Hacker News Reader

Comment by rewqfdsa | Hacker News Reader

The higher criminality drives the police mistreatment. If you're a police offer and interact with mostly black criminals all day, your priors are set so that you think most blacks are criminals. So when you see an honest black person, you assume he's guilty of _something_, and consider framing him the honest thing, since you believe you're just putting the black man away for crimes he's doubtlessly committed, but for which you have no evidence.

(You should understand that _explaining_ something is different from _endorsing_ it. Of course we should judge people by their actions only. It is _understandable_, however, why the current police culture might have arisen.)

View on HN

"criminality" is not an inherent trait in any race, including black Americans. The increased crime rates are a function of a number of inputs, many of which stem all the way back to slavery-- which has never fully been addressed/redressed in our public policy. To fail to recognize this and treat "black criminality" as some initial condition is to fail to critically think about our collective history and the resulting consequences.

This is just made up shit that sounds good in your head. Even if we suppose for a moment that what you should have kept to yourself is true, what do you expect black people to do? In a dysfunctional relationship the person in the position of overwhelming power is the one that needs to change. Who "started" it is irrelevant.

It's sad that you actually think this is true.

You're saying it's not true? That policemen don't assume all blacks must be guilty of something? I'm sure a lot of them really do. That's just how human nature works. We all judge people on flimsy evidence and form prejudices. Police are humans like the rest of us and are bound to have those same kinds of prejudice.

> That policemen don't assume all blacks must be guilty of something?

I believe this is closer to the truth, but that's not what the flagged comment was getting at. His blanket assertion was that blacks committed more crimes than whites.

Deleted comment

You can't draw conclusions from one fact and then call your suppositions facts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com