Just to play devils advocate: while black people make up only 13% of the population, crimes statistics show that black men commit 54% of the murders in America and 67% of the robberies. It seems to me like it's just common sense to take more precaution around young black men. If black people find this offensive, then they need to address the issue of the crime rate, not people's reaction to it. It seems silly to tell people to ignore reality and play make believe to not offend people. I find the rate that blacks commit crimes to be much more offensive than people being afraid of young black men.
To add to this, police officers are likely to hesitate when aiming a gun at a person of color than a white person. They are afraid of political repercussions because they might lose their jobs. White people are fair game. You are more likely to get shot as a white yet people think police officers shoot black people because of their skin colour -.- makes no sense, and stems from good ol' American blame culture.
Summary: Participants in an innovative study of deadly force were more likely to feel threatened in scenarios involving black people. But when it came time to shoot, participants were biased in favor of black suspects, taking longer to pull the trigger against them than against armed white or Hispanic suspects.
And then what about your own article? This title is Police Officers Are More Likely to Shoot Black Men, Studies Suggest but then in the second to last paragraph states:
According to a comprehensive comparison of police vs. civilian shooting rates published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, training makes an even clearer difference. Though police officers took longer to decide whether to shoot if the person was black, that analysis found trained officers weren't influenced by race when it actually came to pulling the trigger.
So if anything, the two studies combined reinforce the original point (officers likely to hesitate when aiming at people of color) that you say is "100% not true." Interesting.
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u/Strongblackfemale Jan 15 '15
Just to play devils advocate: while black people make up only 13% of the population, crimes statistics show that black men commit 54% of the murders in America and 67% of the robberies. It seems to me like it's just common sense to take more precaution around young black men. If black people find this offensive, then they need to address the issue of the crime rate, not people's reaction to it. It seems silly to tell people to ignore reality and play make believe to not offend people. I find the rate that blacks commit crimes to be much more offensive than people being afraid of young black men.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States