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[BBC Video] 'Black women are killed by police too' - Gina Best, mother of India Kager(bbc.com)

65 points64 points67 points submitted by TARDIS
all 14 comments

immersang 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

I did wonder how black women feel about this apparent mainstream view that black men and boys are the only ones specifically targeted and therefore in danger in the US. There was even an episode I happened to stumble across a few weeks back of one of those TV crime dramas where a black woman says she'd rather have a daughter, because black boys are in so much danger. And I was wondering: Really now? Aren't black women and girls the minority that possibly even suffers the most in US society?

But then, I'm neither from the US nor black, so I can't really have an informed opinion. Would be interesting to hear from black women here.

GConly 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun 4 years ago

Black people in America aren't killed disproportionately once you take into account the fact that they have much higher offending and arrest level that puts them into contact with police way more often.

On a per arrest/encounter incident mortality isn't different.

If someone feels like claiming the higher arrests are down to racism via stop and search: they commit homicides and rapes about seven times the non Hispanic white rate Police racism has virtually nothing to do with their higher arrest rates.

critical_of_WR 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

maybe you are referring to Black men, but this video is referring to Black women. You should also know that talking about proportions without putting a logistic model on it and controlling for other factors/variables makes you look like an amateur. You should not speak without a properly nuanced perspective.

This is why I call myself a Black woman, and not a "Person of Colour," because I noticed many White Americans use other minorities when trying to shame Black people. Except when they do it usually they have a bit more of an intelligent argument than "look at the proportions when you adjust for population size." I should point out that I am not even an African American, I am an African that was born in America. I came from an upper class family from a country in West Africa, and my ethnic group outperforms the average American. Thereby suggesting that there are many factors that influence crime rate, and it isn't exclusive to race.

GConly 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun 4 years ago

you should also know that talking about proportions without putting a logistic model on it and controlling for other factors

I did. I controlled for the higher level of arrests, and population size.

Controlling for relative population size black males get killed by the police 2.5 times more often. They get arrested about five times more often, also relative to population size. This means that there's no way they have a higher death rate per police incident.

It's just this isn't a hard science sub and I didn't feel the need to go through the details.

We have the same situation in the UK. It appears our black citizens get killed more often than they should, twice the rate, but this also vanishes when you look at the death rate per hour in custody and then it's a lower death rate. This stat is around in a UK gov paper somewhere.

The black DIC higher death rate issue is caused by greater time in custody, nothing else. Same in America.

came from an upper class family from a country in West Africa, and my ethnic group outperforms the average American.

I'm assuming that would be Nigeria or Ghana, I'm familiar with the data. It's part of the argument that systemic racism against black Americans is not a factor in income disparity. You can't have systemic racism against black Americans be the cause if some black groups outperform white people.

We also have the same thing in the UK with west Africans doing better. The local grammar schools have a lot of West African kids, but almost no Afro Carribean.

Aquadog 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

Are you controlling for poverty? African-Americans are much more likely to be experiencing poverty than any other racial group.

I'm also going to add that black women are the most educated group in the US, yet still have a large income disparity compared to white women.

GConly 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun 4 years ago

Poverty is non relevant in this equation.

The equation is "hours each race spends in custody Vs number number of deaths", adjusted per capita.

We are looking for racism in police deaths. We aren't discussing why they are being arrested or offending. That's a different discussion.

It's also a myth that black women are the most educated group. That idea came from a misunderstanding.

https://ibb.co/3BQjgjt

23% of black women got degrees Vs 38% for white women.

Just over half of 1% of Black women have PhDs, compared with just over 1% of White women – and almost 3% of Asian/PI women. White women are almost twice as likely to have a PhD and Black women, Asian/PI women are more than 5-times as likely.

critical_of_WR 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

The thing is I am a scientist so when you present me statistics about the rates without any model to adjust for other variables then your argument is not substantiated. You should recognize your audience if you want to convince someone that your logic has validity, so I don't think stating that this isn't a science hub and you don't need to go through the details is inappropriate. How does that make you any different from a TIM who would present half baked arguments and call it science?

And my coming from a more successful Black racial group is not taken as evidence of Black American's failure. It can be taken as evidence that your skin colour is not what makes you a failure or a success, as the average of any race regresses to the mean. There is something else that makes people from my ethnic group more privileged than the typical Black American or Black UK citizen. You may call it helicopter parenting and there is a little bit of that. That isn't the entire picture though. A lot of the families come from upper class families, already the most educated of their class, and often the richest citizens of their country. This is something that is seen within international students of all demographics. They will always succeed better than the domestic students or second generation students of any race within Western world. We did not adjust for other variables such as poverty, lack of resources, poor opportunities. These things matter, and I know this as someone that works heavily in data science as well as outreach programs for students that are underprivileged from all racial backgrounds. All I am saying is that you take your outsider information, play the race card based on your context of why things are the status quo. It is one side of the story. It is not complete.

DarthVelma 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

Gonna push back on the "seven times the rapes". That could most definitely be down to police racism. We all know rape is severely under-reported in the first place and the police are notoriously bad about not even bothering to investigate. But I could totally see the police being more willing to go after black rapists than white ones.

GConly 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun 4 years ago

That could most definitely be down to police racism.

Not really. It's going by crimes reported to the police, and victim studies.

You'd have to believe that reports by women naming white rapists (virtually all white victims) were being dumped, and that the white men's victims were not talking about it in victim studies either.

Which seems unlikely.

TARDIS[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

I thought this was quite a powerful video by the mother of a woman shot dead by police. Ms Kager's family later won a wrongful death lawsuit.

sisterinsomnia 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

Washington Post collected data on killings by police for at least two years. I haven't checked if they kept that up, but I did some work on their data sets, to learn more about the racial, ethnic and sex differences.

Women, as a sex, are less likely to come into contact with the police than men are, and that is the main reason why women, as a sex, are less likely to be killed by the police. Black women are more likely to be killed by the police than white women, but less likely than black men. I couldn't tell from the data how much racism builds into this in the direct sense of open racism by the police and how much it builds into this in the indirect sense in that there are more police in minority areas and so a person of color is more likely to come into contact with the police. That latter reason can be caused by systemic racism, but it can also be partly caused by class-related issues and the way poverty intertwines with crime (causing greater police presence) because alternatives are fewer.

I do think that when black women are killed by the police the cases get less attention than when black men are killed by the police. The George Floyd case got so much attention, though, because it was shown in a video, while Brianna Taylor's murder was not videotaped. It's difficult to pull the various strands apart in such cases, but it is very likely that black men's murders by the police do get more attention than the murders of black women by the police, in general.

If that makes sense.

chrysthefeminist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

I read somewhere, sorry can't remember where, that when reports of black women being killed by police come into TV media offices, they often get tossed, while reports of black men being killed by police make it onto the evening news. IOW, there's some deliberate manipulating of what gets to be news and what doesn't in order to keep the attention and focus on men.

Bitchcraft 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

I find this very hard to believe. While women are often less likely to be believe than men when they are alive, a dead woman can be politically more powerful than a dead man, think "missing (white) girl effect". Of course this could be true to a lesser extent for black women, but I would be really surprised if it was entirely flipped.

chrysthefeminist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun 4 years ago

I don't find it hard to believe. I find it all too easy to believe. Men want all the focus and attention on themselves.

As to "missing white girl effect", it is very obvious that missing/dead black women do not have the same "effect", whatever that is, as missing/dead white women.