Race, or Gender - What Metric Drives Police Brutality?
Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2020 4:09 pmBoth, probably.
Let's look at some handy data points to get started. We'll begin with what was universally agreed upon as racist - new york's stop and frisk policy.
I pulled this from the NYCLU (a chapter of ACLU).
https://www.nyclu.org/en/Stop-and-Frisk-data
In 2019, NYPD did stop and frisk to 13,459 people. That's people that they didn't have proof of crime of (and indeed, 66% were abjectly innocent). This is a constitutional violation to start with, but it's also racist:
A quick google search suggests NYC is 26% hispanic, 26% black, 13% asian, and white 33%. The other 2% are other groups or mixed.
https://furmancenter.org/files/sotc/The ... ods_11.pdf
This suggests that latinos are slightly overrepresented (29%/26%), whites are significantly underrepresented (9%/33%), and black people are significantly overrepresented (59%/26%). Asians are also underrepresented (not cited on NYCLU, but I did a pivot table) at 2.2%/13%.
Men make up about 50% of NYC. They make up between 90.5% (base figure, 12179 / 13459) and 90.8% (12229 / 13459) of the total. This discrepancy is made up of 50 stops where sex wasn't recorded. They're over 9 times as likely to be stopped as women. I also did a pivot table for that, because the NYCLU doesn't mention it.
Whew, it's just as sexist as it is racist.
What about black people vs white people killed by police across the nation?
Well...
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
There's a handy graph here that cannot be ignored:
We see here there's a dramatic increase in death of african american men over white men, with white men coming in at second lowest (substantially above asians, but still relatively low). However, compare that to the figures for women - they're almost nonexistent. It's exceedingly difficult to say black men are targeted for death compared with Asian men, and not make the same observation about men compared with women. Again, there's both a racial and gendered aspect here.
It doesn't count the way that black people get targeted for confrontation and arrest by police right?
Sure, that's an issue. It's also a gendered one, although it's fair to note that gendered discrepancy is slowly decreasing.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/ ... cingwomen/
Well, but black people are more likely to be searched. Also true! This also exists on gender lines. Although this bias is lessening.
Well but black people get longer sentences for the same crimes. True as well! About 10% longer. This is a problem.
But... it's also a gendered issue.
https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/f ... hat%20Prof.
And of course, there's the objection that it's men doing this to men so it doesn't count. It absolutely does count - who's committing the gendered oppression is largely irrelevant to the fact that it occurs, and this is true on racial lines as well - where black police are just as likely to kill black suspects as white police, if not more. This is about a system that encourages this type of bias, not about the individual actor carrying it out.
We need to take a full intersectional approach to this issue, understanding the underpinnings that are leading to this discrepancy in police targeting minorities based on race and sex, especially so black men, and understand the root cause and biases leading to this conclusion. Which is not JUST an issue of police training (although that's an important issue and should not be ignored), but also the social and financial factors that drive police to overpolice in minority areas - namely the crime problems and such that come from the discrimination resulting in poverty issues.
What say ye, NSG?
Let's look at some handy data points to get started. We'll begin with what was universally agreed upon as racist - new york's stop and frisk policy.
I pulled this from the NYCLU (a chapter of ACLU).
https://www.nyclu.org/en/Stop-and-Frisk-data
In 2019, NYPD did stop and frisk to 13,459 people. That's people that they didn't have proof of crime of (and indeed, 66% were abjectly innocent). This is a constitutional violation to start with, but it's also racist:
7,981 were Black (59 percent).
3,869 were Latinx (29 percent).
1,215 were white (9 percent).
A quick google search suggests NYC is 26% hispanic, 26% black, 13% asian, and white 33%. The other 2% are other groups or mixed.
https://furmancenter.org/files/sotc/The ... ods_11.pdf
This suggests that latinos are slightly overrepresented (29%/26%), whites are significantly underrepresented (9%/33%), and black people are significantly overrepresented (59%/26%). Asians are also underrepresented (not cited on NYCLU, but I did a pivot table) at 2.2%/13%.
Men make up about 50% of NYC. They make up between 90.5% (base figure, 12179 / 13459) and 90.8% (12229 / 13459) of the total. This discrepancy is made up of 50 stops where sex wasn't recorded. They're over 9 times as likely to be stopped as women. I also did a pivot table for that, because the NYCLU doesn't mention it.
Whew, it's just as sexist as it is racist.
What about black people vs white people killed by police across the nation?
Well...
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
There's a handy graph here that cannot be ignored:
We see here there's a dramatic increase in death of african american men over white men, with white men coming in at second lowest (substantially above asians, but still relatively low). However, compare that to the figures for women - they're almost nonexistent. It's exceedingly difficult to say black men are targeted for death compared with Asian men, and not make the same observation about men compared with women. Again, there's both a racial and gendered aspect here.
It doesn't count the way that black people get targeted for confrontation and arrest by police right?
Sure, that's an issue. It's also a gendered one, although it's fair to note that gendered discrepancy is slowly decreasing.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/ ... cingwomen/
Well, but black people are more likely to be searched. Also true! This also exists on gender lines. Although this bias is lessening.
Well but black people get longer sentences for the same crimes. True as well! About 10% longer. This is a problem.
But... it's also a gendered issue.
https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/f ... hat%20Prof.
After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted." This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity that Prof. Starr found in another recent paper.
And of course, there's the objection that it's men doing this to men so it doesn't count. It absolutely does count - who's committing the gendered oppression is largely irrelevant to the fact that it occurs, and this is true on racial lines as well - where black police are just as likely to kill black suspects as white police, if not more. This is about a system that encourages this type of bias, not about the individual actor carrying it out.
We need to take a full intersectional approach to this issue, understanding the underpinnings that are leading to this discrepancy in police targeting minorities based on race and sex, especially so black men, and understand the root cause and biases leading to this conclusion. Which is not JUST an issue of police training (although that's an important issue and should not be ignored), but also the social and financial factors that drive police to overpolice in minority areas - namely the crime problems and such that come from the discrimination resulting in poverty issues.
What say ye, NSG?