Why #BlackLivesMatter should be #PoorLivesMatter

A casual glance shows police killings are racially disproportionate to our population — though black people are 13.3% of the US, 25% of people killed by the police are black. But that hides another fact: Police killings are racially proportionate to America’s poor. Which makes sense: though there are exceptions from all races, most people killed by the police are poor.

As I write, The Counted reports 654 people killed by the police in 2016–166 black, 322 white, 107 Hispanic, and 59 Other/Unknown. Here’s the what that looks like for white and black victims:

The Kaiser Foundation reports 47,021,300 Americans in poverty in 2014–10,145,200 black, 19,796,700 white, 13,214,100 Hispanic, 3,865,300 Other. Here’s what that looks like for white and black people in poverty:

No, I didn’t use the same chart twice. The black and white racial statistics for police victims and Americans in poverty are perfectly proportional. That 2-to-1 ratio doesn’t change: In 2015, the police killed 581 white people and 306 black people. Over a decade, the police killed 2,151 whites and 1,130 blacks.

Including other races reveals a disproportionality, but it’s not about white and black — Hispanics are under-represented, perhaps because police killings tend to be urban while Hispanic poverty is more rural than white or black poverty.

Under “Other” is a neglected fact: American Indians are the group that’s most likely to be killed by the police. The Counted’s breakdown of people per million killed by police:

5.49 Native American

4.16 Black

1.89 Hispanic/Latino

1.63 White

0.56 Asian/Pacific Islander

The racial list of who is most likely to be killed lines up with racial household income: Native Americans are poorest, followed by blacks, then Hispanics, then non-Hispanic whites, then Asian Americans, who have higher incomes than white Americans. The basic rule for police killings: the richer the group, the less likely its members will be killed by police.

The effect of wealth applies within races, of course. Ryan Cooper notes, “…the difference in lifetime risk of incarceration is something like ten times as great for low-class blacks as it is for high-class blacks. If we assume that the police are generally arresting the same people they interact with generally, then something similar likely holds for police shootings.”

Focusing on black victims hides similar examples of white and Hispanic people killed under outrageous circumstances, like Robert Cameron Redus, pulled over for speeding and shot after saying sarcastically, “Oh, you’re gonna shoot me?” and Derek Cruice, killed while wearing nothing but basketball shorts, and Andy Lopez, whose toy gun was mistaken for a real one, and Christopher Roupe, who answered the door holding a WII controller, and Kristiana Coignard, a bipolar 100-pound teen who entered a police station carrying a knife, and Autumn Mae Steele, killed by a cop who was aiming at her dog, and David Kassick, shot lying facedown in the snow after being stopped for an expired inspection sticker, and Brenda Sewell, whose guards withheld her prescription medicine.

We all know there are racist cops, but statistically, they don’t affect the larger picture. Our police are trained to kill when they feel threatened and have little training for dealing with people who don’t follow orders — which explains why half of the people killed by the police have a disability, which ties into most victims being poor: the disabled are twice as likely to be poor.

Martin Luther King almost certainly would agree with the majority of black folks who prefer #AllLivesMatter to #BlackLivesMatter; he once said, “…there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and Negro alike.”

He said that to support Basic Income as the best way to end poverty, but Basic Income also offers the fastest way to reduce police violence. In a pilot program for Basic Income in Namibia, crime fell by 42%. By reducing inequality and eliminating desperation, we can make a world where all Americans can see police officers as their friends, and the police can be free to protect and serve everyone.