Torillian said:
Dante9 said: I wonder when the white riots will begin, seeing as more white people are killed unlawfully by the police than black people every year? |
Pop Quiz: Can you tell me what you think is wrong about comparing the total number of white people killed unlawfully by the police to the total number of black people?
Here's a helpful hint: 1000 white people and 10 black people in a room. Police come through and unlawfully kill 10 black people and 11 white people. Which group has a bigger issue with police violence in this room?
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In order to make your example work, you have to add some context and data. These are just random numbers to illustrate, but the general idea is there. 100 whites, 10 blacks. 15 of the whites are criminals career criminals with extensive prison sentences, jail records, etc. But 7 of the blacks are career criminals. Police kill 10 whites but kill 3 blacks. That's 10% for whites but 30% for blacks. Is it really correct to say that blacks have a "higher" chance of getting killed? Isn't it more that blacks are more likely to be criminals, and thus naturally more likely come across police and thus to be killed by police? The issue is not that blacks are targeted by police at a higher rate, it's that they have a much higher criminality rate. THAT's the issue.
This wikipedia article states that blacks made up more than 50% of homocide offenders between 1980 and 2008, despite only making up around 13% of the US population. There are especially enlightening lines in the few paragraphs of that section.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Crime_statistics
If you take into account the much, MUCH higher criminality rates of blacks, can we still say that they have a higher chance of being killed by police compared to whites? The statistic that blacks have nearly 3 times the chance of being shot comes from the flawed hypotheses that all races act the same way, that is, that they all have the same criminality rates, which is clearly not the case. Higher crime rates = higher chances to meet police = higher chance of getting killed.