“Lynching in the Age of Color Blindness-A Crime Against Humanity” @ Portside
Posted on March 16, 2012
Ted Pearson — March 15, 2012: “Between 1882 and 1968, a period of 86 years 3,446 AfricanAmericans and 1,297 whites were lynched in the UnitedStates.[ii] These were people who were killed, usually byhanging, often by hysterical mobs of people acting outsidethe law. The perpetrators of these crimes were self-appointed judges, juries, and executioners. 73 per cent ofthe victims were African Americans. The average rate oflynching was 55 people per year. The average rate oflynching throughout that period was .046 per 100,000 people.[iii]
In Chicago, in the 33 months from January, 2009 to November, 2011 there were 51 people killed by Chicago Police Department officers, according to official CPDstatistics.[iv] The police acted as officers of the law,but they acted as judge, jury and executioner in thesecases. Police shot 160 men and 1 woman in those months.African Americans were 74 per cent of the victims; 20 percent were other people of color. The average rate of policekillings was 18.5 per year in this period. The average rateof police killings in Chicago was 0.64 per 100,000 people.[v]
In the United States as a whole in the last decade of the20th Century, from 1990 to 2000, there were 2,054 peoplekilled by police.[vi] The average rate of such killings was205 per year. The average annual rate of killings by policein the country as a whole was .066 per 100,000. [vii]……”
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