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On average the police kill ~80 unarmed people each year, of any race [1]. By comparison, 40 million people are unemployed as a result of the pandemic and lockdo
by manfredo 6y ago
On average the police kill ~80 unarmed people each year, of any race [1]. By comparison, 40 million people are unemployed as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. Certainly, the impact of someone unjustly killed is vastly larger than that of someone laid off or furloughed. But is it 500,000 times greater? These are different issues. They aren't equivalent, but they're comparable at least. Pointing out the inconsistency here isn't "sticking one's head in the sand of relativism."
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
- Kevin_S 6y agoThey are not only protesting the killing of unarmed black people, but all aspects of the structural bias of American police and the justice system against blacks. These biases affect much more than the extreme cases of the killing of unarmed black people.
- kadoban 6y agoThere is _far_ more harm in unjust policing than is counted in deaths per year.
- empthought 6y agoSame for coronavirus and for economic hardship.
- vore 6y agoWho do you think the economic hardship of coronavirus affects the most? https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/30/865413079/what-do-coronavirus-racial-disparities-look-like-state-by-state https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/30/8654130...
- wpietri 6y agoAnd far more harm than just one year's worth. We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that. If people are finding the timing of the current protest inconvenient, well, they've had their whole lives to fix the problem. They shouldn't blame the protesters for their own lack of action. I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil rights protests "unwise and untimely". [1] Somehow it's never the right moment for justice. Anybody suggesting an indefinite delay should be aware that their arguments are indistinguishable from those of people for whom "later" actually means "never". If people really want to end these protests now, instead of arguing for delay they should quickly enact deep structural changes. [1]https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
- zarathustreal 6y ago>We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me. Do you really have 400 years worth of evidence of literal outright racism? How can we hope to inspire change with rhetoric like this? This is the equivalent of simply screaming louder to get a point across. Highly ineffective unless annoying them into submission is your goal.
- oh_sigh 6y agoMany humans operate by parroting things they've heard recently. I'm 90% positive from the phrasing that OP recently saw popovich's video recently and is just repeating the claim.
- dunnevens 6y ago>The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me. We had slavery in America from 1619 until 1865. Jim Crow and segregation for 100 years after that. The Civil Rights Act, and related laws, eliminated much of the legal basis for institutional racism. But as we all know, that didn't eliminate racism. Safe to say, there's plenty of racism left in this country. Especially in institutions like the police. That's 401 years. ETA: That's focusing purely on the black population. If you count what was directed against the native populations, you can go back even further.
- CydeWeys 6y agoGo read an American history book. You seem to somehow be unaware of the existence of slavery and then Jim Crow laws.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mythrwy 6y agoI'm not sure how much "structural" racism actually exists in the US at this point. There are no doubt pockets and they should be rooted out. Personal racism exists and will probably never go away. It would be nice if it did. I do think people get profiled and hassled because other people who look like that have done XXX and cops see a possible pattern. This isn't fair to innocent people at all but I suspect this has been what is happening rather than anything "structural". I learned this firsthand like 20 years ago when I grew long hair and a beard John Lennon style for maybe 8 months. I was very quickly pulled over, hassled and searched (very rudely I might add) on made up charges by a rural cop. This did open my eyes to maybe a small part of what black America goes through in dealing with cops. I cut my hair back to military style, shaved, and it was back to letting me off with a warning and have a nice day. I feel like this kind of thing is a good part of antagonism but I don't see it as "structural". More many cops (including minority cops as far as that goes) not liking certain types of people. They need to serve the community imo and it would be better for everyone.
- statguy 6y agoWhere are you getting 80 from? The link says 1,043 in the past year. Did you mean 80 per month?
- manfredo 6y ago1,000+ includes all people killed by police, most of them armed. You need to filter for unarmed killings. Hover over "weapon" and click unarmed. It's 350 from 2015 to the present.
- sdenton4 6y agoThe time I was arrested at a protest, I was charged with carrying a sharpened stick (aka, protest sign). I didn't even have that, though... It was a lie in the report. The police regularly distort their reporting. There is no centralized collecting of police violence statistics, in large part because they have organized against the collection of those statistics. The 1,000+ number will be far less subject to manipulation. Here's some additional reporting. The 2014 Tampa Bay Times project to track police violence found 827 people shot in a year. In Florida alone. They spent a huge amount of effort on the reporting because the statistics were sometimes not collected and usually not trustworthy where they were. https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2017/investigations/florida-police-shootings/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2017/investigations/f...
- brent_noorda 6y agoThey said 80 unarmed, meaning the rest of the 1043 were armed.
- manfredo 6y agoanother ~140 were armed with "toy weapons", such as the infamous shooting of Tamir Rice. But it's unclear whether that should go into the category of "unarmed" since this is still a threat perceived by police. Here is an image of Rice's toy gun: https://www.cleveland.com/resizer/CbjnPy-8-HkfIl1ApQ431f_DlhE=/1280x0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/image.cleveland.com/home/cleve-media/width2048/img/open_impact/photo/tamir-rice-toy-gunjpg-1a072b85ec91573c.jpg https://www.cleveland.com/resizer/CbjnPy-8-HkfIl1ApQ431f_Dlh...
- mannykannot 6y agoIf these were random accidents, you might just have a point, but they are neither random, nor accidental in the cases in question.