Another shooting in Murica

[AuroRaman]

Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk

 

[LutonSpurs]

All I'm saying is that of you're going to use that table to prove racism (and plenty of people are) then you either have to accept that there's some hierarchy of racism or there's some kind of reverse racism against asian/Pacific islanders that assumes they cannot be armed and dangerous from all races of police.

As you've said, there's clearly a problem with police shooting people in the US but I don't think it's accurate or helpful to restrict that statement to saying there's a problem with police shooting black people. I don't doubt there are some racist police, it would be impossible for an organisation that size not to have any but I don't think it's any more than that.

I also know a runaway news story when I see one. With the editing and publishing of "evidence" now in the hands of those who have no legal or journalistic requirement to be accurate or even handed, we now have a theme that has turned the story of "Incompetent police shoot person" into "Racist police shoot black person".

I don't think that angle is accurate and neither do I think it is helpful to race relations in the US.

Look at the data independently of left wing reporting on it then.

1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since Jan. 1, 2015. Of them, 732 were white, and 381 were black (and 382 were of another or unknown race).

According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.


U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people: 50 each. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.

Police have shot and killed a young black man (ages 18 to 29) — such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. —175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed. Over that same period, police have shot and killed 172 young white men, 18 of whom were unarmed. Once again, while in raw numbers there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.

This data is taken from an article but is all well sourced and accurate.

Ultimately you can say that police officers clearly have less care about black lives, they are clearly more trigger happy when faced with a black person rather than white and clearly the officers seem to get away with it all too often.

 

[the dza]

As you've said, there's clearly a problem with police shooting people in the US but I don't think it's accurate or helpful to restrict that statement to saying there's a problem with police shooting black people. I don't doubt there are some racist police, it would be impossible for an organisation that size not to have any but I don't think it's any more than that.

It is true that there is a problem in America with police shooting people of all races. However, it is also true that this disproportionately affects black men. The problem is deeper than just the police, imo. There is a huge under-current of racism in American society and whilst things do get better over time, that's not much consolation if you are a young black man in America and you are automatically in more danger just because of the colour of your skin.

America went from hundreds of years of slavery, then on to the JIm Crow laws and "separate but equal", which spawned the civil rights movement. Then they went on to the war on drugs, which disproportionately affects black people despite blacks and whites having the same statistical likelihood of using/selling drugs. The sentencing laws being much harsher (iirc, 15x harsher) for being caught with crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine (men on wall street might get caught with powder, but crack will turn up in the ghetto).

In America, it's black people who suffered from slavery and it's black people who suffered under the JIm Crow laws. Now, black people suffer disproportionately from the war on drugs and from the prison industry (and unfortunately, in the US, prison is an industry, with more people behind bars than any other nation on earth). Things do get better over time (no more slaves, black president) but that doesn't mean that there aren't huge problems still.

The attitudes that underpinned Jim Crow laws haven't just disappeared, they have manifested in the war on drugs and what is often called the 'prison-industrial complex'. A symptom of this is that, as a proportion of the population, more black men get shot by police.

 

[scaramanga]

Look at the data independently of left wing reporting on it then.

1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since Jan. 1, 2015. Of them, 732 were white, and 381 were black (and 382 were of another or unknown race).

According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.


U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people: 50 each. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.

Police have shot and killed a young black man (ages 18 to 29) — such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. —175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed. Over that same period, police have shot and killed 172 young white men, 18 of whom were unarmed. Once again, while in raw numbers there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.

This data is taken from an article but is all well sourced and accurate.

Ultimately you can say that police officers clearly have less care about black lives, they are clearly more trigger happy when faced with a black person rather than white and clearly the officers seem to get away with it all too often.

According to studies in Philadelphia, black and hispanic police are more likely to shoot at a black suspect than white police are. Are they racist?

Those figures you've presented don't really have much relevance. Crime in the US is overwhelmingly committed by the poor. The ratios of race in the US are very different amongst the poor to the overall ones you've presented. Based on the fact that police are only shooting once someone is suspected of a crime (whether or not you think they are correct in suspecting that) then the figures you have to use is the "interactions with police".

So how many times is a black suspect shot per black suspect and how many times is a white suspect shot per white suspect?

 

[scaramanga]

It is true that there is a problem in America with police shooting people of all races. However, it is also true that this disproportionately affects black men. The problem is deeper than just the police, imo. There is a huge under-current of racism in American society and whilst things do get better over time, that's not much consolation if you are a young black man in America and you are automatically in more danger just because of the colour of your skin.

America went from hundreds of years of slavery, then on to the JIm Crow laws and "separate but equal", which spawned the civil rights movement.

That's all history. At one point the Romans enslaved people of all races from all over Europe. Muslims still enslave women. I don't believe that's got anything to do with this other than in a comparatively small number of racist police. I suspect there are a fairly similar number of police who hate gays - is there a similar problem with being shot?

Then they went on to the war on drugs, which disproportionately affects black people despite blacks and whites having the same statistical likelihood of using/selling drugs. The sentencing laws being much harsher (iirc, 15x harsher) for being caught with crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine (men on wall street might get caught with powder, but crack will turn up in the ghetto).

And rightly so. Use of drugs is irrelevant to society, crimes committed to fund habits ruins the lives of innocent people.

If and when the people of wall street start holding up stores at gunpoint or robbing houses to fund their coke habits I will expect to see police crack down in the same way.

When you say "same likelihood of using/selling drugs" is that across the board or for each drug? Does it include university students getting stoned or bankers having a powdered lunch? And is that adjusted for population percentages? It would be interesting to know.

In America, it's black people who suffered from slavery and it's black people who suffered under the JIm Crow laws.

See above, history etc.....

Now, black people suffer disproportionately from the war on drugs and from the prison industry (and unfortunately, in the US, prison is an industry, with more people behind bars than any other nation on earth). Things do get better over time (no more slaves, black president) but that doesn't mean that there aren't huge problems still.

I realise there are still problems to be solved but I don't believe those problems are causing police to indiscriminately shoot black people.

The attitudes that underpinned Jim Crow laws haven't just disappeared, they have manifested in the war on drugs and what is often called the 'prison-industrial complex'. A symptom of this is that, as a proportion of the population, more black men get shot by police.

No they haven't. The war on drugs and crime (as in every other country) effects the poor mostly because they are overwhelmingly the ones with destructive habits and who are committing crimes. The police focus their attention on poorer areas because that's where most of the drug-related crime comes from.

In the US, minority groups are massively over-represented amongst the poor - that's where your history is relevant and that's where the work needs to be done.

 

[AuroRaman]

@scaramanga how could one explain the disparity between prison sentences between white people and black/minority people in the US, for committing the same crimes?

Or other examples being the Stanford rape case. Do you seriously believe a court would be as lenient to the offender if he was black, and not a middle class white dude who had a 'bright future as a swimmer'? There is still an institutional issue that is larger than any graph or simple stats can mask (sorry mate, I know you love your stats )

I think one thing that needs to be clear is that movements like Black Lives Matter are not stating that ONLY Black Lives Matter, they are campaigning to promote that black lives matter AS WELL AS other lives. DeRay McKesson made a case in point to those that tout 'All Lives Matter' as a reaction to the BLM movement. "I would never go to a breast cancer rally and yell out 'colon cancer matters.'"

Also, when you look at the state of a minority that get behind the All Live Matters banner, these are the types of people that will happily post on social media that police should run over black people blocking a highway to teach 'em a lesson, then react with outrage when a non-white extremist in a truck mows down innocent people during a holiday celebration.

Of course, there has to be a discussion of how to combat the worrying uprising of police officer murders perpetuated by this whole situation. I find myself constantly typing 'vicious cycles' in recent discussions, it's very frustrating.

 

[LutonSpurs]

Call it racism or call it profiling, the behaviour of the police officers and judges is different for black people than it is for white people. These are the people who are trained to uphold the law and they should not be deferring to racial stereotypes. This is the problem that so many are in denial about.

You have to seperate the issue of poverty amongst minorities leading to increased crime from being a reason for unlawful behaviour by law enforcement officers. They have to be better than that.

 

[scaramanga]

@scaramanga how could one explain the disparity between prison sentences between white people and black/minority people in the US, for committing the same crimes?

I don't know much about the sentencing over there, but I know it's separate from the police as it is here.

Could it be that sentences given to minorities are more likely to be for repeat offences seeing as there are more arrests and convictions for minorities? Otherwise I don't know what would cause it.

Or other examples being the Stanford rape case. Do you seriously believe a court would be as lenient to the offender if he was black, and not a middle class white dude who had a 'bright future as a swimmer'? There is still an institutional issue that is larger than any graph or simple stats can mask (sorry mate, I know you love your stats )

I don't think that's a race thing, I think that's a class thing. Doesn't make it right, but it seems a little strange to bring race into it.

I think one thing that needs to be clear is that movements like Black Lives Matter are not stating that ONLY Black Lives Matter, they are campaigning to promote that black lives matter AS WELL AS other lives. DeRay McKesson made a case in point to those that tout 'All Lives Matter' as a reaction to the BLM movement. "I would never go to a breast cancer rally and yell out 'colon cancer matters.'"

It might make a bit of a difference if they were blaming colon cancer for causing breast cancer.

Also, when you look at the state of a minority that get behind the All Live Matters banner, these are the types of people that will happily post on social media that police should run over black people blocking a highway to teach 'em a lesson, then react with outrage when a non-white extremist in a truck mows down innocent people during a holiday celebration.

Of course, there has to be a discussion of how to combat the worrying uprising of police officer murders perpetuated by this whole situation. I find myself constantly typing 'vicious cycles' in recent discussions, it's very frustrating.

Yeah, they're dingdongs there's no denying that. Unfortunately even dingdongs can be right about some things even if it's for the wrong reasons.

 

[scaramanga]

Call it racism or call it profiling, the behaviour of the police officers and judges is different for black people than it is for white people. These are the people who are trained to uphold the law and they should not be deferring to racial stereotypes. This is the problem that so many are in denial about.

You have to seperate the issue of poverty amongst minorities leading to increased crime from being a reason for unlawful behaviour by law enforcement officers. They have to be better than that.

Yet the police are tasked with using limited resources to stop as much crime as possible.

So it makes sense to gravitate towards areas where crime tends to bunch and that's usually the poorer areas.

 

[AuroRaman]

I don't know much about the sentencing over there, but I know it's separate from the police as it is here.

Could it be that sentences given to minorities are more likely to be for repeat offences seeing as there are more arrests and convictions for minorities? Otherwise I don't know what would cause it.

Yes I believe there is definitely cases for repeat offences, however this cannot deflect from the most definite issue that in an 'equal' footing, minorities are given longer sentences and treated worse. There are also case studies of black people who commit non-violent offences given harsher sentences than white people who have committed heinous crimes.


I don't think that's a race thing, I think that's a class thing. Doesn't make it right, but it seems a little strange to bring race into it.

I'll rephrase. Do you believe a poor white dude would have been given the same sentence as a poor black dude? And, in terms of media coverage, do you believe this would have been on equal footing for either party ie the picture used of the defendant for news stories etc. All sounds very tin-foil-hat, but proven issues that are now in the public domain.

It might make a bit of a difference if they were blaming colon cancer for causing breast cancer.

Firstly, I'm hoping you understood the point that was being made. Secondly, the BLM movement is not exclusively trying to point blame at all police officers, what they are demanding is equality when it comes to police stops and how they are treated.

Yeah, they're dingdongs there's no denying that. Unfortunately even dingdongs can be right about some things even if it's for the wrong reasons.

Apologies, I'm unsure what you mean by this? Right about what?

 

[NaijaSpurs]

@scaramanga when I consider the number of UNARMED black men killed by police in the States I would suggest it is a race thing

 

[glorygloryeze]

Still waiting for someone to explain the shooting of the black guy who was the therapist/carer of that autistic boy/man who lay on the floor and put his hands up shouting "i'm unarmed".

Plus the two shootings of those black guys that were filmed within a few days who were both unarmed.

Care to give explanations for those 3 cases @scaramanga ?
Why were those 3 people shot in your opinion?

 

[StephenH]

@scaramanga is doing his @jeremyclarkson

 

[LutonSpurs]

Yet the police are tasked with using limited resources to stop as much crime as possible.

So it makes sense to gravitate towards areas where crime tends to bunch and that's usually the poorer areas.

And it seems that they are killing people who are not committing crimes, not brandishing weapons but happen to be black.

The police are clearly able to do their job when dealing with white people just not black people.

 

[scaramanga]

@scaramanga when I consider the number of UNARMED black men killed by police in the States I would suggest it is a race thing

Still waiting for someone to explain the shooting of the black guy who was the therapist/carer of that autistic boy/man who lay on the floor and put his hands up shouting "i'm unarmed".

Plus the two shootings of those black guys that were filmed within a few days who were both unarmed.

Care to give explanations for those 3 cases @scaramanga ?
Why were those 3 people shot in your opinion?

And it seems that they are killing people who are not committing crimes, not brandishing weapons but happen to be black.

The police are clearly able to do their job when dealing with white people just not black people.

There are as many unarmed white men killed by police in the US too, it's just not considered newsworthy.

Let's face it, right now taking out your phone when a policeman is chasing a black suspect might make you YouTube famous, nobody is going to bother if it's a white man.

 

[scaramanga]

I think one thing that needs to be clear is that movements like Black Lives Matter are not stating that ONLY Black Lives Matter, they are campaigning to promote that black lives matter AS WELL AS other lives. DeRay McKesson made a case in point to those that tout 'All Lives Matter' as a reaction to the BLM movement. "I would never go to a breast cancer rally and yell out 'colon cancer matters.'"

Having thought about it, I don't think that analogy fits - breast and colon cancer are too disparate.

A better analogy would be a rally in support of people with cancer in the left breast only. In that case, people would (quite rightly) be asking why the fudge they're separating the two and what a ridiculous thing it is to do.

 

[the dza]

Having thought about it, I don't think that analogy fits - breast and colon cancer are too disparate.

A better analogy would be a rally in support of people with cancer in the left breast only. In that case, people would (quite rightly) be asking why the fudge they're separating the two and what a ridiculous thing it is to do.

To try and improve this sh1t analogy...

It's like a breast cancer rally where the right-breasts get much better treatment than the left-breasts, so the left-breasts create a movement called "left-breasts matter" or LBM. It's not that they think right-breasts don't matter, it's just that they think left-breasts should get the same treatment. And then some tit shouts out "hey, right breasts matter too, ALL BREASTS MATTER!" to which the LBM movement says "yeah, that's our point you reactionary phucking boob."

 

[the dza]

That's all history. At one point the Romans enslaved people of all races from all over Europe. Muslims still enslave women. I don't believe that's got anything to do with this other than in a comparatively small number of racist police. I suspect there are a fairly similar number of police who hate gays - is there a similar problem with being shot?...


...In the US, minority groups are massively over-represented amongst the poor - that's where your history is relevant and that's where the work needs to be done.

Exactly. Slavery was a long time ago, but those attitudes fed into the Jim Crow segregation laws in America. Jim Crow wasn't that long ago and whilst it has gone the way of slavery i.e. there is no more legislated segregation, there are still hangover effects from that period and there is still a racist under-current in the society at large. Police killing disproportionately more black people is a fact -- and it's a symptom of a larger societal problem imo where poor people matter less, and there are more poor black people as a result of the attitudes in society over a very long period of time.

 

[parklane1]

Of course there is racism in America there always has been, lets be honest there are political leaders who have links to the KKkclan. Its a boiler cooker and its always been simmering.

 

[scaramanga]

Exactly. Slavery was a long time ago, but those attitudes fed into the Jim Crow segregation laws in America. Jim Crow wasn't that long ago and whilst it has gone the way of slavery i.e. there is no more legislated segregation, there are still hangover effects from that period and there is still a racist under-current in the society at large. Police killing disproportionately more black people is a fact -- and it's a symptom of a larger societal problem imo where poor people matter less, and there are more poor black people as a result of the attitudes in society over a very long period of time.

I agree with all of that other than the bonded bit. I just dont see that.

I've spent a good bit of time out there both working and visiting and everywhere I've been has only been rivalled by London in its integration.