You're using a word that means it's statistically measurable and then saying that the statistics are lies and the real truth is the opposite of what the statistics (supposedly) are saying. Like I don't want to get involved in the racism debate stuff, but the word you're using literally means the opposite of how you're using it. I haven't read any of the studies linked in this thread and I don't really care to, but declaring people racist because you're scared of looking at a spreadsheet for five minutes strikes me as a level of lazy that's downright irresponsible.

Statistics really aren't that hard. It's mostly just high school level math, and even then you don't need to know any actual math to tell when someone is manipulating their numbers if you know how to read them. It's pretty easy to tell when someone has some fucky experimental procedures if you stop for a moment to consider the actual data & methods themselves. For example, one fucky way to gather data is to use self-selected sampling. Examples of this include Twitter, other social media websites, and setting up a booth on campus with a sign saying, "tell us about your strong opinions here," among other things. The reason this is fucky is because your method for gathering the data means that your data are by definition not representative of the general public, because you didn't poll the general public, you polled people who felt strongly enough to share their opinion. This is why all jury selection processes in these United States begin by randomly selecting citizens in their respective counties. By randomly selecting people from the population you wish to represent (and given a large enough sample size), you can be confident that your sample is statistically representative of your population. The confidence in this representation goes up with the size of the sample, the repetition of the test with another randomly selected group, or the test being performed by a second independent research group, as well as numerous other factors.

This isn't even a basic introduction to statistics, but it should explain why some people find statistical analysis to be more valuable than any amount of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I'm not saying that black people aren't systemically oppressed, nor am I saying that police in this country don't need significant reforms, all I'm saying is that when you imply something like, "statistics are lies," it confuses me, and the only reasonable explanation I can think of is that you're simply ignorant of how statistical analysis works. To look at it from your side however, it's also important to point out that a statistical trend doesn't in any way devalue the individual experiences of anyone, black or white. If anything, the sheer volume of people sharing their experiences should prompt new statistical analyses to try to understand these trends better, so that we're better equipped to solve these problems going forward. Because when you try to design solutions, it's best to make sure that your solution will actually interface with reality in the way that you want. It's like putting the armor on the parts of the plane that come home with bullet holes. Clearly, if the planes can fly home with bullet holes there, they don't need any extra armor in those places, it's the rest of the plane you've got to look at. You have to understand why things are happening before you can formulate a solution that will work, and no number of twitter videos of cops beating people is going to tell you how to make sure police encounters never escalate to violence.

On another note, It's curious the rate at which people, both here and pretty much everywhere else on the internet, are having discussions like this with the sole purpose of virtue signalling. People who actually want to change other peoples' minds don't call each other racists or idiots or sheep or whatever. When you do stuff like that, its' only purpose is to make you feel good because of how much smarter you are than the other person. If you want to have an actual dialogue and have a chance at changing someone's opinion, which is what I thought the whole point was, you have to engage the material long enough to understand it, and to try to understand where the difference in understanding is occurring, and work from there to explain why you think the other person's logic is flawed. Even if to you it's obvious on the face of it where the problem is, if the other person is making that argument, clearly they don't get it like you do. You aren't going to convince anyone by calling them an idiot and telling them to go figure out what they're doing wrong on their own. But all of that's only if you want to actually change minds, which I don't think a single person in this thread is interested in doing.

And I think THAT'S the point tambo was trying to make: the media is manipulating the narrative such that reasonable discourse is nearly impossible. The problem is though, it isn't just a media problem. It's systemic to our way of life, and is literally biologically automatic. We are raised to be perfect narcissists, resolute in our convictions, never doubting ourselves or our positions, always certain that we're right. Our media, both social and classical, reinforces this, because we choose media that doesn't challenge us. The people around us reinforce it, because we choose to be around people we already agree with. Our biology reinforces it, because there's no use in second-guessing in nature. But we don't live in nature anymore, we live in the concrete jungle, and here, a wrong decision can have drastic consequences for millions of people. And don't think the irony is lost on me, I'm just as guilty as any other schmuck on this internet backwater. The point, though, is that we can't expect to solve any problems, let alone systemic racial ones, without first at least acknowledging that the other side is operating on good faith and thinks that they have a pretty good point too. But that's the hardest part, and that seems to be the part that almost nobody I've seen or talked to is willing to even consider on any topic, let alone something as emotionally charged as this one. You can't change the world in a shouting match, people. You change the world by changing minds.