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The internet is full of stories about endemic racism among American police. I suspect they are misinformation. This article in WSJ might tell me the truth, but it is hidden from me by a paywall.
Someone on Twitter says 42% of people responsible for police killings in the USA are black men, a category that makes up 6% of the population. I couldn't confirm this by searching the internet, though I only gave it five minutes. I did find that 43% of people who murdered (as opposed to killed) police officers in the USA between 1976 and 1998 were black.
An average of 85 police officers are 'feloniously killed' in the USA each year and between 1000 and 1500 people are killed by police officers.
All fatalities resulting from use of lethal force by on-duty law enforcement officers from 2009 to 2012 in 17 U.S. states were examined by researchers who found that 52% of the victims were white and 32% black. The states, since you ask, were Alaska; Colorado; Georgia; Kentucky; Maryland; Massachusetts; New Jersey; New Mexico; North Carolina; Oklahoma; Oregon; Rhode Island; South Carolina; Utah; Virginia; Wisconsin (2009–2012); and Ohio (2011–2012 only). So the biggest cities in the USA were ignored.
Overwhelmingly, victims were reported to be armed (83%), though black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims.
Someone on Twitter says 42% of people responsible for police killings in the USA are black men, a category that makes up 6% of the population. I couldn't confirm this by searching the internet, though I only gave it five minutes. I did find that 43% of people who murdered (as opposed to killed) police officers in the USA between 1976 and 1998 were black.
An average of 85 police officers are 'feloniously killed' in the USA each year and between 1000 and 1500 people are killed by police officers.
All fatalities resulting from use of lethal force by on-duty law enforcement officers from 2009 to 2012 in 17 U.S. states were examined by researchers who found that 52% of the victims were white and 32% black. The states, since you ask, were Alaska; Colorado; Georgia; Kentucky; Maryland; Massachusetts; New Jersey; New Mexico; North Carolina; Oklahoma; Oregon; Rhode Island; South Carolina; Utah; Virginia; Wisconsin (2009–2012); and Ohio (2011–2012 only). So the biggest cities in the USA were ignored.
Overwhelmingly, victims were reported to be armed (83%), though black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims.
The big story is the murders by black Americans. They are 12 times more likely to commit homicide than whites, according to researchers at Pennsylvania State University, but only 8 times more likely to do so according to figures issued by the Obama administration. The reason for the discrepancy seems to be that in the government figures Hispanic murderers were usually counted as white. The Trump administration hasn't issued any figures.
In 2013 African Americans, who by then accounted for 14% of the population, accounted for 52% of all murder arrests, Whites 45%, Hispanics 22%, Asians and 'Native Americans' together 2.5%.
Why are black people in the US disproportionately murderous? That's a very complicated question. Slavery is not the explanation. Slaves in the antebellum South were noted for their passivity.
Note: Since writing this I have discovered that per capita many more black people than white people have been found guilty of murder in the USA from the 1830s to the present day.
In 2013 African Americans, who by then accounted for 14% of the population, accounted for 52% of all murder arrests, Whites 45%, Hispanics 22%, Asians and 'Native Americans' together 2.5%.
Why are black people in the US disproportionately murderous? That's a very complicated question. Slavery is not the explanation. Slaves in the antebellum South were noted for their passivity.
Note: Since writing this I have discovered that per capita many more black people than white people have been found guilty of murder in the USA from the 1830s to the present day.
RESEARCH ARTICLE
ReplyDeleteOfficer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings
We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race.
National Academy of Sciences
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877
Tiraspol, June 2 - Sputnik.
ReplyDeleteDespite the coronavirus pandemic, the mortality rate in Transnistria has decreased. The number of deaths in the five months of 2020 is 217 cases (7.5%) less than in the same period in 2019.
https://sputnik.md/society/20200602/30449592/rata-mortalitatii-transnistria-2020.html
One overlooked success story in the coronavirus crisis is Vietnam. The country of 97 million people has not reported a single coronavirus-related death and on Saturday had just 328 confirmed cases, despite its long border with China and the millions of Chinese visitors it receives each year.
The key to Vietnam’s success was ignoring the WHO’s advice that there was “no clear evidence of human to human transmission” and introducing temperature screening for passengers arriving from Wuhan at Hanoi international airport in early January. Travelers found with a fever were isolated and closely monitored. By mid-January, the country had introduced medical quarantining at border gates, airports and seaports and on January 24th it cancelled all flights to and from Wuhan. On February 1st, all flights between Vietnam and China were halted, followed by the suspension of visas to Chinese citizens on February 2nd.
Those countries that started screening airline passengers arriving from Wuhan in early January have some of the lowest Covid death tolls of anywhere in the world – Hong Kong (four deaths), Taiwan (7), Singapore (23), Malaysia (115), Thailand (57) and Vietnam (0).
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2020/05/31/latest-news-47/
Nikolai Petrovksy and colleagues at Flinders University in Australia have found that SARS-CoV-2 has a higher affinity for human receptors than for any other animal species they tested, including pangolins and horseshoe bats. He suggests that this could have happened if the virus was being cultured in human cells, adding that “We can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment.”
http://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/where-did-the-virus-come-from/
between 1000 and 1500 people are killed by police officers.
ReplyDeleteThe real point is not whether American cops are disproportionately killing blacks. American cops are killing an awful lot of people. They appear to be behaving like an army of occupation in an enemy country.
What a mess Americans have made of their country. And they're now wrecking the whole world.
Why are black people in the US disproportionately murderous?
Why are Americans disproportionately murderous?
List of countries by intentional homicide rate
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Crime Index by Country 2020
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp
By rate US is listed at 94:
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
'Why are Americans disproportionately murderous?' America has terrible problems. Why? I'd need to think about it. Calvinism, absence of an ethnic core identity (but the WASPs are that, I suppose), a class system (but they do have one) or social hierarchy might be possible culprits. The ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution no doubt are partly to blame. Mexico and most Spanish speaking countries in the New World have similar violence, despite Catholicism. The Spanish speaking republics were founded by white deists and freemasons as the USA was but have lots of social hierarchy. In short, you ask a very good question but an even better and more topical one is mine - why are black people in the US disproportionately murderous?
DeleteToma, they used to call Soviet Russia the Upper Volta with rockets.
Delete' why are black people in the US disproportionately murderous?'
DeleteBecause they are allowed to: they mostly kill each other.
'Upper Volta with rockets'
DeleteThe pot calling the kettle black...
In short, you ask a very good question but an even better and more topical one is mine - why are black people in the US disproportionately murderous?
DeleteIt's also worth asking whether it's really a racial thing or a class thing. Do lower-class whites in the US follow the same patterns of violence and dysfunction? Do middle-class blacks have the same rates of violence as middle-class whites or the same rates as lower-class blacks?
I don't know, but it seems possible that the real problems in the US might be the total dysfunction of the lower classes. It's possible that the collapse of manufacturing industry simply tore the heart out of working-class communities of all races.
The US also doesn't really seem to have a functional welfare state such as Australia has. I know right-wingers hate the welfare state but Australia has one and we have none of the social problems that the US has.
There's also the staggering corruption of American politics which makes people feel completely alienated. In Australia we grumble constantly about the government but we don't think our government hates us and is out to get us.
The insane gun culture in the US is obviously a problem as well. And the weirdness of American Protestantism.
I suspect that the problems in the US are caused by a combination of factors that have created a perfect storm.
I also suspect that the problems in the US are not fixable. They're basically a Third World country - a very rich very powerful Third World country. These days it's the US that is heading towards being Brazil with nukes. If they're lucky. If they're unlucky they'll be Upper Volta with nukes.