Police Kill More Whites Than Blacks is True and it Isn’t
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Men lie, women lie and they both use numbers when it favors them.
This rebuttal is used to downplay black America’s outrage and it’s sad to say, the stat’s are unfairly true — what’s more concerning is that it’s unfairly used. Whether the stats are true or not, it’s insensitive to use statistics to indirectly tell a parent that the unjustifiable acts by the police against their child is justified…
Let’s quickly revisit the stats:
- White: 457 (2017) | 399 (2018) | 370 (2019) | 172 (2020*)
- Black: 223 (2017) | 209 (2018) | 235 (2019) | 88 (2020*)
As the stats show, white people have been leading for 3 years straight and this makes it seem like the narrative of black lives matter is an exaggeration. However, there are 3 major problems when you use stats like this as a response to police brutality on black Americans…
Problem 1: The US population
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the recorded US population in 2019 was 328.2 million and they’ve also stated that white people make up 60.4% while African Americans represent only 13.4%. Here’s the problem…
You can make the case that African Americans would be leading in police deaths if their population size is half of White Americans. The 2019 stats would look like this:
- White Americans killed by police shooting: 370 (60.4% of US population)
- Black Americans killed by police shooting: 530 (30.2% of US population)
Another statistical response is the percentage of races killed by police shootings based on their population size — the average deaths by police shooting from 2017–2020 divided by the race population size shows a higher percentage for black people. Here’s the results:
White Americans
- Population: 198,232,800
- Avg. killed by police: 349.5
- Percentage: 0.00017631%
Black Americans
- Population: 43,978,800
- Avg. killed by police: 188.75
- Percentage: 0.00042918%
Based on this, African Americans are 2.4x more likely to be killed by police than their white brothers and sisters.
Problem 2: It doesn’t make the police right
White people being killed more by police isn’t going to stop police brutality with blacks or any other race. Black Americans bring awareness about police injustice to white people only because most US police officers are white. There’s expectation for white people to clean house and support the message as it increases the chances of effective change taking place.
Problem 3: There’s a difference between ‘killing by shooting’ and unjust murder
The police have the right to neutralize an ‘armed’ threat with a firearm, regardless of race. The issue is that visual evidence rarely shows this scenario with black Americans.
The statistics of police killing by shooting counts the justified and unjustified acts. This is why the stats are a deceiving rebuttal to the black lives matter outrage — it doesn’t even count the police killings without firearms (such as choking).
More accurate statistical representations of the unjust done by the US police to black people would be found in researching:
- The number of “unarmed” people killed by police shooting
- The number of “unarmed” people killed by police
- The number of people choked to death by police
So far, one study on deaths via lethal force by law enforcement revealed that white people were the majority victims (52%) and blacks made up 32%, yet black people had a 2.8 times fatality rate higher than whites. The study also noted that blacks were more likely to be unarmed compared to other races.
There’s another rebuttal…
‘Black People kill each other more than the police kill them’
It has been backed up by stats, and just like the police killing more whites than blacks argument, there are countering statistics and arguments to cancel those stats. Here are some of them:
The black unemployment rate —The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that black people are leading in unemployment yet black women are the most educated group in America. This adds weight to the idea that black people are discriminated against in the professional world and it definitely ends the “they need an education” argument. Ultimately, it puts black Americans in a survival-based reality and this inflates the crime rate in their communities.
PTSD (post-traumatic slavery disorder) — Soldiers come back from war and the world understands they might need treatment so they become sane again. But the 400 years of slavery black people went through, nobody seems to think they need treatment to undo the trauma they continue to inherit from their ancestors.
No reparations—Black Americans rightfully feel they should be compensated for slavery because it slowed their progress and a fair amount of funding would help create mass solutions. The ADOS movement have been politically vocal about this yet no solution has been rewarded. Meanwhile, the federal reserve are able to lower interest rates and print more dollars to bailout large businesses (some of those businesses benefited from slavery).
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom” — Malcom X
