MichaelGG

Last year only 20 unarmed black people were shot and killed by police vs 30 whites. So far this year the numbers are 8 and 11. Counting all police shootings last year, whites are 457 of them, blacks 223. About twice the number of whites have been shot by police. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

So yes blacks are killed at a higher rate per population. But what about by actual violence? When looking at violence, blacks and whites commit about the same number of homicides despite population differences. Homicide is the most fair stat we have. If we use lesser crimes [like drug possession or other violence], we will see blacks overrepresented due to higher policing and a biased justice system. In fact, as minority areas of cities have a low solve rate, going by homicides may understate the racial difference in crime in favour of blacks.

It sort of looks like, if you want to get racial about it, whites are the ones killed too much by police. And if you look at the numbers for Hispanics, it is even worse. (But that might be an artifact of how race/ethnicity/Hispanic is reported.[1])

Yet that does not stop perception. There was an ad on TV a while back with a black mother having "The Talk"[2] with her teenage daughter about getting stopped by cops and not wanting her killed. Well, let's see: in 2017 one unarmed female black person was shot by police, and that was when a SWAT team raided her and her bf's place. Such ads that portray this as an issue are simple fear mongering. 2018, so far that number is 0. An ad about how to hide in case of lightning storms would be more realistic. Or simply more training about driving. Or avoiding pools. Or practically anything else in the world.

Try it out: Go ask around and see what your friends and others think the true rate is of unarmed people being killed. Ask them what difference in numbers they think exist for black vs white, and ask them about the flip side of civilian violence. My guess is you'll first get some incredibly high statement about how this is just happening non-stop, then when you reveal the numbers you'll get some other excuse about how it is not about the numbers anyways but some other general racial problem.

1: I'm using https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-... for a quick view of homicide stats. The numbers could be off by 2x and it would not change the point much.

2: Found it: https://youtu.be/3s20ePvTaME?t=21 "This is not you about getting a ticket, this is about you coming home" to which the girl says "I'm going to be OK....right?" Obviously a dramatization but if you're somehow implying to your teenage girl that cops are going to pull you over and you'll not "come home", you're the problem.