5 Black police officers charged over death of Tyre Nichols
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I have never and likely will never buy the argument that America's cops are racist and target black people.
A black American is something like three times more likely to die by police than a white American. But a black American is also nearly six times more like to either commit murder or be murdered. And it's over ten times more likely to be a black-on-black murder.
It is not controversial to state that black Americans are far more involved in crime, as the causes of this largely come from a long history of institutional racism and its affect on communities. You cannot argue that racist institutions have resulted in poorer outcomes for black communities and then deny those same outcomes.
The fact is 75% of people killed by US police are white. That there is one population group overly represented in a minority of police killings means there is something happening with that group, not that they are being targeted. That something is a higher rate of crime and interaction with police. It's so incredibly obvious looking at any stats about crime.
If I go on a spree and kill 10 people in the US, 7 of them white, and 3 of them black, you cannot say that I am a racist who is targetting black people just because they are overly represented compared to their population. I am still killing 7 white people. I'm just a murderer who encountered more black people that day than the demographics would suggest I should have.
In a country like America that is so socially segregated in many places, by far the biggest threat comes from one's own race. Black people are dying at extraordinarily rates, not because of the police, but because of each other. People who do their utmost to deflect from this reality are race baiters who want a culture war with white people more than they want to help black communities reduce this problem.
When the stats are drilled into, the race of the police officer is largely irrelevant when it comes to these shootings. If you replaced the US police entirely with black people, the stats wouldn't change. White people would be killed more while black people would be more likely to be killed.
There isn't a single white person in this story and people are still trying to make it about race. "They only got charged so quickly because they're black." is an absurd take. The police chief is also black.
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