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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

It is a tactic commonly used as you say. It's also a relevant statistic here, although all race on black violence would have been even better. It still serves to support the point quite clearly that police are not to be feared as much as criminals, even if you're black.

Having said that, a lot of criminal violence happens if you're mixed up in that world or frequenting a bad area as opposed to just random violence. There's something different about police violence where it has that random quality and can affect you anywhere, sometimes just minding your own business.

Plus it's doubly egregious because the police are supposed to protect you, not hurt you. Even before this became an issue, and as a white person, I get nervous with police interactions. You just don't know what kind of mood they're in or how they're interpreting the situation.

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It is completely irrelevant. It's like responding to "It's raining today" with "It was sunny last week". At best, it's a non-sequitur, at worst it's an active attempt to distract from the conversation at hand. And it ignores the facts that A) black-on-black crime does not happen at a substantially higher rate than white-on-white crime, B) the explanation for why most crime is intra-racial in a segregated country is pretty straightforwardly obvious, and C) Black people actually are attacked and killed by police at wildly disproportionate rates, which is why the subject of police violence against Black people is a valid topic of conversation, whereas "black-on-black crime" is a pointless or hostile digression.

> It is completely irrelevant

It's irrelevant to the real issue, but not to the upthread claim that blacks view police as the greatest threat. In the latter context, it is not irrelevant to point out that such a view does not seem to be in line with the evidence.

"Blacks view police as the biggest threat" seems to be perfectly in line with what Black people are and have been saying for decades if not centuries.

If only folks would listen to Black voices, they wouldn't be gumming up the conversation with irrelevance.

White on white crime is also much more prevalent than crime across racial boundaries. A priori you are much more likely to be a victim of crime by someone you know or in your immediate community. Because America is so segregated still, the conclusion follows pretty immediately.

It's in line with what people have been saying, but as parent observed, it's not in line with risks. But this is nothing new for people in general; we spend way more newspaper inches worrying about terrorism (which kills a fraction of people) than traffic fatalities (which is 8th leading cause of death globally).

This is, of course, as true as it is irrelevant. Because police can be 1/7th as likely to kill black people as non-police, and that's still far, far too many and a completely different category of murder (because the murderers are rarely punished, and are protected by the power of the state). Even if cops were 1/70th as likely to be the murderer of a black person, it's too many.

Some kinds of death are both avoidable and morally reprehensible for a society to allow or condone.

Agreed, the comparison between who kills black folks is irrelevant. The comparison that is relevant here is who police officers kill.

This page is a good summary of the relevant statistics: https://beehivemedia.com/dataviz/when_police_kill_in_black_a...

Sure. You're correct. But it's such a frequently deployed concern troll that it's challenging to assume good intent. Like many, pjc50 is just trying to articulate, organize some thoughts on a very tough topic. Does every. single. statement. have. to. be. pendanted. and. relitigated. every. with. the. same. tired. talking. points. every. single. time?

You completely missed the point. It's relevant to this thread that blacks should fear the police more than criminal violence. Well sorry, that's not born out by the statistics, so it's an irrational belief.

You are saying "violence", but the statistics cited in this thread are myopically focused on murder. Non–lethal violence, racial profiling, disproportionate sentencing, etc, are all forms of physical and judicial violence that might justify Black people fearing the police more than criminals.

I don't think that's justified, until I see data to the contrary.

>It still serves to support the point quite clearly that police are not to be feared as much as criminals, even if you're black.

As you point out yourself, it doesn't necessarily if you consider the average black person. The average black person is not a gang member, not a criminal and doesn't hang out with those groups. It may very well be that for such a person the police are a bigger risk than criminals. It's simply that the massively higher violence amongst criminals shifts the overall numbers.

It's totally irrelevant. Most white people are killed by white people too. It's an effect of de facto segregation in society. Most crime is proximate.

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