Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Don't Compare Police Shootings and Black-on-Black Crime

Black-on-black crime is far more pervasive, but police shootings bring back a history of fear.

July 7, 2016 at 4:29 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Don't shoot.
Photographer: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

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It has become leaden and disheartening, the series of tragic slayings of young black men by police. One can accept the statistics suggesting that the problem is not as bad as we think. One can buy entirely existence of a “Ferguson effect” -- the idea that increased scrutiny of police actions has led to increases of violent crime in cities. One can concede that the far greater problem facing Black America is the way our young men are killing each other.

And yet, somehow, the incidents of police shootings weigh heavily upon the soul.