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You can only believe this if you've fallen for the spin perpetrated by media outlets. The number of unarmed Black civilians killed by police each year is so sm

You can only believe this if you've fallen for the spin perpetrated by media outlets. The number of unarmed Black civilians killed by police each year is so small that you can fit the entire list of names and details since 2014 (31 total) on a few pages of generously-spaced HTML table rows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americans_killed_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States#2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americ.... This is against approximately 10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total police encounters. While it's tragic that the count is nonzero, any rational person should be amazed that the incidence is so vanishingly low, given the uncertainty inherent to policing. It's truly remarkable that it isn't much much higher. I couldn't find statistics about police killings of unarmed White people, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number is higher than 31 since 2014. The only reason you think there is (or was) an epidemic of police shootings of unarmed Black people is because the media has worked very hard to maximally exploit cherrypicked cases to get you to believe that. Furthermore, Black communities are often strong advocates of retaining or even increasing police presence: > A Gallup poll conducted from June 23 to July 6 [2020] surveying more than 36,000 U.S. adults found that 61 percent of Black Americans said they'd like police to spend the same amount of time in their community, while 20 percent answered they'd like to see more police, totaling 81 percent. Just 19 percent of those polled said they wanted police to spend less time in their area. The reason for this is obvious. Persistent socioeconomic inequality has had the same devastating impact within Black communities as it has had everywhere else in the world: increased criminality.

fighterpilot 5y ago
This is a good survey that shows the impact of availability bias on people's perceptions about this topic: https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Rep...
- rebelos 5y ago
  The problem is that when you sign up for a tribe, you experience an emotional obligation and social pressure to adopt its beliefs wholesale, even if that means jettisoning rationality along the way. This is an affliction that beleaguers both sides of the aisle.
threatofrain 5y ago
There is no nationwide effort to classify killings based on whether an individual was armed at the time. It's better to just look at killings because those are significant enough to record. https://www.axios.com/latinos-killed-by-police-estimate-858f2c03-d500-49c6-89fc-f282013132e3.html https://www.axios.com/latinos-killed-by-police-estimate-858f...
- rebelos 5y ago
  The suggestion that there is some significant number of police killings that are going unreported - especially in the environment of the past several years - is categorically conspiratorial thinking. It fails the barest of sanity checks when you consider just how 'deep state' an effort would be required for that to be conducted at scale. Are there some unreported police killings? Almost certainly. Would there be enough to alter the central thrust of the above argument about the shockingly low incidence of police killings of unarmed persons relative to ~10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total encounters? Almost certainly not. EDIT: Poster changed the link and added a comment. The below is a response to the modified comment. > There is no nationwide effort to classify killings based on whether an individual was armed at the time. It's better to just look at killings because those are significant enough to record. Sure. You can look at the total number of police killings and not only are the numbers still shockingly low as a percentage of arrests and encounters, but there is also no overt sign of an extraordinary racial bias: https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de....
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    > The suggestion that there is some significant number of police killings that are going unreported - especially in the environment of the past several years - is categorically conspiratorial thinking. It fails the barest of sanity checks when you consider just how 'deep state' an effort would be required for that to be conducted at scale. > Are there some unreported police killings? Almost certainly. Would there be enough to alter the central thrust of the above argument about the shockingly low incidence of police killings of unarmed persons relative to ~10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total encounters? Almost certainly not. Axios is one of the most credible outlets to both the GOP and the Democrats. Then-WH spokesperson Sarah Sanders has praised Axios as a worthy outlet. The Raza database just looks at newspaper reports for deaths by police. There is no nationwide standard for how police deaths should be recorded. You are the one suggesting bizarre conspiracy. A nationwide conspiracy of local newspaper outlets reporting deaths.
rdevsrex 5y ago
Yep. A lot of people who’ve been hurt by racism in the past, engage in loose pattern matching. If the story is a police officer shot a black person, to many it’s automatically racism, despite whatever the facts are. That said, I’m black btw, the problems in the black community are not down to any one thing, but certainly the lack of two parent households is a biggie. I was fortunate to grow up in California with two parents who could afford to send me to a private school. Even absent more government intervention, just having more stable households will do a lot to fix the inequalities.
- rebelos 5y ago
  You raise a very important point and one that is difficult to discuss. I'm Asian and I grew up with parents who hewed rather closely to Asian culture. There are two values they championed essentially above all others, well known to most: devotion to family and the intense pursuit of academic achievement. I do feel like I've been a direct beneficiary of that cultural impulse. Much like yourself, I did my best to leverage educational opportunities and had the stability of a supportive family. When we talk about culture and the Black community, many people become understandably wary. It's a fine line between invoking culture and being seen to blame Black people for their own problems. Not to mention that, in doing so, it can be easy to lose sight of the richness of Black culture and its extensive contributions to so many aspects of the American experience e.g. in music, sports, entertainment, art, literature, and cuisine. Perhaps a better way to frame it is that when a particular community has suffered so much injustice and attendant compounded stagnation, it's very hard to find an expedient solution to bring that community to parity that doesn't involve constructing fresh and even revolutionary internal narratives around achievement (and not just academic). Without that sort of effort, it might take many more generations for a combination of government intervention and the natural course of progress to fully remedy the imbalance. And there's also the problem of exacerbating racial animus in the course of addressing that imbalance. While I understand the need for it intellectually, I have substantial misgivings about preferential treatment being extended specifically to Black (or Hispanic or Native American) people along racial lines. There is something that feels deeply wrong about attempting to cure racial injustice by inflicting new racial injustices on people whose only fault was being born a particular race at the wrong moment in history, especially when we are purporting to be an enlightened society that has learned its lesson in this regard. The position is unpopular with many here, but it is my opinion that we should not be devising a society that argues that a boy from an underprivileged neighborhood in Philadelphia is more deserving of opportunity than a girl from a disenfranchised part of the Rust Belt because he's Black and she's White. Rather, we should be saying that they are nearly equally in need of help from society because they are both disadvantaged. While this is not perfectly fair insofar as it does not factor in race, I believe it is a policy position that on balance would help the Black people who are most in need of it without leaving anyone of another race feeling as if (s)he's experiencing undue discrimination. Unfortunately I believe that quandary is even more fraught than the issue of police killings and therefore at present resistant to the possibility of honest discourse.
Anechoic 5y ago
You can only believe this if you've fallen for the spin perpetrated by media outlets. The only reason you think there is (or was) an epidemic of police shootings of unarmed Black people [...] This is unfair - note that the comment you are referring to didn't specially mention police unarmed shootings of blacks, the comment was about disportionate policing and killings (which presumably includes, but is not exclusive to shootings of unarmed citizens). I mention this because police shootings are not the only manifestation of institutional racism. There are also unjust arrests, accusations, beatings (remember, Rodney King wasn't shot), convictions, and general mistreatment. You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride. As a relatively well-off, straight-laced black man, I'm not overly afraid of getting shot by police (although I think I got close to catching a bullet once), but I am terrified of a stop going bad in some way, not because of what I observed in the media, but because of my own personal experiences. I live in a high-crime city in the northeast and as big component of my job is spending time in high-crime parts of cities all over the US (most recently, Chicago South Side, including Altgeld-Murray projects). The only times in my life where I thought my life or safety was in serious jeopardy involved interactions with police. Furthermore, Black communities are often strong advocates of retaining or even increasing police presence Absolutely true, and that reflects my feelings as well. But that is not the same as saying black communities trust police.
- rebelos 5y ago
  I agree with everything you're saying save for this: > I live in a high-crime city in the northeast and as big component of my job is spending time in high-crime parts of cities all over the US (most recently, Chicago South Side, including Altgeld-Murray projects). The only times in my life where I thought my life or safety was in serious jeopardy involved interactions with police. I understand there's a meme that exists about Black people needing to fear being murdered by the police. The entire point of my post is that, from a statistical point of view, this is almost as irrational as being afraid of terrorism, a plane crash, a shark attack, or being struck by lightning. I was also focusing very narrowly on the topic of police killings of Black people, as you noted. I want to be very clear that I understand that Black people are victims of racism and socioeconomic inequality in other ways.
lvl100 5y ago
No, sounds like you’ve fallen for the spin. Not the other way around.

fighterpilot 5y ago

This is a good survey that shows the impact of availability bias on people's perceptions about this topic: https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Rep...

rebelos 5y ago
The problem is that when you sign up for a tribe, you experience an emotional obligation and social pressure to adopt its beliefs wholesale, even if that means jettisoning rationality along the way. This is an affliction that beleaguers both sides of the aisle.

threatofrain 5y ago

There is no nationwide effort to classify killings based on whether an individual was armed at the time. It's better to just look at killings because those are significant enough to record. https://www.axios.com/latinos-killed-by-police-estimate-858f2c03-d500-49c6-89fc-f282013132e3.html https://www.axios.com/latinos-killed-by-police-estimate-858f...

rebelos 5y ago
The suggestion that there is some significant number of police killings that are going unreported - especially in the environment of the past several years - is categorically conspiratorial thinking. It fails the barest of sanity checks when you consider just how 'deep state' an effort would be required for that to be conducted at scale. Are there some unreported police killings? Almost certainly. Would there be enough to alter the central thrust of the above argument about the shockingly low incidence of police killings of unarmed persons relative to ~10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total encounters? Almost certainly not. EDIT: Poster changed the link and added a comment. The below is a response to the modified comment. > There is no nationwide effort to classify killings based on whether an individual was armed at the time. It's better to just look at killings because those are significant enough to record. Sure. You can look at the total number of police killings and not only are the numbers still shockingly low as a percentage of arrests and encounters, but there is also no overt sign of an extraordinary racial bias: https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de....
- threatofrain 5y ago
  > The suggestion that there is some significant number of police killings that are going unreported - especially in the environment of the past several years - is categorically conspiratorial thinking. It fails the barest of sanity checks when you consider just how 'deep state' an effort would be required for that to be conducted at scale. > Are there some unreported police killings? Almost certainly. Would there be enough to alter the central thrust of the above argument about the shockingly low incidence of police killings of unarmed persons relative to ~10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total encounters? Almost certainly not. Axios is one of the most credible outlets to both the GOP and the Democrats. Then-WH spokesperson Sarah Sanders has praised Axios as a worthy outlet. The Raza database just looks at newspaper reports for deaths by police. There is no nationwide standard for how police deaths should be recorded. You are the one suggesting bizarre conspiracy. A nationwide conspiracy of local newspaper outlets reporting deaths.

rdevsrex 5y ago

Yep. A lot of people who’ve been hurt by racism in the past, engage in loose pattern matching. If the story is a police officer shot a black person, to many it’s automatically racism, despite whatever the facts are. That said, I’m black btw, the problems in the black community are not down to any one thing, but certainly the lack of two parent households is a biggie. I was fortunate to grow up in California with two parents who could afford to send me to a private school. Even absent more government intervention, just having more stable households will do a lot to fix the inequalities.

rebelos 5y ago
You raise a very important point and one that is difficult to discuss. I'm Asian and I grew up with parents who hewed rather closely to Asian culture. There are two values they championed essentially above all others, well known to most: devotion to family and the intense pursuit of academic achievement. I do feel like I've been a direct beneficiary of that cultural impulse. Much like yourself, I did my best to leverage educational opportunities and had the stability of a supportive family. When we talk about culture and the Black community, many people become understandably wary. It's a fine line between invoking culture and being seen to blame Black people for their own problems. Not to mention that, in doing so, it can be easy to lose sight of the richness of Black culture and its extensive contributions to so many aspects of the American experience e.g. in music, sports, entertainment, art, literature, and cuisine. Perhaps a better way to frame it is that when a particular community has suffered so much injustice and attendant compounded stagnation, it's very hard to find an expedient solution to bring that community to parity that doesn't involve constructing fresh and even revolutionary internal narratives around achievement (and not just academic). Without that sort of effort, it might take many more generations for a combination of government intervention and the natural course of progress to fully remedy the imbalance. And there's also the problem of exacerbating racial animus in the course of addressing that imbalance. While I understand the need for it intellectually, I have substantial misgivings about preferential treatment being extended specifically to Black (or Hispanic or Native American) people along racial lines. There is something that feels deeply wrong about attempting to cure racial injustice by inflicting new racial injustices on people whose only fault was being born a particular race at the wrong moment in history, especially when we are purporting to be an enlightened society that has learned its lesson in this regard. The position is unpopular with many here, but it is my opinion that we should not be devising a society that argues that a boy from an underprivileged neighborhood in Philadelphia is more deserving of opportunity than a girl from a disenfranchised part of the Rust Belt because he's Black and she's White. Rather, we should be saying that they are nearly equally in need of help from society because they are both disadvantaged. While this is not perfectly fair insofar as it does not factor in race, I believe it is a policy position that on balance would help the Black people who are most in need of it without leaving anyone of another race feeling as if (s)he's experiencing undue discrimination. Unfortunately I believe that quandary is even more fraught than the issue of police killings and therefore at present resistant to the possibility of honest discourse.

Anechoic 5y ago

You can only believe this if you've fallen for the spin perpetrated by media outlets. The only reason you think there is (or was) an epidemic of police shootings of unarmed Black people [...] This is unfair - note that the comment you are referring to didn't specially mention police unarmed shootings of blacks, the comment was about disportionate policing and killings (which presumably includes, but is not exclusive to shootings of unarmed citizens). I mention this because police shootings are not the only manifestation of institutional racism. There are also unjust arrests, accusations, beatings (remember, Rodney King wasn't shot), convictions, and general mistreatment. You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride. As a relatively well-off, straight-laced black man, I'm not overly afraid of getting shot by police (although I think I got close to catching a bullet once), but I am terrified of a stop going bad in some way, not because of what I observed in the media, but because of my own personal experiences. I live in a high-crime city in the northeast and as big component of my job is spending time in high-crime parts of cities all over the US (most recently, Chicago South Side, including Altgeld-Murray projects). The only times in my life where I thought my life or safety was in serious jeopardy involved interactions with police. Furthermore, Black communities are often strong advocates of retaining or even increasing police presence Absolutely true, and that reflects my feelings as well. But that is not the same as saying black communities trust police.

rebelos 5y ago
I agree with everything you're saying save for this: > I live in a high-crime city in the northeast and as big component of my job is spending time in high-crime parts of cities all over the US (most recently, Chicago South Side, including Altgeld-Murray projects). The only times in my life where I thought my life or safety was in serious jeopardy involved interactions with police. I understand there's a meme that exists about Black people needing to fear being murdered by the police. The entire point of my post is that, from a statistical point of view, this is almost as irrational as being afraid of terrorism, a plane crash, a shark attack, or being struck by lightning. I was also focusing very narrowly on the topic of police killings of Black people, as you noted. I want to be very clear that I understand that Black people are victims of racism and socioeconomic inequality in other ways.

lvl100 5y ago

No, sounds like you’ve fallen for the spin. Not the other way around.