Police, murders, race, and numbers

[classical_hero]

Not that I know of.


...of course then we would also have to deal with why are they stopping more black people?

Is there a statistic for what percentage of calls to the police are for the perpetrator being black?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Maybe it would be a good idea to stop collecting such statistics. Continuing to collect such statistics will only reinforce useless racial debates and demarcations.

France did exactly this. I don't remember all the specifics of the law,(there was a thread here many years ago where it was discussed, I'd have to see if I could find it), but IIRC collecting such statistics was banned.

The reason was stated as something like "We don't look at people by their race" or "There are no races" or something along those lines. Being cynical, one would think it was because they don't want it revealed that France has race problems too (can't say minorities in France are jailed at a higher rate if there are no studies that can be done to prove/disprove it).

 

[Domen]

Link

After reading the FiveThirtyEight article I realized several things, I'm not entirely sure what I think about them, how I feel, or what they mean. But I think they deserve a mention and some consideration.

Out of the sample of 1,913 police killings over 20 months (08/13-03/15) 511 were black, or about 27%. Given 14% of the population is black we get that a generic black person is 2 times as likely to be killed by police as a random non-black person.
That's pretty significant, but also a reminder that not being black will only save you about half of the time.

Then we have the number 1913, FBI homicide data for 2013 says that their were 14,196 homicides in 2013. If we normalize use that as a rate we get 23,660 homicides in 20 months. A little more math gives us 8.1% of all homicides are committed by police officers.

Again according to the FBI website 53% of homicide victims were black, so that gives us...
4.1% of murdered black people were murdered by police
10.6% of murdered non-black people were murdered by police
This I found surprising...

Also I have no data to support this, but my intuition tells me that police acts of violence are almost certainly exponentially distributed according to severity. So for everyone who gets killed there are likely an order of magnitude more people who were beaten/tortured/whatever.

*All my calculations were done assuming that the police killings were counted in the FBI numbers since they claimed to include "justifiable homicides" which include self defense etc.

OK so you say Blacks are more likely to get shot by the Police and more likely to get murdered by someone. But you forgot to add that Blacks also more frequently come in contact with the Police as they are statistically more likely to commit crimes, and that most of Blacks who are murdered are victims of Black murderers (Blacks are more likely to commit homicides but most of these homicides are Blacks killing Blacks, rather than Blacks killing others).

Is there any data on how often black people are stopped by the police compared to white people?

I am wondering whether the police is more likely to shoot if the victim is black, or if they kill equally but happen to encounter black people more often.

African-Americans for whatever reason commit crimes - and especially robbery - statistically more often.

So yes, the Police encounter Black people more often.

If they come in contact with the Police more frequently, they statistically get killed by the Police more frequently.

A little more math gives us 8.1% of all homicides are committed by police officers.
Again according to the FBI website 53% of homicide victims were black, so that gives us...
4.1% of murdered black people were murdered by police
10.6% of murdered non-black people were murdered by police
This I found surprising...

Not surprising if you know that Black "civilians" kill other Black "civilians" very often (statistically speaking).

 

[Domen]

Bottom line, the cure for racism in America is time. A few more generations and people will be looking back at Tiger Woods and instead of seeing a "black" golfer they will be seeing an "ambiguous" person just like most of them. Obama will be an "ambiguous" person, again just like most of them.

Us white, black, Asian, and Hispanic people will be either dinosaurs or fresh off the boaters, and the sensible people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Yes, when you mix enough to melt into a single race, racism will disappear.

However, then you will start complaining about lack of "multiculturalism" and lack of "ethnic heterogeneity".

So you will surely invent new problems, only for the sake of having some.

Look at the present paradoxical situation - American leftists criticize "ethnically homogeneous states" (e.g. B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in New York Times: "the Poland you see today is a complete anomaly" or B. Lerner-Spectre in IBA News: "transformation which must take place, Europe is not gonna be the monolithic societies they once were in the last century") - but, ironically, that's what they want to create in their own countries (hence they encourage people of various ethnic groups and races to mix in order to achieve the much desired ethno-racial homogeneity, which will eliminate ethno-racial tensions).

If some population is homogeneous then it means that it already melted into a monolith during previous centuries, not that it was always homogeneous. Germans for example aren't a big family of inbreds, but - quite the contrary - one of the most genetically diverse of all Europeans.

Yet, Germans are quite homogeneous ethnically (culturally) - excluding recent immigrants, of course.

 

[Agent327]

Ah, the inevitable Domen on race matters:

Yes, when you mix enough to melt into a single race, racism will disappear.

Humans already are a single 'race'(or species rather). That's not the issue.

Yet, Germans are quite homogeneous ethnically (culturally) - excluding recent immigrants, of course.

Of course. Funny thing though: there will always be recent immigrants - just as there have always been recent immigrants.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It doesn't take "melting into a monolith". It just requires enough ambiguity for people to stop being stupid about it. In a family where at least one sibling is in what is commonly considered a 'mixed race marriage' it gets really hard to be stupid, and even harder to pass this particular stupidity on to the next generation. That will eliminate the need for people to individually overcome having been raised by bigots to be bigots.

 

[Senethro]

Huh.

Hmmmm.

It seems the only thing worse than American understanding of race issues are European understanding of American race issues.

*implodes from irony*

 

[Tahuti]

France did exactly this. I don't remember all the specifics of the law,(there was a thread here many years ago where it was discussed, I'd have to see if I could find it), but IIRC collecting such statistics was banned.

The reason was stated as something like "We don't look at people by their race" or "There are no races" or something along those lines. Being cynical, one would think it was because they don't want it revealed that France has race problems too (can't say minorities in France are jailed at a higher rate if there are no studies that can be done to prove/disprove it).

Well, do you know whether it did alter political debates about crime significantly, as in moving from focus on race to focus on neighbourhood's for instance?

 

[nc-1701]

I'm impressed by the extent to which the OP ended up being a Rorschach test for racists.


All I did was some math with what I would consider rather inconclusive results.


...and in the rush to fight about racism, nobody except Warpus has even come close to comment on the conclusion that police are committing 8% of the murders, and an even higher percentage among non-blacks.

 

[Tahuti]

I'm impressed by the extent to which the OP ended up being a Rorschach test for racists.

So, would you judge me racist?

All I did was some math with what I would consider rather inconclusive results.

That's why it needed more focus to begin with.

...and in the rush to fight about racism, nobody except Warpus has even come close to comment on the conclusion that police are committing 8% of the murders, and an even higher percentage among non-blacks.

So?

 

[Traitorfish]

Just entertain the thought seriously damn it! Do you really believe it has no role at all in reinforcing a negative spiral? The logic of collecting racial statistics and then basing conclusions that some races are more discriminated against than others has fundamentally the same logic as affirmative action with all the negative consequences. Besides, the data can also be used the other way: To 'prove' blacks are more criminal than Europeans and Asians, thus reinforcing stereotypes.

Racists have never needed statistics to "prove" their prejudices, only to give them a thin gloss of respectability. They'll be no less toxic if we abandon hard data, they'll just be held less tightly accountable to their outbursts.

 

[Farm Boy]

France did exactly this. I don't remember all the specifics of the law,(there was a thread here many years ago where it was discussed, I'd have to see if I could find it), but IIRC collecting such statistics was banned.

The reason was stated as something like "We don't look at people by their race" or "There are no races" or something along those lines. Being cynical, one would think it was because they don't want it revealed that France has race problems too (can't say minorities in France are jailed at a higher rate if there are no studies that can be done to prove/disprove it).

You can't be serious. Late April Fools?

 

[dutchfire]

I'm impressed by the extent to which the OP ended up being a Rorschach test for racists.


All I did was some math with what I would consider rather inconclusive results.


...and in the rush to fight about racism, nobody except Warpus has even come close to comment on the conclusion that police are committing 8% of the murders, and an even higher percentage among non-blacks.

hey! I did some math too!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

hey! I did some math too!

I would have done some math, but I was busy pointing out that there isn't any quality source data to work from.

 

[nc-1701]

hey! I did some math too!

When I wrote Warpus I was definitely thinking of your post... In fact I'm not sure Warpus even posted in this thread

Stupid avatar switch still has me confuzzled.