Originally Posted By: nca225
Originally Posted By: AmarilloMike
ncaa I can claim progress. You have gone from arguing that Black citizens are grossly disproportionately shot by policemen because those Black citizens' race to arguing that Black and White citizens get shot unjustly by policemen too often. Well, once a century is too much. Again you conflate two different things and leave me to disentangle.

You have conceded that Black Citizens have more encounters with Police than white Citizens because the population of Blacks have a much higher rate of criminality than Whites. The NYT article I linked to shows that cops shoot Blacks at an 18% lower rate per encounter than Whites. So you have conceded that. Again, progress.



Sorry Mike, but you can't claim progress asserting I've changed on a position I've never taken. I've been pretty consistent in my concern about the unchecked authority of the Police State. I have pointed out in threads that the victims of the shootings were black, but never indicated that were killed because of it, in fact my concern was whether it was just solely because they were armed at the time of police contact.

And no, I have not conceded that Black Citizens have more encounters with Police than white Citizens because the population of Blacks have a much higher rate of criminality than Whites. I have been urging you to consider poverty as the demographic variable instead of race. At the risk of being crass, poor people have more contact with police because poor people engage in more criminal activity that has a higher likelihood of police contact then rich people.



The first time you brought it up I agreed Blacks have a high criminality rate because they have a high poverty rate and that their criminality rate was because of the their poverty. And because of their high criminality rate they have a high rate of encounters with the police.

I don't see how we disagree on that.


I am glad to be here.