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Comment by ralusek | Hacker News Reader

Reddit is responsible for the fact that 24% of people killed by police are black?

> 24% of people killed by police are black

> African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. [0]

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/1...

> black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.

Black Americans are also 4 times as likely (per capita) to kill a police officer.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2018/topic-pages/officers-feloniou... (bottom of page)

The reality of course is that the relationship between law enforcement and the black community is dogshit. There are terrible people on both sides that escalate nonsense into homicide, and this puts both groups on high alert in tense encounters.

Unfortunately I feel that one side has to move first to fix the situation and to me that's obviously law enforcement. But even if they started, in earnest, today it's going to take decades to equalize and sins of the past will eternally haunt us all.

It's hard to reconcile that theory with the facts of most of the cases that make the news. For example, the police officers who killed George Floyd clearly had no reason to fear for their lives. Or what about all the black folks shot in bed in no-knock raids?

The first step everyone needs to take to resolve this problem is to stop blaming the victims of police violence.

>It's hard to reconcile that theory with the facts of most of the cases that make the news.

Why would you expect a uniform sampling of cases from the news? Police killed 1000 people last year. Almost 3 per day. How many of those did you hear about? Why would you hear about some vs. the others?

> The first step everyone needs to take to resolve this problem is to stop blaming the victims of police violence.

Who are you addressing this to? Me? I didn't blame George Floyd in the least. That was straight up murder.

I wouldn't, but I think it's important to be sensitive to what people are actually protesting about. It's mostly these outrageous cases and (in the case of black folks) lived experience that make people angry.

People cite statistics to illustrate the fact that these cases are part of a bigger problem of systematic racism. Some people expend a lot of effort trying to explain the statistics away, but that largely misses the point.

The problem is that this emotionally charged state will lead directly to policies designed to defuse the situation rather than solve the underlying problem. This is how systemic issues persist (well, the main reason is 'doing nothing', but i digress)

I don't think it's fair to characterise a response as (merely) emotional just because it's a response to a specific incident rather than a broader trend.

Correct, but then the subsequent question, as the other user pointed out, is WHY? The default position to fill in the gap seems to be that "racist discretion on the part of the police is responsible," but is that actually a reasonable and defensible assumption?

Note that I pointed out that 96% of people killed by police are male, but men only make up 50% of the population. Do you assume that the difference between their per-capita representation is best explained by anti-male sexism? Aren't there a series of other relevant factors you could use to explain the disparity? I suggest you reflect on it honestly.

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