Quote:
Originally Posted by Doctor Zeus
What your implying here is that the police killings of black people are justified because they prevent more homicides. The logic I see is "police are ok killing more blacks, as blacks are more likely to commit murder, thereby the killings we can assume as justified as preventing more black homicides"
Is that right?
Its not right. I don't think anyone has ever started a sentence that started "So what you are saying (technically you used implying, but same thing)..." and ever made a good faith argument, and this example is not an exception to that rule. Basically, "So your saying.." is an admission you are about to say something completely dishonest.
Anyways, in the paragraph below you kind of own yourself. You admit there is an alignment between police homicide and overall homicide, then decide based on your feelings (and at least one anecdotal example) that this alignment doesn't pass the muster for you.
Clearly, comparing countries (including non western countries, which have higher violence rates) we see a general pattern where the countries with the most police brutality have the most overall brutality, so it would be very dishonest to just decide there is nothing there.
The truth is any understanding of basic human pyschology would allow you to cross the logical crater you have made and understand that repeated negative interactions with an identifiable group would create proportionally worse outcomes for that group, and some innocents will suffer.
The irony is that I know you can intuitively grasp this when it comes to understanding outcome disparity between men vs. women, but when it comes to identities that don't fit your preferred narrative, it is time to turn intuition off.
I am all for sensible policing reform, and maybe this is something that should have been done a long time ago, to correct police abuse against EVERYONE.
But I suspect even sensible reform that has a positive effect will not move the needle much as far as systemic injustice against black men specifically, because it is such a small rock in the grand scheme of things, and the problem is being highly exaggerated to begin with. As long as a small identity group through behavior has proportionally higher negative interactions with police, the outcomes are going to be proportionally worse too. There really is no way to hand waive this truth away. I mean you can hand waive it away, but the problem will still be there long after your hand is too tired to move.
If you want to claim that systemic racism is the cause for the behavior that will invariably lead towards poor outcomes, and work towards solutions to address this, then I think this can lead you towards meaningful improvements in outcome. But it doesn't seem like you (or anyone else) is too interested at the moment. Maybe when the moral panic is subsided.