Why “Black Lives Matter?”
As I have grown older, issues of race have become increasingly important to me. Growing up I wanted nothing more than to be able to simplify America’s race problems, but the more I educated myself, the more I realized that race is a foundational issue in America. Issues of race cannot be ignored, cannot be simplified, and certainly cannot be solved easily.
These past weeks especially have brought issues of race into sharp focus for me. I see many people proudly saying Black Lives Matter. I also see people that wince at those words. They say things like “it’s not only Black lives that matter, all lives matter,” and “why must it only be injustice against Black people; why can’t we fight all kinds of injustice” honestly and earnestly. I want to address these people directly.
I believe you value every person’s life; I also believe there are fundamental things about the Black experience you may not understand. I reach out to you in good faith, seeking to examine police violence with you, through the eyes of a young Black man.
I would often call my fiancée late in the evening, just to chat. I didn’t want my roommates to eavesdrop on these intimate conversations, so I stepped outside to speak privately with someone I love. What is there to fear in this situation? I immediately worried about the police. What if someone sees me from their window and calls the cops because I “look suspicious”? What if that cop sees my hand in my pocket and assumes the worst?
It may seem irrational to fear something as uncommon as police violence. Very few people are killed by police officers. There are so many reasons you might expect me to not experience these fears. Maybe you might expect me to have the presence of mind to cooperate, thus avoiding an altercation, or that because these issues are associated with poverty, and I am not impoverished, that I wouldn’t likely come close to a situation like this. But statistics substantiate this fear endemic to the Black community.
According to a data set built with FBI data and maintained by the Washington Post [1], since 2015 police officers have killed 3,169 suspects armed with guns, 772 of whom were black. This number is 74% higher than the proportion of blacks in our country. One might dismiss this with “but maybe more blacks carry guns.” But it’s impossible to dismiss this: since 2015 police officers have killed 356 unarmed people, 125 of whom were black. This number is 150% higher than it should be, meaning the disparity in unarmed suspects is worse than the disparity for armed suspects[b].
A simpler way to put it is this. In 2019, black people were 3.19 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. In 2020, as of August when I am writing this, that number is 2.64. This number is slightly different for every state, but one of the worst is the state I live in. In Utah, in 2019, Black people were 20 times more likely to be killed by the police than white people.
Black people are disproportionately affected by police violence: not only are we being killed more, we are being killed much more, especially when we are unarmed. This frightens me.
We might be inclined to think that these statistics may be an artifact of issues that America has with minorities or the impoverished generally. They are not. The same analysis for Hispanics shows armed suspects are killed 20% less than expected, and unarmed 2% less. This was shocking to me because so many of the institutional problems we associate with the Black community are also issues in the Hispanic community. But it isn’t about poverty [6,c], it’s about race. This issue is unique to the Black community.
These statistics combined, with well reported cases that sparked Black Lives Matter protests, might help you get a better picture of where the fear comes from. Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed by a father and son enacting what was, in the very best light, unrestrained vigilante violence [2]. In 2019 Atatiana Jefferson, was shot in her own home after the police were called for a non-emergency check. Her door was ajar and a concerned neighbor wanted to be sure that she was safe, instead she was killed by an officer [3]. And Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot seconds after seeing the police officer that killed him, apparently had his hands in his pockets [4].
Police violence is unusual, but it doesn’t feel unusual to me. Unjustified police violence is random and unpredictable, bringing deep terror upon the Black community. Where you might see police killings and lament the failing of some individual officer, we see yet another innocent brother or sister killed for no other reason than their being Black.
Imagine that your neighborhood is especially prone to break-ins. They don’t happen extremely often, but much more often than in any other neighborhood in your city. Now consider what it would be like if you couldn’t move to a different part of town, you couldn’t lock your doors, and the people robbing your neighborhood were police officers.
While this analogy has flaws, it captures how trapped, anxious, and helpless police shootings make me feel. I need to fight against this terror. I need to let people know what I’m feeling. I need to hope for a better future. When I say Black Lives Matter, I am trying to feel hope that Black people can be safe. When I say Black Lives Matter, I am trying to force this country to change. When I say Black Lives Matter, I am asking people to see my despair and reach out.
When someone responds with “all lives matter,” it rejects my pleadings and dismisses my fears. Black Lives Matter has always been about the Black experience; how we experience America differently from white people. This is why we say Black Lives Matter and why we unite in shining a light on police violence.
In the year 1852 Frederick Douglass was asked to address the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society at a meeting on July 5th. One passage in that speech strikes me especially strongly, and I think it captures some of what I’m trying to say.
The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. [5]
This inequality is still felt today, it is why we say Black Lives Matter, it is why we kneel in mourning at the anthem. I ask you, look at our distress with new eyes, see at least a fraction of our experience, and join together in commitment to make Black Lives Matter.
References
Photo Credit: Me
[1] The Washington Post Police Shooting data. The Washington Post, May 2020. https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings
[2] Shah, Khushbu. “Ahmaud Arbery: anger mounts over killing of black jogger caught on video.” The Guardian, May 06, 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/06/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georgia
[3] BBC News. “Woman Shot Dead by Texas Police through Bedroom Window.” BBC News, BBC, 13 Oct. 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50032290
[4] The Associated Press. “Expert: Video Shows Tamir Rice Had Hands in Pockets When Shot.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 5 Dec. 2015https://www.cbsnews.com/news/expert-video-shows-tamir-rice-had-hands-in-pockets-when-shot/
[5] Douglass, Fredrick. “What to the Slave if the Fourth of July?” July 5, 1852. https://masshumanities.org/files/programs/douglass/speech_abridged_med.pdf
Footnotes
[a] The way that I am measuring disparity is by using a percent error calculation. Based on demographic composition we would expect a certain proportion of the people killed by police to be Black. This method rides on the assumption that in a truly equal society no one group will be disproportionately affected by police violence.
[b] This disparity is even worse for the state that I currently call home, Utah. According to my analysis, Black people are killed at a rate 733.33% more than they should be. This compared to about 40% more in Hispanic.
[c] Blacks and Hispanics experience very similar amounts of poverty. According to the census bureau the poverty rate for Hispanics is 17.6% and the poverty rate for Blacks is 20.8%. These similar poverty rates really accentuate the difference in murder victimization by police.
