A thread on the “racist police are hunting black men” narrative. Given that this narrative, driven by the media and amplified by the Democrat Party, is currently fueling the violent destruction of our cities, I think it matters whether the narrative is actually true or not.

The first thing to note is that police kill twice as many white people as black people. None of the white people receive anything like the same kind of attention, but they exist. And they are in fact more numerous than the black victims

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

Now it will be pointed out that there are many more white people than black people in the country, so the fact that they account for more of the police shooting victims isn’t a surprise. Correct. But two things to consider:

1) If all or most or many of the black victims were shot because of racism, why were the white victims shot? However you explain the latter, how do you know that the same explanation, or combination of explanations, doesn’t also apply to the black victims?

Why do we assume racism for the black victims while assuming any number of other explanations for the white victims? This is irrational and irresponsible.

If there are any number of potential reasons why a white guy might get shot by the cops (including that he was the aggressor and brought it on himself), how can we rule out all of those possibilities for a black guy who gets shot?

2) A disproportionate amount of violent crime in this country is committed by black people. That’s a statistical reality. It means that there will be a disproportionate amount of potentially hostile interactions between police and black suspects.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

So the real question is whether a black person is more likely to be *unjustly* killed *in an interaction with police* than a white person. I don’t have that figure and I’m not sure if anyone does, but the evidence would seem to point to no.

Consider that white cops are not more likely to kill black suspects

https://amp.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2019/07/24/white-cops-are-no-likelier-to-shoot-dead-african-americans-than-black-ones-are

Also consider that many of these high profile police killings (Baltimore, for example) happened in black-run cities, with black mayors and black police chiefs and many black officers

If the problem of police brutality affects white people and black people, and if it persists even under black leadership, and even at the hands of black cops, then don’t we need to search for an explanation other than “racist cops are hunting black folks”?

I believe there is a problem with policing in this country. I also think the racial narrative offered as an explanation for this problem ignores the facts on the ground, is often incoherent, and is promoted by hustlers operating in bad faith and for their own ideological ends

One final point. The vast majority of people killed by cops are men. Can I then theorize that cops are homicidal feminists out searching for men to kill? Or is it obvious that men die by police more often because they commit more violent crime?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/police_mort_open.pdf