Adonis Diaries

A few Statistics: Victims of Police Violence Are Mostly Blacks

A Pew study found that 63% of white and 20% of black people think that Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Darren Wilson (who resigned the force) is not about race.

Those people are wrong.

When Force is Hardest to Justify, Victims of Police Violence Are Most Likely to be Black

African Americans are, in fact, far more likely to be killed by police.

Among young men, blacks are 21 times more likely to die at the hands of police than their white counterparts.

But, are they more likely to precipitate police violence?  No. The opposite is true.

Police are more likely to kill black people regardless of what they are doing. In fact, “the less clear it is that force was necessary, the more likely the victim is to be black” (source).

That’s data from the FBI.

This question was also studied by sociologist Lance Hannon.

With an analysis of over 950 non-justifiable homicides from police files, he tested whether black people were more likely to take actions that triggered their own murder. The answer was no.

He found no evidence that blacks were more likely than whites to engage in verbal or physical antecedents that explained their death.

There is lots more evidence if one bothers to go looking for it.

So, no. Just… no.

This is about race. It is very, very obviously about race.

It’s not a matter of opinion; it’s a scientific question that has been asked and answered.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Note: Centuries of oppressions and uprising have left their mark on the racial issue in the USA. White are scared shit of blacks, even female blacks, and Blacks are afraid shit of the police force when it converges to the neighbourhood, and especially when the blacks are away from their neighbourhood.

Most probably, new recruits from white police officers are not comfortable when confronting a robust black male, and any sign of closing distance between the two bring a violent reaction from the white officer.

On the other hand, many blacks take advantage of the police force keeping a distance from them in order to exaggerate their outlawed activities, mainly the petty thefts and mugging.