
KING: White men have killed 7 of 8 cops in U.S. this year - honua
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-white-men-killed-7-8-cops-u-s-year-article-1.2539913
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JoeAltmaier
With a demographic of 14% of US males being black, that's almost exactly what
you'd predict the stats would be. Still, the argument that media reporting is
biased is still concerning.

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dragonwriter
> With a demographic of 14% of US males being black, that's almost exactly
> what you'd predict the stats would be.

Well, "White" and "Not black" aren't the same thing. If killing cops was
unrelated to race, you'd expect 75% of the acts to be by whites (US is 75%
white), which is 6 in 8.

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JoeAltmaier
That's another troublesome point. Our distinctions are related to old Jim Crow
notions that 1/64th Black made you Not White. Why not the other way around? If
1/64th White made you Not Black, then the USA would be about 99% white.

So I'm not sure what these stats even mean. At bottom, its a broken idea that
a killer is White or Black; it largely depends upon who's doing the reporting.

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dragonwriter
I think you've misunderstood.

"Not black" and "White" are different not because of things like the one-drop
rule and its legacy, but because there are races other than "White" and
"Black" present in the US.

"Not black" includes Native Americans/Alaskan Natives, Asians/Pacific
Islanders, etc., not just Whites.

> Our distinctions are related to old Jim Crow notions that 1/64th Black made
> you Not White. Why not the other way around? If 1/64th White made you Not
> Black, then the USA would be about 99% white.

Er, no. Because even if modern Black vs. White racial identification were
entirely driven by the one-drop rule (its not), there's only about 87% of the
population that identifies as _either_ White or Black, so shifting some
portion of the Black to White isn't going to make 99% of the population White.
Again, there are other races in the US besides White and Black.

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JoeAltmaier
Thanks for the statistics lesson!

On that subject, we seem to be missing a killing by an Other - at 13% of the
population, we should have another minority in the demographic. Well, small
sample set I guess.

Anyway I have to stop making tangential remarks in responses - folks always
interpret them too closely.

