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I've never understood this point. White people are mostly murdered by other white people. Black people are mostly murdered by other black people. This should be

I've never understood this point. White people are mostly murdered by other white people. Black people are mostly murdered by other black people. This should be obvious...most murderers know their victims, and they know them well enough to have a motive to kill them. When a police officer wrongfully kills a white person, we don't go around telling white people that they shouldn't care about police murders because more white people are killed by other white people than the police. Why does it matter when discussing black people murdered by police? Here's something that you should consider: the police murder problem in the US is massive. If our police had the same rate of killings as German police, we would have about 45 deaths at the hands of the police every year. But we actually have over 1000. And black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Why shouldn't we complain about that?

will4274 5y ago
Because the black homicide rate is really high. It can be a bit easy to forget this, caught in the abstract. The movement isn't called "the police shouldn't kill people" - it's called "black lives matter". I'd expect a movement named "white lived matter" to focus on all-up issues for white people. > black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Among young people (18-45), black people are ten times as likely to die by homocide (27.6% of deaths vs 2.8%). From the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-white/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-w...). Giving yourself a broad focus "black lives" and then ignoring the number one category of death among young males (homicide) - it's a bit odd. Imagine if you ran across the "Cancer Matters" institute and it turned out they don't study lung, breast, or prostate cancers (the three most common and deadly). Instead they study just one specific subtype. What would you think? Edit: just a small comment, but I'm more trying to "explain the argument" than make it myself. Asking if organizations are "pure enough" to their purposes is a common tactic on all sides, and it's clear that _some_ who ask this don't do so in good faith, trying to set the bar impossibly high. People have wildly different perceptions of BLM, in part because BLM is different organizations in different cities. I don't mean to endorse those impossibly high bars, only to _explain_ that the criticism is that BLM is not meeting the bar to some folks in terms of actions matching the mission/label. I'm trying to answer in good faith - assuming that the question was asked in that same good faith - as a legitimate request for explanation.
- darksaints 5y ago
  If you want to dig past the abstract, crime is far more predictable by poverty rate than it is, or ever has been, by race. In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks. But the racially segmented crime rates are higher because black poverty rates are higher. And why is that? Ask any sociologist and they'll have the same answer: systemic racism. This shows up in hundreds of different ways: redlining, wage gaps, resource availability, etc.. The criminal justice system as a whole, and cops in particular, are a huge part of this. Cops Terry Stop black people at higher rates than white people. Cops detain black motorists at higher rates than white people. Cops arrest black people at higher rates than white people for the same crimes. They are prosecuted at higher rates than white people for the same crimes. They receive longer sentences than white people for the same crimes. And they get wrongfully convicted (as evidenced by exonerations) at higher rates than white people. And we have an extremely ugly history of making laws that are intentionally targeted at criminalizing black people...giving cops more ammunition to continue this oppression. Black people being murdered in cold blood by police officers is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to black oppression by the police. World War I wasn't started because people really cared about Austrian Archdukes...the explosion into full on war was a long time coming, and Franz Ferdinand was just the trigger. Just as well, BLM activists absolutely care about black people being killed by black people. But when a cop, who represents a daily oppressive force against black people trying to make their way out of poverty, brutally murders someone in cold blood, in broad daylight, and with dozens of witnesses begging him to relent, and then continues to choke a dead body for several minutes after he gave up the ghost....yeah, protesters have every right to make a big fucking deal about it. BLM absolutely cares about black violence and crime. They know what the solution is: black economic mobility. And contrary to the experience of poor white people that also experience violence and crime problems, cops are a part of the problem, not the solution. Just to be clear, to all the downvoters, this is an actual earnest conversation. I don't think any participant of this thread deserves the downvotes that it is getting. I do believe there is subtle racism here, but it isn't malicious racism, just the typical sort of everyday biases that present themselves in all people from time to time. We don't solve systemic racism by taking sides and lobbing pot shot insults. That does more damage than good.

will4274 5y ago

Because the black homicide rate is really high. It can be a bit easy to forget this, caught in the abstract. The movement isn't called "the police shouldn't kill people" - it's called "black lives matter". I'd expect a movement named "white lived matter" to focus on all-up issues for white people. > black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Among young people (18-45), black people are ten times as likely to die by homocide (27.6% of deaths vs 2.8%). From the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-white/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-w...). Giving yourself a broad focus "black lives" and then ignoring the number one category of death among young males (homicide) - it's a bit odd. Imagine if you ran across the "Cancer Matters" institute and it turned out they don't study lung, breast, or prostate cancers (the three most common and deadly). Instead they study just one specific subtype. What would you think? Edit: just a small comment, but I'm more trying to "explain the argument" than make it myself. Asking if organizations are "pure enough" to their purposes is a common tactic on all sides, and it's clear that _some_ who ask this don't do so in good faith, trying to set the bar impossibly high. People have wildly different perceptions of BLM, in part because BLM is different organizations in different cities. I don't mean to endorse those impossibly high bars, only to _explain_ that the criticism is that BLM is not meeting the bar to some folks in terms of actions matching the mission/label. I'm trying to answer in good faith - assuming that the question was asked in that same good faith - as a legitimate request for explanation.

darksaints 5y ago
If you want to dig past the abstract, crime is far more predictable by poverty rate than it is, or ever has been, by race. In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks. But the racially segmented crime rates are higher because black poverty rates are higher. And why is that? Ask any sociologist and they'll have the same answer: systemic racism. This shows up in hundreds of different ways: redlining, wage gaps, resource availability, etc.. The criminal justice system as a whole, and cops in particular, are a huge part of this. Cops Terry Stop black people at higher rates than white people. Cops detain black motorists at higher rates than white people. Cops arrest black people at higher rates than white people for the same crimes. They are prosecuted at higher rates than white people for the same crimes. They receive longer sentences than white people for the same crimes. And they get wrongfully convicted (as evidenced by exonerations) at higher rates than white people. And we have an extremely ugly history of making laws that are intentionally targeted at criminalizing black people...giving cops more ammunition to continue this oppression. Black people being murdered in cold blood by police officers is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to black oppression by the police. World War I wasn't started because people really cared about Austrian Archdukes...the explosion into full on war was a long time coming, and Franz Ferdinand was just the trigger. Just as well, BLM activists absolutely care about black people being killed by black people. But when a cop, who represents a daily oppressive force against black people trying to make their way out of poverty, brutally murders someone in cold blood, in broad daylight, and with dozens of witnesses begging him to relent, and then continues to choke a dead body for several minutes after he gave up the ghost....yeah, protesters have every right to make a big fucking deal about it. BLM absolutely cares about black violence and crime. They know what the solution is: black economic mobility. And contrary to the experience of poor white people that also experience violence and crime problems, cops are a part of the problem, not the solution. Just to be clear, to all the downvoters, this is an actual earnest conversation. I don't think any participant of this thread deserves the downvotes that it is getting. I do believe there is subtle racism here, but it isn't malicious racism, just the typical sort of everyday biases that present themselves in all people from time to time. We don't solve systemic racism by taking sides and lobbing pot shot insults. That does more damage than good.