It's race, but it's more than race

A young man walking down the street scuffles with a police officer. The young man is shot dead. The police officer is white, the victim is black. It turns out the victim is unarmed.

Someone calls the police and says there is a young man playing with what is probably a toy gun in a park. The police arrive and within seconds the young man (a boy, really), is shot dead. The police officer is white, the victim is black. The victim is armed only with a toy.

A young man is pulled over. When asked for identification he turns and reaches into his car. The young man is shot. The police officer is white, the victim is black. The victim is unarmed.

A man is stopped and questioned by the police on the street. He is wrestled to the ground in a chokehold, and dies. The police officer is white, the victim in black. The victim is unarmed.

A man is questioned by police for suspicious behavior. He runs, the police officer catches up, they scuffle. The man is shot and killed. The police officer is white, the victim is black. The victim is unarmed.

I am sure that if I looked I could find dozens of other examples from this year, which all follow the same basic blueprint: there is a white police officer, there is a black man, the black man commits no violent offense but ends up dead nonetheless.

In 2011 in the United States, there were 404 deaths at the hands of the police. In Germany and England and Wales and Australia combined there were fourteen deaths at the hand of the police. Those countries combined have roughly half the population of the United States. We had twenty-eight times more deaths by police.

So there is a problem in America; a big, ugly, awful problem. Like any problem it can't be solved without knowing the reason.

It's not guns. The US has about 88 guns per 100 people; Switzerland has about 45. I can't find any information on police shootings, fatal or otherwise, in Switzerland, which makes me think it's not a problem there, though their police are routinely armed.

It's not population. The Albuquerque Police Department fatally shot and 23 individuals between 2010 and 2014, while in the same time period there were less than three fatal police encounters in all of England and Wales.

The argument that it is race is certainly compelling, looking at cases that get public attention, but actual statistics are hard to come by. There are, however, countless studies that support the idea that this is a racial problem. It's not even worth debating that racism is still deeply and profoundly ingrained in American culture.

But to say it's a race problem feels, to me, as if it is still missing the point, because the problem isn't race. We, as Americans, cannot allow this to be a race problem, because that by definition makes it a bigger problem for one slice of society than for the rest.

On some levels it is, of course. I'm a 28 year old woman. When I walk down the street in America, I do not fear that the police will unduly hassle me, because I am white and I am female and therefore I am not seen as a threat. I'm not saying that if I waved a gun - real and operational, or otherwise - in front of a police officer I wouldn't get shot. But I would have to demonstrate something like a threat in order to face that risk. My existence, my presence in a public space, is not read as a threat (and that, in case you are wondering, is a textbook example of the oft-discussed and oft-questioned 'privilege').

On other levels, it shouldn't be. I should not be safer from the police for any reason other than 'not being a criminal', because people who are actively demonstrating not just criminal but potentially lethal activities should have reason to fear for their lives at the hand of the police. If there is not a reasonable cause to believe that I am trying to kill or maim someone else, there's no reason I should have any concern whatsoever that the police will hurt me.

It's not a race issue, it's a police issue. It's an all of us issue.

It's rapidly turning our society into an us-vs-them situation, where us is citizens, law-abiding or otherwise, and the them is the police.

The police exist for one reason, and one reason only: to protect the population. They are not here to uphold any sort of agenda other than the laws as decided by the judiciary and the legislature. Needless to say, this process should be blind to all but one issue, and that is whether you are committing a crime. Even then, if the police see you stuffing packets of Oreos into your pants at 7-11, or think you were selling something you shouldn't have been, or  doing any number of a million crimes that do not in any immediate threats to anyone else's life, they should not be using lethal force. No one is being saved by that lethal intervention; they're just taking away.

No one should be afraid of the police. That's literally the opposite. The police should be a reassuring presence. They should make me and you and everyone else feel safe, but increasingly, they do the opposite. When the police become a force to be opposed on principle, your society has real, big, serious problems.