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Saturday, September 24, 2016
Race and Murder in the USA
Sometimes a chart speaks a thousand words. For those who care to shed a little light on the reality of racial murder in the United States, I submit the following (via Maggie's Farm):
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9 comments:
I'm not sure this chart is saying what it claims.
If this chart is measuring "murder", that's about criminal conviction, so if a police officer fears for his life and shoots a big scary black man, and he is not indicted or convicted, this won't be meaasured in a "murder" count.
And even if a police officer is indicted and convicted, it would likely be under man-slaughter rather than murder, since you may usually presume the officer's intention wasn't to kill a person, but that was just an accidental consequence his method of self-protection.
And while we're here, what do we know about police convictions for murder? Here's one from this year. Yes, this confirms my suggestion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-shooting-convictions_us_5695968ce4b086bc1cd5d0da
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Many people viewed 2015 as a year of reckoning for police, with continued scrutiny of the use of deadly force spurring momentum for reform. In reality, however, the road to accountability remains a long one.
That point is clearly reflected in the number of police officers who were convicted on murder or manslaughter charges last year for fatally shooting a civilian in the line of duty.
In 2015, that number was zero. And that’s not unusual. No officers were convicted on such charges in 2014 either. In fact, since 2005, there have only been 13 officers convicted of murder or manslaughter in fatal on-duty shootings.
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If we want to critique BLM's attention towards police killings, we need to look into the complete list of unarmed blacks killed by police officers while not indicted or convicted of manslaughter.
Of course there's still a problem there - even when a case goes to trial, how does a jury decide whether a killing is justified or not? And before cameras, officers word could be enough to suggest they had valid fears for their safety.
I know the Michael Brown meme "Hands up, don't shoot" is based on a falsehood, but it suggests a reality to young black men in the face of police, or parents of young black men. What do you have to do to be safe from being killed by a police officer?
And Trump supports "profiling", and we can presume he means racial profiling, and that means treating innocent young black men like suspects, and demanding their compete submission to questioning and searches and anything they do or say that feels like a threat to an officer can be considered potential grounds for lethal force.
And we can consider many young men of any race will not like being treated as suspects on a regular basis and will sometimes talk back to officers, and sometimes do foolish things like throwing an elbow to an over-achieving molester searching for imaginary contraband.
And we can imagine some young men also are not the brightest students in the class, and might even have some mental illness or something and may react negatively to an unjust authority they don't understand.
So there are many reasons to see police guns and racial profiling don't mix well, and will likely get innocent people killed, merely for not being completely submissive to authority.
And in the wider white community some fear we're moving to a police state, and in fact police officers who demand complete submission for their own safety are likely demanding submission that they themselves would never accept as citizens, if the tables were turned.
Maybe Trump is right, and the streets of Chicago should be declared a police state at times, and then at least we'd know our submission was only temporary, and we could train our citizens to show complete submission to authority in such times, and when the "police state" call is lifted, we could all go back to being jerks, without finding ourselves members of the "suicide by cop" club.
Maybe "suicide by cop" should be a legal category given to anyone "too stupid" to be successfully submissive to authority?
Ares,
Normally I ignore you, but are you truly that dense? There can be no other explanation for the drivel you regurgitate. You might want to check that "White Knight " syndrome.
Ares Olympus @September 24, 2016 at 5:25 AM
"I know the Michael Brown meme 'Hands up, don't shoot' is based on a falsehood, but..."
Just stop. Just. Stop. Please.
BLM is a Soros-funded agitprop based on a falsehood to mobilize blacks to vote. It is a total lie. It's a chant. It's bullshit.
Wake up.
I wonder why guns are flying off the racks...
Aeres:
With comments like you have brayed forth I am sure you must be a graduate of Havard Law, probably were a member of Law Review. Having said that you have demonstrated a breath of knowledge, experience, and commonsense that insures Obama will select you for the Supreme Court,
By the way, who ties your shoelaces?
I'm betting on Velcro, loafers, or Crocs.
Ares isn't a lawyer. He's a software programmer. Perhaps docksiders?
He has the "knowledge, experience, and commonsense" to help Obama with his failed ObamaCare website. Too bad Mr. Obama didn't call Ares Olympus.
Hands up, don't type!
Again, I refer you to "The Platform": https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/
No justice, no peace.
That's not the BLM platform.
This is...
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision
IAC, on the platform, does this list below talk about "white people murdering black people"?
But regardless, I do doubt with effectiveness of "war on black people" phrasing, since it can encourage blacks individually or collectively to see enemies that are just other people trying to live and justify their own violence against them.
Keith's link above does look more a bit more focused on reducing police violence specifically.
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https://policy.m4bl.org/end-war-on-black-people/
End the War on Black People
We demand an end to the war against Black people. Since this country’s inception there have been named and unnamed wars on our communities. We demand an end to the criminalization, incarceration, and killing of our people. This includes:
1.An immediate end to the criminalization and dehumanization of Black youth across all areas of society including, but not limited to; our nation’s justice and education systems, social service agencies, and media and pop culture. This includes an end to zero-tolerance school policies and arrests of students, the removal of police from schools, and the reallocation of funds from police and punitive school discipline practices to restorative services.
2.An end to capital punishment.
3.An end to money bail, mandatory fines, fees, court surcharges and “defendant funded” court proceedings.
4.An end to the use of past criminal history to determine eligibility for housing, education, licenses, voting, loans, employment, and other services and needs.
5.An end to the war on Black immigrants including the repeal of the 1996 crime and immigration bills, an end to all deportations, immigrant detention, and Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) raids, and mandated legal representation in immigration court.
6.An end to the war on Black trans, queer and gender nonconforming people including their addition to anti-discrimination civil rights protections to ensure they have full access to employment, health, housing and education.
7.An end to the mass surveillance of Black communities, and the end to the use of technologies that criminalize and target our communities (including IMSI catchers, drones, body cameras, and predictive policing software).
8.The demilitarization of law enforcement, including law enforcement in schools and on college campuses.
9.An immediate end to the privatization of police, prisons, jails, probation, parole, food, phone and all other criminal justice related services.
10.Until we achieve a world where cages are no longer used against our people we demand an immediate change in conditions and an end to public jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them. This includes the end of solitary confinement, the end of shackling of pregnant people, access to quality healthcare, and effective measures to address the needs of our youth, queer, gender nonconforming and trans families.
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