You get up too late, Magma.
magma wrote:nowaysj wrote:ProPublica calculated a statistical figure called a risk ratio by dividing the rate of black homicide victims by the rate of white victims. This ratio, commonly used in epidemiology, gives an estimate for how much more at risk black teenagers were to be killed by police officers.
That is how your source calculated how many black people were shot by police. Farcical. This number is bogus because there are far more black homicide victims because black people kill far more frequently. This has nothing to do with officer involved shootings.
Why is calculating a ratio "farcical"? I've obviously missed your point here.
You might get it if you explain to me how that study determined the rate at which police officers kill black people.
magma wrote:The real number of people killed by the police every year is harder to determine than it should be. But the best real numbers from real reported cases where officer involved shooting is the cause of death listed on death certificates is 326 whites killed in 2013, as opposed to 123 for blacks. So in 2013, if someone was shot and killed by the police they were 2.6 times more likely to be white than black.
Yet an American is 7 times more likely to be white that black; so white people are seeing about half the deaths they should if the playing field was even.
No they're seeing .45 times the deaths if the playing field was even, as I stated right here:
nowaysj wrote:blacks are 2.2 times more likely to be shot and killed by police
magma wrote:Yes, but why is that?
Yes, obviously, why.
magma wrote:You need to understand the whys in order to actually change anything.
I do?
magma wrote:Are you saying that Black people are genetically skewed towards violence
I'm not saying that, but I will entertain the idea. Even the concept of "genetically" needs expansion to include epigenetics.
I will entertain any idea that has the potential to lead us out of this. But whether they are or not is not at issue. What
is at issue is if a police officer legitimately perceives a heightened threat when confronting a black suspect. When a black man has committed some felonies and police officers go in for the arrest, that is the end of the line. That is get real time. We have people screaming in the streets, acting like fools because of the end of the line. The real issue starts much, much sooner, if you've left it to where Mike Brown is choking old people to get blunted, you've left it too long, that is a terminal situation, whether he is shot or locked up, it's over for Mike Brown.
magma wrote:or could it be that the experience of being Black in America is enough to push a greater number into violent crime?
It seems like the experience of being black everywhere may be enough to push a greater number into violent crime.
magma wrote:America's great obsession for the last few centuries has been picking out differences between races
America's great obsession, during the time that I've been here, that is 70's-whatever the fuck you call this decade, has been getting along. Families trying to stay afloat through turbulent economic times, through decaying physical and moral infrastructure.
magma wrote:A country that still has, however unofficially, the "white" neighbourhoods and "black" neighbourhoods that were put in place during segregation and never properly integrated still clearly has an enormous hangover of institutionalised racism to deal with.
No. There has been a dance. On a large scale, there have been race swaps between the urban interior, the urban exterior and now back into the interior. Many communities were built after segregation, which also, as a legal concept was a southern issue, though the north did have discriminatory covenants attached to land. Also don't think that it is just white people excluding blacks. Blacks make it very clear that whites are not welcome in their communities. In reflection, most of the racism I've actually, personally seen has been blacks discriminating against whites.
magma wrote:That hangover will produce violent crime, it will produce disillusioned generations, it will produce kids who've seen clearly demonstrated time and time again that they have no stake in society...
Of course you see this as a social/state issue, but I see this as a family issue. The true soil that a child grows in is his family, and when that family puts no worth in the child, the child lives as if his life is without worth. Again, Michael Brown is the example. I wholeheartedly believe that Michael Brown's mother and father killed him. They failed him utterly, it just took their failure 18 years to reach fruition at the end of Daren Wilson's pistol.
magma wrote:Unfortunately, as tempting as it is to shoot our bang-bang sticks at danger, at some point, society has to be the caring family, the village raising the kids, that it likes to think it is when a white girl goes missing in Montana.
No external input can have a greater impact on a child's life then their family. Teachers, social workers, foster homes, vocational trainers, police officers, all committed, pitching in to show caring and respect doesn't mean shit when nobody in your family cares for you. That kind of pain is powerful and will find expression. Don't think that we're just sitting here whiling away the arvo, we have all kinds of social programs to suture these kids, but it is meaningless against negligent parenting and toxic popular culture. I'm not even going to get started on the role the media and popular culture then plays in shaping self image for these kids, but it is the ol' one, two, ko combo.
Unless you'd like to just roundup these at risk kids and send them to reeducation camps, I don't see the kind society helping much.
magma wrote:If your cops aren't skilled, compassionate, intelligent, nuanced or man enough to grasp the concepts at play here and take the risks their badge implies they're willing to take, then you, like many countries (including mine) need serious reform... and not in the shape of more guns and less questions for Police.
Our police forces have been very forcibly changed over the last twenty years. Many of the good guys have been squeezed out. Police departments have literally fought for and won the constitutional right to discriminate against smart applicants. Israeli defense contractors have been training police forces across the country as we gear up for an apartheid state (and who better to train our future occupiers). Serious and plentiful military equipment has hit the streets all over America. I've seen one of these MRAP tanks rolling or parked in almost every city I've visited recently. Like I'm often want to say, this situation has much greater implications.
