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Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. Most violence is committed by people y

Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. Most violence is committed by people you're around, and in an intensely segregated country, that will usually be people that are the same race as you. It's a complete digression from the actual conversation here, which is about agents of the state, entrusted to act as enforcers of the state's monopoly on violence, abusing that trust and meting out violence to people who have done nothing wrong.

treis 6y ago
>Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. It's part of the story, though. The incident in the linked article started because a group of teens jumped another and stole his phone. If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action.
- dhosek 6y ago
  [edited to add context] a comprehensive reply to the "what about black on black crime" comment from journalist Michael Harriot. https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1268463768285188096?fbclid=IwAR14-WIG8jldNTy03xiUgzAKLkN421_Nwbs57myCLlY-XAmeokJjYuVIRh8 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/126846376828518809...
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    When people ask "why isn't anyone talking about black on black crime?" or why aren't "we" in the black community talking about it, my response is usually to start by asking "Who is 'we'"?[0] and then to retort that "'We' are, 'we' have been" and several black authors have written and are writing about it. - "Locking Up Our Own", James Foreman, an analysis by a black attorney discussing black crime, black recidivism and black involvement as attorneys and judges in the criminal justice system - "In Contempt", Christopher Darden, an autobiography written by one of the attorneys in the OJ Simpson trial where swaths of the book are dedicated to Darner's views and interactions with other attorneys who tackled "black on black crime" in LA during the 90's prior to his time as a District Attorney - "The Man Not" (the most recent publication in this non-exhaustive list), Tommy Curry, explorations on the victimization of black men by their black guardians, with some focus on sexual abuse and exploitation of their bodies as the lens through which Curry focuses a larger critique - "Negroland", Margo Jefferson, a memoir of the black elite class of Chicago and ramifications of black success experienced sometimes at the expense of lower-class black Americans, perpetuated sometimes by upper-class black Americans I'm a bit fatigued by the insinuation that black America is shirking a responsibility to tackle these in-group issues, because it's not as if there's a lack of poignant critical theory emerging from our group on the topic. It's all there and readily available, and the names and reference content I provided here isn't an exhaustive list either. --- [0] https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/who-is-we-1833100853 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/who-is-we-1833100853
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - treis 6y ago
    I don't see anything in there to refute what I said. In fact, he seems to agree with my numbers at least. He admits that Blacks are roughly 10x as likely to commit murder. If we agree with that and agree that is some rough proxy for criminality why wouldn't we expect about 10 times as much police violence against Black people?
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      If we agree with that and agree that is some rough proxy for criminality why wouldn't we expect about 10 times as much police violence against Black people? Caveat lector: If we agree. I don't agree with this idea that the statistics of criminality in the black community is a proxy for anything, and more that it is a result of multiple compounding issues that snowballed throughout generations of peoples bringing us to where we are today. In your mind what is this a proxy for? I'd like to hear this notion unpacked. Those questions are varied and nuanced and their answers are equally varied and nuanced, and against the backdrop of exactly how certain members of the constabulary execute (pun most certainly and deliberately intended) violence in response to violence are people like me trying to desperately point at as this the topic we want to discuss when we say "Black Lives Matter", yet time and time again we have to stop and have the "black people commit more crimes" discussion with people who are focused on the math of crimes committed while black at the expense of just about any other valid variable in the equation. So if we take the "black people commit more crimes" framework on its face, does that mean they deserve to die for all of them? Did Sandra Bland really need to be shot because she didn't want to put out a cigarette at a traffic stop or could the officer have written her the moving citation she probably actually deserved, and gone about his policing elsewhere?[0] Did Eric Garner need asphyxiation for a civil citation when he was stopped for selling illegal cigarettes? Did George Floyd need to have a knee on his neck for nearly 10 minutes for a counterfeit $20? I challenge us all to think beyond just "well they committed a crime" and start asking some hard goddamn questions about what we're saying if that's going to be the response to critical theories of criminal justice-because many (not all) of the names commonly shouted out in discussion about police brutality committed petty offenses that should have received citations but instead received death sentences; highlighting a severely disproportionate view of policing scofflaws that breaks "well they broke the law" down into "contempt of cop"[1]. --- [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/22/a-trooper-arrested-sandra-bland-after-she-refused-to-put-out-a-cigarette-was-it-legal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/2... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop
- jf22 6y ago
  The problem is people don't deny black-on-black crime is a problem. Society is in agreement that we don't want that. Bring up racism and police brutality though and people strongly deny it's a problem.
  - vangelis 6y ago
    Weirdly, it only seems to come up when you mention police brutality!
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      That's because no one outside of the Black community listens to Black voices about Black social issues unless (1) it's positive attention to a rich Black person blaming the the moral failings of Blacks for the problems of Black communities and absolving White and wealthy society, or (2) it's attention (usually, historically, negative, but there are moments when that flips on one issue or another) to Black people questioning a trusted (by Whites) social institution and it's contribution to Black social problems. Everything else is beneath notice of the wider society. It's talked about, but no one outside of the community is listening. Which is fine, except when they base their response to the issues on which they do pay a little attention to assumption that what they aren't hearing on other issues is because it's not being talked about.
    - treis 6y ago
      That's disingenuous. Police brutality almost always comes up in the context of BLM and in this specific case the article made it a racial issue. You can't do that and then say "why are we talking about race" when (the general) you started the conversation talking about race.
      - vertex-four 6y ago
        Talking about specific issues which relate to race does not mean all issues which relate to race have to be brought up.
  - genoapol 6y ago
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action. Why do you consider it okay for police to stop and harass innocent people with no evidence simply because they live in a certain neighborhood?
  - treis 6y ago
    Where did I say that it was okay for police to stop and harass innocent people?
    - seamyb88 6y ago
      Your logic implies it. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional
eloff 6y ago
It is a tactic commonly used as you say. It's also a relevant statistic here, although all race on black violence would have been even better. It still serves to support the point quite clearly that police are not to be feared as much as criminals, even if you're black. Having said that, a lot of criminal violence happens if you're mixed up in that world or frequenting a bad area as opposed to just random violence. There's something different about police violence where it has that random quality and can affect you anywhere, sometimes just minding your own business. Plus it's doubly egregious because the police are supposed to protect you, not hurt you. Even before this became an issue, and as a white person, I get nervous with police interactions. You just don't know what kind of mood they're in or how they're interpreting the situation.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  It's totally irrelevant. Most white people are killed by white people too. It's an effect of de facto segregation in society. Most crime is proximate.
- trowawee 6y ago
  It is completely irrelevant. It's like responding to "It's raining today" with "It was sunny last week". At best, it's a non-sequitur, at worst it's an active attempt to distract from the conversation at hand. And it ignores the facts that A) black-on-black crime does not happen at a substantially higher rate than white-on-white crime, B) the explanation for why most crime is intra-racial in a segregated country is pretty straightforwardly obvious, and C) Black people actually are attacked and killed by police at wildly disproportionate rates, which is why the subject of police violence against Black people is a valid topic of conversation, whereas "black-on-black crime" is a pointless or hostile digression.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It is completely irrelevant It's irrelevant to the real issue, but not to the upthread claim that blacks view police as the greatest threat. In the latter context, it is not irrelevant to point out that such a view does not seem to be in line with the evidence.
Balgair 6y ago
The commentor's name is literally 'jeffdavis'. I'm not sure what else one could suspect about their motivations.
- trowawee 6y ago
  True. And looking at their comment history, this "What about black-on-black crime?!" seems to be a recurring bit over the last few weeks whenever people here talk about police brutality. Still, I think it's worthwhile to name and push back on this tactic when we see it, because it's pretty commonly used when people want to minimize or ignore police violence.
- lliamander 6y ago
  Are you suggesting that the user chose their username in honor of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States? I suppose it's possible, but it's patently absurd to assume that is the only (or even most likely) reason for their name or explanation of their intentions.
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
It is indeed disingenuous, but that's exactly how "black lives matter" sounds to many. Lack of police accountability and oversight is the problem - regardless of color combinations of the murder and the victim.
number364789 6y ago
I don't know if this is valid or true, but I sometimes think that the 1990s through early 2000s pop culture depiction of black culture embedded itself strongly in the psyche of many white Americans. It sounds silly to say that gangster rap, and The Wire, and such things are responsible for racial stereotypes, but for many of my white friends, I think this is absolutely true. One sad part of this is that some of the most well-known, financially successful black Americans came out of this environment, either real, or pretended in order to sell entertainment (and make a lot of money).
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  The relevant stereotypes are older than independence and deeply embedded in American culture, they don't stem from 1990s to early 2000s popular culture.
  - number364789 6y ago
    I agree there are stereotypes much, much older than this, of course - and 90s pop culture does not explain away the longer term discrimination. Still, if the question is about how white Americans perceive black Americans as a group, especially those white Americans who do not know many black Americans personally, I think you have to consider portrayals in pop culture as a factor. At least, that is my perception, as a white American who has only a handful of black friends, but who has a number of white friends who are/were into this kind of pop culture. At the least, it reinforces any existing fears that might have been initially planted by other sources (e.g. racist family members).
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > I think you have to consider portrayals in pop culture as a factor. Sure, but pop culture in large part expresses and transmits preexisting stereotypes (and even when it doesn’t, it is perceived through the lens of those stereotypes.) I'm not saying it's not involved, just that it's not the source.
      - 6y ago
tomp 6y ago
It's a relevant statistic for this discussion, which is not a discussion about generic police brutality. Retracting from "Black Live Matters" to "we're discussing police brutality here" is a common mote-and-bailey tactic that isn't a valid argument.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Moat-and-bailey is perfectly valid if it's used to indicate how failure of the argument to address the more-defensible position implies the argument fails on the less-defensible position (as a general comment on rhetorical process, not a comment on Black Lives Matter or police brutality).
jeffdavis 6y ago
It's relevent because you need to compare the costs of police (e.g. police violence) to the scale of problem that is supposedly being solved (e.g. murders). You can choose to fear who you want to fear, I guess. But the numbers seem to suggest pretty much everyone should be more concerned about being murdered than being killed by police. Being killed by police is more of a betrayal, for sure. For that reason it might be worse in some sense. But I'm not sure why that should result in disproportionate fear on the order of 20X. Also, I should say that it's much harder to pin down how many murders police prevent.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Murder is an understood societal outlier that society doesn't tolerate. Society is disquietingly tolerant of murder when the murderer is wearing a badge and executing a suspect "In the line of duty." If not for the nationwide protests, it is extremely likely the murderers of George Floyd would still be employed by their police departments, forget arrested.
  - jeffdavis 6y ago
    "Society is disquietingly tolerant of murder when the murderer is wearing a badge" I agree. But the original post seemed to be saying that it was rational for blacks to be carefree about criminals and afraid of police, which just doesn't seem in line with the data. And it's also disquieting how little people seem to care about murder victims, who are much more numerous and also disproportionately black (by a greater factor than the disproportionate killings by police). Those black lives matter, too.
    - c22 6y ago
      Criminals don't wear uniforms, you can't tell them apart from regular people when you see them in public. Regular people who mean you no harm outnumber criminals significantly and it would be absurd to fear them. Police officers are instantly recognizable. If you're statistically more likely to be harmed by the police than by a regular person then it is completely rational to be concerned when you see one.
tzs 6y ago
He definitely should not have brought up "black-on-black" crime. The statement he was trying to refute was that blacks are more likely to die from police than from random criminals. To evaluate whether or not that is true, we just need two numbers: (1) how many black people a year are killed by the police, and (2) how many black people a year are killed by random criminals. It's hard to think of a good reason one would narrow #2 to just "black-on-black" crime if the goal is to show that the original statement is wrong. It's also kind of irrelevant in another sense. People have been working on stopping crime for millennia and are still nowhere near figuring it out. Police killings are something we might actually be able to do something about, so it makes sense to concentrate on them even if they are not actually the biggest immediate danger to individuals.
- jeffdavis 6y ago
  Right, a more clear number would have been total murders. The race of the murderer was irrelevant to my point, and the difference between police killing versus getting murdered would have been even more pronounced had I included all murders. I'm a little confused about your point about stopping crime. Surely it can't be stopped completely, but just as surely, some policies are more effective than others. For instance, ending the war on drugs would likely dry up funding for gangs.

treis 6y ago

>Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. It's part of the story, though. The incident in the linked article started because a group of teens jumped another and stole his phone. If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action.

dhosek 6y ago
[edited to add context] a comprehensive reply to the "what about black on black crime" comment from journalist Michael Harriot. https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1268463768285188096?fbclid=IwAR14-WIG8jldNTy03xiUgzAKLkN421_Nwbs57myCLlY-XAmeokJjYuVIRh8 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/126846376828518809...
- dvtrn 6y ago
  When people ask "why isn't anyone talking about black on black crime?" or why aren't "we" in the black community talking about it, my response is usually to start by asking "Who is 'we'"?[0] and then to retort that "'We' are, 'we' have been" and several black authors have written and are writing about it. - "Locking Up Our Own", James Foreman, an analysis by a black attorney discussing black crime, black recidivism and black involvement as attorneys and judges in the criminal justice system - "In Contempt", Christopher Darden, an autobiography written by one of the attorneys in the OJ Simpson trial where swaths of the book are dedicated to Darner's views and interactions with other attorneys who tackled "black on black crime" in LA during the 90's prior to his time as a District Attorney - "The Man Not" (the most recent publication in this non-exhaustive list), Tommy Curry, explorations on the victimization of black men by their black guardians, with some focus on sexual abuse and exploitation of their bodies as the lens through which Curry focuses a larger critique - "Negroland", Margo Jefferson, a memoir of the black elite class of Chicago and ramifications of black success experienced sometimes at the expense of lower-class black Americans, perpetuated sometimes by upper-class black Americans I'm a bit fatigued by the insinuation that black America is shirking a responsibility to tackle these in-group issues, because it's not as if there's a lack of poignant critical theory emerging from our group on the topic. It's all there and readily available, and the names and reference content I provided here isn't an exhaustive list either. --- [0] https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/who-is-we-1833100853 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/who-is-we-1833100853
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- treis 6y ago
  I don't see anything in there to refute what I said. In fact, he seems to agree with my numbers at least. He admits that Blacks are roughly 10x as likely to commit murder. If we agree with that and agree that is some rough proxy for criminality why wouldn't we expect about 10 times as much police violence against Black people?
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    If we agree with that and agree that is some rough proxy for criminality why wouldn't we expect about 10 times as much police violence against Black people? Caveat lector: If we agree. I don't agree with this idea that the statistics of criminality in the black community is a proxy for anything, and more that it is a result of multiple compounding issues that snowballed throughout generations of peoples bringing us to where we are today. In your mind what is this a proxy for? I'd like to hear this notion unpacked. Those questions are varied and nuanced and their answers are equally varied and nuanced, and against the backdrop of exactly how certain members of the constabulary execute (pun most certainly and deliberately intended) violence in response to violence are people like me trying to desperately point at as this the topic we want to discuss when we say "Black Lives Matter", yet time and time again we have to stop and have the "black people commit more crimes" discussion with people who are focused on the math of crimes committed while black at the expense of just about any other valid variable in the equation. So if we take the "black people commit more crimes" framework on its face, does that mean they deserve to die for all of them? Did Sandra Bland really need to be shot because she didn't want to put out a cigarette at a traffic stop or could the officer have written her the moving citation she probably actually deserved, and gone about his policing elsewhere?[0] Did Eric Garner need asphyxiation for a civil citation when he was stopped for selling illegal cigarettes? Did George Floyd need to have a knee on his neck for nearly 10 minutes for a counterfeit $20? I challenge us all to think beyond just "well they committed a crime" and start asking some hard goddamn questions about what we're saying if that's going to be the response to critical theories of criminal justice-because many (not all) of the names commonly shouted out in discussion about police brutality committed petty offenses that should have received citations but instead received death sentences; highlighting a severely disproportionate view of policing scofflaws that breaks "well they broke the law" down into "contempt of cop"[1]. --- [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/22/a-trooper-arrested-sandra-bland-after-she-refused-to-put-out-a-cigarette-was-it-legal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/2... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop
jf22 6y ago
The problem is people don't deny black-on-black crime is a problem. Society is in agreement that we don't want that. Bring up racism and police brutality though and people strongly deny it's a problem.
- vangelis 6y ago
  Weirdly, it only seems to come up when you mention police brutality!
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    That's because no one outside of the Black community listens to Black voices about Black social issues unless (1) it's positive attention to a rich Black person blaming the the moral failings of Blacks for the problems of Black communities and absolving White and wealthy society, or (2) it's attention (usually, historically, negative, but there are moments when that flips on one issue or another) to Black people questioning a trusted (by Whites) social institution and it's contribution to Black social problems. Everything else is beneath notice of the wider society. It's talked about, but no one outside of the community is listening. Which is fine, except when they base their response to the issues on which they do pay a little attention to assumption that what they aren't hearing on other issues is because it's not being talked about.
  - treis 6y ago
    That's disingenuous. Police brutality almost always comes up in the context of BLM and in this specific case the article made it a racial issue. You can't do that and then say "why are we talking about race" when (the general) you started the conversation talking about race.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      Talking about specific issues which relate to race does not mean all issues which relate to race have to be brought up.
- genoapol 6y ago
marcinzm 6y ago
>If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action. Why do you consider it okay for police to stop and harass innocent people with no evidence simply because they live in a certain neighborhood?
- treis 6y ago
  Where did I say that it was okay for police to stop and harass innocent people?
  - seamyb88 6y ago
    Your logic implies it. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional

eloff 6y ago

It is a tactic commonly used as you say. It's also a relevant statistic here, although all race on black violence would have been even better. It still serves to support the point quite clearly that police are not to be feared as much as criminals, even if you're black. Having said that, a lot of criminal violence happens if you're mixed up in that world or frequenting a bad area as opposed to just random violence. There's something different about police violence where it has that random quality and can affect you anywhere, sometimes just minding your own business. Plus it's doubly egregious because the police are supposed to protect you, not hurt you. Even before this became an issue, and as a white person, I get nervous with police interactions. You just don't know what kind of mood they're in or how they're interpreting the situation.

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
It's totally irrelevant. Most white people are killed by white people too. It's an effect of de facto segregation in society. Most crime is proximate.
trowawee 6y ago
It is completely irrelevant. It's like responding to "It's raining today" with "It was sunny last week". At best, it's a non-sequitur, at worst it's an active attempt to distract from the conversation at hand. And it ignores the facts that A) black-on-black crime does not happen at a substantially higher rate than white-on-white crime, B) the explanation for why most crime is intra-racial in a segregated country is pretty straightforwardly obvious, and C) Black people actually are attacked and killed by police at wildly disproportionate rates, which is why the subject of police violence against Black people is a valid topic of conversation, whereas "black-on-black crime" is a pointless or hostile digression.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > It is completely irrelevant It's irrelevant to the real issue, but not to the upthread claim that blacks view police as the greatest threat. In the latter context, it is not irrelevant to point out that such a view does not seem to be in line with the evidence.

Balgair 6y ago

The commentor's name is literally 'jeffdavis'. I'm not sure what else one could suspect about their motivations.

trowawee 6y ago
True. And looking at their comment history, this "What about black-on-black crime?!" seems to be a recurring bit over the last few weeks whenever people here talk about police brutality. Still, I think it's worthwhile to name and push back on this tactic when we see it, because it's pretty commonly used when people want to minimize or ignore police violence.
lliamander 6y ago
Are you suggesting that the user chose their username in honor of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States? I suppose it's possible, but it's patently absurd to assume that is the only (or even most likely) reason for their name or explanation of their intentions.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago

It is indeed disingenuous, but that's exactly how "black lives matter" sounds to many. Lack of police accountability and oversight is the problem - regardless of color combinations of the murder and the victim.

number364789 6y ago

I don't know if this is valid or true, but I sometimes think that the 1990s through early 2000s pop culture depiction of black culture embedded itself strongly in the psyche of many white Americans. It sounds silly to say that gangster rap, and The Wire, and such things are responsible for racial stereotypes, but for many of my white friends, I think this is absolutely true. One sad part of this is that some of the most well-known, financially successful black Americans came out of this environment, either real, or pretended in order to sell entertainment (and make a lot of money).

dragonwriter 6y ago
The relevant stereotypes are older than independence and deeply embedded in American culture, they don't stem from 1990s to early 2000s popular culture.
- number364789 6y ago
  I agree there are stereotypes much, much older than this, of course - and 90s pop culture does not explain away the longer term discrimination. Still, if the question is about how white Americans perceive black Americans as a group, especially those white Americans who do not know many black Americans personally, I think you have to consider portrayals in pop culture as a factor. At least, that is my perception, as a white American who has only a handful of black friends, but who has a number of white friends who are/were into this kind of pop culture. At the least, it reinforces any existing fears that might have been initially planted by other sources (e.g. racist family members).
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I think you have to consider portrayals in pop culture as a factor. Sure, but pop culture in large part expresses and transmits preexisting stereotypes (and even when it doesn’t, it is perceived through the lens of those stereotypes.) I'm not saying it's not involved, just that it's not the source.
    - 6y ago

tomp 6y ago

It's a relevant statistic for this discussion, which is not a discussion about generic police brutality. Retracting from "Black Live Matters" to "we're discussing police brutality here" is a common mote-and-bailey tactic that isn't a valid argument.

shadowgovt 6y ago
Moat-and-bailey is perfectly valid if it's used to indicate how failure of the argument to address the more-defensible position implies the argument fails on the less-defensible position (as a general comment on rhetorical process, not a comment on Black Lives Matter or police brutality).

jeffdavis 6y ago

It's relevent because you need to compare the costs of police (e.g. police violence) to the scale of problem that is supposedly being solved (e.g. murders). You can choose to fear who you want to fear, I guess. But the numbers seem to suggest pretty much everyone should be more concerned about being murdered than being killed by police. Being killed by police is more of a betrayal, for sure. For that reason it might be worse in some sense. But I'm not sure why that should result in disproportionate fear on the order of 20X. Also, I should say that it's much harder to pin down how many murders police prevent.

shadowgovt 6y ago
Murder is an understood societal outlier that society doesn't tolerate. Society is disquietingly tolerant of murder when the murderer is wearing a badge and executing a suspect "In the line of duty." If not for the nationwide protests, it is extremely likely the murderers of George Floyd would still be employed by their police departments, forget arrested.
- jeffdavis 6y ago
  "Society is disquietingly tolerant of murder when the murderer is wearing a badge" I agree. But the original post seemed to be saying that it was rational for blacks to be carefree about criminals and afraid of police, which just doesn't seem in line with the data. And it's also disquieting how little people seem to care about murder victims, who are much more numerous and also disproportionately black (by a greater factor than the disproportionate killings by police). Those black lives matter, too.
  - c22 6y ago
    Criminals don't wear uniforms, you can't tell them apart from regular people when you see them in public. Regular people who mean you no harm outnumber criminals significantly and it would be absurd to fear them. Police officers are instantly recognizable. If you're statistically more likely to be harmed by the police than by a regular person then it is completely rational to be concerned when you see one.

tzs 6y ago

He definitely should not have brought up "black-on-black" crime. The statement he was trying to refute was that blacks are more likely to die from police than from random criminals. To evaluate whether or not that is true, we just need two numbers: (1) how many black people a year are killed by the police, and (2) how many black people a year are killed by random criminals. It's hard to think of a good reason one would narrow #2 to just "black-on-black" crime if the goal is to show that the original statement is wrong. It's also kind of irrelevant in another sense. People have been working on stopping crime for millennia and are still nowhere near figuring it out. Police killings are something we might actually be able to do something about, so it makes sense to concentrate on them even if they are not actually the biggest immediate danger to individuals.

jeffdavis 6y ago
Right, a more clear number would have been total murders. The race of the murderer was irrelevant to my point, and the difference between police killing versus getting murdered would have been even more pronounced had I included all murders. I'm a little confused about your point about stopping crime. Surely it can't be stopped completely, but just as surely, some policies are more effective than others. For instance, ending the war on drugs would likely dry up funding for gangs.