The Civil Unrest and Presidential Election Study (CUPES), completed last month, asked 980 adults two questions.So, how do you think these questions were answered?
The first was, “If you had to guess, how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019?” Options ranged from “about 10” to “more than 10,000.” The second question was “If you had to guess, in 2019 what percentage of people killed by police were black?” Respondents could choose any number from 0 to 100.
According to the Washington Post database, regarded by Nature magazine as the “most complete database” of its kind, 13 unarmed black men were fatally shot by police in 2019. According to a second database called “Mapping Police Violence,” compiled by data scientists and activists, 27 unarmed black men were killed by police (by any means) in 2019.There's a chart at the CUPES link which illustrates the data very clearly.
The CUPES survey found that “over half (53.5 percent) of those reporting ‘very liberal’ political views estimated that 1,000 or more unarmed black men were killed,” and 26.6 percent of those identifying as “liberal” believed it was “about 1,000.” Fourteen percent of those identifying as “very liberal” believed “about 10,000” unarmed black men were killed, and almost 8 percent of those identifying as “very liberal” believed that more than 10,000 black men were killed by police in 2019.
The disparity between liberals and conservatives in terms of how familiar they are with the actual data is remarkable. Of those who consider themselves "conservative" or "very conservative" about 46% thought there were about ten unarmed black men killed by police in 2019 and about 37% of this cohort thought the number was about 100, whereas only 16% of "very liberal" and 22% of "liberal" respondents thought the number of unarmed black men killed by police was about ten.
Why are liberals so much more poorly informed than conservatives? I'll return to that question in a moment, but let's let Geraghty finish:
The study noted that, according to peer-reviewed research, 26.7 percent of the victims of police-shooting fatalities between 2015 and 2020, were black. Another source, BBC News’s “Reality Check Team,” reported that in 2019 specifically, 23.4 percent of the victims of police-shooting fatalities were black.Well, I think if you believed what liberals believed there'd be a civil war raging in this country. It's little wonder race relations are in such a mess. How can there be so much ignorance in a country that has so much information at its fingertips? And why are liberals so much more poorly informed than conservatives?
The second question found similar results. “Those who reported being ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal’ were particularly inaccurate” in their guesses of what percentage of people killed by police were black, “estimating the proportion to be 56 percent and 60 percent, respectively.”
If you walked around believing that 1,000 or 10,000 or even more unarmed black men were killed by police each year, with minimal if any consequences, you would probably distrust the police and want to see them abolished or defunded or, at minimum, torn down and rebuilt from the ground up with a completely different culture.
Here's a theory: The progressive media whose job it is to disabuse the masses of false ideas and educate them as to the truth has done a miserable job of both. Journalists have doubtless by now surpassed lawyers and used car salesmen as the most untrustworthy and untrusted professionals in our culture, and it's largely because so many of them on the left have opted to be cheerleaders instead of referees.
If our media were doing their job, they'd be incessantly stressing the truth of these statistics until people on the left realized how wildly wrong their assumptions are, but so far from being an agent for truth and justice, the media seems intent on dousing the flames of racial conflict by spraying them with gasoline.
Perhaps it's too strong to suggest that they "intend" to be inflammatory, but I think it's accurate to say that if provoking racial animosities was indeed their goal, hiding the truth about these stats would certainly be one of their preferred tactics.