zlacker

[parent] [thread] 10 comments
1. chrisj+(OP)[view] [source] 2020-06-16 23:01:44
Completely agree. Although the data doesn't show african american's are killed at a higher rate(in fact it shows the opposite) it does show that they are discriminated against at a higher rate. Pulled over more, etc.
replies(2): >>thebea+U >>danShu+N4
2. thebea+U[view] [source] 2020-06-16 23:08:45
>>chrisj+(OP)
If I understood the data correctly, African Americans are pulled over more, then after being pulled over they are killed at the same rate as other groups.

That still implies they are killed at a higher rate. The population we're concerned about isn't "people who have already been pulled over".

3. danShu+N4[view] [source] 2020-06-16 23:36:41
>>chrisj+(OP)
> Although the data doesn't show african american's are killed at a higher rate

Wait, what? Take a second look at the first 3 paragraphs, and then the "Racial Patterns" section of that Wikipedia article you linked.

When people say that police killings aren't racially motivated, they are disputing the causes of the disparity in race-based deaths, not the disparity itself.

I mean, you can just do the math from recorded police shootings yourself, and you pretty consistently across multiple years get death-per-million numbers for black communities that are around 1.5-2.5x as large as for white communities. Black men are pretty objectively killed at higher rates than white men, the studies you're talking about are questioning why that is and whether officer bias and/or systemic racism plays a role in those numbers.

replies(1): >>chrisj+w5
◧◩
4. chrisj+w5[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-16 23:42:47
>>danShu+N4
Did you read the `Racial patterns` section and look at the data from the FBI?
replies(1): >>danShu+N7
◧◩◪
5. danShu+N7[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-16 23:58:05
>>chrisj+w5
Yes. You're going to have to direct me to a quote, I don't know what you're referring to. What I see is:

2015:

> A 2015 study found that unarmed blacks were 3.49 times more likely to be shot by police than were unarmed whites. [...] Another 2015 study concluded that black people were 2.8 times more likely to be killed by police than whites.

2016:

> According to The Guardian's database, in 2016 the rate of fatal police shootings per million was 10.13 for Native Americans, 6.6 for black people, 3.23 for Hispanics; 2.9 for white people and 1.17 for Asians. [...] Another study published in 2016 concluded that the mortality rate of legal interventions among black and Hispanic people was 2.8 and 1.7 times higher than that among white people.

2018:

> A 2018 study found that minorities are disproportionately killed by police but that white officers are not more likely to use lethal force on blacks than minority officers.

2019:

> A 2019 study in the Journal of Politics found that police officers were more likely to use lethal force on blacks, but that this was "most likely driven by higher rates of police contact among African Americans rather than racial differences in the circumstances of the interaction and officer bias in the application of lethal force." A 2019 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that blacks and American Indian/Alaska Natives are more likely to be killed by police than whites and that Latino men are more likely to be killed than white men.

----

I see exactly one study in this section that disputes the disparity itself, and that study was widely criticized and ended up issuing a correction:

> A 2019 study in PNAS concluded from a dataset of fatal shootings that white officers were not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-white officers [...] The study was widely criticized by other academics, who stated that the study's conclusion could not be supported by the data. [...] PNAS issued a correction to the original article.

I don't see data from the FBI mentioned in the racial disparity section. Maybe I'm missing what you're referring to.

Again though, you don't need to do a complicated study to find the disparity itself. You can literally just add up the number of deaths for each race and then divide by population numbers in the US for black/white communities. You'll get higher per-million numbers for black communities than for white ones. I'm not sure how someone could dispute that, unless you're arguing that the Guardian is under-reporting white deaths or something[0]. If you want to debate the causes behind that disparity, then that's a separate conversation.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/...

replies(2): >>peanut+Ep >>chrisj+w71
◧◩◪◨
6. peanut+Ep[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-17 02:17:33
>>danShu+N7
> You can literally just add up the number of deaths for each race and then divide by population numbers

Should it not be -> number of deaths by race DIVIDED BY police interaction by race?

Or maybe -> number of deaths by race DIVIDED BY police interaction by race but only for 911 emergencies (or something like that)

replies(1): >>danShu+yr
◧◩◪◨⬒
7. danShu+yr[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-17 02:37:16
>>peanut+Ep
You could very reasonably use a different denominator, but in that case the study would be measuring different things.

"Black people are X percent more/less likely to be killed than white people by police", is a different statement than, "Black people are X percent more/less likely to be killed than white people by police during a police interaction."

The first statement just draws attention to a very straightforwardly observable data trend, the second tries to figure out why the trend exists. It posits that the reason black people are killed at a higher rate might be because they have disproportionately higher numbers of police encounters.

And from there, people can ask why that trend exists, and so on, and so on.

◧◩◪◨
8. chrisj+w71[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-17 10:07:30
>>danShu+N7
You can't look at percentage of population but percentage of who commit crimes.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

> Blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and off enders. Th e victimization rate for blacks (27.8 per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000). Th e off ending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000) (table 1)

From the article

> A 2015 study by Harvard professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr. found that there was no racial bias in the use of lethal police force between black and white suspects in similar situations. The study did, however, find that blacks and Hispanics are significantly more likely to experience non-lethal use of force.

> A 2016 study published in the journal Injury Prevention concluded that African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos were more likely to be stopped by police compared to Asians and whites, but found that there was no racial bias in the likelihood of being killed or injured after being stopped

replies(1): >>danShu+co1
◧◩◪◨⬒
9. danShu+co1[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-17 12:50:17
>>chrisj+w71
See my other comment[0], you're making two separate claims here. Why blacks are disproportionately killed by police is a conversation that might be worth having, but it doesn't change the fact that they are disproportionately killed.

As an analogy, a truck driver might be less likely to crash or be killed on any specific drive than I am. However, a truck driver also drives a lot more than I do, so a truck driver is still more likely overall to die in a vehicle crash than I am.

In the same way, even if we lived in a world where blacks were less likely to be killed in an individual police interaction, that doesn't change the fact that a black person is still more likely overall to be killed by a police officer than I am.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23547106

replies(1): >>Jungle+HM1
◧◩◪◨⬒⬓
10. Jungle+HM1[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-17 15:03:43
>>danShu+co1
Then the problem is the truck driver is driving too much. He should drive less.
replies(1): >>danShu+oU1
◧◩◪◨⬒⬓⬔
11. danShu+oU1[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-06-17 15:43:26
>>Jungle+HM1
Which is why we're seeing calls by protestors to reduce overall police presence in cities and to instead migrate various police responsibilities onto social workers with more directly applicable training.

Naming issues aside, reducing the amount of time the 'truck driver' spends on the road is one of the biggest goals of the "defund the police" movement. But again, that's a separate discussion.

[go to top]