25 unarmed Whites and only 14 unarmed Blacks were fatally shot by police in 2019. Do the data suggest that police deserve an apology from those who vi

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1cthlctrth said:
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LeafByNiggle:
“blacks have never been treated the same as whites”.
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But they’re treated better in the United States than almost everywhere else.
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But they are not treated the same as whites. That is the more relevant comparison.
 

“Do the data suggest that police deserve an apology from those who vilify them?”​

I see people ignoring the most relevant data, and thus all the suggested fixes won’t eliminate the problem.

You always start with looking at the whole picture

2,800,000 arrests are made annually on black people​

Then look at the problem as a piece of the bigger pie - about 15 unarmed blacks are killed by police in the same year. You can tweak/dispute this count, but it doesn’t really change anything.

%0.0005 of above arrests resulted in preventable death​

We can work to reduce these 15 deaths, but the system as a whole doesn’t seem to be causing preventable deaths.
 
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What step do you think need to be taken to solve it? If your suggestion is something like, White people need to…, then you need to also add black people need to …
 
1cthlctrth said:
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LeafByNiggle:
But they are not treated the same as whites.
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70% of the NFL is Black. 80% of the NBA is Black. If you’re recommending quotas so that there are more white players, I would have to disagree.
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Very cherry-picked statistics do not refute the fact that blacks are not treated the same as whites. You will find this among the USCCB resources:
USCCB:
Racism has rightly been called America’s original sin. It remains a blot on our national life and continues to cause acts and attitudes of hatred, as recent events have made evident. The need to condemn, and combat, the demonic ideologies of white supremacy, neo-Nazism and racism has become especially urgent at this time.
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phil3 said:
What step do you think need to be taken to solve it? If your suggestion is something like, White people need to…, then you need to also add black people need to …
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I refer you to the USCCB website:

https://www.usccb.org/committees/ad-hoc-committee-against-racism

https://www.usccb.org/committees/ad...cism/combatting-racism-statements-and-letters

So my question to you is, what are you doing to combat racism?
 
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Theo520 said:
We can work to reduce these 15 deaths, but the system as a whole doesn’t seem to be causing preventable deaths.
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Defunding parts of the police departments and using the money to implement more public safety-oriented services is one way we can work to reduce preventable deaths. Calling the individual cops “bad apples” does not work as we saw in Louisville where the police who killed Breonna Taylor were found to be acting within the system directives. So it is the system after all.
 
This is just a general rant so I am not targeting you specifically, but for once, just once, can a conversation take place without referring to the monolithic left or right, but instead listen to each other as individuals?

This is my take as an individual. I think there is no racism encoded into law but at the end of the day, laws need to be interpreted, applied and enforced by individuals and it is on the application that racism can occur. It is in the application of the law that our biases come out.

For example, it is well known that black people tend to get convicted more for possession of marijuana than white people. If you look at how the law against marijuana possession is written, there is no targeting of black people, but in the enforcement of the law, black people are convicted more and get harsher sentences. Whereas white people get off even if caught with the same amount of marijuana.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Defunding parts of the police departments and using the money to implement more public safety-oriented services is one way we can work to reduce preventable deaths. Calling the individual cops “bad apples” does not work as we saw in Louisville where the police who killed Breonna Taylor were found to be acting within the system directives. So it is the system after all.
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It may also increase preventable deaths, since they are usually called when there is law breaking or threat of violence. 911 already sends EMTs for medical health issues. A social worker can’t replace a cop IMHO, though we could have more services follow up after the police engage.

The Breonna case highlights an opportunity for precision reform of warrant/arrest procedures, not broad defunding. Considering the couple were still in their bedroom, I suspect there wasn’t much of a time lag between yelling “Police” and the door being breached.
 
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Theo520 said:
It may also increase preventable deaths, since they are usually called when there is law breaking or threat of violence.
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But if we had proper services to deal with mental health we would get to the point of a public breakdown resulting in a 911 call less.
 
Nothing, I don’t agree there is systemic racism in this country. I read the documents and as usual none of it mean anything. it is all written in feelings with no substance. it is the same usless stuff that has been written for the past 100 years that hasnt solved the problem.
 
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Sarcelle said:
This is just a general rant so I am not targeting you specifically, but for once, just once, can a conversation take place without referring to the monolithic left or right, but instead listen to each other as individuals?
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I think that is fair criticism. I think we tend to do that because you tend to hear the same talking points parroted all the time (logical flaws and all) without any apparent critical thought going into them.
Sarcelle said:
For example, it is well known that black people tend to get convicted more for possession of marijuana than white people. If you look at how the law against marijuana possession is written, there is no targeting of black people, but in the enforcement of the law, black people are convicted more and get harsher sentences. Whereas white people get off even if caught with the same amount of marijuana.
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I have read of this criticism but it cuts both ways. The opposite is frequently true for other drugs such as methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin, which tend to be more commonly abused in white communities. I think that judges in specific communities tend to target the problems they see most common in those communities most harshly. This seems to indicate it is less motivated by racial differences than by other factors. It would certainly make for an interesting study to see this phenomenon studied more thoroughly.
 
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phil3 said:
Nothing, I don’t agree there is systemic racism in this country. I read the documents and as usual none of it mean anything. it is all written in feelings with no substance. it is the same usless stuff that has been written for the past 100 years that hasnt solved the problem.
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I am sorry you have such a low opinion of the usefulness of our bishops’ writings. But my faith tells me differently.
 
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Hmm, you have a point.

However even if the law was carefully worded to be non-biased, how it gets implemented, will be in some way biased.

Why?

Because the humans that apply and enforce these laws have their own biases.

So when people say there is no systemic racism, they may be correct when it comes to the letter of the law and the way it is written. So yes, racism may not be encoded into law. But that is just part of the picture.

A system, such as the justice system, is not only made up of the written law but also made up of people. It is people who inject racism into the system.

Racism is very much alive and well and very common.

Anyone, regardless of race, sex, age, class, education level, can be racist.
 
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Sarcelle said:
However even if the law was carefully worded to be non-biased, how it gets implemented, will be in some way biased.
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No doubt. The question is whether that bias is due to racism. I think when we look at data from a granular level though, the answer is usually no because there are other factors that directly contribute to the disparate outcomes that don’t involve racism. I think the recent study done by the economics professor at Harvard on police shootings and violence illustrates this. His conclusion with regard to police shootings is that suspect behavior was a far better indicator of whether someone gets shot by the police. Coincidentally, the same report indicated a disparity when violence is used when there isn’t a shooting that could not be completely explained by suspect behavior. However, he declined to say whether this disparity was due to racism. This is probably because there may be other factors that condition police reactions, such as prevalence of crime in a neighborhood, etc. Keep in mind, this was a black professor. My general rule of thumb is that you don’t assume racism unless you can demonstrate actual racism. This means looking at things from a case-by-case basis.

If you look at it from another perspective, men have much higher probability to be involved in police shootings and instances of police brutality. Is this a function of the police being biased against men? Or is this a function of the fact that men commit violent crime at much higher rates than women and are generally more aggressive in how they respond to the police.

Just because there is disparity in outcome does not mean that racism or sexism is the cause.
 
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Yes, it will have to be done on a case by case basis.

Personally, I think that the problem of police violence may be due to something else other than racism.
 
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LeafByNiggle said:
The need to condemn, and combat, the demonic ideologies of white supremacy , neo-Nazism and racism has become especially urgent at this time
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If you mean to infer that political leaders in the Democratic Party are racist because they oppose School Choice and funding for Charter Schools, or because Democrats support the religious oppressive and poverty-creating idea of socialism, I think that might be stretching it a bit.

Democrats may have other reasons than preventing minorities in poorly performing school districts from having the same education opportunity as others. And Democrats might support socialism for reasons other than creating religious intolerance and poverty.
 
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I am sorry that you have a very bad habit of putting words into other people’s mouths. I didnt say the bishops are useless, I said what they that they wrote in these papers is useless.

If more people would stop thinking with their feelings and start using their brains, this world would be a much better place
 
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phil3 said:
I didnt say the bishops are useless, I said what they that they wrote in these papers is useless.
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If you refer to the document above, I found it useful. It might be useless to you, maybe others, but that does not make the document useless. The soil matters as much a the seed.
 
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