It fits a narrative. It helps the democrats divide people into groups.
It just amazes me how many people fall for this narrative, even very intelligent people. I had a discussion with several co-workers (one lawyer, the other a data analyst) who literally thought that the overwhelming majority of people killed by policy were African American.
Yes, it's factually correct that more white people are killed by the police in the United States, but that's a dubious statistic unless you first adjust for population.
If you adjust for population first, black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.
Uh, I discussed this in detail in my original post. The stats I linked to indicate that they are 85% more likely to be killed by police than their portion of the population (not 150% as you say).
Also there are confounding circumstances as I discussed, African American communities have far higher rates of crime and violence (over 50% of all homicides are committed by African Americans) on average so you would expect more African Americans to be killed by police if only for that reason.
Also I acknowledge that there may be historical/cultural reasons (economic/physical oppression and resultant cultural pathologies) for the high rate of violence/crime in AA communities.
Just as a mathematical note, if the black share of police shootings is 85% higher than their population share and the white share is something like 20% lower than their population share, it means black people are about 2.5 times more likely to get shot than white people.
