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Comment by paggle | Hacker News Reader

And debate isn’t what the author wants. How would the author feel about a debate about whether black people are statistically more likely or not to experience police brutality? People feel like they can debate what happened to MH17 or who Angelia Jolie will date. But for these issues there is only one sanctioned viewpoint. Forgive me for not standing in a circle while we all chant it.

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Ok, here's some https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/2015

- Police departments disproportionately killed black people, who were 41% of victims despite being only 20% of the population living in these cities.

- 41 of the 60 police departments disproportionately killed black people relative to the population of black people in their jurisdiction.

- 14 police departments killed black people exclusively in 2015, 100% of the people they killed were black. For only 5 police departments were 100% of those killed white.

You conveniently left out some important statistics:

- Despite being 13% of the population, blacks commit 53% of homicides and 37% of all violent crime: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-....

Maybe that explains why they have more trouble with cops. It's easy to craft a simple narrative of good vs. evil when systematically ignore all the sins of one side.

Again, the statistics are about more the 'being black'. They are about neighborhood, economics, social norms. Resulting in altercations between mostly-white police and black citizens getting out of hand.

Its not right; I'm not arguing that. But until we understand the actual reasons behind the statistics, its just a shouting contest.

How many more black people than white people per capita commit crimes, and have interactions and altercations with the police?

I can show you the answer for New York City: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_... The crime of shooting is very striking: Only 2.2% of perpetrators are white.

Now also include class, income, and neighborhood data.

Thanks but it was just illustrative. I was not trying to start that debate. Only to highlight that the “conversations” that the author wants to see are largely just echoes of the same opinion, not an actual lively debate about who Sansa Stark will marry. I’d rather argue for an hour about whether Tom Brady or Joe Montana was better than sit in a drum circle and see who can say Black Lives Matter the loudest.

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