Dr Wilfred Reilly -- Is there Systemic Racism in the United States..? — Transcript

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1. 0:00is there systemic racism in our police
2. 0:03departments in the aggregate
3. 0:05well systemic or institutional racism as
4. 0:08an academic is a phrase that I'm always
5. 0:11a bit skeptical of now obviously if we
6. 0:14want to be honest about some of this
7. 0:16country's history there have been
8. 0:17systems like criminal sentencing in the
9. 0:19past where until quite recently you did
10. 0:22see discrimination at kind of a broad
11. 0:24group targeted level but very often this
12. 0:27phrase simply means there's a difference
13. 0:30in performance between two groups and
14. 0:32we're going to attribute that to racism
15. 0:33and to give an example of why that
16. 0:35doesn't necessarily work I mean my
17. 0:37favorite sports league the NBA the
18. 0:39National Basketball Association is more
19. 0:41than 65% black and I don't think any
20. 0:44serious person would believe that that's
21. 0:46because white jocks just don't get a
22. 0:48fair shake in American society the
23. 0:50reason is that there's what you might
24. 0:52call a cultural variable
25. 0:53african-americans play basketball more
26. 0:56and so on average at the median with all
27. 0:58due respect to the hick from French Lick
28. 1:00we're better at it
29. 1:01white guys play more baseball and if you
30. 1:03look at MLB that is a very heavily
31. 1:05Caucasian and Hispanic Athletic League
32. 1:07and you see this same thing in more what
33. 1:11you might call serious situations all
34. 1:13the time so in 1995 the government
35. 1:17economist June O'Neill who's a liberal
36. 1:18as I understand and the conservative
37. 1:20researcher Dinesh D'Souza was fairly
38. 1:22nonpartisan at the time looked at the
39. 1:25troubling fact that there is a gap
40. 1:26between black and white incomes as I
41. 1:28recall African Americans made 82% of
42. 1:31what park Asians did and this was just
43. 1:33universally attributed to racism and
44. 1:36what they found out was that that wasn't
45. 1:37the case there were a lot of
46. 1:39quote-unquote variables involved African
47. 1:42Americans are a younger population the
48. 1:44most common age for a black man is 27
49. 1:46the most common age for a white man is
50. 1:4858 obviously people earn more later in
51. 1:51life when they've had the chance to move
52. 1:52into executive roles African Americans
53. 1:55are much more concentrated in the south
54. 1:57where wages are lower for everyone if
55. 1:59you adjust for these factors in just a
56. 2:01couple of others I mean years not even
57. 2:03quality of schooling just staying in
58. 2:05school average performance on a test
59. 2:07like the SAT the gap almost disappeared
60. 2:10and you could argue that some of those
61. 2:12things are tied into
62. 2:13class and whatnot but there's no pattern
63. 2:15of businesses paying an absolutely
64. 2:18equally qualified black guy and an
65. 2:20absolutely equally qualified white guy
66. 2:22different amounts in general and I think
67. 2:25that's a valuable lesson to take into
68. 2:26life so when people argue that policing
69. 2:29is institutionally racist almost always
70. 2:31what they are saying is African
71. 2:33Americans are arrested at a higher rate
72. 2:36or they encounter police at a higher
73. 2:37rate then the black percentage of
74. 2:39society would predict but the obvious
75. 2:42intermediary variable there is crime
76. 2:45rate if you look at the borough of
77. 2:47Justice Statistics crime report the
78. 2:49African American crime rate for violent
79. 2:51crimes where you encounter the police
80. 2:53White's dominate corporate crime is two
81. 2:55point four times the white rate so you
82. 2:57would expect there unfortunately to be
83. 2:59more encounters between African
84. 3:01Americans and the police and when you
85. 3:03look at this narrative about black
86. 3:05people and the police being in constant
87. 3:07conflict not only does a lot of the
88. 3:09structural element perhaps not all of it
89. 3:11but a great deal disappear if you adjust
90. 3:13for crime rate the figures themselves
91. 3:16that are often used are strike me is
92. 3:18very very inflated in terms of police
93. 3:21violence so there's a there's a
94. 3:23comprehensive database of police
95. 3:25shootings and police killings maintained
96. 3:27by The Washington Post newspaper there's
97. 3:29another one that's kept online and live
98. 3:31at www.acefitness.org killed by police
99. 3:59and only 229 of those were African
100. 4:02American and there's a lot of serious
101. 4:04research that looks at types of violence
102. 4:07other than just shooting other than
103. 4:09killing so Roland fryer who is one of
104. 4:12the youngest individuals ever to gain
105. 4:14tenure at Harvard and like me as a black
106. 4:15man took a comprehensive look at every
107. 4:18type of police violence in a paper that
108. 4:20came out and I believe 2016 and what he
109. 4:23found is that there were some small gaps
110. 4:27african-americans were a bit more likely
111. 4:29to be for example cursed at or lightly
112. 4:31shoved but when it came to extreme
113. 4:34beatings or police shootings
114. 4:36african-americans in the case of
115. 4:38shootings were actually 24.2 less likely
116. 4:41with everything along with race adjusted
117. 4:43for to be shot by the police then
118. 4:45White's were so I don't think you see a
119. 4:48pattern of broad systemic targeting
120. 4:51specifically of black people by the
121. 4:53police today that doesn't mean there
122. 4:56aren't individual bad officers I mean we
123. 4:58saw the horrifying George Floyd tape I
124. 5:01mean my position is that charges should
125. 5:03be filed against every one of the
126. 5:04officers involved in that situation but
127. 5:07even there the facts are a little more
128. 5:08complex than they originally seem to be
129. 5:11two of the officers on the scene as it
130. 5:13turns out
131. 5:14thow and kuhn if I have the names
132. 5:16correct are not Caucasian men Floyd and
133. 5:20Shelvin the officer primarily
134. 5:23responsible for the killing had
135. 5:24previously known one another from a
136. 5:26nightlife security position so I don't
137. 5:28think we can just look at interactions
138. 5:30between african-americans and the police
139. 5:31and say what we have here is an epidemic
140. 5:34pattern of racism a genocide as attorney
141. 5:37Crump called it in a recent book all
142. 5:39right we'll be right back