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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

> ...obviously we would expect police deaths to mirror trends in crime, socio-economic status...

If you look at the data in aggragate, I believe you'll find that there's a disparity even when controlling for factors like that.

> But in countries like the U.K. where one third of their police killings in a whole year are a terrorist who was in the middle of a stabbing spree? That’s just ideological fashion.

British police don't carry firearms in the general case so obviously police deaths aren't a large issue for British BLM, but there's still very much a racial disparity in justice system encounters that still exists despite controlling for the kinds of factors you listed previously. Different sentences for the same crime kind of stuff.

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> If you look at the data in aggragate, I believe you'll find that there's a disparity even when controlling for factors like that.

I’m almost certain that this isn’t the case. I think the crime rate alone accounts for the whole disparity and then some. I’ll dig up sources when I have more time. My best steel man is that police are profiling blacks in their killings; blacks do commit more crimes, but whether or not a particular black person commits crimes may not feature strongly in whether or not he is likely to be killed by police. In any case, the more important detail is that we didn’t even talk about it. Anyone who suggested as much was immediately dismissed as a racist; the media never even entertained the question.

> British police don't carry firearms in the general case so obviously police deaths aren't a large issue for British BLM, but there's still very much a racial disparity in justice system encounters that still exists despite controlling for the kinds of factors you listed previously. Different sentences for the same crime kind of stuff.

Perhaps, but it’s very strange to me that the U.K. would respond to subtler forms of alleged discrimination the similarly to how the US responded to graphic videos of black men being killed by police. I won’t argue the point since it’s all speculation either way.

Look at this thread, a perfect example: We’re now not talking about the go developer survey, lost focus on the topic. Why? I want tech, enough social problems everywhere else I look.

I agree with you, but we got here because the go developers plastered their controversial political views all over their tech site and people are remarking that this might be part of the reason why people aren’t (per the survey) feeling as welcome in the community.

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