In a word: Yes. [I’m writing this as a fact-check of a statistic quoted by some writers who challenge the BLM movement’s narrative: that police are out to randomly slaughter Black Americans]
In short:
Black Americans are 2 to 4 times more likely to be killed by lightning strike as they are by the police. (The range is due to uncertainty of death by lightening strike between 1 in 50,000 and 1 in 80,000).
But we should really only look at those Black Americans who are unarmed and killed in a police interaction. Because, given the peculiarities of the United States, if you have a gun and resist arrest, you’re more likely to be killed and the justice system will find that a “justified killing”.
Unarmed Black people killed by police in 2019 was 14 out of 235, according to figures from the Washington Post. Thus:
Unarmed Black Americans are 38 to 60 times more likely to be killed by lightning strike as they are by the police.
In all scenarios Black Americans are way more likely (2 to 60 times) to be killed by lightning strike than they are by the police. This ought give some pause for contemplation.
Is this a valid comparison? Not really. I think it’s basically bogus since lightning has no agency, whereas the police do. But... it does give some perspective, since there is a view out there that Black people are in fear of leaving their homes, in fear of being gunned down by the police. That is simply not true, by the stats. Unless they’re afraid of going out because of lightning.
Yet Obama worked the same trick. He said that more people died of accident in the bathtubs than they did from terrorist attacks. Again, true, but bathtubs are not out to get you, they don’t have agency, whereas the jihadist are out to get you and do have agency. Bathtubs don’t kill thousands at a time, whereas Jihadists do.
Still, the BLM types can’t have it both ways. If Obama compares terrorism with accidents in the bath, then the other side may compare police killings with likelihood of being killed by lightening. In fact, that comparison is more relevant because -- and even BLM would agree here, surely -- the police are not out to perpetrate mass casualty events like 9-11. To deny we can make that comparison with lightning, while going along with Obama’s bathtub comparison, is pure hypocrisy.
I’m guessing that readers may think my observation itself racist. What of all the police killings we see, every day, on TV? Indeed we do. And will continue to do so, because everyone has a camera in their pocket and are determined to get the police, and they kill about one a day. But that's evidence by anecdote, which is not evidence. That’s feeling. The other side is data. The feeling is that there’s mass slaughter of Blacks. The data is there is not. Nowhere near. Lightning can strike 60 times before there’s a black death at the hands of the police.
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To avoid being killed:
By lightning: Don’t stand under a tree in a thunderstorm
By police: Don’t resist arrest: How not to get your ass kicked, by Chris Rock
More recent: Matt Walsh, @ 2:57
