August 6
GUEST: Christian Perenti, author of "Radical Hamilton," and Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College CUNY, talks about his latest article, "The Surprising Geography of Police Killings" and how race and region determine who gets murdered by the men in blue.The Surprising Geography of Police Killings
Christian has done the research. Police in the North kill more Black people than police in the South. When one looks at the ratio of Blacks in each state, the most dramatic killing rates are not in Alabama but in Massachusetts.
How could that be? It is just possible that police kill a higher percentage of poor people. Large numbers of whites are poor in the South, making them more apt to be murdered by the cops. Whites in the North are better off, so the killings of Black people make up a higher percentage if the population.
So is the problem of Black killings related to their rates of poverty? Blacks make up a larger number of poor people in the North. Being poor and Black in Massachusetts is a risk to your life.
Are racism and class competing narratives? Not necessarily. But to avoid talking about poverty and police killings is maybe to miss the larger point. MLK was working on the Poor People's March when he was murdered. Had he come to realize that poverty was the real enemy of poor people, whether they are Black or white?
And do the corporations want us to focus on racist police, rather than risk a true, multicolored movement for fair pay and economic justice?
