Hi Cathy, Bulwark subscriber here! I am a bit confused by your assessment of "systemic racism." Is your main point that instances of police brutality and misconduct should be examined on a case-by-case basis and that having an understanding of the ways in which unconscious bias is imbedded in our institutions is a hinderance to that obje…
Hi Cathy, Bulwark subscriber here! I am a bit confused by your assessment of "systemic racism." Is your main point that instances of police brutality and misconduct should be examined on a case-by-case basis and that having an understanding of the ways in which unconscious bias is imbedded in our institutions is a hinderance to that objective? How is taking a more cursory look at policing at odds with also rooting out specific instances of racially motivated misconduct? Systemic racism, as it applies to policing, is just a framework to understand and address the ways in which people of color are disproportionately affected through every stage of the criminal justice system, despite the evidence that different racial and ethnic groups commit crimes at roughly the same rates. Addressing those material realities is a means to just that. I don't think it's fair to say focusing on the issues ratchets up fear in a disproportionate way when approximately 1 in every 1,000 Black men is killed by police (https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1821204116). When it comes to the murder of George Floyd in particular, I wonder how anyone could watch the video of his death and think anything could justify the manner in which he was killed. I think we sometimes get caught up navigating hypotheticals as part of a semantic exercise when the conclusion of what happened is quite straightforward. We saw the video. We watched him die. We saw him on the ground, in handcuffs, crying out for his mother as he slowly lost consciousness. What perceived threat could he have posed or what possible crime could he have committed that would justify being killed the way he was?
Hi Kate! Sorry about the late reply (working on multiple deadlines). I appreciate your comment and the Bulwark subscription, of course!
To begin with, I completely agree with the last part of your comment. I think the situation with George Floyd's death was fairly clear and as I said in my comment, I thought it was misguided for Coleman Hughes to promote a "debunking." Radley's rebuttal was excellent. Do we have evidence that the murder was racially motivated? I don't know. There was a fairly similar case with a mentally ill white man, Tony Timpa, who suffocated to death while being restrained by cops who not only ignored but mocked his pleas for help thinking that he was simply being hysterical. (No one was punished in that case.) There was also a case in 2005 involving a white man who was having a drug episode and died while a black cop was sitting on his back to hold him down. BUT I agree that given the very real history of racism in American policing, it was totally understandable that the public (especially the black community) reacted with such intensity.
As for my comments on "systemic racism": I certainly don't object to studying racial patterns in law enforcement, my issue is more with blanket claims about racism being "baked into" policing instead of focusing on specific factors that contribute to racial biases. I'm all for looking into those. But with all due respect, your comment shows why the rhetoric around the issue can complicate understanding. You said that "people of color are disproportionately affected through every stage of the criminal justice system, despite the evidence that different racial and ethnic groups commit crimes at roughly the same rates." While there is evidence of disparate treatment, the last part of your statement is mistaken, as this 2021 paper from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics will show: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf Using not just arrests but victim reports to the police and to crime victimization surveys as a measure, black Americans make up 12.5% of the US population but account for 35.5% of nonfatal violent offenses. (Hispanics and especially Asians, on the other hand, are underrepresented among offenders.) Does this justify right-wing hatemongering about "black crime," or even racist claims that black people are innately prone to violence? No, of course not. There are also crime-rate disparities among white ethnic groups in America, and crime rates in various majority-black and majority-white countries show a lot of variation. In the US these patterns have a lot to do with the legacy of racism, above all economic disadvantage. These patterns also don't justify racial profiling, which definitely happens! But we also need to have a clear picture of the facts and data.
Ironically, the study I linked has been cited by Media Matters as showing that "Among the most serious incidents of violent crime (rape or sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault), there were no statistically significant differences by race between offenders." But that sentence is truncated; the full sentence says "between offenders identified in the NCVS and persons arrested per the UCR" (i.e. between crime reports and arrests). What this actually means is that for serious violent crime, the rates of arrest for different groups roughly match their crime rates. However, this study did find that blacks people are disproportionately arrested for minor offenses (i.e. out of proportion for committing them), so yes, racial biases do exist and it's important to understand them.
Lastly - of course all wrongful police killings are terrible! But a 1 in 1000 lifetime chance (which includes not only wrongful killings but being killed in the commission of a violent crime) is fairly low compared to, say, the lifetime risk of being killed in an auto accident (about 1 in 100). Does that mean we're paying too much attention to police killings? No, of course not -- a wrongful killing by an agent of the state is uniquely terrible. It still seems to me that it's important to keep things in perspective. Is the gap between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 2500 (a white male's chance of being killed by police) so great as to justify constant fear?
I hope you don't think I'm minimizing these issues or saying that there's no problem to address. The question is what facts do we start with and what remedies do we need. Thanks for listening!
It was very sweet of you to get back to me at all! Thank you!
My comments were absolutely blanket claims about racism being "baked into" policing, but they were a short hand meant to distill many studies and scholarly articles that support such claims and my personal experiences working on the issue of police and criminal justice reform for many years in Los Angeles. I was trying to be quick and keep things short. I see now I should have gone through the trouble of citing sources at the start. I’m about to go to bed, so I hope you don’t mind, I’ll do that tomorrow.
But before I go, you may have heard the people of Los Angeles County are once again reeling because the police shot and killed a 15 year old black boy named Ryan Gainer. I’ve seen the body camera footage, and I’m sure some may claim the murder was justified. The slight boy was in his pajamas and was coming at the officer with a large gardening tool after all. I am angry, yes, but mostly I am sad. I am sad that this keeps happening. I am said that the police are not properly trained to deal with people having mental health crises (Ryan was autistic) and no matter the circumstances, young black men are more likely to be perceived as a threat.
Something I’ll also get into tomorrow was a run in I had with police in my early 20s while I was in the throes of a manic episode for what was then undiagnosed bipolar disorder. The police treated me with a shocking amount of deference. I will get into the reasons why tomorrow when I thoroughly present my assessment of the problems tomorrow based on years of research and years of work, not lip service and blanket statements.
Until then, I’ll leave you with a video of Ryan talking about why he thinks it’s important to be a good person and spread kindness.
I do not believe this sweet boy needed to die and I do think systemic bias is the reason why. (Bold statements, I know, that I’ll get into tomorrow).
Thanks again for getting back to me. And I’ll follow up soon. Good luck with your deadlines.
Hi Cathy, Bulwark subscriber here! I am a bit confused by your assessment of "systemic racism." Is your main point that instances of police brutality and misconduct should be examined on a case-by-case basis and that having an understanding of the ways in which unconscious bias is imbedded in our institutions is a hinderance to that objective? How is taking a more cursory look at policing at odds with also rooting out specific instances of racially motivated misconduct? Systemic racism, as it applies to policing, is just a framework to understand and address the ways in which people of color are disproportionately affected through every stage of the criminal justice system, despite the evidence that different racial and ethnic groups commit crimes at roughly the same rates. Addressing those material realities is a means to just that. I don't think it's fair to say focusing on the issues ratchets up fear in a disproportionate way when approximately 1 in every 1,000 Black men is killed by police (https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1821204116). When it comes to the murder of George Floyd in particular, I wonder how anyone could watch the video of his death and think anything could justify the manner in which he was killed. I think we sometimes get caught up navigating hypotheticals as part of a semantic exercise when the conclusion of what happened is quite straightforward. We saw the video. We watched him die. We saw him on the ground, in handcuffs, crying out for his mother as he slowly lost consciousness. What perceived threat could he have posed or what possible crime could he have committed that would justify being killed the way he was?
Hi Kate! Sorry about the late reply (working on multiple deadlines). I appreciate your comment and the Bulwark subscription, of course!
To begin with, I completely agree with the last part of your comment. I think the situation with George Floyd's death was fairly clear and as I said in my comment, I thought it was misguided for Coleman Hughes to promote a "debunking." Radley's rebuttal was excellent. Do we have evidence that the murder was racially motivated? I don't know. There was a fairly similar case with a mentally ill white man, Tony Timpa, who suffocated to death while being restrained by cops who not only ignored but mocked his pleas for help thinking that he was simply being hysterical. (No one was punished in that case.) There was also a case in 2005 involving a white man who was having a drug episode and died while a black cop was sitting on his back to hold him down. BUT I agree that given the very real history of racism in American policing, it was totally understandable that the public (especially the black community) reacted with such intensity.
As for my comments on "systemic racism": I certainly don't object to studying racial patterns in law enforcement, my issue is more with blanket claims about racism being "baked into" policing instead of focusing on specific factors that contribute to racial biases. I'm all for looking into those. But with all due respect, your comment shows why the rhetoric around the issue can complicate understanding. You said that "people of color are disproportionately affected through every stage of the criminal justice system, despite the evidence that different racial and ethnic groups commit crimes at roughly the same rates." While there is evidence of disparate treatment, the last part of your statement is mistaken, as this 2021 paper from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics will show: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf Using not just arrests but victim reports to the police and to crime victimization surveys as a measure, black Americans make up 12.5% of the US population but account for 35.5% of nonfatal violent offenses. (Hispanics and especially Asians, on the other hand, are underrepresented among offenders.) Does this justify right-wing hatemongering about "black crime," or even racist claims that black people are innately prone to violence? No, of course not. There are also crime-rate disparities among white ethnic groups in America, and crime rates in various majority-black and majority-white countries show a lot of variation. In the US these patterns have a lot to do with the legacy of racism, above all economic disadvantage. These patterns also don't justify racial profiling, which definitely happens! But we also need to have a clear picture of the facts and data.
Ironically, the study I linked has been cited by Media Matters as showing that "Among the most serious incidents of violent crime (rape or sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault), there were no statistically significant differences by race between offenders." But that sentence is truncated; the full sentence says "between offenders identified in the NCVS and persons arrested per the UCR" (i.e. between crime reports and arrests). What this actually means is that for serious violent crime, the rates of arrest for different groups roughly match their crime rates. However, this study did find that blacks people are disproportionately arrested for minor offenses (i.e. out of proportion for committing them), so yes, racial biases do exist and it's important to understand them.
Lastly - of course all wrongful police killings are terrible! But a 1 in 1000 lifetime chance (which includes not only wrongful killings but being killed in the commission of a violent crime) is fairly low compared to, say, the lifetime risk of being killed in an auto accident (about 1 in 100). Does that mean we're paying too much attention to police killings? No, of course not -- a wrongful killing by an agent of the state is uniquely terrible. It still seems to me that it's important to keep things in perspective. Is the gap between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 2500 (a white male's chance of being killed by police) so great as to justify constant fear?
I hope you don't think I'm minimizing these issues or saying that there's no problem to address. The question is what facts do we start with and what remedies do we need. Thanks for listening!
Hi Cathy,
It was very sweet of you to get back to me at all! Thank you!
My comments were absolutely blanket claims about racism being "baked into" policing, but they were a short hand meant to distill many studies and scholarly articles that support such claims and my personal experiences working on the issue of police and criminal justice reform for many years in Los Angeles. I was trying to be quick and keep things short. I see now I should have gone through the trouble of citing sources at the start. I’m about to go to bed, so I hope you don’t mind, I’ll do that tomorrow.
But before I go, you may have heard the people of Los Angeles County are once again reeling because the police shot and killed a 15 year old black boy named Ryan Gainer. I’ve seen the body camera footage, and I’m sure some may claim the murder was justified. The slight boy was in his pajamas and was coming at the officer with a large gardening tool after all. I am angry, yes, but mostly I am sad. I am sad that this keeps happening. I am said that the police are not properly trained to deal with people having mental health crises (Ryan was autistic) and no matter the circumstances, young black men are more likely to be perceived as a threat.
Something I’ll also get into tomorrow was a run in I had with police in my early 20s while I was in the throes of a manic episode for what was then undiagnosed bipolar disorder. The police treated me with a shocking amount of deference. I will get into the reasons why tomorrow when I thoroughly present my assessment of the problems tomorrow based on years of research and years of work, not lip service and blanket statements.
Until then, I’ll leave you with a video of Ryan talking about why he thinks it’s important to be a good person and spread kindness.
I do not believe this sweet boy needed to die and I do think systemic bias is the reason why. (Bold statements, I know, that I’ll get into tomorrow).
Thanks again for getting back to me. And I’ll follow up soon. Good luck with your deadlines.
Best,
Kate
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLNQKX5F/