Responses to Reviewers ("On Race, Cops, Fake News, and the True Inconvenient Truth: An Anti-Racist Manifesto")

John F. Gaski
Mendoza College of Business
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Author's note: The author especially thanks IJCR editors Tola Olu Pearce and Richard Hessler. 

Reply to the First Reviewer 

Introductory Details 

The first point of possible contention is the first reviewer’s reference to America’s “1619” founding, a claim that has been discredited by professional historians (e.g., Bynum et al. 2019) in response to the well-known “1619 Project” (Hannah-Jones 2019).  Rather than elaborate on those well-established differences, I offer my own contrarian contribution to the controversy: 

 Condemning our nation for things that happened a century and a half before its formal, legal founding is like blaming today’s American Indians for the slavery and mass murder committed by their indigenous ancestors during the same era—or 10,000 years earlier.  Or is the 1619 Project merely using a generic “American” designation, meaning North American settlers rather than a constituted nation?  No, the project explicitly assigns the 1619 establishment date to the United States of America. 

Let us also note, in fairness, that black African slavery was imposed on our patch of North American geography from the outside (in 1619 or whenever) by those who engaged in the slave trade.  The slave buyers were white Europeans, and the sellers were black Africans.  A radical idea:  Hold both groups culpable. 

When the U.S. was formally founded in 1787 (or 1776), the existence of slavery in the territory was a given fact.  Eradication of the institution of slavery in 1863 took either 87 years (“four score and seven”) or 76 years, depending on when the national founding is explicitly placed, but that is practically overnight in the context of the full sweep of history.  Of course, those who suffered in the chains of slavery during the interim would take issue with “overnight.” 

 One other objective condition contesting the 1619 interpretation:  The U.S. is perhaps the only nation based on ideas or a philosophy, not geography or ethnicity.  That status renders it even less legitimate to assert commonality between the nation and slavery because of coincidental post-1619 geography.  Nevertheless, I salute my fellow Notre Dame alum, Nikole Hannah-Jones, for her Pulitzer Prize, even if gained, in part, through false reporting. 

On state-sponsored violence against black Americans, allegedly disproportionate, indeed all we need are the unadorned facts, whether peer-reviewed or not—starting with the reviewer’s reported 164 cases of blacks killed by police during part of 2020 as if it reveals “racial disparity in law enforcement.”  We do need more than one isolated number, however, as in 164 compared to what, and in what circumstances?  If anyone still does not know the basic facts following the eruption of law enforcement statistics in the George Floyd aftermath, here is a primer from mainstream sources (actually an addendum to my original): 

There ultimately were 241 blacks killed by U.S. police (by shooting) in Y2020, 23.6% of that year’s overall total (Table 1).  White fatal victims of police, though, numbered 457 or 44.8%.  So, although black victims of fatal police shooting exceed their share of the U.S. population, they are disproportionately low in number relative to share of police encounters.  Vice versa for whites.  The originally cited reality also remains that black officers are more likely than whites to fatally fell black suspects or offenders (Johnson et al. 2019; MacDonald 2020). 

This information does not comport with the cherished, politically correct narrative, but truth is a good starting point for enlightenment.  In this case, it also derails a false narrative.  The reported numbers essentially reinforce those of my original paper, so the reviewer’s position was actually pre-rebutted.  Her/his application of the word “murder” is especially misplaced because nearly all fatal police victims are those attempting to use deadly force against the police—by definition and by rule.  This empirical generalization is supported by the ultra-low number of unarmed police victims (about 40 fatalities per year, typically, in the U.S.), per the well-known Washington Post (2020) reporting, i.e., 20 white, 10 black, 10 other, etc. 

Another mis-statement is the equation of “civil rights protests” with the 500-plus riots during the summer of 2020—events that claimed at least 25 fatalities.  As a critic, I have no problem acknowledging that an element of those protests was peaceful.  Why is it so difficult for the other camp to admit the obvious violent riot component?  I hope the reviewer now recognizes that the BLM organization is not only violent, racist, communist, and anti-American, but also a major financial con-job and scam.  Yes, anti-American because violent protests (vs. peaceful assembly), as seen during the 2020 summer, are contrary to the Constitution. 

Specifics

On “Police and Controlling Blacks.” 

While the Southern slave patrols did pre-date the formal establishment of modern policing in the United States in the 1830s (more recently than most realize), there is little connection between the two.  The primary motivator for creation of municipal police forces in this country was mass urbanization and its precipitated crime problems.  In fact, the main targets of any police suppression during the 19th and early 20th Centuries in America were Irish, Italian, and East European (qua Catholic) immigrants, with protection of black citizens from white gang violence one corollary focus (Potter 2013; Waxman 2017). 

To smear the institution of American policing as merely an outgrowth of a particular slavery practice that long preceded the nation’s actual founding is unfair and unjustified.  Use of indefinite supporting tropes such as “Scholars have . . . argued” and “Historians argue” can be seen as weak rhetorical devices that sometimes violate the reviewer’s own standards. 

On “Weaponization of Qualified Immunity.” 

This section targets police accountability generally, whether resulting from qualified legal immunity or otherwise.  First, selectively on the desultory points offered by the commentator: 

“Voluminous” violent misconduct by police?  Even if every allegation were valid, in view of literally hundreds of millions of police encounters with criminals and suspects every year, I again suggest that the United States has achieved something close to the minimal residual misconduct one could expect from the police function in a country as large and complex as ours.  In fact, the exceptions tend to occur in the liberal-Democrat-run major cities, such as ones cited here, consistent with my hypothesis that the American left is sabotaging the black population’s welfare by design. 

Ironically, the latest crime statistics reveal the mortal harm done to the U.S. black population by the recent campaign to defund and demonize the police.  For Y2020, the number of black American homicide victims increased by 32% (with most perpetrators other blacks), from 7,484 to 9,941, compared to 21% for whites, in large measure because police have become reluctant to risk prosecution by patrolling black neighborhoods (Colton 2022).  Eliminate qualified immunity for the cops and see their numbers and activity plummet even more, as black fatalities rise along with a national slouch toward complete anarchy.  Let us not ignore the trade-off aspect of this police and crime issue.  Stop “stop and frisk” and witness more black fatalities.  Restrict policing of black neighborhoods, and innocent blacks will pay the ultimate price.  Which is the lesser evil to choose?  Which policy is really the racist one?  Any remaining KKK members, if any exist, would be rooting for this reviewer’s choice, ironically. 

Finally, the author not only undermines her/his case but forfeits the debating point outright by the bald assertion and assumption of “racial dominance and social control” motives on the part of the Minneapolis cop who was found to have murdered George Floyd.  Ducking my own question (not assertion) in this way violates forensic debate protocol. 

On “Myth of Black Criminality.” 

To some extent, this reviewer criticizes things I did not say.  I do not assert that blacks commit most of the crime in the U.S., because they do not.  Government data confirm, however, that blacks commit a majority, not just a disproportion, of our most serious violent crime: 56% of homicides in 2019 (FBI 2021).  I did say that, among the various demographic groups, young black males commit “the most crime in this country,” which is very different.  In other words, it means that young black males commit a plurality of U.S. crime, i.e., comparatively more than any other demographic.  And because 85-90% of interracial black/white violent crime is committed by blacks against whites, as cited in my original, we certainly do not have an epidemic of white-on-black violence.  (It is not disputed that there is even more black-on-black violent crime.) 

After citing some objective statistics showing that the overall black crime rate, violent and otherwise, is double the population share, the reviewer subjectively attributes that disparity to the “root cause” of law enforcement decisions.  Ignored are a different set of well-known root cause nominees: poor education (in turn caused by deficient public schools), addictive drug use, and a 75-80% illegitimacy rate which creates instant poverty families.  This three-piece set of imposts could be termed the Unholy Trinity of the modern progressive lifestyle—which again is why I have suggested intentionality on the part of that political faction.  They believe they need a dysfunctional underclass as a reservoir of votes.  So I, too, am alleging a form of systemic racism! 

On “Legacy of Slavery.” 

Only a few selected disagreements are offered here. 

• If Americans have not been taught about slavery, Reconstruction, lynching, and apartheid, it would be largely the fault of government schools and the teachers unions—just to identify this author’s real targets.  But then how could such wall-to-wall consciousness of America’s racial past have come about?  How could these topics have become such an obsessive national discussion?  It appears, therefore, that the Stevenson quote in the essay is just wrong about this bald assertion. 
• We can agree, in a way, that “white suspects are treated qualitatively differently than blacks.”  This author offers but one supporting anecdote, though, in opposition to hard data that whites, not blacks, are more likely to die at the hands of police—not only in absolute numbers but relative to police encounters (CDC 2020; Cesario, Johnson, and Terrill 2019, p. 588; MacDonald 2019). 
• The mention of the Breonna Taylor case is beneficial because the public information environment needs an antidote for the poisonous disinformation that has been propagated.  I am prepared to believe that Taylor and her boyfriend thought they were being invaded by a hostile criminal acquaintance.  So, it remains understandable for the male to have opened fire on the intruders.  Likewise, when the Louisville police entered the Taylor apartment they were immediately fired upon, with one officer hit, so they naturally returned fire―which proved fatal to Taylor.  Thus, regarding the gunplay, neither side did much, if anything, wrong!  The incident was just one of those tragedies precipitated by a confluence of fateful circumstances. 

The one tactical mistake, which set everything in motion, was on the part of the cops, i.e., a misguided search warrant.  So, there is tangential blame, but not for a racist or even racial incident.  Every “officer-involved shooting” or law enforcement episode involving a black criminal suspect need not be grounds for civil rights controversy—but that is what racial demagogues do for a living.  I thank the first reviewer for the opportunity to counter-balance pejoratives such as “black women . . . are met with weapons drawn while asleep in their own home.”  The Elijah McClain tragedy, however, does appear an outrage from this vantage point, too—making it one of those rare unjust cases still found in this country. 

• It is not unusual to see complaints about the high U.S. prison population, or vice versa.  In light of the out-of-control street crime afflicting virtually every major American city, is it not obvious that many more criminals belong in prison? 
• The Lancet medical journal reference (attributed to lead authors Sharara and Wool) first reprises the “3.5 times” disproportionate rate of fatal police violence for blacks, which was addressed in my paper.  Disproportionate relative to the general population, that is, but disproportionately low relative to the population police encounter on the job.  But are those disproportional police/black encounters themselves discriminatory?  Not necessarily; they could be regarded as artifactual.  High-crime areas do, and should, receive greater police attention.  Again, black citizens tend to become crime victims when police avoid high-crime neighborhoods. 

Another detail to note about that prodigious reference (technically identified as “GBD 2021” because of 94 co-authors for the Global Burden of Diseases project) is that its text is visibly political, tendentious, and hostile—very rare for a medical academic journal other than the Lancet, which sometimes shares those attributes.  Substantively, the 17,000 (claimed) under-reported police-encounter deaths between 1980 and 2019 amount to about 400 per year, so the discrepancies between rival totals do not produce much change in the inter-racial proportions that have been our focus.  For example, GBD finds black deaths under-reported by 59.5%, but a 56.1% under-report rate for whites (pp. 1243, 1247). 

GBD uses, without correction, databases that include all police action-associated deaths, including police and civilians killed by criminal perpetrators No wonder the authors can allege undercount by others.  Not to be overlooked either is that the GBD study relies entirely on its own retrospective estimates based partly on creative interpretation and assumptions, as opposed to Federal government statistics. 

For some reason, the GBD project compares with one data source, the USA National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), and not the official Department of Justice data.  The most extreme finding of all is not even highlighted by GBD or the reviewer:  95.6% of police-“caused” deaths are male, only 4.4% female.  Clearly, this reveals an extraordinary anti-male sexist bias in U.S. police work—at least by the standards of GBD! 

• Finally, The use of individual anecdotes is not effective.  Because this is a debate of sorts, I must point out that for every instance of an unarmed black victim of mortal police action in the U.S., there is a much larger number of police killed by black criminals.  Sorry to have to report that omnibus summary. 

On “(Un)constitutional Race-Based Policing.” 

The reviewer self-rebuts much of her/his presentation with the “world watched in horror” introductory line about the George Floyd incident.  The American public and its institutions were especially traumatized, and constituted a big part of the horrified masses.  That reaction is not characteristic of a racist nation, as the reviewer alleges of the U.S.  Of course, as reported in my original, the United States is one of the world’s least racist countries per international survey by the renowned Pew organization. 

Yes, by all means, let us compare the national hysteria over the January 6 near-riot at the Capitol with the blasé disinterest, especially by the national media, in over 500 genuine riots during Y2020’s “summer of love.” The reviewer and I may actually agree on almost everything across the full spectrum of life.  We just happen to be focusing on an issue of major disagreement in this exercise.  Regardless, I regret having to comment that when the “largely peaceful demonstrations” euphemism is used for 534 riots that produced arson, looting, and 25 fatalities, credibility may be forfeited.  Any violent law-breakers deserve prosecution, conviction, and punishment, whether reacting to George Floyd or an election.  In fact, many genuinely peaceful January 6 demonstrators have spent over a year in jail.  If “most Americans believe” January 6 “was an act of treason,” however, then most Americans need to look up the definition of treason. 

Considering what the real numbers reveal, it is not surprising that this reviewer has come out against real numbers.  The real apples-to-oranges comparison is the commentator’s use of a simplistic baseline of general population, as opposed to the more nuanced and relevant population denominator of police interactions, when assessing bias in violent police action.  “Rate of police shootings” is indeed based upon “how police respond to . . . white . . . versus black suspects”—along with the conduct of the suspects.  Yes, “arrest rates are an indicator of police surveillance”—and also the conduct of criminals.  Crime and incarceration rates may very well indicate police discretion and administration of justice—but also criminal activity itself!  It is not this author whose treatment is more simplistic.  Again, black fatalities from police interaction do exceed share of the general U.S. population, but are disproportionately low relative to share of police encounters. 

On “Institutionalized Racism.” 

Some of the preceding applies here as well, such as the admonition against reliance on anecdotes against objective aggregates.  Of the list of 24 so-called “victims” of police, 23 of which could be found on the Web, 22 had a history of hardened criminal behavior and/or were violently resisting police at the time of arrest.  (In Breonna Taylor’s case only, the violent resistance was on the part of her boyfriend.)  Eleven were also high on drugs or alcohol at the time of death.  Most of the cited cases resulted in police indictments or convictions. 

Black mothers fear for their sons?  They should, but mainly because of the black-on-black violent crime volume, not the lesser amount of police-on-black violence.  On the basis of inter-racial violent crime statistics, white mothers have more to fear in that context.  (The raw numbers do answer these questions.)  The truth is especially important on this subject because the distorted propaganda has incited even more anger and violence. 

Again, higher crime rates precipitate higher incarceration rates.  Reduce policing to artificially lower the latter, and more innocent black Americans will be harmed. 

On “Rise in Hate Crimes.” 

One likely area of agreement can be identified:  I am against hate crime and this reviewer appears to be also.  One corollary disagreement may remain:  I believe all violent crime should be classified as hate crime de facto.  An operational weakness of the institution of law is its compulsion, and practical need, to assess motives—notoriously an unscientific practice. 

I can confirm the bulk of hate crime numbers transmitted by the reviewer as authentic.  Some additional subtleties, however, may shed more light.  One detail not shared by this first reviewer is that most (53.1%) of these logged “hate crimes” are non-violent, i.e., simple “intimidation”—which could alter the overall impression or gestalt (FBI National Press 2021).  In addition to the reported disproportions are these: Y2020 white hate crime offenders are disproportionately low (55.1%); blacks high (21.2%).  Considering overall murder offenders, whether designated as hate crime or not, of 16,245 in Y2019, 4,728 were white (29.1%) and 6,425 were black (39.6%) (FBI 2021)—again, the same under/over-representation (without adjusting for cases of unknown race). 

Finally, on this inter-racial aspect of such compelling interest, Y2019 black-on-white violent crime totaled 472,570 incidents (84.0% of the black/white inter-racial total, i.e., excluding other ethnic groups), while the white-on-black violent crime number was 89,980 (16.0%) (Morgan and Truman 2020, p. 18).  Implication:  Indulging the position that all violent crime should be considered hate crime, as many do, then the 7700+ reported hate crimes and corresponding 55.1% (21.2%) white (black) offenders are dwarfed by the 562,550 total for Y2019 violent crimes.  We could go on trading numbers but, with such important policy ramifications, any misleading portrayal of the inter-racial U.S. landscape needs to be brought into better focus. 

On “Conclusion” and in Conclusion. 

Curiously, of my original article and the targeted comment, mine is the one that offers elaboration of the nature of structural/institutional/systemic racism in America—although an unorthodox perspective.  My original and this reply together report information that reveals the first reviewer’s selection of numbers as potentially misleading. 

Moreover, at times, unsupported or counterfactual assertions must be confronted.  For instance: “If the aforementioned statistics were of other race victims, the nation would be in outrage.”  The contrary fact is that our nation does go into outrage, and remains in outrage now in response to the single case of George Floyd.  We have seen the same national outcry in other cases among the relatively few involving police-on-black violence that are genuinely perceived as wrong—or portrayed that way by media.  Or how would names such as Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and George Floyd have become household words?  In contrast, of over one million black violent crimes against whites in 2018-19 combined (vs. under 150,000 white-on-black; Morgan and Truman 2020; Morgan and Oudekerk 2019), does the reader know the name of any victim?  Likewise, the names of 566 black-on-white murder victims in America in Y2019 (vs. 246 white-on-black)—or the 2,574 black-on-black murder victims that year (or 2,594 white-on-white victims, for that matter)?  Is there general public awareness of the name of any victim of police-on-white violence?  (Latest accessible federal data aggregates are used throughout; FBI 2021.) 

 Recall the pattern of approximately 1000 fatal acts of police violence annually in the U.S. in recent years, with about half the victims white.  Recall the Washington Post-disclosed annual unarmed fatal victim totals of about 40—with 20 white, 20 black, 10 other.  What this means is that the other 960 or so are armed and generally attempting violence against the cops!  The portrait of “racial/police” violence is therefore far from accurate. 

In final reply, on appropriate respect for facts and science, only the most basic level of science is involved in this exchange.  That would be reporting and ordering of objective raw data in the most meaningful and unbiased way.  The only analysis by either of us is the most primitive mathematical operation of all: counting—and only sometimes involving relative counting in the sense of proportions.  The numerical issue is not complicated unless someone attempts to mislead through selective presentation. 

In that regard, one detail correction:  I did not quote Hitler.  I did unfavorably reference Hitler and the Nazis in comparison with contemporary perversion of the civil rights movement into its own apparent racism, reverse or otherwise, along with the American left’s own straight-up racist record.  In contrast, I offered a favorable cite of the Martin Luther King philosophy—which so many reject today. 

Reply to the Second Reviewer  

Naturally, I appreciate the second reviewer’s substantive support, along with the distinctive contribution of confirmatory data.  I, too, suspect that some crime statistics formerly released publicly are now being suppressed by the government because of sensitivity.  I further thank the reviewer for his/her insights. 

The one clarification or variance I can offer is on the absence of systemic racism in the U.S.  I concur that anti-black discrimination/racism is close to being eradicated as a thing of the past in this country.  It is absolutely verboten in polite company and in public.  This is verified by Pew’s ranking of the U.S. as one of the world’s least racist nations, as cited in my article.  Yet one political camp is committed to advancing the opposite public impression for transparently partisan reasons.  (Politics intrudes here only because one side of the divide chronically connects it to race.) 

How many crackpot white supremacists—or whatever they call themselves—are left?  Too many, but apparently too few to count.  (After Buffalo, there is one fewer on the street.) 

However, I did nominate two remaining forms of systemic U.S. racism for attention: first, the reverse discrimination (“affirmative action”) paradigm, which is racial discrimination by design, albeit for humane though misguided motives.  This policy travesty qualifies as immoral by the most widely accepted ethical system extant, Kantian deontology, because of unjust means.  In this, the second reviewer and I strongly agree. 

The other enduring systemic barrier would be the apparently intentional suppression of black opportunity by national Democrats.  Their cynical rationale, as I hypothesize based on the long-term record:  Keep the underclass down and dependent so they have to vote for us!  It is long overdue for this possibility, this suspicion, to be raised publicly. 

Reply to the Third Reviewer 

Concerning the third reviewer’s first substantive though peripheral complaint, I can reprise a point from the reply to the first reviewer.  Again, my original article treats, of necessity, only the first step of the scientific process: assembling facts from the most credible sources.  In this case, it involves archival data from the federal government.  As a corollary benefit of the narrow task, we find that rudimentary arithmetic applied to the data is sufficient to rebut popular disinformation on the subject at issue—thereby discrediting propaganda that itself has caused such needless hysteria and even violence.  Yet, to serve the larger interests expressed by this reviewer, the contribution of raw (secondary) data is essential before productive theory development or legitimate empirical analysis can proceed. 

“No engagement with social theory”?  Any social theory on widespread, excessive police violence is worthless if excessive police violence is not widespread.  My conclusion’s main implication is still apt:  The hard numbers suggest that the true amount of inappropriately violent police conduct in the U.S. is at or near the minimal residual level such a large and complex nation could hope to achieve. 

The U.S. may have anti-black racism in its history—first imposed on it from the outside via the world-wide institution of slavery—but perhaps not much of an enduring legacy because the practice of anti-minority racism has been the supreme social taboo for many years.  I have presented argumentation and evidence, unrebutted by the reviewer, that the United States is a very non-racist country—but have also nominated, as a conspicuous exception, ironic political efforts to hamstring black socio-economic progress.  The most insidious adjunct fact may be the racist, genocidal aspect of abortion.  More black abortions than white abortions in the U.S. means the abortion rate for black women is more than six times that for white women.  The total domestic toll among the black population from this slaughter is about 20 million since 1973.  Widespread ignorance of this trend may be an artifact of information suppression by the media. 

Responses to Details 

• I do assert that the Black Lives Matter organization diminishes the traditional civil rights movement.  BLM’s nature as a racist, terrorist, Marxist group is a perversion of orthodox civil rights advocacy.  (Racist and Marxist by self-profession, terrorist by behavior, that is.) 
•  My “On Race . . .” article is not about U.S. law enforcement in the 18th, 19th, or early 20th Centuries.  It addresses racial implications of law enforcement now. 
• When losing a debate on contemporary racial issues, one side can be counted on to bring up one of two historical transgressions: slavery and lynching. The reviewer references the latter. 

According to a credible source, a total of 3,446 black lynching are estimated to have occurred in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968 (NAACP 2022).  From the disparity in black/white domestic inter-racial murder rates cited previously, the “surplus” of black-on-white murders avenges that entire history about every ten years!  It is beyond regrettable to view these historical markers in such prosaic equity or tit-for-tat terms, but those who have falsely propagandized an epidemic of police and white violence against American blacks has brought it on themselves and are now “hoist on their own petard.”  Without doubt, such a condition may have existed at one time in America but, based on the adduced evidence, no longer seems to prevail, in the main.  We can hope this contrarian exercise in setting the record straight will help to further defuse and illuminate. 

• “[D]rawing attention toward police violence against black people” is not anti-American slander, and I did not allege that it is.  Overstating or falsifying the amount of police violence against black people in the U.S. is exactly that.  
• Re: “because police killings of black people are rare, the problem is overblown.”  This is objectively true; the phenomenon is much rarer than publicly perceived and politically alleged, as supported by the evidence marshalled throughout. 
• For the past 45 years or so, the only lawfully sanctioned racial discrimination in the U.S. has been in favor of minorities and against whites (and now sometimes Asians).  This also happens to be true. 
• Re: “avoiding young black males in public spaces is a matter of self-preservation because they are ‘crime-prone.’”  I attribute the avoidance part to Rev. Jesse Jackson, and this reviewer compares it with belief in a “criminal gene.”  I have never heard of a criminal gene but here is an exact Jackson quote on the subject (Goodreads 2022):  “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” 
• The reviewer objects to the series of points but presents no rebuttal, then recycles the debunked assertion that “police commit violence . . . disproportionately against black people,” and also cites Ross, Winterhalder, and McElreath (2021) in response to my cited Cesario, Johnson, and Terrill (2019).  This is an important though ironic addition to the exchange because Ross et al. are not the last word on the subject, and actually support Cesario et al.’s main findings.  They even confirm anti-white bias in police shootings.  The only difference between the two studies, as also pointed out by Cesario (2020), applies to the small number of unarmed victims (such as the 20 white, 10 black, etc., annual count previously featured)—a number too small to be statistically meaningful.

Of course, when losing an argument on the basis of evidence, it is customary to question the evidence—in this case, the federal government’s annual crime and policing reports.  The gold standard of that opposing approach is the GBD research (2019) in the Lancet, which was dealt with earlier for finding little difference in black/white police shooting numbers even after adjusting for preferred data.  Another study cited by the present reviewer (Knox, Lowe, and Mummolo 2020) ultimately reports a small effect of police misreporting bias: 1.5% for black encounters, 1.3% for Hispanic (p. 632). 

• Earlier I suggested that the reviewer had already disqualified her/his case by challenging this author’s motives.  Ultimately, we see that error compounded and then expanded by ad hominem attack against me and another author.  So be it. 
• Re: “Black people’s lives are so insignificant that we ought to question whether even just one state-sanctioned murder of a black person is worth our time and attention. . . . [F]or whom do black lives matter?”  Obviously, I presented nothing close to this caricature.  Every state-sanctioned killing of a black person, whether murder or not, matters.  So, equally, does every state-sanctioned killing of a white person.  But it is the aggregate numbers that must be compared fairly and objectively, and that process seems to lead to conclusions at variance with those of the third reviewer.  Black lives matter because all lives matter.  To disagree with either clause is inadmissible.  Yet, it appears that some are willing to endanger black lives by restricting police protection in high-crime areas—one of the many ironies of this exchange. 

References

Bynum, Victoria E., James M. McPherson, James Oakes, Sean Wilentz, Gordon S. Wood. 2019. “Re: The 1619 Project.” New York Times Magazine. 

CDC. 2021. “National Violent Death Reporting System” Washington, DC: Centers for Disease         Control and Prevention, CDC.” Retrieved from (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/datasources/nvdrs/index.html).

Cesario, J. (2020). On selective emphasis, broad agreement, and future directions: Reply to Ross, Winterhalder, & McElreath. PsyArXivPreprints (December 14). Retrieved from    psyarxiv.com/2p5eg/

Cesario, Joseph. 2020. “On selective emphasis, broad agreement, and future directions: Reply to Ross, Winterhalder, & McElreath.”. Retrieved from           psyarxiv.com/2p5eg/

 Cesario, Joseph, David J. Johnson, and William Terrill. 2019. “Is there evidence of racial disparity in police use of deadly force? Analyses of officer-involved fatal shootings in 2015–2016”. Social psychological and personality science, 10(5):586-595.

Colton, Emma. 2022. "Massive Increase in Black Americans Murdered Was Result of Defund Police Movement: Experts." Fox News. Retrieved from (https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-americans-paid-enormous-price-for-defund-the-police-movement).

FBI (U.S. Department of Justice). 2021. “2019 crime in the United States.” Retrieved from ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s./2019/topic-pages/expanded-homicide  

FBI National Press Office. 2021. “FBI releases updated 2020 hate crime statistics.” Retrieved from fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-updated-2020-hate-crime-  statistics  

GBD. 2021. Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: A network meta-regression. The Lancet, 398(10307), 1239-1255. 

Goodreads. 2022. Jesse Jackson quotes. Retrieved May 27, 2022 from goodreads.com/quotes/5978-there-is-nothing-more-painful-to-me-at-this-stage  

Hannah-Jones, Nikole. 2019. Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. New York Times Magazine. doi: 10.7312/holt19801-018

Johnson, David J., Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and Joseph Cesario. 2019. “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (32):15877-15882. 

Knox, Dean, Will Lowe, and Jonathan Mummolo. 2020. “Administrative records mask racially biased policing.” American Political Science Review 114 (3): 619-637.

MacDonald, Heather. 2019. “False testimony”. City Journal. Retrieved from city-journal.org/police-shootings-racial-bias  

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