No, A Higher Crime Rate Does Not Explain Police Violence

and teaching about racism is the only way to teach American history accurately.

This is a (late) response to Tom Cotter, and the previous thread linked below.

I would like to begin by making final points on the issue of race and police shootings and then move back to the issue of Critical Race Theory in Schools as that is what the initial comment was referencing.

You are correct, raw data alone cannot be used to prove discrimination. This is especially true for the surprisingly limited data we have on police shootings in general. Although I do believe we can lay that issue squarely at the feet of police departments, many of which outright refuse to report on data that would help better identify these problems — this should be a cause for concern in itself. Nevertheless, the disparities that are present in the statistics should be a reason to investigate further and look for ways to reduce said disparities.

For many, this investigation begins and ends by pointing to the seemingly high rates of crime in the black community as if it, in some way, justifies or explains the large amount of Black victims of police violence. They do so without taking into account all the factors that not only go into Black crime rates such as poverty and lack of access to resources but also the factors that punctuate encounters with Black people and other POC, most notable of which is distrust. A distrust that is largely justified given the history of policing in the United States and the current climate involving questionable interactions with the police. This distrust is also exacerbated by high profile police killings of unarmed Black men, and evidence of intentionally misleading police reports of crimes.

While Black Americans may be overrepresented in violent crime statistics, this overrepresentation does not explain the drastic differences in the way police treat Black suspects. Empirical data show this distrust is warranted mainly in the use of force statistics (both lethal and non-lethal). Use-of-force statistics show police are 350% more likely to use force against a Black person, and even after controlling for all possible variables (including compliance vs. non-compliance), black people were still 21% more likely to be targets of force and aggression. This comes alongside statistics that show black people have a much higher chance of being stopped, searched and arrested, despite having contraband and committing non-violent crimes at a comparable rate to white counterparts. Distrust is also compounded by an oversaturation of police in areas that are considered “Black neighborhoods”, leading to more stops and searches. This oversaturation is almost universal in American cities, despite cities and “black neighborhoods” varying greatly in crime rates. This means it is not just violent crime rates that bring police to neighborhoods, but something else. There is plenty of evidence based on the statistics that the driving factor here is a belief that crime is being committed higher in these areas, even though there is no evidence to support this. This is a bias on the police’s part.

Furthermore, the police and those who support the current policing institution justify this by citing arrest records. This would, of course, be misleading. If police patrol an area more and commit to making more stops in that area, then a higher crime rate would be reported because the police are there to catch crimes. This does not mean crimes are not being committed other places. It is a strange cycle that we perceive as justifying itself.

Now to Critical Race Theory in schools:

“We practice capitalism and democracy in The United States, those are facts. The notion that we need to reject western ideals, like democracy and capitalism, because they are the cause of all racial inequities we observe in society is a story — and a silly one at that.”

What is history, but stories? A misconception is that we can take ideology and politics out of history. History is political and ideological because people are political and ideological. Teaching about Columbus braving the seas, discovering the Americas and peacefully coexisting with Native Americans is no more ideological than teaching about redlining and the lingering effects it has on capital in black communities. They both tell a story. The difference is one tells a a fictionalized account that furthers our own inflated sense of who we are as Americans. Furthering this idea that to be American is to be brave, morally superior and good, as opposed to the story that America has deep issues stemming from its past that contradict our national identity, and that not only do many of our national idols have varied and complicated relationships with race, and that those relationships were in play as they made their impact on our systems of government, but also perhaps those who have a monopoly on economic, social, and political capital in this country have had their successes built on those who do not have access to the same resources due to issues that are inherent in our very systems. That is an uncomfortable story to tell, but not telling it only feeds into an undeserved sense of superiority, and, perhaps more importantly, an unwarranted sense of inferiority for those who seemingly cannot achieve that same level of capital.

“What I won’t agree to is replacing that story of American exceptionalism with a neo-racist ideology that seeks to tear down the values that built this country and replace them with values that led to the needless deaths of 200M+ innocent people in the 20th century.”

I think I take issue with this statement the most because it implies that pointing how racism has played a role in the founding and building of our country is not only somehow racist, but that it is un-American. You speak about the values that this country was built on, the western ideals of meritocracy, fairness, and capitalism. Well there is nothing more American that ensuring everyone has a fair starting point to achieve what capitalism promises. Not doing so spits in the face of fairness and undermines the entire notion of meritocracy, and that is un-American.

I am also unsure of which value you are contributing the 200M+ deaths to, but I would like to point out that this argument seemingly ignores the hundreds of millions of deaths directly related to capitalistic endeavors.

Sources:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-data-say-about-police-11592845959