^^^There is ample data available on racial disparities on traffic stops and disproportionate response by police at traffic stops and other interactions.
The first official source of traffic stop data I found this morning was for North Carolina.
https://trafficstops.ncsbi.gov/Default.aspx?pageid=2I grabbed the most recent year's worth of data and looked at it a bit.
Blacks make up about 27% of the population of North Carolina, and account for 36.2% of traffic stops, so definitely overrepresented.
By the same token, males make up 49% of the population and 62.6% of the traffic stops. Would you likewise, then, argue that this is clear evidence of systemic bias against males?
For that matter, 54.7% of female traffic stops resulted in a citation or arrest and 58.1% of male traffic stops ended in citation or arrest.
By comparison, 54.1% of stops involving black drivers resulted in a citation or arrest and 56.2% of stops of white drivers ended in citation or arrest.
They didn't break out their use of force by race.
If the only reason for statistical disparity is bias, it would appear that there is at least as strong a bias against men than against blacks. If we were to compare prison statistics, we'd find that men are imprisoned at a rate a full order of magnitude greater than women. Hard to be more clear cut than that, isn't it?
Now, some people might go so far as to argue that there could be more than one single factor driving that disparity. As I am not black, I could never suggest that in the United States black people as a demographic commit a disproportionate number of crimes, which could drive a greater number of police interactions both legitimately and because of that fact's influence on prejudice. However as a man I am in a position to admit that being male is - bar none - the most significant demographic indicator of serious criminality, and have to realize that men are more likely to commit traffic offenses, more likely to commit more serious offenses, and more likely to be manifesting other criminal behavior as well.
In addition, from the anecdotal point of view, I have been interested to hear my Black work colleagues and social friends talk about this in recent years. The majority of our Black work and social circle are like my wife and I: educated, work in a professional job and are affluent. As such, I would think that interactions with the police would be low on their list of concerns. This is not necessarily the case, especially in regards to their children who borrow the Audi for a Friday night date.
With respect, being concerned about something is not the same thing as that thing being worthy of concern. Today there is certainly a disproportionate amount of media coverage for police abuse of blacks which I would think would drive concern in much the same way that media hysteria drives overblown concern about other things. Which is not to say that their concern is totally based in hysteria, but I do believe it plays into it. A cop friend once pulled in behind the vehicle of a neighbor of mine that was parked on the street late at night. The driver was a beautiful young black woman who regularly came over to my house with her niece to play with my kids. As soon as he approached her car this lady started screaming at him that she hadn't done anything wrong and calling him a racist and so forth. He explained that he saw someone hunched over their steering wheel and had simply stopped to check to make sure everything was okay, and that given that it was well past midnight and dark, he had no idea what her race was prior to approaching the vehicle. On one hand, this kind of confrontational interaction is driven by the historical reality of racist behavior by police, but it is definitely amplified and kept going by black parents who tell their kids that they should fear and hate police.
I have heard many stories about 'driving while black' and negative experience with the police. It has been an eye-opener for me because I have not been exposed to those same experiences.
As a youth I was subjected to what I believe are inappropriate stops. This was especially true when driving late at night. I remember several times being pulled over for "weaving within the lane" - something I was not doing and something that is not in violation of a traffic law anyway. I suppose I should have attributed those stops to my race and if my parents taught me that I was going to be wrongly stopped because of my race then I probably would have.
Is there racism within the 18,000 police forces in the USA? No doubt.
Of course. The point has never been whether or not there are individual racist cops, but whether cops are as a whole racist. You made the claim that your race protects you during a traffic stop. That implies that you believe that racism plays a significant role in how police generally handle lethal force.
I don't appreciate being thought of as racist simply because I am an older white male, but I can see how some people, due to their experiences or other knowledge, come to that conclusion.
Do you defend all racial prejudice as long as it is based on subjective experiences or knowledge? Or is only some racial prejudice okay?