In 2021, 233 black Americans were shot and killed by police. And while the data is hard to come by and likely fraught with error, the Washington Post database reports 23 unarmed black Americans were shot by police in 2018. To be clear, every one of these deaths is a tragedy.
Would you be surprised to learn that, in 2021, 8,488 black Americans were the victim of homicide? In fact, police shootings (of which the vast majority may have been justified) still only represents 3% of black people murdered that year, and unarmed shootings by police make up approximately 0.3% of those fatal shootings. The FBI Crime Database reports that more than 52% of homicides in 2021 were committed by blacks, and according to USA Today, 93% of black murders are perpetrated by blacks.
Number of murder victims in the United States in 2021, by race
So the data shows there is a very serious problem of blacks committing murder and being murdered in America, but the focus has been solely on the very small number of shootings committed by police, rather than fatal shootings of blacks committed by their fellow citizens. If your goal were to save black lives, wouldn’t you focus on the 97% rather than the 0.3%?
One argument to this question reads something like this: when a citizen commits a crime they are much more likely to be arrested and go to jail than a police officer. While there is some evidence this is true, it’s much more complicated than that. Police officers are granted “qualified immunity” in the line of duty, a practice that many people think should end. But it is the current law of the land, and it gives sovereign immunity protections for officers who make mistakes in the general line of duty. This is likely the proximal cause of police acquittals and non-prosecutions and it should end.
But, even worse, more than 50% of murders (especially in big cities) go unsolved. In Chicago, the rate has dipped recently into the 30% range. Part of this can be attributed to shrinking resources at police departments (ironically, brought on by the BLM movement to de-fund the police among other budget cuts), but experts will tell you it is also due to the lack of witness participation. There is a negative feedback loop due to lack of trust, where police are unable to solve murders due to witnesses unwilling to trust them with information, in part because the witnesses don’t trust the police to solve the crime. The net effect is that in some neighborhoods across America, murders occur regularly without much being done about it by witnesses or police.
At the website for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, here are the stated major policy objectives: Defunding the Police, Pretrial Reform, Anti-Voter Suppression, Police Oversight, Medicare for All, DeMilitarize the Police, Supreme Court Democracy Reform, DC Statehood, Ending the Filibuster, Climate Justice. Three of these topics address police brutality (the 3%) and the other seven are progressive policy goals unrelated to directly saving black lives. And we should have more police oversight and we should de-militarize the police.
There is not one mention, however, of the thousands of murdered black people murdered by black people that is punishing the community. There is not one mention of the illegal drug trade, gang violence, lack of education opportunities and breakdown of the family that’s transpired in the past 60 years in the black community especially, but in America generally. You can not solve a problem until you’ve identified the causes, and in the case of black lives murdered, racist cops doesn’t even register on the map. I’d like to share a few more charts with you:
Percent of US Births Outside of Wedlock, 1964-2014
Leading Causes of Death – Males – Non-Hispanic Black – United States, 2018
These are jaw-dropping statistics with deep, complicated causes that can not be explained with a basic, single answer: “systemic racism.” Indeed, the United States, while still imperfect, has been the greatest experiment in freedom and race relations ever attempted in the history of the world. The US fundamentally created the modern democracy and equality movement for the world with its founding documents. The US is the only country to inherit a slave-based system (inherited from the European monarchies in Spain, the United Kingdom and others, importing colonists and slaves long before the USA was born) and that fought a Civil War to free its slaves. The greatest documents that encapsulate the freedom movement for all people generally are: the US Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There is still much to fix but no country ever has done more to attempt to right the wrongs of the treatment of its people, especially in regard to slavery and race.
So there are no simple solutions to where we go from here. But we need to start, at the very least, to ask the right questions, which seem to be verboten in America. Here’s my list for the Black Lives Matter movement:
Why is the leading cause of death for black boys and men ages 1-44 homicide?
Why are 70% of black children born out of wedlock?
What part of the poor education options available in many black communities contributes to the larger problems of wealth, family and homicides?
Why do black leaders seemingly never discuss the single greatest problem for black lives (homicide within the community)?
How can Black Lives Matter and other organizations partner with police and local governments to build relationships, dialog and trust?
Is de-funding the police good or bad for the black community?
If you agree that the problem has many causes and has gone unsolved for decades, what new options and alliances within the system could you pursue for meaningful change?
If there is any hope in building a better future for black lives, we have to start asking the right questions. What other questions should we ask?
Drop some in the comments.