America Is Not Racist and Neither Are the Cops
Here’s the Data to Prove It
Many cities around America are undergoing protests and riots in response to the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by police officer Derek Chauvin, a white man, on May 25, 2020. The protests are unwarranted; the riots are disgusting.
What Chauvin did is inexcusable, criminal, and also disgusting, and he is going to be prosecuted and sent to jail. On May 29th he was arrested and had charges brought against him: 3rd-degree murder and 2nd-degree manslaughter. This is as it should be, and everyone agrees with that.
The reason the protests are unwarranted is that justice is being served and everyone agrees it should be. Who and what are people protesting against? Racist police killings? Systemic racism in America? But those claims have no basis in reality; here’s why:
First off, as far as I know, there has yet to be evidence that this was a racially motivated killing. Without evidence, why makes assumptions? Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and while the video of the event proves Chauvin is definitely guilty of at least what he was charged with, it tells us nothing of his motives.
However, even if evidence does come up proving Chauvin had racist motives, he’s still going to jail, and everyone agrees he should. How does that prove police or America as a whole are racist? MLK’s quote goes “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” not “injustice anywhere means injustice is everywhere.” And anyway, justice is being served.
Secondly, white people are shot to death by police more often than black people. Looking at 2019, the ratio was 370 to 235. Now, when accounting for population difference, that ratio does change. Approximately 251,103,235 Americans are white and 43,984,096 Americans are black. The ratio of deaths by percentage of population then is 0.0000015 to 0.0000053.
But, apart from the fact that both those numbers are way too low to call systemic anything, we also have to account for crime rates to determine how often each race encounters the police in charged situations. While black people make up only 13% of the population, in 2018, 43% of all violent crime offenders were black.
There are likely many reasons for this disparity, and that could be the topic of another essay, but what these calculations show is that there is no evidence of racial discrimination when it comes to being killed by the police. This article also does similar calculations and arrives at the same conclusion. But now let’s look at some more official studies as well.
Roland Fryer, a Harvard professor of economics, wrote a paper in 2017 that concluded “On the most extreme use of force — officer-involved shootings — we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.”
And this study from 2019 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that “We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.” For those who are interested, there are a number of critiques of this study, but also a response by the authors addressing the critiques.
So that covers why the protests are unwarranted. Of course, everyone has the right to protest whatever they want, regardless of their grievance. But no one has the right to riot, and the people who are doing just that are criminals who should be locked up.
And so far, at least 4100 people have been arrested, which is good. And the National Guard has been activated in at least 20 states, which is also good; hopefully, they will be able to restore law and order soon. We need justice for the vandalism, destruction of property, theft, arson, assault, and 5 killings, so far, coming out of these riots just as much as we need justice for George Floyd.
In summary, the police system isn’t racist or dangerous for black people, and America isn’t systematically racist either; there is no way to draw either conclusion from the evidence without just making stuff up. We can only speculate about the mindset and motives of the people who first came up with this narrative, but the destructive consequences of their actions are clear.
Of course, there are some racist people in America; but equating a few racist cops with the entire law enforcement institution, or a few racist civilians with all of American society, is no different than equating a few black criminals with the entire black population.
Most people are decent. The few who aren’t need to be constrained. The way we constrain indecent people is with the law. Those who break the law go to jail. That’s why Chauvin is going to jail, and, hopefully, that’s why violent rioters will be going to jail. Without the law, indecent people will be unconstrained. Not only are the rioters unjustified in any regard, but they’re actively breaking down the institution that keeps the thing they’re pretending to care about, racism, constrained.
In this, a dark moment in American history, I beg everyone who’s rational to calm down; consider the fact that our neighbors are just like us, regardless of skin color or uniform or political beliefs, we’re all Americans. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
We just sent American astronauts to space on an American rocket, from American soil! “The trampoline is working!” We can do anything when we’re unified! And everyone is unified in our belief that racism is evil, that Chauvin needs to go to jail, and that there is more we can all do to make this country better. So can we please stop burning the country down and start working on improving it!?
