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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 a
by 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.
- uoaei 6y ago"Blacks view police as the biggest threat" seems to be perfectly in line with what Black people are and have been saying for decades if not centuries. If only folks would listen to Black voices, they wouldn't be gumming up the conversation with irrelevance. White on white crime is also much more prevalent than crime across racial boundaries. A priori you are much more likely to be a victim of crime by someone you know or in your immediate community. Because America is so segregated still, the conclusion follows pretty immediately.
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt's in line with what people have been saying, but as parent observed, it's not in line with risks. But this is nothing new for people in general; we spend way more newspaper inches worrying about terrorism (which kills a fraction of people) than traffic fatalities (which is 8th leading cause of death globally). This is, of course, as true as it is irrelevant. Because police can be 1/7th as likely to kill black people as non-police, and that's still far, far too many and a completely different category of murder (because the murderers are rarely punished, and are protected by the power of the state). Even if cops were 1/70th as likely to be the murderer of a black person, it's too many. Some kinds of death are both avoidable and morally reprehensible for a society to allow or condone.
- uoaei 6y agoAgreed, the comparison between who kills black folks is irrelevant. The comparison that is relevant here is who police officers kill. This page is a good summary of the relevant statistics: https://beehivemedia.com/dataviz/when_police_kill_in_black_and_white/ https://beehivemedia.com/dataviz/when_police_kill_in_black_a...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- specialist 6y agoSure. You're correct. But it's such a frequently deployed concern troll that it's challenging to assume good intent. Like many, pjc50 is just trying to articulate, organize some thoughts on a very tough topic. Does every. single. statement. have. to. be. pendanted. and. relitigated. every. with. the. same. tired. talking. points. every. single. time?
- eloff 6y agoYou completely missed the point. It's relevant to this thread that blacks should fear the police more than criminal violence. Well sorry, that's not born out by the statistics, so it's an irrational belief.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoYou are saying "violence", but the statistics cited in this thread are myopically focused on murder. Non–lethal violence, racial profiling, disproportionate sentencing, etc, are all forms of physical and judicial violence that might justify Black people fearing the police more than criminals.
- eloff 6y agoI don't think that's justified, until I see data to the contrary.