Police shootings and the "men connection"

Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2014-08-30 04:36

Article here. Excerpt:

'This is the most most heinous thing I've learned in my two years compiling Fatal Encounters. You know who dies in the most population-dense areas? Black men. You know who dies in the least population dense areas? Mentally ill men. It's not to say there aren't dangerous and desperate criminals killed across the line. But African-Americans and the mentally ill people make up a huge percentage of people killed by police.

And if you want to get down to nut-cuttin' time, across the board, it's poor people who are killed by police. (And by the way, around 96 percent of people killed by police are men.)'

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This confirms a point I tried to make in an earlier post: that when a black men is shot by a policeman, it's not just because he's black. It's also because he's a man. So it's not just racism, it's also sexism. The sexism is the belief that men are the disposable sex. So, too, most people killed on the job--about 92%--are men. And in the Vietnam war, about 55,000 American men died and about 8 women.

Alas, this doesn't mean it's purely about racism or sexism. A police officer will likely feel more threatened by an unarmed 300-lb man than an unarmed 120-lb woman. Still, the dominant cultural belief is that is that it's more acceptable to kill a man than a woman, so even men who are not a severe threat are more likely to be killed. In other words, a police officer who may hesitate to kill a woman will likely not hesitate to kill a man. The stats back this up.

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Submitted by el cid on Mon, 2014-09-01 15:54