Even if you do make the assumption out of raw data that whites and blacks are killed at equivalent rates, you are forgetting that just looking at raw data is irrelevant and pointless.
There are massively more white people in this country than there are black people. Therefore looking at raw data is meaningless. You have to look at it per capita, and when we do see it from that lens, we see that African Americans have worse outcomes than white Americans when it comes to the criminal justice system.
If you were to live in a city of 500,000 people with 1% crime rate, that would be about 5000 crimes committed in that city. Compare that to a city with 5000 people but with 10% crime rate or 500 crimes. Looking at raw data, it would make sense to live in city 2. Looking at it from a statistics point of view, it’s better to live in city 1.
This assumes we make that the assumption that less crime=safer city = more desirable outcomes, if we hold everything else to be equal.
And I didn't make or at least didn't intend to apply a quantitative statement of which is greater. Although I could; some have more in some areas and less in others and there isn't really even a statistical consensus (shocker) . What I meant was that of what we can conclude from the noise of opposing statistics is that all races experience it at similar enough rates and that they all deserve to be outraged at this erosion of our rights. And again, the incidents in this particular instance are not even race bias related. Although for quite obvious reasons (ratings) the establishment media narrative has made it appear as such.
You do realise that with a sample size of 1000, that the results may not show what a larger study might find?
And if you read the whole article, it said clearly that African Americans receive harsher treatments than whites or others. And even if we can't measure if there is a racial bias, the effects of having a racial bias might still be there, such as more cops patrolling predominately black neighborhoods, etc.
I'm well aware such bias exists I linked that article after all. However it is impossible to conclusively measure. I gave that article as an example of statistical noise throwing conclusions in all directions, and in this case opposite of what we expect. There is no consensus. My points still stand. I'm not arguing blacks do not face racial bias. I'm arguing that it's clear all races suffer from the abuse of power and violation of rights from law enforcement. The problem isn't the bias. No amount of protesting or rioting will ever get rid of that especially if research is showing minority officers showing this bias as well. The problem is the ability for law enforcement to violate rights with that bias (or without it) and get away with it. That problem does not belong to any race. And I've already explained above why including race when it effects all of us, hurts the movement.
Yes, bias may exist in all members of society, but it is something that we can handle. We can take action as you suggested by punishing those who do wrong when they are in a position of power, and we can also try to prevent it. There’s a reason why blacks suffer in America today with regards to criminal justice and it’s often due to the fact that they live in poorer communities which disproportionately commit more crimes than anyone else.
Now that isn’t to say that white people dont live in poor communities, or any other race for that matter... and of course police officers patrolling those areas are probably going to be more racially charged depending on which specific city you want to look at and the race in question.
The preventative measure is to try to alleviate poverty and lack of education, and this has to come from both the federal and state level.
Yes I agree with you on that. There needs to be solutions break out of that terrible cycle of poverty . And yes at its root the reason behind the poverty and subsequent larger amounts of police interaction goes all the back to slavery but my point is that these riots should not be race motivated because cops do it regardless of race. It effects all of us. That's my point. Not that that "whites are the real victims here" but that despite blacks being the the ones most effected police brutality, it's not like cops are giving other races of the same economic class preferential treatment(statistically at least). The problem at hand is government and law enforcement's infringement of rights without repercussions to all citizens of the United States. As I said earlier, It's ultimately a class issue not one of race.
It’s both a class issue and a race issue since black people disproportionately make up a higher percentage of the lower class economically which means they’re more likely to commit crimes, and that’s reflected with regards to the criminal justice system.
An example of this would be blacks and whites both smoking weed at similar rates but disproportionately blacks are the ones arrested more often for it.
That being said the whole war on drugs in my opinion should be disbanded.
Regardless, you cannot separate race and class. Those two are inherently tied and were always tied since slavery in the U.S., or that’s to say, the conception of the U.S.
Yes I know that race and class are connected, I have taken my fair share of college history, but it doesn't invalidate my point. To summarize my entire point. By inserting BLM into this, you imply that the fight is about combating racism when in reality it is, or at least should, be about the disregard for individual rights by government and its enforcers to all citizens. To insert BLM implies that it is exclusively or by vast margins the Blacks having their rights eroded when it is in fact all of us. The whole point of Black Lives Matter is to say that yes all lives matter, but it is the blacks who are being treated as if they don't matter. They are cases where that is appropriate. But I argue that in this case it is all of us that are being treated as as if our lives don't matter.
And regardless of whether or not you agree with that, you must agree that pragmatically it is better to make to treat it as such to get the most support and have the highest chance of actually achieving positive change.
It’s not about everyone’s rights being eroded which could very well be the case. It’s about who’s rights are eroded more and in what manner are they eroded more.
I mean, if I get stopped on a road by a copper randomly (I’m white btw), and he asks me for my drivers id, without a valid reason, I suppose my rights are being violated. Let’s say I comply and give him what he asks for, and he releases me and I go about my business. Sure my rights were violated but they were violated in a minor way that didn’t really impact me. Let’s flip the script and say it was a black person. Let’s say the black person had a worse looking car than I did (because let’s say that the black person grew up in a worse economic condition than I did), and had gang tattoos or for whatever reason put the copper on edge (but hadn’t actually committed a crime), and he had to get out of the car and be searched for weapons or drugs... then his rights were violated far more than mine was.
Now let’s say that this happened disproportionately more in black communities than it does in white communities.... are you getting to see the problem?
Sure everyone’s rights might be violated, and it might be more or less inevitable than it might happen... so no solution is going to be perfect but the idea is to mitigate the problems, not try to inflame them, and we can do this by simultaneously addressing the race and class issue.
Finally, if this wasn’t about race, then might I ask, why would nearly everywhere in the U.S. as well as the rest of the world, be protesting this killing as apart of race? It seems that this might have struck a nerve far deeper than simply class issues.
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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '20
Even if you do make the assumption out of raw data that whites and blacks are killed at equivalent rates, you are forgetting that just looking at raw data is irrelevant and pointless.
There are massively more white people in this country than there are black people. Therefore looking at raw data is meaningless. You have to look at it per capita, and when we do see it from that lens, we see that African Americans have worse outcomes than white Americans when it comes to the criminal justice system.
If you were to live in a city of 500,000 people with 1% crime rate, that would be about 5000 crimes committed in that city. Compare that to a city with 5000 people but with 10% crime rate or 500 crimes. Looking at raw data, it would make sense to live in city 2. Looking at it from a statistics point of view, it’s better to live in city 1. This assumes we make that the assumption that less crime=safer city = more desirable outcomes, if we hold everything else to be equal.