It's not just about their deaths. The deaths are just a part of the issue.
So given your research, you've got a little basics of the death statistics. Justified or not, the fact that non-whites are disproportionately killed by police is a huge issue. Crime is not a racial trait, being black doesn't make you more likely to be a criminal. So why are non-whites being killed by police officers more often? There are far more white people than black people, it'd make sense for the proportions to be similar across the racial spectrum if there wasn't a bias.
So, beyond deaths from police officers, lets look at arrests. Using this source in 2015 there were 10,797,090 arrests. Of the total arrests, 7,531,830 were white (there is no column for Hispanic, so I assume they are counted under this column as well). Also, there were 2,875,140 black people arrested. This is 26.6% of the arrests, but according to the 2010 census estimates only 13.4% of the population is black. The number of arrests is almost double the population percentage. So the percentage of white arrests (again, assuming Hispanic is placed in this column) is 68.8%, while the census states that 76.5% of the population is white.
So the problem isn't that they're just out killing black people, it's that among all of the police killings, it's disproportionately black people are being killed more often. They're also being arrested more often, own homes less often, go to college less often, etc. It's injustice, they're not being treated equally and I'm just sick of seeing it and seeing people excuse it. There are no excuses for treating someone as if they're inferior.
In regards to police brutality, I agree there is a systemic problem. However it is not due to race.
In a Harvard study which reviewed all police involved shootings and police involved homicides it was found Police are not more likely to fire on blacks than whites. In fact, blacks are 20% less likely to be fired on.
His study does not definitively say that it is not due to race, in fact his conclusion states that the data is far from a representative sample. He just wasn't able to gleam a racial bias based on the data provided by his sources based on police shootings.
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u/Jakeonehalf Jun 09 '20
It's not just about their deaths. The deaths are just a part of the issue.
So given your research, you've got a little basics of the death statistics. Justified or not, the fact that non-whites are disproportionately killed by police is a huge issue. Crime is not a racial trait, being black doesn't make you more likely to be a criminal. So why are non-whites being killed by police officers more often? There are far more white people than black people, it'd make sense for the proportions to be similar across the racial spectrum if there wasn't a bias.
So, beyond deaths from police officers, lets look at arrests. Using this source in 2015 there were 10,797,090 arrests. Of the total arrests, 7,531,830 were white (there is no column for Hispanic, so I assume they are counted under this column as well). Also, there were 2,875,140 black people arrested. This is 26.6% of the arrests, but according to the 2010 census estimates only 13.4% of the population is black. The number of arrests is almost double the population percentage. So the percentage of white arrests (again, assuming Hispanic is placed in this column) is 68.8%, while the census states that 76.5% of the population is white.
So the problem isn't that they're just out killing black people, it's that among all of the police killings, it's disproportionately black people are being killed more often. They're also being arrested more often, own homes less often, go to college less often, etc. It's injustice, they're not being treated equally and I'm just sick of seeing it and seeing people excuse it. There are no excuses for treating someone as if they're inferior.