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Comment by crc32 | Hacker News Reader

> Twice as many unarmed white men are shot by police

I visited your link and could not see a matching statistic.

Filtering by "unarmed" and hovering over "Race" I got a count of 19 White, 15 Black, 4 Hispanic.

I then also had a quick look at the article for "Brett Luengo", [0] (White) which states i.e. "Luengo attacked a woman first..." etc. etc.; I mean it goes on for quite a while. So seems like there's a big variation in the definition of "unarmed man" shooting that doesn't preclude other kinds of violent or aggressive activity/indications.

Looks to me like the statistics are not really telling the whole story there so maybe that's why you don't hear them "covered in the national news".

[0] https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-met...

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> I visited your link and could not see a matching statistic.

I was wrong. Police kill twice as many whites but I shouldn't have included the unarmed qualifier.

> I then also had a quick look at the article for "Brett Luengo"

He did attack but I think it still qualifies. I personally didn't hear of this one but a google search shows it was covered, even if not very extensively. It was picked up on national news.

Even still, the comment that law enforcement is wholesale killing young unarmed black males is just false.

Oh right, I guess I thought what you were doing was saying that cases like [0] being "heard about on the national news" is showing some kind of bias, that it's not something to be concerned about because the same is happening regardless of race, and using some statistics to evidence your assertion.

I was trying to say that a) you were massively off about the relative quantities of unarmed shootings and that b) in any case; I would imagine people are more upset - i.e. it's in the national news - about e.g. [0] than; e.g. Brett Luengo, because there's a huge difference in the circumstances surrounding their deaths, something which cannot be interpreted from the statistics you cited.

Further, my admittedly limited & poor knowledge of the situation caused me to infer that the op was talking about this qualitative difference, although you are correct in saying that if you take the statement "we cannot seem to stop shooting unarmed black men" absolutely, strictly, literally; without applying any context whatsoever, then talking about quantities is completely valid.

So - my apologies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott

Given that there are 5 times as many white folks as black in the US, that stat isn't saying what you think it is.

Black people are still more likely to be shot than white people.

I don't think that anyone reasonable ever claimed that the police were 'wholesale killing young unarmed black males,' just that it happens too often.

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