There’s a typical story that plays out in the aftermath of police shootings. One side, critical of police, comes out pointing to the excesses of police brutality, particularly in cases in which officers killed black men and boys. The other side, supportive of police, comes out pointing to the nuances of the cases and perhaps the ways that the victims are to blame for their deaths — he had a criminal record, he didn’t listen to the police, and so on.
This didn’t really happen after Justine Damond, a white woman, was shot and killed by a black police officer, Mohamed Noor. While many people — including some Black Lives Matter activists — criticized the shooting, very few defended Noor in the same way they have stood up for police officers in previous incidents. Not many articles focused on nitpicking the lack of information we have to try to weaken the case against the police. There’s been little to no victim blaming. [...]
Ranking victims of police shootings is odd enough, but there are plenty of totally innocent victims of police killings besides Damond. Consider that, in Detroit, police in 2010 killed a sleeping 7-year-old when they stormed her home while looking for her uncle — though this girl, unlike Damond, was poor and black. [...]
The Katrina research is just one example. A 2009 study found that, when looking at images of others in pain, the parts of people’s brains that respond to pain tended to show more activity if the person in the image was of the same race as the participant. Those researchers concluded that their findings “support the view that shared common membership enhances a perceiver’s empathic concerns for others.” Other studies reached similar conclusions. [...]
One 2014 study, for example, found that people view black boys as older and less innocent starting at the age of 10. “Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection,” Phillip Goff, an author of the 2014 study, said in a statement. “Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent.”
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