It's a dodge, it's a smokescreen, it's a red herring, it's bullshit.
I'm frankly sick of it. Every time we get into this, we get the "What about Chicago?" and "What about Black guys that Kill Black guys?" We always get into the proportional argument, but people who want to bring this up only want to pay attention to proportions when it looks bad for black people.
"The Average Black Guy Walking down the Street is more likely to Rob, Kill, Steal"...
That's the position that those who repeatedly deny that Racism has anything to do with the Killing of someone like Michael Brown. He was Black, so he was "more likely" dangerous - "more likely" a potential killer - so it's automatically justified to kill him first.
Can't you tell he was gonna kill Officer Wilson if he could? He "Charged". He was "On Dope". He Fled, then he didn't Flee. He broke the cop's "Orbital Bone" - somehow, while 35 Feet away, but not fleeing. And this Fake X-Ray Proves it. And this Blank Incident Report. See, it's clear as day. Obvious as the nose on your face.
But it's Not Racial. Nope. Just Facts and Figures.
The first problem that they have is that the actual FBI stats don't prove what they claim it proves. The FBI Uniform Crime Stats for Robbery and Theft and Assault Aren't Broken Down By Race.
They just aren't. I've been looking at them for 20 years, and they aren't.
Here is the Robbery Data, which as a matter of fact is separate from Burglary and Larceny Theft.
None of them are broken down by Race of the Offender.
So where does this "Blacks Commit more Crime" stuff come from?
Well, there is a Racial Breakdown on Murder. And it goes like this.
The first immediate problem is that this data is
Incomplete. This chart only reflects Murders where a) Both Victim and Perpetrator's Race are Identified and b) there were only
One of Each.
One Single Victim and One Single Perpetrator.
So if you have One Perpetrator who kills multiple people, like say for example White Guys like Adam Lanza or James Eagan Holmes, or Jared Loughner, or James David Addkisson or Eric Harris or Dylan Kleibold or John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy or Jeffry Dahmer, or the Boston Strangler, or the Zodiac Killer, or The Unibomber - none of them have ever been included on this chart. It doesn't cover spree killings, mass murders or murder suicides. Every time some distraught guy guns down his ex, and his kids, and his in-laws, and his dog and the neighbors dog, and then himself - it's doesn't show up on this chart. It doesn't include Serial Killers, and shouldn't there be bonus points awarded for being a Serial Killer? Shouldn't Tim McVeigh kinda tip the scales a bit all by himself? [Ed. Aren't most Serial and Spree Killers - generally speaking - White? I mean, they are - aren't they? Ain't that weird? Why y'all gotta shot the dog too? What's the matter with White Spree Killing People anyway? Why is it they're "Misunderstood" and must be "Insane", but Kunta Jr's obviously a "Killa!"] Shouldn't all that start to add up? But this chart wouldn't include any of them or the killings of the Hillside Stranger, because there were TWO of them, not just one. They were a Team. Not single. Not on the chart.
You can verify this by looking at the totals. The Racial Breakdown Chart has the "Total Murders" at 6018.
But the total number of Murders in 2012 wasn't 6018. It was 12,765
So about half the Murders
Are Missing from the Race Breakdown chart because they involve either multiple offenders or multiple victims who may be of multiple races and/or genders. So it's not really possible to draw a direct line from the Murder Victim/Race chart to "Black Guys are More Likely to Rob, Kill, Steal.." because that straight line
doesn't exist.
That line is wavy, it circles and loops and doubles back on itself. And you can tell because the way people tend to draw the line start by establishing a Populational
Quota.
The argument here is that since Black people are outnumbered by White people 5 to 1 then the Murder Rate - and all other Crime Rates - for Blacks should also be 5 to 1 or else something MUST BE WRONG with them.
And I guess they should be 16% of the Rich People, and 16% of the Employed People and 16% of the Students and Professors and 16% of the Basketball Stars and 16% of the Baseball Stars and 16% of the Hockey Players and 16% of the Musicians and Actors because everything always works out to exact population proportions now doesn't it?
When exactly has that ever worked out in precisely that manner? Never, that's when.
Why is it when we point out that none of those percentage ever match up to population exactly that these guys claim it's "no big deal" and not the result of anything - even when Police are Stopping, Searching and Citing Blacks Guys two or three times their existence in the population without any cause, and without Finding any Guns or Drugs it means nothing as has "no impact or relevance", Cops have "No Choice" but to focus on people who aren't armed or doing anything wrong, but when they find a criminal conviction differential [even when their getting it all wrong] it's the biggest thing in the world?
Ok, sure. But if you look at the Murder Offender Chart besides breaking down for Race it also breaks down for Gender.
Male Offenders: 9,425
Female Offenders: 1,098
If I'm not mistaken Women outnumber Men in this country, but Male Murder Offenders outnumber Women Offenders by over 9 TO 1.
I don't hear anyone arguing that Men are inherently more Violent, Dangerous and more likely to "Rob, Kill, Steal" than Women. Do you? No you pretty much don't because that's Hella Stupid. What is the problem with MEN, and their propensity for Men on Men Crime?
Keep thinking that the next time you hear people complain about the next obsessive Jody Arias-styled Trial that takes over the airwaves. Or Female Serial Killer Joanna Dennehy. Or Cristal Richardson whose on trial for stabbing a guy 130 Times. Have you ever seen a single episode of "The Real Housewives of Anywhere?" Or Springer? Yeah, but Men are "more violent".
It's so interesting that these guys are such statistical and probability experts when they can't quote the actual numbers, and don't even know where those numbers come from or what else they would indicate if you were to follow that same - faulty - logic.
And these are the numbers that come out at the end of the Justice System, not at the beginning. Even the total of 12,765 "Murders" isn't complete. It's not the total number of Killings that took place that year.
The CDC's says something different. They say there were 39,518 Suicides in 2011.
That's more than the number of "Murders" by almost 3.5 to 1, and Suicide is only the Tenth most likely cause of Death in America.
Murder isn't even on this chart. The average person is far more likely to die of Heart Disease or Cancer, then either Suicide or Murder.
Let's go back, just for the sake of argument to the Murder/Race Chart - incompletely though it is. Most Murders on this chart aren't interracial.
White Offender/White Victim: 2,614
Black Offender/Black Victim: 2,412
So White guys are more likely to Kill White Guys. Same for Black Guys. How likely is that random black guy to murder some random white guy in a single-offender/single-victim situation? How likely is the reverse?
White Offender/Black Victim - 193.
Black Offender/White Victim - 431.
This is a differential that the people who want to justice fear of Black Men love to jump all over. It's higher for Black Offenders by 238. That's just 1/10th of the non-interracial Murders, which is only a fraction of the total Murder but Ok, it's Bigger. But here's the problem with that - this count doesn't include all the times that the shooting was deemed "Justified".
FBI includes a "Justified" Killing by Law Enforcement chart.
As shown it averages about 400 per year, which is more than 238, the difference between Black/White Interracial Killings.
Yet the Racial Breakdown on this isn't included. If, most of the shootings are by White Police, and most of the Victim are Black Men - that damaging 431 to 193 ratio could actually be more like 531 to 493 - or 600 to 200 - or something - but we can't confirm that because that exact number isn't being published anywhere. I've been looking for it 20 years, haven't found it yet.
But Isn't it interesting that exactly who Police are Killing regularly - despite their populational ratio - isn't published with all the other Murder data? How convenient.
And then when you look at "Justifiable Homicide" by Citizens who aren't part of Law Enforcement - the numbers are nearly double.
Justifiable Homicides:
Year Police Citizen
2007 398 252
2008 378 265
2009 414 266
2010 397 285
2011 393 260
2012 409 330
So we're really not talking about 400 Killings that are deemed "justified" - we're talking about 700 of them per year.. And according to a report on Democracy Now from last year about half of those "Justiifed" killings were of Unarmed Black People.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Kali Akuno, a longtime organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, author of Let Your Motto Be Resistance: A Handbook on Organizing New Afrikan and Oppressed Communities. His organization’s report is called "Operation Ghetto Storm," documenting the extrajudicial killing of 313 black people in 2012. Michelle Alexander is still with us, author of The New Jim Crow.
It’s great to have you both with us. Kali Akuno, very quickly, just go through what you found.
KALI AKUNO: What we found is that this practice of extrajudicial killings is very systematic throughout the country. We found that police officers rarely—or the security guards or those who are deputized, such as George Zimmerman—are rarely, if ever, persecuted for the crimes that they commit, for the killings that they commit. And we found that overwhelmingly—as you mentioned some of the figures, overwhelmingly, most of the folks who were killed do not have any weapons. And the main reason—even 47 percent of those who were killed, the reasoning that was offered by the police is that they felt threatened—and so, a very similar argument that you hear in the Zimmerman case. And this was very systematic.
Yet again, 313 is
more than 238.
This data is in conjunction to the report that White Guys who Kill Black Guys are about 225% more likely to have their situation "Justified" than the other way around.
Yes, the rate of Black Murders is High, but so is the Rate of White Murders. In fact if you
include all the data such as mass killings - which people usually don't - that rate is far higher than it appears. The Rate of MEN Murderers is Higher than the rate of Women Murderers but we don't call that a "crisis" of Man on Man killings that people must be forced to address.
And it's not like people aren't trying to stop Black Murders, particularly Black people who are far more likely to be on the receiving end of that Violence than White people are. I can understand that the 80% majority White population is probably tired of being blamed for the outcomes with the 16% minority Black population, but the best answer to that situation is NOT to justify and excuse treating the 70% majority of law abiding Black Men as if they are the same, or responsible for the 28% minority who ultimately wind up in Prison, or Dead.
Be that as it may here's the thing, the reason so many people get up in arms and go out in the streets when an Unarmed Black Man gets Killed by a Cop or a Cop Wannabe is because of that last chart.
The Murder of the Black Man is Far Less Likely to even be considered a Murder. The presumption that "the average black guy is more likely to Rob, Kill, Steal.." even when that isn't really supported by the complete numbers, is never-the-less fully believed by many people.
This is why Officers Stop, Search and Question Black Men far beyond their populational proportion and even more than the tendency to commit any crimes that would justify the stop in the first place. This is why they get sentenced more severely for the exact same offense. This is why they wind up in jails more often. That's why they end up Killed By Cops, even when they're unarmed and surrendering. The Officers, the Judges and the Juries are doing the same thing the guy I was arguing on twitter is doing. He's trying to calculate the "odds this Black Guy is Dangerous" in his head, on the fly, without even doing calculations of probability on the back of a napkin, when he's GOT THE WRONG NUMBERS and refuses to even realize it.
Even the worst number, that about 28% of black men are likely - at some point in their life - to be sent to State Prison or Federal Jail also says something else. That about 70% of them Won't Be. This shows that the vast majority of Black Men are in fact - law abiding - and not likely to Murder/Death/Kill you or anyone else. But when I present this argument (as shown above) was it accepted as a valid way to "calculate the odds"?
Nope. Not even. Cuz White guys are at 88% and that makes Black guys look bad [even if that's really because they don't just get caught or prosecuted due to the "presumption of innocence" that Black guys don't get.]
This is a biased process, one that generates biased results. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
And of course, they all swear they're not "Racist" even though presuming the outcome before you analyze the specifics of a unique situation and unique person is exactly how Racism works. It's exactly what make the System Racist.
And it's not going to change until we require what some Conservatives clamor for when we point out Income Inequality, and Job Inequality, and School Inequality. It's going to take the Courage to Ignore what the Stats seem to say, and find out what each individual has to say.
That requires taking a risk. The presumption and stats and generalities might be right, and they also might be wrong.
Do we have the courage to challenge our own perceptions on a day by day, minute by minute basis? Do we have the guts to question what the odds tell us might be and take the time and effort to find out what truly is?
Not yet, it seems - not yet.
Vyan