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Comment by kfrzcode | Hacker News Reader

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>In the last 5 years police in the USA have killed twice the rate of white people than black people, too.

I guess if we're going to unpack that, it's also worth noting that about 60% of the population of America is considered white and about 12% of the population in America is black, according to https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-a...

Across the various years reported on the link you shared 46% of people shot to death by police were white, 22% were black. While that's more dead white people than dead black people, it's also disproportionate to the population.

While you're pondering what deaths we pay attention to, consider all the ways alcohol kills people, and how preventable that is, since we're just throwing things out there.

Alcohol is another massive killer. So are tobacco products. Processed food, and all of these factors are heavier on economically challenged folk.

Just saying it's not worth the outrage we've seen. Anyway we're ot.

> In the last 5 years police in the USA have killed twice the rate of white people than black people

That's a misleading way to use the term "rate". If you adjust for relative population size, the rate at which police shoot black people in the USA is disproportionately higher (over 2.5 times) than the rate at which they shoot white people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

Are you just looking at raw numbers? Because the population size is different and in fact the link you posted says this:

> Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 5.9 fatal shootings per million of the population per year between 2015 and January 2023.

Are you responding to a different message entirely?

No, I'm just elaborating that the police-brutality issue in America is actually not really as impactful and scary as one might think, and especially not as skewed toward targeting the black population disproportionately as many propagandists might have you think. Attempting to dispel a myth or at least learn along the way.

The data other posters have responded to your post with show exactly the opposite. Policing in America and its potential negative outcomes are skewed toward black men. It’s undeniable. Traffic stop, arrest, incarceration, and shooting data all show the same story.

But I guess that’s not really what you’re arguing here, you’re saying “black men being killed by police at a rate 2.5 times higher than white men, but people think it’s worse than that,” and “people are making too much noise about black men being killed by police at a rate 2.5 times higher than white men, and they really ought to cut it out.”

I disagree with this viewpoint completely.

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