God bless America.

I’m going to say, yes.

Self deprecating, sarcastic, humour, in bad taste.

Care to share your opinions Yeti rather than just a link?

It’s clearly an attempt at humour with the aim of putting her at ease, but it’s hideously offensive in my opinion.

I’d love to know how the officer would have approached the driver if they were black? My guess is he wouldn’t have been so friendly.

Self deprecating, sarcastic, humour, in bad taste.

^This.

If anything it draws attention to the disproportionate amount of black people being killed by cops. And if one white cop uses that stick to beat himself/his colleagues with, however misguided at the time, I think it’s better than sweeping it under the carpet.

We’re it to be a black person in the car? Who can say, but I can only hope he would have dealt with it in a similar fashion (try to put the person at ease with a little (but different) humour.

Cue multiple pages of frothing…

tomhoward – Member

If anything it draws attention to the disproportionate amount of black people being killed by cops.

It’s not disproportionate though. Far more white men are shot and killed by police than black men, and the number of black men shot and killed by police is proportional to the amount of black men involved in crime.

The cop is obviously making a sarcastic comment about the skewed media portrayal of the facts. Incredibly bad timing and taste to make such a joke.

Christ, not everything is racist, he was trying to put the driver at ease with perhaps some misguided humour, but then what I find funny and what you find funny are two different things.

If anything, he was being self deprecating to the way people see the police in america at the moment.

It’s crap like this that stop the aliens visiting

Stupid joke to make.

the proportion of black men shot and killed by police is proportional to the amount of black men involved in crime.

compared to the number of white crims killed by white cops? Are more black guys stopped in the first place, and those situations then escalate?

I’ve been pulled over by the US Cops.

When you see them walk towards you with a hand on their gun holster it’s blood scary.

As much as this is a discussion on race issues… the underline fact that people are scared of their police force should also be a major talking point.

It’s not disproportionate though. Far more white men are shot and killed by police than black men, and the number of black men shot and killed by police is proportional to the amount of black men involved in crime.

Data?

Official data on the number of people killed by the police turns out to be remarkably unreliable.

“We can’t have an informed discussion, because we don’t have data,” FBI Director James Comey said in the House of Representatives in October.

“People have data about who went to a movie last weekend, or how many books were sold, or how many cases of the flu walked into an emergency room. And I cannot tell you how many people were shot by police in the United States last month, last year, or anything about the demographics. And that’s a very bad place to be.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36826297

Take your time Jimjam

No access to google? Anyway, according to Snopes, and the Washington Post 1388 Americans were fatally shot by police in 2015. 318 were black and 560 of them were white. In 2016 1034 Americans were fatally shot 215 were black, 338 were white.

More white men are shot, but according to the Washington Post black men are proportionally 2.5 times more likely to be shot as a percentage of their population.

According to the Guardian black men in America are five times more likely to be jailed than white men. According to The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People black men represent 43.4% of the prison population in America despite only representing 13% of the overall population.

According to a link on Channel4.com/news citing statistics from the bureau of Justice black men were responsible for 52% of all homicides between 1980 and 2008 which is a disproportionate number of murders given their percentage of the population. According to FBI arrest rates between 2011 to 2013 – 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.

I’m not great with numbers but it looks like a disproportionate number of crimes, and especially violent crimes are committed by black men in America. Obviously there must be socio-economic reasons why this is the case, it’s safe to assume black people live in more socially deprived areas, there will be higher levels of criminality in those areas and there will be more interactions with police as a result. But it doesn’t help matters to just say the police shoot more black people than white people.

It’s a far more complicated issue than simply cops = racists, but everyone wants to feel as though they have quick and easy answers to all questions.

Self deprecating, sarcastic, humour, in bad taste.

Americans, especially cops, do not do self deprication or sarcasm so probably not unreasonable to think the worst.

It’s a far more complicated issue than simply cops = racists, but everyone wants to feel as though they have quick and easy answers to all questions.

The Gini coeffecient has an insight here. According to research, the bigger the gap between rich and poor (which is what the Gini Coeffecient measures) the more violent that society becomes. It doesn’t matter how rich the richest are, only what the gap is between them and the poorest.

Being economically deprived in a country where you have some of the richest people in the world and very easy access to guns is going to result in the economically deprived being violent in general.

geetee1972 – Member

The Gini coeffecient has an insight here. According to research, the bigger the gap between rich and poor (which is what the Gini Coeffecient measures) the more violent that society becomes. It doesn’t matter how rich the richest are, only what the gap is between them and the poorest.

Yes, young men are going to strive to attain the things that society has deemed are valuable or important and if they can’t see a path to attain those legally they’ll try to get them illegally.

The bigger the disparity the further away the shiny baubles will seem. It’s probably not helped by hip hop artists and rappers fetishisizing money, jewellery and cars seemingly above all else.

Doesn’t excuse murder and violent crime either though.

jimjam, you account for 878 of 1388 deaths in 2015 and 553 of 1034 in 2016. Were the rest women, Hispanic, native American, Asian? The latter 3 classifications would also be non-white and would imply that the original assertion is partially correct. More people of colour are killed by the American police than whites.

Italics edit for logical clarity (for me and hopefully you).

Thats nice Jimjam but it doesnt prove

Far more white men are shot and killed by police than black men

Far less actually according to wiki 61ish% are white and 13ish% black. In both years you quote the number of blacks shot is much more than 50% of the number of whites shot. So this statement is clearly innaccurate from the numbers you quote.

Why are you arguing about this? It’s well established the the absolute number of white men killed is higher than blacks – not even Channel 4 disputes that.

Is this racist?

No. … 😆

gobuchul – Member

tomhoward – Member
Self deprecating, sarcastic, humour, in bad taste.

^This. [/quote]
^^This.

anagallis_arvensis – Member

Thats nice Jimjam but it doesnt prove

Far more white men are shot and killed by police than black men

I don’t think it’s a gross exaggeration to say 560 is far more than 318. Or that 338 is far more than 215, especially in the context of numbers of people killed. 242 people is a lot of dead people.

Americans, especially cops, do not do self deprication or sarcasm so probably not unreasonable to think the worst.

Sweeping generalisation is sweeping shocker.

I don’t think it’s a gross exaggeration to say 560 is far more than 318. Or that 338 is far more than 215, especially in the context of numbers of people killed. 242 people is a lot of dead people.

Yes but if there are a lot more white people than black people then there are more to go at aren’t there

Is there a number of killings per 100k of a particular group stat?

I don’t think it’s a gross exaggeration to say 560 is far more than 318.

Fair enough but I do especially when you consider the population sizes.

From the guardian…

Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.

American police do not often do humour when on patrol. Might be something to do with the fact they could be shot at by anyone and this makes them nervous.

I think its a poor attempt at humour to calm a drunk driver down and nothing more.

We have a training session on how to deal with the cops for travelers to the USA. It goes along the lines of do not argue, give them everything they want, once the event is over call the company lawyers for advice. Mind you for one of the locations we travel to there are a load of meth houses and the advice is to not stop when it is dark and to run down people blocking the road if they don’t move…