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It seems like you've misunderstood the conversation about these killings. The mainstream of the discourse about police killings of black men is rooted in the no

It seems like you've misunderstood the conversation about these killings. The mainstream of the discourse about police killings of black men is rooted in the notion that they're being killed because policing is a malevolent, explicitly racist institution whose racism manifests in a proclivity to kill black men at higher rates than white men. This is what a very large fraction of my affluent, nominally-educated social circle believes, and it's dominated the conversation about these protests. This isn't a new line; the original round of BLM protests were even more statistically illiterate on the point than the current ones. I've always found it ludicrous for people to tar a statement as offensive on grounds of being a non sequitur and thus in bad faith. This relies on being confident that both you and the accused have an aligned and 100% accurate sense of the discourse, and that there's no way that any reasonable number of Pinker's more than half million followers could hold the belief he's addressing. (Not that it matters, but since this is a pretty high-emotion subject, I'll just lay my cards on the table: As far as I can tell, the notion that police kill unarmed men _at all_ is abhorrent. I am and long have been a strident supporter of greater limits on the police (and carceral system), but fantasizing that police killings are racialized is just going to lead you to the same blind alley of pseudoscience and IATs that BLM is in. That doesn't mean that I think the racial skew is a non-problem: the higher arrest rate is largely mediated through a higher crime rate in the black community, a problem whose roots lie in a much larger racial justice problem that is similarly disserved by misinterpreting reality).

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perl4ever 6y ago
No, I haven't misunderstood the conversation; I'm not interested in it at all, just in one specific point about what Pinker specifically wrote. I guess that's not what you want to talk about, but I wish you wouldn't reply to me if you don't want to engage.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  It appears you've also misunderstood my comment (or I've misunderstood yours). Your claim is that Pinker's comment was a non sequitur, as arrest-proportional killings don't convey information about whether the killing were necessary. But in the context of a conversation that assumes that the population-relative skew of killings is driven by racism, it's not a non sequitur at all: it provides evidence against the ubiquitous, confident claim that the population skew is due to explicit racism by the police. It's still possible that a black men being arrested has a higher chance of being killed _relative to the necessity of doing so_, but nobody has even tried to make that case statistically. If I've misunderstood your point, perhaps you could clarify, instead of giving a petulant, low-effort response.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    It seems you are suggesting it's possible for killings to be driven by racism, but for the skew of killings not to be driven by racism. It's a very fine distinction, which I am not interested in validating or invalidating, but I'm thinking it's not relevant to why Pinker's tweet was ill-received when he wrote: "Data: Police don't shoot blacks disproportionately." and "Problem: Not race...". He just wasn't that finely tuned.
    - wutbrodo 6y ago
      > It seems you are suggesting it's possible for killings to be driven by racism, but for the skew of killings not to be driven by racism. Well more precisely, I'm happy to accept that population-disproportionate killings of black men are due to racism, but understanding the facts is important to understanding how that racism manifests. Ie, if it matches the arrest rate and/or the violent crime rate, we're facing a much broader racial justice problem than simply throwing an IAT at every cop in the country. I don't understand why Pinker's tweet wouldn't be interpreted in that light.

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perl4ever 6y ago

No, I haven't misunderstood the conversation; I'm not interested in it at all, just in one specific point about what Pinker specifically wrote. I guess that's not what you want to talk about, but I wish you wouldn't reply to me if you don't want to engage.

wutbrodo 6y ago
It appears you've also misunderstood my comment (or I've misunderstood yours). Your claim is that Pinker's comment was a non sequitur, as arrest-proportional killings don't convey information about whether the killing were necessary. But in the context of a conversation that assumes that the population-relative skew of killings is driven by racism, it's not a non sequitur at all: it provides evidence against the ubiquitous, confident claim that the population skew is due to explicit racism by the police. It's still possible that a black men being arrested has a higher chance of being killed _relative to the necessity of doing so_, but nobody has even tried to make that case statistically. If I've misunderstood your point, perhaps you could clarify, instead of giving a petulant, low-effort response.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  It seems you are suggesting it's possible for killings to be driven by racism, but for the skew of killings not to be driven by racism. It's a very fine distinction, which I am not interested in validating or invalidating, but I'm thinking it's not relevant to why Pinker's tweet was ill-received when he wrote: "Data: Police don't shoot blacks disproportionately." and "Problem: Not race...". He just wasn't that finely tuned.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    > It seems you are suggesting it's possible for killings to be driven by racism, but for the skew of killings not to be driven by racism. Well more precisely, I'm happy to accept that population-disproportionate killings of black men are due to racism, but understanding the facts is important to understanding how that racism manifests. Ie, if it matches the arrest rate and/or the violent crime rate, we're facing a much broader racial justice problem than simply throwing an IAT at every cop in the country. I don't understand why Pinker's tweet wouldn't be interpreted in that light.