So basically your cops shoot a ton of black men who pose little to no threat because white men carry out mass shootings a lot ? That’s your argument ?
Let's not be too flippant here. It's a rare day you'll find me defending a police shooting; we're commenting here on an event that I'm sure all sides see as a needless, preventable tragedy. Nonetheless, I've been to the bank that got held up in North Hollywood. I've ridden through the neighborhood where eight cops got themselves in a crossfire over a blue SUV with a couple Mexican women in it were mistaken for a black truck with a cop in it. And I've been told "everyone has a bad day" by an LAPD cop as a justification for why Fruitvale happened. Your mistake is "basically." Your mistake is "meatheadedness." Your mistake is wanting this to be a simple problem with a simple solution - "Americans need to be less stupid." "Cops need to be less racist." Nobody is the villain in their own movie. Turning off your empathy doesn't help you understand anything. Last night, cops in Chicago shot a security guard for doing his job because last week a cop got shot doing his job. Racism is a problem. White guys are a problem. Fear is a problem. But there's racism, fear and white guys in lotsa places. What sets the US apart is the likelihood of walking face-first into a military-grade arsenal.
I disagree because when you look at the scenarios were cops are shooting innocent black men they have no real reason to believe the guy has a military grade arsenal in his back pocket. Or maybe it was tucked away in the glove compartment of the car. Last week a cop ran into a room were he knew some guy with a gun was shooting, I’m sure he had good intentions but did he even have a plan before running in ? A cop shot an innocent black man in Chicago because that’s just what cops in your country do. If this wasn’t a race thing there would be people of every race getting shot as regularly. Cops are just scared of black men not military grade arsenals and I don’t accept that as an excuse. I’m scared of men when I walk around too, so what ? Do I get a pass for attacking any that might be able to out power me ? Maybe one day it will start to happen in predominately white suburbs and, like the opioid crisis, something might actually get done about it.
You disagree that there's complexity? I said, explicitly, that "racism is a problem." What you're saying, in as many words, is that racism is the only problem. We can find data for that. Here's the incidence of police shootings in the USA by year: Here's the incidence of hate crimes: If it were "just" racism, you'd expect to see an uptick in racist violence by people other than cops. But there's no correlation. So. Did a black man get shot because a cop was itchin' for an excuse to shoot black people? Maybe. We don't know. We might find out. It's certainly happened in the past. Did a black man get shot because it's easy to panic when you're charging into an active situation? Maybe. We might find out. It's certainly happened in the past. And it's probable that he got shot for more than "just" one reason.
You know all those videos of white people calling the police on black people for going about their lives ? I have no doubt they legitimately think something is wrong and they feel afraid, I just doubt they would feel those fears if white people were doing the same thing. I don’t really think itching to shoot a black person and panicking in an active situation are mutually exclusive. I don’t think they wake up every day hoping they get a chance to shoot a black person, racism rarely works that way. Sexism doesn’t work that way either but we constantly see men and women get treated differently by people who would never consider themselves sexist. I think it’s possible to get extra jumpy around black people without realizing it. I can say with absolute certainty that they do not get jumpy around small women like myself, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say there are other people they would get more jumpy around even though many of them are innocent while some small women are god damn psycho’s.