Police Shootings Reflect Structural Racism
The Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State Level (In press)
The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and other unarmed Black victims at the hands of police sparked a national conversation about racism and policing, from the Black Lives Matter movement to kneeling NFL players. Critics of these protests have attributed police shootings to “bad apples” within police departments, or argued more Black victims die at the hands of police because higher rates of violent crime in Black communities lead to more interactions with police.
But a new study led by School of Public Health researchers finds states with a greater degree of structural racism, particularly residential segregation, have higher racial disparities in fatal police shootings of unarmed victims.
Published in the Journal of the National Medical Association, this is the first study to examine the relationship between structural racism and racial disparities in fatal police shootings at the state level. Even controlling for rates of arrest, the researchers found a strong association between the racial disparity in unarmed fatal police shootings and a range of structural racism indicators, with residential segregation showing the most pronounced association.
"The problem of police killings of unarmed Black victims should not be viewed merely as a problem of flawed action on the part of individual police officers, but more as a consequence of the broader problem of structural racism," says senior author Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences. "Unjustified homicide by police should be added to the long list of the public health consequences of societal racism."
The Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State Level (In press)
Objective
The objective of this study was to discern the relationship between state-level structural racism and Black-White disparities in police shootings of victims not known to be armed.
Methods
Using a Poisson regression, we evaluated the effect of structural racism on differences between states in Black-White disparities in fatal police shootings involving victims not known to be armed during the period from January 1, 2013 through June 30, 2017. We created a state racism index, which was comprised of five dimensions: (1) residential segregation; and gaps in (2) incarceration rates; (3) educational attainment; (4) economic indicators; and (5) employment status.
Results
After controlling for numerous state-level factors and for the underlying rate of fatal shootings of black victims in each state, the state racism index was a significant predictor of the Black-White disparity in police shooting rates of victims not known to be armed (incidence rate ratio: 1.24; 95% confidence interval, 1.02-1.50). For every 10-point increase in the state racism index, the Black-White disparity ratio of police shooting rates of people not known to be armed increased by 24%.
Conclusion
These findings suggest that structural racism is an important predictor of the Black-White disparity in rates of police shootings of unarmed victims across states.
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