The Fuzzy Logic Behind the Movement

“But this discrepancy makes perfect sense if we consider the tone of racial discourse in the United States for half a second.”

The murder of George Floyd by officer Derek Chauvin was horrific beyond description, and the lack of accountability on the part of police is a major issue in the United States. Yet, at the same time, the underlying anti-racist narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement is basically wrong. Both of these things can simultaneously be true without dissonance.

The Black Lives Matter’ narrative posits that entrenched anti-black racism explains the racial disparity in policing outcomes between blacks and other groups, as well as many other inequalities in outcome that we see in society. More broadly, the implicit biases of the white population that were developed to justify its vast privileges over minorities—and t0 assuage their guilt for historical racism—come together to form a structure of oppression that disproportionately harms non-whites. This view has been churned out by virtually every mainstream media outlet, major corporation, and social media platform since the recent protests began.

But the basic premise of Black Lives Matter is wrong: There really is not significant evidence of bias in police shootings when accounting for all relevant factors. And, my view is that if a core aspect of a given political or cultural narrative is untrue, the outcome will probably be bad.

According to The Washington Post’s database, in 2019, a total of 1,002 Americans were killed by police, 250 of whom were black. In terms of unarmed police killings of civilians the total is 55, 14 of whom were black, and 25 were white. (This is compared to the 89 police officers who were killed in the line of duty that year.) At first glance, the racial composition of these numbers is nowhere near as overwhelmingly tilted as prevailing beliefs would suggest. However, considering that black Americans comprise only 13.4% of the population, a black American is twice as likely to be killed by police than what would be expected in a world of equal outcomes—and is 2.5 times more likely than a white American to be killed by police.