What you’ve written above probably seems like common sense to most people. The problem is, sometimes common sense isn’t always what we think it is. White America and Black America live in two different Americas. And they always have.
The reason drug usage surveys compare whites and blacks in the system is that those are the only people who take drug tests. However, you are incorrect in saying that this invalidates the results because the white people included in the drug testings are also
already in the system. It does not compare black people in the system to white people in general but blacks and white already in the system to be drug tested.
Even if this one study was not valid there are plenty of others. From Wikipedia “Although many have claimed that there is little difference between rates of drug use between blacks and whites based on surveys,[23] a 2005 study found that blacks, when compared with whites, are much more likely to underreport their own drug use in surveys.[24] However, the underreporting effect diminished to a nonsignificant value when socioeconomic variable was taken into an account.[24] Other studies on the racial variation in validity of self-reported drug use have produced varying results. One study found that blacks who had been arrested were more likely than their white or Hispanic counterparts to admit cocaine use.[25] A 2004 study found that blacks who tested positive for marijuana use were less likely to report they had used it.[26] Two other studies have found that blacks were more likely to underreport cocaine use than whites,[27][28] though one of these studies found that this difference in rates of underreporting disappeared when one controlled for whether the offender had tested positive for crack cocaine.[28] A 1997 study found that African Americans and Hispanics were more likely than whites to claim they had not used cocaine even when they tested positive for it.[29] A 2014 study also found that black men who have sex with men were less likely than their white counterparts to report use of either marijuana or cocaine, despite little difference between the groups in likelihood of screening positive for either drug.[30]” That is five studies just on the Wikipedia page. That is not even exhaustive.
As I already explained, victimization surveys are not done through arrest records, the Department of Justice surveys people to ask if they were the victim of a crime, that way it includes people who did not report the crime to the police. A certain amount of those surveyed are also interviewed by the Census Bureau. This creates a very accurate picture of the amount of crime going and the characteristics of the criminals. So unless black victims are making up stories of black criminals or white victims of crime are covering up for white criminals then it lets us know what the data is for criminality among various ethnic groups. These survey results match up very closely with the Uniform Crime Reports that the FBI compiles from police forces around the nation.
If crime rates were equal among ethnic groups either there are massive amounts of innocent black people in prison, or massive amounts of white and asian criminals prowling around with impunity. If it is the former why are black people lying to the census bureau about being the victim of crime? If it is the latter why don’t cops care about white victims of crime?
If BLM or similar groups live in some alternate America where it makes common sense to say “the police are hair-trigger racists who will kill you at the drop of a hat - therefore resisting arrest is understandable” then there is not much to be done.
Regards,
Shodan
Agreed. They’re not saying this.
Why can’t everyone, including white people, as well as Hispanics and Asians, hear it? Of course Sharpton/Jackson’s critics don’t talk about them pointing out problems with the blacks if they can’t see it bc they won’t do it in front of the camera but only behind closed doors or events with little press.
We all have to live together, and at the end of the day, whites are still the super majority of America, and given how many Hispanics see themselves as white, will be for the forseeable future. The majority of America needs to actually be able to know that blacks are making a good faith effort to clean up their act if police departments are to become more fair. That doesn’t diminish the need for sentencing reform and body cameras, but there are two sides to each coin.
I know Obama praises the police, but Sharpton/Jackson and other similar black politicos and public figures do not, but rather ONLY whine about them. Yes there are problems but you don’t help the situation by only complaining about an institution necessary in society.
Also, what does “demilitarizing” the police actually mean? I know Obama doesn’t promote “disbanding,” but the crazier comments from BLM representatives/members like “disbanding police” need to be more strongly attacked.
Such hyperbole is not necessary. The Klan, OK, that comparison works, but not the police.
They can hear it – it’s incredibly easyto find. They do this publicly all the time, and have for decades.
The only way to not know that black leaders regularly address black-on-black crime and violence is to deliberately avoid it.
There are not two legitimate sides to every story – slavery didn’t have two sides, neither did/do Jim Crow, segregation, red-lining, housing discrimination, police brutality, etc.
They do indeed also praise police at times. You just deliberately seem to avoid such news.
Demilitarizing the police means that they don’t need tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc.; SWAT teams don’t need to be utilized routinely to break down doors and charge in when children are present; cops should treat communities more like partners and allies than enemies; etc.
It’s entirely true. For most of American history, black people were subject to random and brutal violence by police. Before slavery ended, one of the major duties of police was to track down fled and rebellious slaves and capture or kill them. During Jim Crow, cops were far more likely to join a lynch mob or KKK mob beating then to stop one.
You seem entirely unaware of how brutally violent America law enforcement and authority in general was to black people until very recently.
One thing that strikes me as very significant is that in terms of total homicides (11,961 )in the US as of 2014, 53% of all homicides are committed by black people(6339), and 88% of all homicides are committed by men.
So assuming that the 88% gender rate holds true by race as well, that means that 47% of all homicides are committed by black men, who compose roughly 6.5% of the total population of the country, which is the same as the non-black groups combined.
And cops know this information, I’m sure, either directly through the statistics, or indirectly via job experience and departmental tribal knowledge. I imagine armed with this information, it’s hard NOT to treat black men differently and with more fear and apprehension as a law enforcement person.
And yet, the black community does not acknowledge this in the least bit. It’s a constant refrain of outrage at being treated differently and assumed as violent, which seems disingenuous to me;
Sure they do – black leaders talk about this all the time. But the vast majority of black men are not violent, and not dangerous, and it’s entirely unjust to treat them as if they are.
A majority of black men do not need to be violent to explain disparate treatment. Only disparate activity is needed to explain disparate treatment.
Disparate treatment makes America worse. If black children grow up being more likely to see their parents/brothers/uncles mistreated (disparately!) by police, as has been the story for pretty much all of America, then they will more likely disparately react with fear and anger to police and see them as enemies, thus continuing an endless cycle (unless disparate mistreatment stops).
Yes disparate treatment is bad. But that’s one problem with disparate treatment analysis. You can’t have disparate treatment on an individual basis.
Consider two hypotheticals:
[ol]
[li]Society is made up of two groups, A and B. Group A commits 95% of all crime while group B commits 5%. Is it reasonable to expect police to treat Group A and Group B the exact same way?[/li]
[li]I offer you a $1 wager of a coin toss where you get to pick heads or tails. You can make this wager as many times as you like. You also know that the coin will come up heads 60% of the time because it’s not a perfectly balanced coin. If you win, you get $1 and if you lose, you pay $1. What side will you pick? The smart money is to pick heads, collect the $1 60% of the time, and pay the $1 40% of the time, rinse and repeat. Police have to make this bet too, except instead of $1 it’s their life.[/li][/ol]
That’s why the rate of arrestable activity is critical to consider.
But it’s not 95-5. It’s more like 60-40, and when disparate treatment could be causing some of the disparate crime statistics, then it is indeed reasonable to ask that the treatment change.
The example you give is not an example that’s “incredibly easy to find.” Something that would be characterized as such should be what Sharpton more mentions in front of typical audiences, not rare events like funerals. And yes, people like him need to say it in front of white audiences more often; whites are the majority of the country. Also, that last example doesn’t imply frequency; you dug it up.
On those, I’m with you; but those were racial legal codes; the police brutality is not a product of racist legal codes; its a product of yes, some bad HR in police departments (too many HS grads looking for an easy pension after 20 years) but also black crime and lack of it appearing that black leaders acknowledge their problems (and in front of non-blacks, the American majority).
When there are riots, or drug labs, or gang hideouts, why don’t they need them? Tho yea, they should be more careful about when to actually use them.
It’s not fair of you to characterize the capturing of runaway slaves as some sort of police-only thing; the laws back then often required non-police to aid in the capture of them too; but slavery is almost 200 years over and we live in 2016, not 1856. Southern whites in general were pretty bad back then, but the way you phrase it implicates non-southern white cops.
And also, don’t appropriate the unique Jewish suffering by comparing the police in general, which is/was an organization that reflects the populace at large, to Hitler’s fascist paramilitary wing. Even for as racist as many Americans were in the past, no, it was not as bad as the Nazis, not close, not ever.
It’s more complicated than that. I would actually agree with you that the individuals in question could have made better choices. However, I think the reason they made bad choices has everything to do with the history of America and Black America. I don’t defend the knockout game, pushing around old immigrant shop keepers, resisting arrest, behaving erratically, and other conduct that inevitably causes officers to make split-second decisions which sometimes turn out to be wrong. At the same time, I think we need to understand that this is more than just a matter of officer - black interaction. It’s deeper than that, and if you don’t get it, then you’re not contributing to the solution.
Whether or not it’s easy to find (and they both took less than a minute), hopefully now you recognize that black leaders routinely criticize criminality in the black community.
What black leaders have said has never convinced the “American majority” (e.g. white Americans) at the time. Most white Americans opposed MLK Jr. They were wrong then. On issues of black civil rights, most white Americans have generally been wrong for most of American history. It’s not the job of black leaders to convince white people – it’s the job of black leaders to fight for rights and dignity and respect. And it has to be demanded, because it’s never been acquired without being demanded.
I’m saying SWAT teams are way overused, and used haphazardly, and this just so happens to disproportionately harm black people (like many other things that just so happen to disproportionately harm black people).
Considering the abominable history of the way black people have been treated, there are plenty to be implicated aside from southern whites. It wasn’t police only, but that makes it worse, not better. And it doesn’t change the fact that police were the deadly and brutal enemies of black people for most of American history.
Absolutely as bad as the Nazis (though at such levels one gets to a level of evil that pretty much cannot be categorized), as much as such things can be compared. Black people were enslaved for a century and brutalized for another century. Far more than 6 million were enslaved, raped, brutalized, and murdered. Millions died in the trans-Atlantic voyages alone, and millions more died from the brutalization, rapes, and murders that occurred in America after they got here.
That this was done for reasons of profit and labor does not exculpate it a single iota. The trans-atlantic slave trade, and the treatment of black people in America for more than a century afterwards, is every bit the evil, as great or greater in body count, and far, far greater in years and decades and centuries of human suffering, as the Holocaust.
And I have relatives who died in the Holocaust. My (German Jewish) grandmother’s family barely escaped Germany in the 30s. I won’t say that one or the other was worse – they both are as bad as humans can get.
And this is the essence of it all. You have centuries of white laws that create a race-based caste system, which denies blacks equal access to education, breaks up families, destroys their original culture, and purposely denies economic, legal, and political equality under the law. The white government’s Constitution in this country didn’t even consider blacks as humans until 1868, and it barely considered them human until about 1968. It’s only until about 1970 that you see blacks regularly admitted to higher education. And yet we know that in today’s world, higher education, or education of any sort, is essential to socioeconomic mobility. And we wonder why people like Eric Garner are reduced to selling black market cigarettes, or why Alton Sterling is reduced to selling records out in front of a liquor store on a weekday after midnight. In the eyes of white people, police are protectors; in the eyes of black people, police are the enforces of inequality. They tell black people what they can and cannot do – something that all generations of blacks in this country are by now used to. If you don’t understand this, then you shouldn’t comment. Sure, you can comment, but it’s not valid and you’re not going to get blacks to agree with you.
And I think that’s really what happens in these discussions. What results is, “Hey, listen n*gger, if you want to be a part of mainstream society, then trust cops more.”:rolleyes: Sure.:rolleyes:
Hey- I don’t have to convince or get anyone to agree with me- I’m white and male, i.e. people like me run everything.
And that’s the point- if BLM and the black community are wanting to effect lasting and meaningful change, they need to quit trying to guilt, brow-beat or intimidate everyone else into doing what they want, and actually start addressing WHY cops shouldn’t be more afraid of black men. If, as Sleestak and I pointed out, black men are murdering both civilians and cops in numbers that are wildly disproportionate to their numbers, the onus of explanation lies on BLM and the black community to explain why the fear and apprehension of black men is unfounded, especially for cops.
I’m not saying the treatment is acceptable, but the underlying fear and apprehension is real and valid, and nobody seems to address that.
I know that if I was a cop and I was approaching a small group responsible for 41% of all police homicides, I’d be doubly nervous about it, especially if they have the typical young black male machismo going on as well.
I’ll go further and say that the one thing that seriously hurts the black community and BLM is their immediate rush to judgement, automatic backing of the black man, and shrill cries of “Murder!” before the body’s even cold. Talk about poisoning the well of the court of public opinion! They’d get a lot more traction with everyone else if they went along with investigations and occasionally accepted the findings. Instead, they jump to judgment and refuse to accept the findings, which makes many people wonder what the hell they want- clearly they want law and order, but on their own terms apparently.
That’s the first example, what about the 2nd?
And is there a point on the spread where this type of reaction would be appropriate?
I know… late to the game. I normally try to read through the entire thread before commenting but this quip got me. There have been several people that were killed and did not resist and other cases where sure, there was resistance but it’s honestly baffling that the officers avoided prosecution given the circumstances.
Eric Garner was killed using an illegal choke hold. In my department choke holds are very clearly marked as deadly force. How in the world did the Garner case qualify for deadly force with 4 officers working to arrest him is insane. Freddy Gray wasn’t buckled up. Again, my department is big on this. We have to buckle these guys up and here it looks like all six officers are going to avoid criminal charges for knowingly breaking a policy. Okay, okay, it was a policy never followed. Then the department should be held seriously liable for allowing that policy to lapse. By that, I mean serious leadership removal and administrative sanctions.
There are plenty of victims where the police were just wrong. Tamir Rice and Castille. The guy gunned down in Charleston and the other guy gunned down at a McDonalds (I think).
Minorities grow up with a distrust in law enforcement and government after years of being mistreated or being told by their elders of past mistreatment. Read some books “middle age white man from the suburbs.” I recommend the New Jim Crow and Between the World and Me.
Guess what, that is a textbook definition of begging the question and it invalidates a claim that the study applies to the general population, which is the claim you were making.
It compares blacks and white already in the system to be drug tested, and that is the problem because blacks are more likely to be in the system due to drug use. But there is data that is directed at the general population. Unfortunately for your argument it does not concur with your claims.
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quickconfig.do?34481-0001_all
If you combine cocaine and crack whites use illicit drugs at a much higher rate and in massively higher numbers in the general population.
But even if we go by:
“Table 40. Percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, by type of crime and perceived race of offender”
We see that Crimes of violence, overall
Yet
So despite the fact that almost three times as many whites committed violent crimes there were more black people in prison.
Are you still going to stick with your invalid data despite your own references not matching your claims?