Which group is most likely to die at the hands of the police?


All the news about police killings have tended to focus on the fact that many of the victims are black. So we can be excused for thinking that the black community is the worst hit by overly aggressive policing. But Xeni Jardin points out that there is another group that is suffering even worse.

Native Americans are even more likely to be killed by police than African-Americans. Despite being only 1% of the population, they make up 2% of all such deaths. Of course, when you look at the subgroup of young people, both black and Native American communities have death rates that are way above the national average.

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Comments

  1. oualawouzou says

    Tangential question: I’ve only recently read “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” (obviously, I’m not American). I know that a fuss is raised every once in a while because some people want to censor “the n-word” in those books, but do people ever protest “Injun Joe” and all the other negative connotations associated with the word “Indian” in those stories?

  2. DonDueed says

    oualawouzou, I can’t recall any major controversy about “Injun Joe”, but I can think of a couple reasons why that might be. I’ve never lived in a region with a large Indian population, and as a fraction of the overall US popolation they make up a much smaller percentage than some other minorities (e.g. black or Hispanic). So there are fewer voices to raise.

    Also, many Indian groups don’t object to the term “Indian”. Typically their first choice is the tribal name — Navajo, Blackfoot, etc. — but are OK with “Indian”. “Redskin” is right out. (I do not claim to speak for any particular person or group, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard from several different sources.)

    No doubt “Injun Joe” would be considered derogatory, though. It’s quite possible that has caused friction in some parts of the country.

  3. Mano Singham says

    I wrote something about this some time ago:

    I recently had the opportunity to meet Denis K. Norman, chair of the Native American Program of study at Harvard University, who gave a talk on disparities in health among American Indians and learned some interesting things from him.

    For example, I had thought that the term ‘Native American’ was the most respectful way to refer to them but he says no. When Indians refer to themselves their first preference is to self-identify by their tribe names. Their second preference is to call themselves ‘Indians’. The term Native American is not favored by them and is their third choice. It is, however, the term favored by non-Indian academics (hence his job title above).

    As to the corrupted form “Injun”, I don’t know. It does sound derogatory these days but I don’t know if it was deliberately said that way to be disparaging or whether that was how people pronounced that word those days in that part of the world, and Twain, like other writers, was simply trying to capture that dialect.

  4. oldoligarch says

    American Indians are largely ignored because discussion of them raise difficult questions about the right of Americans to large sections of “their” country.
    Questions neither conservatives nor liberals,Euro-american,Asian-Americans,African-Americans nor Hispanic-Americans want brought up.

  5. brucegee1962 says

    Also in answer to the Twain question, Tom Sawyer is assigned much less often than Huck Finn these days.

  6. says

    While there is certainly racism towards other non-white people in Canada, where we really shine (?) in that area is towards First Nations people. There is an epidemic of missing and murdered aboriginal girls and women, and our prime minister refuses to do a thing about it.

    Damn, I hope the voters do the right thing next month. I’m tired of the Harper government making me ashamed of my country. (The shame is massive this morning following the news that the family of that drowned child everyone saw yesterday was denied refugee status here.)

  7. Lesbian Catnip says

    Damn, I hope the voters do the right thing next month. I’m tired of the Harper government making me ashamed of my country. (The shame is massive this morning following the news that the family of that drowned child everyone saw yesterday was denied refugee status here.)

    But taxes!
    -Harper, at some point, probably

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