discussion comment
4 years ago
I know I'm a few days late on this thread, but it's interesting that almost every single person is backing themselves up with nothing but anecdotes, even while claiming to have sources on the subject. Since I haven't seen too many sources, I'll leave a few below. It's gonna be a long comment, but at the end I'll draw up some quick conclusions of my own for anyone interested.
First a few sources on whether or not officers are targeting racial minority suspects:
Do White Law Enforcement Officers Target Minority Suspects?
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/puar.12956
Results from experimental trials testing participant responses to White, Hispanic and Black suspects in high-fidelity deadly force judgment and decision-making simulations
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1007/s11292-012-9163-y
Toward a Comprehensive Understanding of Officers’ Shooting Decisions: No Simple Answers to This Complex Problem
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/01973533.2014.923312
Next, some sources on lending and economic status (relates to claims of modern redlining, racial discrimination in hiring, etc.):
Mortgage Lending in Boston: Interpreting HMDA Data
https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/1992/mortgage-lending-in-boston-interpreting-hmda-data.aspx
Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_summary.pdf
Hiring bias study: Resumes with black, white, Hispanic names treated the same
https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-biz-20160503-story.html
A New Study On Name Discrimination Suggests Names Signaling Race Are Also Linked To Social Status
https://www.bustle.com/p/a-new-study-on-name-discrimination-suggests-names-signaling-race-are-also-linked-to-social-status-2348497
African-Americans over-represented among low-paying college majors
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/african-americans-over-represented-among-low-paying-college-majors
Here are some statistics on homicides by race and ethnicity, as well as people killed by cops (all from 2018 for consistency but I can give you data from other years as well):
2018 Crime in the United States: Homicides by Race and Ethnicity
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls
People killed by police officers in 2018 (can sort by race, gender, weapon, fleeing from a crime, etc.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police-shootings-2018/
Fatal Encounters (another resource recording fatal encounters with police officers by race, gender, year, etc):
https://fatalencounters.org/our-visualizations/
From all of the above, I'm torn between all the various sentiments in this thread. On the one hand I know that black people are not experiencing the same outcomes as white people at this point in time: higher rates of poverty, lower rates of education, lower paying jobs, higher rates of single-parent households, etc. I also feel for the people hearing about recent tragedies, having America's unfortunate past in their memories, and lashing out because they feel they're just seeing more of the same. If I was hanging out with a black person that felt that way, I'd buy them a drink and help them feel better.
On the other hand, if I wanted to acknowledge the above inequities we see, and REALLY get to the root of the problem so I could start making some sense of it and ultimately some real progress, I'd take a clear look at the research and push sentimentality and anecdotes out of my mind. That doesn't mean I don't feel for my black brother above; it means I care so much about his plight, I'm going to push my own feelings out of the way and see what's really at the root of it so we can start to rectify the problem.
So what does the data say? Many people are out there in the streets, claiming that black people have to live in constant fear that they'll be shot by a police officer for no reason. That is absolutely not true. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't work to reduce excessive force by law enforcement anyway, and that's something everyone can always agree on. But on the list of top threats to the lives of innocent black people, death by police is nowhere near the top. If we put the same amount of effort that's going to protest against the police instead towards lowering black-on-black crime, vastly more lives would be saved. Others rightly pointed out that it's not a "either-or" but a "both-and" - and that may be true, but still, the current response is completely unbalanced in the wrong direction. If we did instead take a clear look at real problems and work to solve them, the same amount of energy could save far more lives, and would bring with it less destruction of property, less injured/killed protesters and police officers, and less cultural and racial division.
It's also helpful to keep in mind the ways different narratives are politically expedient to different groups of people. The worst thing that could happen for Democrats would be conditions getting better for black people, more broadly. If the broader narrative was that conditions have gotten VASTLY better for blacks by many metrics in recent decades (which they have), then the Democrats wouldn't be able to claim that "if you don't vote for me, you ain't black" (as Biden said). Blacks are a significant component of the Democratic voting base, and they will only be locked in as long as they can be convinced that everyone is against them EXCEPT the Democrats. I don't want to totally take Republicans off the hook either, though - Trump did say at some point something like "you guys are all poor, your schools are crumbling, and you're living in crime - why not vote for me, it can't get any worse".
Also keep in mind that right on BLM's website, they make it clear that they're not just focused on racial equality, but also the whole gambit of far-left views: dismantle the patriarchy, dismantle the nuclear family (which ironically has already happened in black families and is probably largely to blame for high rates of crime and poverty), promote trans ideologies, etc. I don't care what your own particular views on any of those subjects are, but it's important to know that supporting BLM doesn't just mean you support black lives in general; it means you're getting behind an organization with very specific ideological leanings that extend far beyond the scope of racial inequity. Source for the above is their own website:
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
The real answer is to stop playing identity politics and start using politics to figure out what is best for the American people more broadly - not only what's best for this party or that. There's no such thing as "racial justice" and there's no such thing as "social justice". Justice is justice for individuals, and we're only innocent or guilty as individuals. As long as we teach people to see everything exclusively through the lens of skin color, we'll be doing exactly what the worst parts of our history did. MLK is so famous for a reason: because he saw right through this, and sought to take skin color out of the equation, not to continue focusing on it as America's racists had always done in the past.
I'll end with a quote by Booker T. Washington, once a slave and later a free man:
"There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public... Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."