Steve QJ
2 min readApr 3, 2023

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Right. But in the case of the KKK, their stated and implicit aim is white supremacy. They are incentivised by the organisation to kill or harm black people. There are no accountability measures in place to prevent them from doing so. In fact, they'd be rewarded for doing so. There are no black members of the KKK. Nor would the KKK allow there to be any.

And if, by some strange chance, they allowed some low level grunts to be black, and if by some even stranger chance, any black people wanted to work in that environment, you certainly wouldn't see any black people in leadership positions.

None of this is true of the police.

Yes, of course, even in a white supremacist frame, not every murder an organisation commits is in service of white supremacy. But what do you think the proportion of black people to white people killed by the KKK is? Pretty high, right? And I'd bet that almost every single one of the white people they've killed was actively defending or supporting black people.

This isn't true of the police either.

So yes, the police force killing significant numbers of white people in similar fashion to the way they kill black people does, in fact, diminish the likelihood that white supremacy is the cause. It doesn't eradicate it. I've said, in pretty much every reply to you, even the one on my article, that it doesn't eradicate the possibility, so I'm not sure why you're still harping on that, but it does beg the question whether white supremacy is the most significant or helpful lens to view the problem though. You still haven't presented any evidence that it is.

Obviously, undeniably, some police officers have killed black people because they were racist. But a police officer is not "the police." The vast majority of police encounters, like ~98% of the millions that take place every year, are completely non-violent. Black people are given comfort and aid by police officers every single day. Black people inhabit the highest levels of authority within the police force, guiding culture and policy and systems of accountability. To flatten all of this out and pretend that the police are just minimally evolved slave catchers is asinine.

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Steve QJ
Steve QJ

Written by Steve QJ

Race. Politics. Culture. Sometimes other things. Almost always polite. Find more at https://steveqj.substack.com

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