# Why are young black men in the US 21X more likely to be killed by police than young white men? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 13, 2014, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156 "2014-10-13T01:48:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/41 "2014-10-13T17:17:02Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Um… let us return to the OP. > Crime statistics. I’m providing the crime statistics that you claim (with no support whatsoever) are far smaller than the disparity in cop killings. Cops kill (or are supposed to kill) _criminals_. The statistics _are_ far smaller for the ratio of young black male criminals to young white male criminals. You’re comparing the wrong statistics. Irrelevant statistics. If cops are just behaving as a reflection of the criminal statistics – they’re more likely to kill young black males because young black males are more likely to be criminals – than it wouldn’t be close to 21 times different. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/42 "2014-10-13T17:20:12Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Um… let us return to the OP. > Crime statistics. I’m providing the crime statistics that you claim (with no support whatsoever) are far smaller than the disparity in cop killings. I provided a cite in post #5. You are incorrect (again). ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/43 "2014-10-13T17:25:36Z")
I think the suggestion is that whatever factor is causing black men to be the disproportionate victims of homicide is also influencing police shootings of black men. The argument seems to be that police culture is not the problem, since that is unlikely to be affecting the overall disproportionate rate of homicide. If that’s the argument, I don’t think it is very persuasive. One likely explanation that still implicates police culture is that black men are indeed disproportionately involved in violence, for a whole range of reasons. A combination of racism, overly-militarized and insufficiently citizen-concerned tactics, and that empirical reality of more violence (which is itself largely a consequence of white supremacy) cause the police to both have more fraught encounters with black men and to shoot them more often in those encounters. Changing policing would not reduce the non-police violence level (except insofar as distrust of the police and mass incarceration are contributing factors to that violence), but it could indeed reduce the number of police shootings. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/44 "2014-10-13T17:27:16Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > If that’s the argument, I don’t think it is very persuasive. One likely explanation that still implicates police culture is that black men are indeed disproportionately involved in violence, for a whole range of reasons. They are, but they’re not 21 times more likely to be involved in violence than young white men – not even close (it’s around [6 to 8 times](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide) for homicide). ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/45 "2014-10-13T17:28:03Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Cops kill (or are supposed to kill) _criminals_. The statistics _are_ far smaller for the ratio of young black male criminals to young white male criminals. You’re comparing the wrong statistics. Irrelevant statistics. If cops are just behaving as a reflection of the criminal statistics – they’re more likely to kill young black males because young black males are more likely to be criminals – than it wouldn’t be close to 21 times different. Then why don’t the base homicide rates line up? Why are the base homicide rates 19 times different, if there’s such a small difference in the ratio of black to white criminals? BTW, I was comparing non-hispanic whites to non-hispanic blacks, which matches the methodology used by ProPublica. Your cite does not. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/46 "2014-10-13T17:28:06Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > They are, but they’re not 21 times more likely to be involved in violence than young white men – not even close. Right. I’m not sure why you think I was suggesting otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/47 "2014-10-13T17:31:15Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I provided a cite in post #5. You are incorrect (again). Your cite was for the whole population, not for young men. Accord to [this article](http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/22/viewpoint-dont-ignore-race-in-christopher-lanes-murder/), young black men murder 14 times more than young white men. True, it’s not 21 times, but it is an amazingly high ratio, wouldn’t you say? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/48 "2014-10-13T17:31:15Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Then why don’t the base homicide rates line up? You’re using the homicide victim stats. How does it make sense to compare cops killing young black males to criminals killing young black males, if the argument is that cops are justified in this increased rate of killing young black males? That would only work if young black males were 21 times more likely to commit murder, and they’re not. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/49 "2014-10-13T17:31:34Z")
> [@Toastmaker](#): > > Black population is about 13% but account for about 46% of violent crime. It’s common knowledge that large percentages of black male youths intentionally emulate gangster, thug-life habits and attitudes which naturally put law enforcement on a somewhat higher state of alert when dealing with them. Like a lot of things that are passed off as common knowledge, this is a pile of crap. Lots of black kids like hip hop. So do lots of white kids. That’s been public knowledge for as long as data on CD sales has been public. Once upon a time it was quite a shock when people discovered that suburban white kids were buying more hip hop albums than black kids in the city, but I’d have thought word would have gotten around by now. What does happen is that when black kids and white kids engage in the same behavior, people are much more likely to call the black kids thugs and gangstas and other nonsense. You can see this sometimes in discussions of things like baggy pants or hooded sweatshirts, which are popular with all sorts of people but are evidence of gangsta-dom when black kids do them. And unfortunately black people are more likely to have negative interactions with the police. For example, [here’s a recent study that shows that even though white people are slightly more likely to deal drugs than black people and the two groups use drugs at the same rate, black people are far more likely to be arrested for drug dealing or possession.](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2014/09/30-war-on-drugs-black-social-mobility-rothwell) And if we’re talking about attitudes, it should be noted that policies like stop and frisk in NYC make it much more likely that people of color will have a negative experience with the police. But by all means, let’s dismiss this and the shooting data as a coincidence. The real answer is probably based on what clothes they wear and what kind of music they listen to. That makes sense. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > What’s the point of all this? It has nothing to do with the OP. The point of it is ‘hey, look over there!’ ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/50 "2014-10-13T17:32:15Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > They are, but they’re not 21 times more likely to be involved in violence than young white men – not even close (it’s around [6 to 8 times](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide) for homicide). Again, your cite of “6-8 times” is not for “young black men”. For young black men, it’s 14 times for homicide. Don’t know about violent crime in general. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/51 "2014-10-13T17:32:16Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Your cite was for the whole population, not for young men. > > Accord to [this article](http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/22/viewpoint-dont-ignore-race-in-christopher-lanes-murder/), young black men murder 14 times more than young white men. True, it’s not 21 times, but it is an amazingly high ratio, wouldn’t you say? The ratio I cited was 6 to 8 times. Either way, it’s very high. But it’s still not 21 times. EDIT: your cite goes nowhere. It says “14 times”, but the associated link doesn’t work. Where does this 14 times come from? ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/52 "2014-10-13T17:34:58Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The ratio I cited was 6 to 8 times. It was not for “young black men”, was it? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/53 "2014-10-13T17:35:02Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Like a lot of things that are passed off as common knowledge, this is a pile of crap. Lots of black kids like hip hop. So do lots of white kids. That’s been public knowledge for as long as data on CD sales has been public. Once upon a time it was quite a shock when people discovered that suburban white kids were buying more hip hop albums than black kids in the city, but I’d have thought word would have gotten around by now. What does happen is that when black kids and white kids engage in the same behavior, people are much more likely to call the black kids thugs and gangstas and other nonsense. You can see this sometimes in discussions of things like baggy pants or hooded sweatshirts, which are popular with all sorts of people but are evidence of gangsta-dom when black kids do them. And unfortunately black people are more likely to have negative interactions with the police. For example, [here’s a recent study that shows that > even though white people are slightly more likely to deal drugs than black people and the two groups use drugs at the same rate, black people are far more likely to be arrested for drug dealing or possession.](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2014/09/30-war-on-drugs-black-social-mobility-rothwell) And if we’re talking about attitudes, it should be noted that policies like stop and frisk in NYC make it much more likely that people of color will have a negative experience with the police. This is a good supporting piece of evidence. If we believe black people are treated differently by police, it would show up differently in statistics like this one – and apparently, it does. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/54 "2014-10-13T17:36:30Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > It was not for “young black men”, was it? Considering that your non-existent cite is still not 21 times, it’s the best one offered so far. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/55 "2014-10-13T17:47:14Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > You’re using the homicide victim stats. How does it make sense to compare cops killing young black males to criminals killing young black males, if the argument is that cops are justified in this increased rate of killing young black males? The young black men killed by police are victims of (legal) homicide. These young black men are, wittingly or unwittingly, in a situation where another person feels that committing homicide is the best course of action. This situation comes up about 20x as often as with young white men, whether or not the other person is a cop. You can try to look at the cop angle in a vacuum, but you’re missing a source of violence that is 75 as large as cop violence, and is violence that the police are actively working against. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/56 "2014-10-13T17:49:46Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > This is a good supporting piece of evidence. If we believe black people are treated differently by police, it would show up differently in statistics like this one – and apparently, it does. And of course [black and Latino men were far, far more likely than anyone else to be stopped during the NYC stop and frisk program](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/21/12-years-of-data-from-new-york-city-suggest-stop-and-frisk-wasnt-that-effective/), which is why a court ultimately ruled that the program violated their civil rights. The name is unique to NYC, but some of the tactics involved are not. [Asset forfeiture](https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/civil-asset-forfeiture) is another related problem. Again, minorities are way more likely to have these kinds of interactions with police. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > The young black men killed by police are victims of (legal) homicide. > > These young black men are, wittingly or unwittingly, in a situation where another person feels that committing homicide is the best course of action. This situation comes up about 20x as often as with young white men, whether or not the other person is a cop. > > You can try to look at the cop angle in a vacuum, but you’re missing a source of violence that is 75 as large as cop violence, and is violence that the police are actively working against. You’re putting the police on par with murderers, and that’s actually the best thing I can say about this apples-to-oranges comparison. If the police are much more likely to kill a young black man than a young white man, they’re not actively working against violence. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/57 "2014-10-13T17:58:36Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > You’re putting the police on par with murderers, and that’s actually the best thing I can say about this apples-to-oranges comparison. If the police are much more likely to kill a young black man than a young white man, they’re not actively working against violence. The police are 1/75th as likely to kill a young black man as a murderer. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/58 "2014-10-13T18:03:41Z")
And of course if anyone objects to the data provided in the OP, that illustrates another problem: there’s no comprehensive database of people killed by the police. Everybody from Nate Silver to Radley Balko to The Daily Show has weighed in on this lately. It’s transparently absurd, but there you go. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > The police are 1/75th as likely to kill a young black man as a murderer. You’re not contradicting anything I said. _You_ wrote that, somehow, a black murder victim and a black man who is killed by the police are both “in a situation where another person feels that committing homicide is the best course of action.” A death by a murder and death by cop aren’t supposed to be similar at all, so why are you comparing them? Someone who is killed by another citizen is a murder victim. Someone who is killed by a police officer is dead at the hand of the government, a person who is trained and trusted with a great deal of power to uphold the law. If you’re more likely to a be murder victim, that has jack squat to do with the likelihood that the police will kill you. Getting back to the OP, I wrote this in another thread on this subject last week: > [@What exactly do cops have to fear from black males?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-do-cops-have-to-fear-from-black-males/700819/4): > > It’s not just cops. Our society strongly associates black men with violent crime, and unfortunately the police and legal systems play into that: black people are more likely than white people to be arrested for crimes even if blacks and whites commit them at similar rates, and they get sentenced more often and more harshly. There’s evidence that judgment against black people begins far earlier than that, too, as they are more likely to be suspended from school, too. Crazy as it sounds, it’s a phenomenon people have started calling the preschool to prison pipeline. ([You can read details and cites for several of those points here.](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/08/broken_windows_policing_deaths_racism_in_chokeholds_arrests_and_convictions.html) [And here.](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/racial_bias_in_criminal_justice_whites_don_t_want_to_reform_laws_that_harm.html)) And it goes without saying that cops often have to deal with criminals and find themselves in dangerous or potentially dangerous situations. So the answer is that it doesn’t have a lot to do with police. It doesn’t mean every cop or even most cops are racist and it doesn’t mean all of these things are intentional. In fact part of the problem is that a lot of these biases can’t be conscious. It’s about society in general, and while individual incidents might not mean much, it’s easy to see that there’s a pattern to these kinds of things. So when there are systemic problems with policing, in the broader scheme that reflects the society the police are a part of. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/59 "2014-10-13T18:06:11Z")
I’ve never understood the societal contradiction: “The reason men are more likely to be arrested, or shot and killed by police, or incarcerated than women, is because men commit more violent crimes than women.” Okay, fair enough. But yet: “The reason black men are more likely to be arrested, or shot and killed by police, or incarcerated than white men, is somehow NOT because black men commit more violent crimes than white men.” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156/60 "2014-10-13T18:20:34Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I’ve never understood the societal contradiction: This is actually very easy and has been discussed at some length in the thread already. You’re assuming the underlying premises of those statements are both true, and I am not sure that’s the case. And we’re also discussing the fact that some people suffer disproportionate rates of arrest and violence at the hands of the police. It ought to be obvious why it’s a problem if some people are far more likely to get arrested, hurt, or killed than others even if they’re committing the same crime. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-young-black-men-in-the-us-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police-than-young-white-men/701156.md?page=4)