BELIEVE IN THE SCIENCE: Research fails to prove racism behind police shootings of Black men.

In fact, per the 2018 US National Crime Victimization Survey, the only group of people systematically killing Black people are other Black people and overwhelmingly so. The Bureau of Justice Statistics also reports that “the offender was of the same race or ethnicity as the victim in 70 per cent of violent incidents involving Black victims.” This directly confronts assertions, especially by celebrities and politicians, that Black people are “literally hunted,” as Lebron James put it. . . .

According to the Washington Post’s database on police shootings, in 2019, 243 Black men were shot and killed (24.3 per cent of total), of which only 11 were unarmed. In contrast, 379 white men were killed (38 per cent of total), of which 23 were unarmed. . . .

In short, there is no definitive conclusion that racism plays a primary or significant role in citizen deaths at the hands of the police. Research, so far, has not “proven” the hypothesis that (white) racism is to blame for racial disparity in the use of force. Any such attempt will be correlational at best, with a variety of variables to consider. Equally as important but rarely addressed, what explains the underrepresentation of other minority groups?

What, indeed?