There are a lot of complications when discussing race. Among these complications is that it's difficult to establish if race is a factor in various incidents. Personally, I think liberals are a little too quick to assume.
To an extent, I understand discussing proportions. Fewer black people are killed by police officers, but black people are disproportionately more likely to be killed. Unfortunately, this kind of discussion falls short of establishing cause. It's possible that racial bias is driving this issue, but it's also possible that this could be caused by black people disproportionately living in violent communities. As an individualist, I believe that the actions of each police officer is influenced by the unique traits of that officer. There absolutely can be common contributing factors, but I don't support baseless assumptions.
Whenever a white person is killed by police officers, race is never considered to be a contributing factor. Whenever a black person is killed by police officers, racism is treated as the sole factor. The simple reality is that skin color will never be sufficient to prove motive. If a black person dies at the hands of a police officer, that does not establish race as a factor.
Again, I'm open to discussions about proportions. I'm not open to people explicitly accusing someone of racism without any evidence to back the claim. We can certainly discuss the possibility that an officer is racist or systemic racism is an underlying factor, but we shouldn't say something is racist in absolute terms unless there is legitimate evidence that a white person would be treated better.
I should mention that I might be oversimplifying things a bit. If you so much as recognize differences in skin color, you are likely to develop some form of racial bias. This is human nature. Police officers are certainly not exempt. As I already stated, race is complicated. The extent that race is a factor can be quite variable, and there are a lot of factors that can overtake a specific form of bias. In other words, it's possible for a black supremacist to kill someone who is black. This is why even though race will likely influence these officers at an unconscious level, we shouldn't point to anti-black racism as a definitive cause.
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