I think there is more to it than that.... Death is the ultimate bad outcome, but the targeting of blacks is definitely a problem with any crime. How much more frequently are they patted down by police? Pulled over? How much more are the police even involved in something because they were called to the scene because the presence of a black person? Like the lady in the park who called the cops on the bird watcher because she was scared of a black person.
That last one isn't the cops fault, but cops are called out to respond to white people being scared of black people fairly regularly. Stuff you and I do all the time can result in a call to the cops, such as:
- Bird watching in a park
- Sitting in a Starbucks
- Selling water for a trip to Disneyland
- Mowing lawns (a white neighbor saw some black kids mowing grass, which was their summer lawn business, and called the cops)
- Entering your own apartment (white neighbors stopped the owner of an apartment from entering his own apartment unless he could prove he lived there. When he had the key, they called the cops and reported a breakin)
- Taking a nap (a Yale University black student was taking a nap in a common area, and they tried to make her prove she was a Yale Student, and the cops were called)
Again, in these cases the police did the right thing (as far as I know), and in some of these cases people donated money to make it right (if you can call it that)... but the point is black peoples interaction with police is likely much higher than yours and mine. Nobody calls the cops on me for mowing grass or trying to come home, or walking around, etc...
This kind of stuff happens all the time.
You may not call those problems "systemic", but when this is how you have to live your life, I think you need to show more empathy to the black experience as a whole.... Your pointing to certain stats and saying "see, the cops arrested tons of black people but didn't kill that many statistically".... That is not the only problem.
Police brutality is not exclusively murder, and is not the only part of systemic racism... Blacks tend to receive longer jail sentences, be sentenced to jail more frequently, stopped by police more often, have the police called on them more often, etc. Black men are 5% of the population and about 35% of the prison population. 1 in 3 black men will spend some time in jail, etc.
And all of those things contribute to the cycle... Black people have a harder time finding great employment than white people do, black communities tend to be poor, with bad schooling, etc... Once you've had interaction with the criminal justice system, your life becomes significantly more difficult, etc.
I mean, we could go on forever with this... but I think your focus on this too narrow. Again, death is the worst outcome, but the death of innocent/unarmed black men makes everything else boil over... So the protests come after a death, but there are a lot of other issues.
