What TyGuy posted is not a "flaw" in the article. He is projecting his own assumptions...assuming that the 2X rate in blacks being shot must somehow be their fault.
Actually, he's not assuming that. He's raising it as a
possibility. You're the one assuming that it is not possible. Ask yourself this: do you think white people and black people (speaking generally/statistically, not about individuals) view police the same? And if they
don't view police the same, isn't there at least a
possibility that viewing police differently
may lead to people treating/reacting to police differently?
The
potential issue here is kind of a chicken/egg thing. If some black people are anti-police, they are may be less likely to cooperate with police and/or more likely to resist arrest. And the more who get in physical confrontations with cops because they're resisting arrest, the more other black people will believe that cops are more violent towards black people, so the problem may feed on itself. And it is entirely possible that the problem started because police really
did/do treat black people worse. But the reaction to that becomes self-reinforcing even
if the cops do clean up their act.
I am not saying that is happening. But if you are going to look at stats that say "black people are more likely to be arrested for resisting arrest", and conclude from that police treat black people differently from white people because of their race, then it is up to you to
disprove the possibility that there may be a different reason for that discrepancy.
It is also possible that unless the "resisting" charges are controlled for income, that the reality is that the poor are more likely to be arrested for resisting, and part of the reason blacks are arrested disproportionately is because they are disproportionately poor.
Again, I'm not saying that is the case. I don't know. I'm simply saying that if you're going to draw a conclusion from statistics, you have to control for other variables.
