amount of the crime in the US isn’t an opinion. Cite. 46% of the police feloniously killed since 2004 were killed by black assailants (cite) - that’s not an opinion either. Whites make up about 72% of the population, and commit about 53% of the hate crimes. Blacks make up about 13% of the population, and commit a little more than 24% of the hate crimes (cite). Also not an opinion.
As I said, we need to figure out if there is any problem before we address. You don’t have any evidence beyond the undoubted fact that things were different fifty years ago.
This isn’t fifty years ago. (Cite.)
Regards,
Shodan
It was the “primarily because” statement I call opinion: “Black people are killed by the police in disproportionate numbers primarily because black people commit crimes, especially violent street crimes, in disproportionate numbers, anecdotes notwithstanding.”
I understand that statistically, black people are over-represented in arrests and convictions, but I dispute that it’s anything more then opinion that the disproportionate number of killings of black people by police is “primarily” due to this. It might be, but the influence of other factors could be as great or greater.
Well, I have evidence of some level of department-wide mistreatment of black citizens, such as the DOJ’s Ferguson report. I add to that numerous anecdotal reports of black people being mistreated by police, and most significantly to me, opinion polling that shows that the vast majority of black Americans believe that police generally treat them less fairly than white Americans. I think you’ll agree that the following statement is true – far more black Americans (relatively speaking) than white Americans report that they or someone they’re close to has been mistreated by law enforcement. That may not be conclusive evidence, but it’s at least some data that I think is useful to look at.
So my position is based on statistics, but it’s just an opinion. Yours is based on opinion polls - what does that make it?
Regards,
Shodan
I’ll proceed with the assumption that you’re interested in a real discussion rather than a snark battle, and that you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m honestly trying to think and understand and discuss. If I’m wrong, please let me know and I’ll bow out.
I believe that a position that black people are more likely to be arrested and convicted of a crime is based on statistics. But your position, that this is the primary cause of the disproportionate number (though we have very little statistics on how large this disproportionate number actually is) of police shootings of black people is not based on statistics, since we have very little statistics on police shootings of black people.
Now if we had solid numbers for police shootings nationwide (if they were as well reported as criminal statistics), and we saw that average violent crime ratio for black to white citizens was X, and the police shooting ratio for black to white citizens was Y, and X and Y were very close to each other, then I’d concede that there is statistical support for your position. But we really know very little about what the Y value is – I’ll assume that there’s some value for Y that would concern you. For example, if the violent crime ratio were 3 to 1, and the police shooting ratio were 100 to 1, would you be concerned that possibly there is a factor involved unrelated to disparities in crime rates?
I think your conclusion that the primary cause is disparities in crime rates might be premature, but I’m open to other lines of thinking.
I believe that type of reporting is much more damaging than it’s being acknowledged. Bias and sensationalism in news report can’t do anything but influence the perception of reality in the public and set the groundwork for confirmation bias to flourish.
If the media is inducing perception biases on the population this in turn will affect the way said population behaves, so for instance if through sensationalism the media imparts in the black community an unrealistically elevated perception of fear for law enforcement, then that perception will lead to changes of attitude towards law enforcement, for example lack of trust or cooperation; this in turn would affect the perception of the police towards that group of people, feeling they are uncooperative and untrustworthy… and new there’s a nice little vicious circle at work making things worse than they ought to be.
With that in mind jumping to conclusions and assigning or even implying racist motives to this or that incident, IMHO, is irresponsible.
And the other way, of course, as well. If the media is inducing perception biases such as to impart an unrealistically elevated perception of trust for law enforcement, that too would presumably have an effect.
In a fairly recent study done by StreetCred Software, it was found that the media was four times as likely to report the race of both officer and suspect if the suspect was black as opposed to some other race. Whatever the media’s intention, that type of reporting certainly gives the impression that there is an agenda. It is misleading, at best. Have a look at the study.
People often cite the discrepancy between the general population’s demographics and the demographics of police shootings as proof of racism. The fault with that logic is that police shootings are not random events.
That goes back to what I said earlier - before discussing whether such-and-such is a problem, you need to establish that such-and-such exists, and that it is a problem.
Do black people get shot by the police in numbers disproportionate to their representation in the general populace? Sure, I will accept that. Is it a problem? I have seen no indication that it is. The police occasionally shoot violent criminals or those who resist arrest. And in nearly all the cases over which BLM and such work themselves into a lather turn out to be violent criminals, resisting arrest, or otherwise get shot under circumstances that don’t have much to do with anything except “the police occasionally shoot violent criminals or those who resist arrest”. Not always - usually.
Since you don’t believe you know what Y is, you have not established that police shootings of black people is a problem.
I have provided the statistics to show that blacks commit violent and street crimes disproportionately. I am willing to accept that blacks get shot disproportionately, and nearly all the anecdotes of blacks getting shot turn out to be black violent criminals who resist arrest.
So go ahead - show me the statistics that prove that police shootings of innocent blacks is a problem. If you don’t have such statistics, then don’t assert it as a problem.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, it takes two to Tango, but that effect would arguably be positive; I’m reading through Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature at the moment, and he repeatedly touches on the point that an increased confidence in third party arbiters of justice (AKA law enforcement) is one of the key factors in the reduction of violence over time.
In my opinion a significant percentage of the media erodes that by having a business model based on creating outrage.
I don’t think I’ve asserted that it’s a problem – just that I’m concerned that it might be a problem. Basically, if most members of a particular group says “this thing affecting us is a problem”, then I think it’s reasonable to consider that they might be correct, especially if it’s a thing with a long history of negatively affecting them. That doesn’t mean concluding that they’re correct without further investigation, but in my view it also means that one should not conclude, as you appeared to (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that this is not a problem. Isn’t it reasonable to consider, for example, that maybe police departments should be required by law to keep better records on their shootings, and report them to the DOJ, or something similar?
Absolutely. I remember the summer a few years back when the media started reporting shark attacks. Some people pointed out that there was no news there - the rate of shark attacks was the same as it had always been. So the media was essentially just started reporting a normal situation as if it was news.
I’d need to see some cites for that. Beyond that, I think you’re missing a trick; you’re comparing increased confidence in the police to OVERconfience in the police. They’re most likely linked, but I think you’re looking at two different scales here.
I didn’t say we should just blame it on the police. I fully agree that we should examine the problem and see what it is before we try to fix it.
You may be right. Black people may get shot by the police in disproportionate numbers because they get into situations where the police shoot you in disproportionate numbers.
So now the problem we need to address is “Why do black people get into those situations in disproportionate numbers?” You note that black people commit a disproportionate number of crimes. Why is that?
Are black people inherently drawn to crime? Or is it that black people are more likely to live in environments that lead people to commit crimes? If that’s the case, why do black people live in those environments? Is it by choice or are there other factors which compel black people to live in bad environments?
These are different problems and require different solutions. But I don’t see anything here which says we should just ignore problems.