A recent statistic making the press is that black men are 18 1/2 times more likely to shoot a cop than a cop is to shoot a black man.
My first response, which is not the first question one should ask, was that the 18 are not given a badge and being paid with tax money, sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law in their office. Nor have we elected their bosses. But the point is simply this: The nineteenth black guy is not a “black guy” under the U. S. constitution, but a citizen, and this is what people mean when they complain about “racial profiling.” He is the black cop on his way home from work, the black minister giving his life to help the city, the doctor who may well save one’s life, if not become director of housing one day.
No, the first question I should have asked is this: How many more times is a “white” guy likely to shoot a cop than to be shot by a cop. What? No Stats?
What affirmative action was trying to address was the systematic destruction of a people by the years of slavery- the breaking of the black families and the discouragement of education- followed by the effect of years of segregation and plain meanness that humans practice toward one another given the power to do so. That is not a racial thing, but a human thing. If affirmative action is not quite equality, and not quite constitutional, the question is what can we do to heal the wound of the lash that once drew and may again draw blood by the sword drop for drop. Indeed, the white guy too is not a “white guy,” but just an applicant. Indeed, to list people by race for the purposes of affirmative action was a horendous error, as will be demonstrated when the racists take office, if it has not already been demonstrated by what they have been allowed to do.
That ninteenth guy is he on whom the solution to our greatest domestic national problem depends. There are things the black minister can do that no one else can do, and black politician who recognizes that is our patriotic duty to avoid corruption. Government in geneal can provide equipment and secure the oppotunity to do, but cannot do it.
How many times more likely is a black man to be shot unjustly than a white man? How many more times likely is a cop to not be prosecuted when mudering a black man, or even genuinely accidentally shooting him? Did I overtax or burn out your stats function? How many times more likely are the mad to be shot than to shoot? How many times is a man moe likely to be punished for than listened to for telling the truth?
There are things too about this statistic that are difficult to say. How many more time is a black likely to encounter criminal police than is a white guy?
There are things accessible to common sense, not to mention intelligence, that defy statistical analysis, if only fo practical reasons- one cannot get good stats if they deny that murders are murders, and deny that injustice is injustice in any paticula matter.
Black
And Blue
God only knows its not what
We would choose
To do.
-Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
mmcdonald77 