The death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy killed by police in Cleveland, Ohio, has perhaps highlighted better than any similar case both the dire need for justice system reform and the extent to which some whites struggle with even the most basic concepts of ethical thinking.    

On a frigid day in November 2014, Rice was playing with a pellet gun in an open-carry city, outside a recreation center. A 9-1-1 caller reported a “guy…probably a juvenile” pointing a gun that was “probably fake” at other people, “scaring” them. The pellet gun was missing the orange tip that indicated it was fake, and somehow the caller’s suggestion it wasn’t real (nor that Rice was likely a child) was not relayed to the officers heading to the scene.  

The police drove their vehicle onto the grass, pulled up next to Rice, and an officer-in-training, Timothy Loehmann (formerly declared unfit for duty by another police department due to emotional instability), allegedly fearing that Rice was reaching for his pellet gun, shot him within two seconds of coming to a stop.

Watch the video here; the police arrive at the 7:07 mark.

According to the Cleveland police, Loehmann had his door open and shouted three times at Rice as the vehicle approached him. The police did not park at a safe distance, take cover, and demand via loudspeaker that Rice drop the gun and surrender. Such actions would have clearly made the situation safer for themselves as well as for Rice, and possibly led to a far different ending.

After Rice was shot, his older sister, playing nearby, ran toward him, but was forced to the ground by the officers; she was handcuffed and put in the police cruiser.

Officers then stood around Tamir as he lay wounded. One officer had his hands on his hips when a man, identified by police as an FBI agent who was in the neighborhood, entered the frame and administered first aid. It was the first medical care the boy received in the four minutes that followed the shooting.

Rice was taken to the hospital, but died the following day.

Tamir Rice’s name became a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter activists and other enraged Americans, black and white, seeking to reform a nation where, due to both conscious and subconscious anti-black biases, blacks are far more likely to be killed by police than whites.

In court, the city blamed the boy, insistent of his “failure…to exercise due care to avoid injury” and claimed the boy’s family was suffering damages “caused by their own acts.”

This is a pattern of white behavior seen throughout American history: blacks, even those who are children, or unarmed, or nonviolent, are consistently blamed for their own deaths, not only due to their actions toward police in the moment, but life choices beforehand.

Black victims, writes Anthea Butler,

…are vilified. Their lives are combed for any infraction or hint of justification for the murders or attacks that befall them: Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie. Michael Brown stole cigars. Eric Garner sold loosie cigarettes. When a black teenager who committed no crime was tackled and held down by a police officer at a pool party in McKinney, Tex., Fox News host Megyn Kelly described her as “No saint either.”

Early news reports on the Charleston church shooting followed a similar pattern. Cable news coverage of State Sen. and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of Emanuel AME who we now know is among the victims, characterized his advocacy work as something that could ruffle feathers. The habit of characterizing black victims as somehow complicit in their own murders continues.

In other words, black foolishness, shortsightedness, aggressive nature, or criminality lead to black deaths. “If you don’t want to get killed by police, stop breaking the law!”

This line of thinking conservative whites use is rarely applied to themselves or their own children. If a white conservative, or his or her son or daughter, ever made the mistake of stealing cigars, illegally selling cigarettes, mouthing off, disobeying, or even getting physical with a police officer, said white conservative would likely not find a policeman justified in shooting to kill. He or she would expect the police to find a nonviolent, non lethal solution to the situation. He or she would want to live, or want his or her child to live, to see a constitutionally-guaranteed day in court.

Even prosecutor Tim McGinty, the white attorney assigned to show the grand jury what criminal charges the officers could possibly be charged with, participated in blaming the boy for his death.

After the grand jury refused to indict the policemen, a common occurrence in the U.S. judicial system for police that kill both whites and blacks, McGinty explained police actions in this case were “reasonable” and that Rice’s “size made him look much older” and that he had “been warned his pellet gun might get him into trouble that day…”  

In other words, Rice’s physical appearance and his refusal to listen to reason are why he is in a grave, not the fact the police are likely infected by conscious or subconscious anti-black sentiment, didn’t give Rice a reasonable chance to surrender, and don’t carry non lethal bullets, a technology readily available that could save thousands of American lives.

McGinty, abandoning any facade of neutrality, said, “…the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police.”

The victim’s family declared in a statement:

Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting instead like the police officers’ defense attorney… In a time in which a nonindictment for two police officers who have killed an unarmed black child is business as usual, we mourn for Tamir, and for all of the black people who have been killed by the police without justice. In our view, this process demonstrates that race is still an extremely troubling and serious problem in our country and the criminal-justice system.

McGinty recommended to the grand jury that no charges be filed. A Washington Post editorial explained recently how grand juries are designed

…to be a tool of prosecutors. They don’t hear from both sides in a case, like a trial jury would. They hear only from the prosecutor, who decides what evidence and testimony is presented.

The family called on the Department of Justice to “conduct a real investigation,” and quickly a petition for such an inquiry and a new jury exploded online.

To many conservative white Americans, this was a tragedy, a tragic misunderstanding, but police actions were justified, meaning right or reasonable, because the police believed Rice was about to pull out a real gun and open fire.

This, of course, ignores the fact that had the officers parked at a distance and tried to talk Rice into putting down his fake gun, which he probably would have, the officers would have felt much safer than if they were mere feet away from the boy after charging in. The police put themselves in “danger.”

Tamir Rice’s death revealed how confused conservative white ethics have become, marked by the inability to apply the same set of moral principles to others that are applied to oneself or one’s own family.

The decisions of the police, and the decision of the grand jury, that left Tamir Rice dead and his killers free are deemed reasonable and right by many conservative whites. Yet if one such conservative white had a son, daughter, friend, spouse, or sibling who made the same “mistakes” as Tamir Rice (not heeding a warning, being large for his or her age, playing with a gun without an orange tip in an open-carry city, not throwing up his or her hands the instant the police arrived, etc.), would ideas concerning what’s reasonable and right change?

If said conservative white could say honestly, “If it was my son, the police acted reasonably in killing him” then he or she has been morally consistent. This writer finds that idea, that justification for his or her child’s death, equally disgusting as the justification for Rice’s murder, but at least ethical standards have been applied equally to oneself and others.

If said conservative white has a change of heart, and says, “If it was my son, the police actions were not justified,” we can see how bankrupt white ethics are in matters of race. If one is so willing to say police acted rightly and reasonably when shooting Tamir Rice, why would it not be the same for your own loved ones, were all other factors (words, behaviors, perceptions, etc.) identical?        

This is likely a testament to the conscious and subconscious racism virtually all American whites have, according to psychological studies, a demonstration that black lives are not as worthy of life as white lives in the minds of many conservative whites.

True, such a response could suggest that one values the lives of one’s family more than those of other families, an idea that could be based in evolutionary fact, yet an idea any ethical person can nevertheless decide to be abhorrent and any critical thinker can realize likely ignores, without cause, the subconscious prejudices scientific study has revealed to be present.

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To Mayor Sly James and Chief of Police Darryl Forté:

I am about to make a radical suggestion, an idea that runs counter to prevailing thought on justified police actions: that every civilian, even those that open fire on police officers or innocent bystanders, deserves to live if possible.

That it is right and just that all Kansas Citians, not matter how deranged or violent, deserve to see their constitutionally-guaranteed day in court.

It may seem a strange idea to those conditioned to assume anyone who fires a gun at others has automatically given up his or her right to life, even if said person suffers from mental illness. Here I suggest a higher form of ethical thinking.

In light of yesterday’s condemnatory report in The Kansas City Star that found 47 Kansas Citians died in altercations with police from 2005 to 2014 (with 56 more wounded by police gunfire), a rate higher than many similarly sized cities, it is time to reconsider how Kansas City arms its officers.

This is especially true when considering “about half the confrontations involved someone suffering from mental illness or depression or someone suspected of being impaired by drugs or alcohol.”

The accompanying analysis of the incidents in The Star found that “in at least four cases, officers first tried nonlethal force, such as a stun gun, a rubber bullet or a bean bag.” One man was shot by a rubber bullet in 2013, “but it didn’t work.” A woman in 2007 was struck by a beanbag round to “no effect.”

So in four cases (perhaps more, but this is unknown) out of 103, or 3.8%, police tried nonlethal force first. That, to any person who values life, is unacceptable.

Chief Forté insists, “If you look at the people we shot…they dictated how we responded to them.” That is without question mostly truthful, but ignores a reform that could have saved dozens of lives in Kansas City (thousands across the U.S.).

The Kansas City Police Department should be armed only with rubber bullets.

True, rubber bullets will sometimes fail to take down a criminal on the first shot (though the same complaint can be made of standard bullets). And critics will protest, calling it foolhardy to give a criminal with standard bullets an edge over an officer with rubber ones.

Yet Kansas City police officer deaths due to gunfire are extraordinarily rare. In the same period that 47 civilians died in confrontations with the police, no KCPD officers died in the line of duty, according to the Officer Down Memorial. Since 1990, 6 officers have died in the line of duty, all due to vehicle accidents.

The last officer to die from gunfire was in 1983. In total, 67 Kansas City policemen died from intentional gunfire since 1879 (averaging 0.49 a year). In contrast, from 2005 to 2014, the police killed 35 people who had a gun or were suspected of having a gun (3.5 per year).

When the scope of data is broadened to include officer deaths by intentional gunfire, assault, vehicle pursuit, and vehicular assault, 77 perished (0.56 per year) since 1879. Compare this to the 47 civilians killed by police from 2005-2014 (4.7 per year).

All this is not to devalue the lives of police officers, who deserve much admiration for their courage and sacrifice.

It is to suggest that, while acknowledging the possibility of increased risk to police officers, a rubber bullets only policy may save more lives overall (including, perhaps, police officers’: since 1879, 7 officers died from accidental gunfire; while the data does not clarify, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that an officer accidentally shot by a fellow policeman may have a better chance of living were he or she struck by rubber bullet).

This reform should be enacted in the name of all Kansas Citians, but especially the names of those whose deaths were truly senseless, like Ryan Stokes, who allegedly refused to stop running from police and was, at the moment of his death, unarmed, or Javon Hawkins, who refused to put down a sword and was killed.

True, rubber bullets can kill — they are not a perfect solution, and depend very much on who uses them and how, in the same way police can use tasers to kill (a Virginia man in 2013 was tased 20 times and died), nightsticks to kill, or fists to kill (the beating of Manuel Palacio in 2014 by the KCPD could have easily continued longer and resulted in Palacio’s death).     

Yet rubber bullets are far less lethal than standard bullets, and can therefore prevent wrongful deaths and afford every suspect his or her right to a fair trial. Reducing police killings is also, without question, the ethical thing to do in light of the statistical analyses and psychological research that indicate, due to both conscious and subconscious anti-black biases, blacks are far more likely to be killed by police than whites who commit identical crimes.

The idea that shooters deserve to be gunned down immediately usually changes if said shooter is your son, brother, sister, or mother. People tend to apply their ethics inconsistently (a practice that must change), believing it right for a stranger (especially of a different race) to be shot to death for his or her actions, but not someone they love in an identical scenario exhibiting the same behavior.

Standard bullets need not be eliminated completely; more dangerous ammunition can be kept on reserve for escalated situations, for instance if it was determined a suspect was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

Kansas City can lead by example, showing America how many lives can be saved if we use the technology available to us.

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Conservative America rejoiced recently when an African American, Steven Hildreth, Jr., publicized on social media his peaceful encounter with a Tucson, Arizona police officer. Hildreth was legally armed at the time he was pulled over.

After explaining how the officer appreciated Hildreth’s respect so much he let slide a blown headlight and an outdated registration card, Hildreth wrote on Facebook:

I’m a black man wearing a hoodie and strapped. According to certain social movements, I shouldn’t be alive right now because the police are allegedly out to kill minorities.

Maybe…just maybe…that notion is bunk. Maybe if you treat police officers with respect, they will do the same to you. Police officers are people, too. By far and large, most are good people and they’re not out to get you.

True, the hundreds of thousands who shared his post and the rest of the U.S. can together rejoice that no tragedy occurred. Blacks and whites, and people of all political persuasions, can acknowledge many police officers are good people, and feel relief Hildreth and this officer interacted with civility.

Yet anecdotes like this in no way invalidate the research that shows black Americans are overall treated differently than white Americans who commit the same acts. Conservative whites, and blacks as well, delighted in this story because they see it as evidence that members of the Black Lives Matter movement and similar social justice groups are delusional, their ideas “bunk.”

Anecdotes, personal experiences, are a huge part of the story of modern American racism. But one cannot rely on them alone to measure conscious–let alone subconscious–prejudice.

A leftist could draw Hildreth’s attention to Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy killed by police in Cleveland in November 2014. Watch the video here.

Rice was playing outside with a pellet gun–in an open-carry state. The police pulled up next to him and immediately shot him. They did not park at a safe distance and demand he drop the gun and raise his hands. They did not give him the opportunity to respectfully hand over his weapon.

If all a black male has to do is treat an officer with respect, why is Tamir Rice in a cemetery?  

In court, the city blamed the boy, insistent of his “failure…to exercise due care to avoid injury” and claimed the boy’s family was suffering damages “caused by their own acts.”

This is evidence that blacks can be the victims of horrific police brutality, in the same way Hildreth’s story is evidence blacks and police officers can interact peaceably. But like Hildreth, a leftist cannot rely on this story alone to support his or her worldview.

Are we at an impasse? A stalemate between stories that tell very different tales? Or is racism measured not with individual anecdotes, but through scientific research, controlled experiments?

As documented in Tim Wise’s Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity, psychological experiments reveal nearly 90% of whites subconsciously associate blacks with negative terms like “violence.”

About 60% of whites will openly admit to trusting negative stereotypes about lower intelligence, higher aggression, and greater laziness in blacks. 25% of whites say an ideal neighborhood would be free of blacks.

We can measure the results of these ideas scientifically. For example, when researchers decided to send out resumes to employers, identical except half had “white” names at the top and half had “black” names, the latter was 50% less likely to be called for an interview. The study was entitled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?”

Studies like one in 2002 show that ordinary civilians in simulations are far quicker to shoot armed blacks than armed whites, and decide quicker to spare an unarmed white than an unarmed black.

Could negative ideas about black people, whether conscious or subconscious, also affect police officers?

2005 research in Psychological Science showed police officers were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed blacks than unarmed whites. Remarkably, the bias diminished with extensive time in the simulation.

A 2006 study published in Basic and Applied Psychology found that during simulations, as Fair and Impartial Policing put it,

Officers with negative attitudes toward Black suspects and negative beliefs regarding the criminality of Black people tended to shoot unarmed Black suspects more often in the simulation than officers with more positive attitudes and beliefs toward Blacks.

Luckily, as Lorie Fridell, former director of the Police Executive Research Forum, wrote in “This is Not Your Grandparents’ Prejudice”:

Scientists have shown that implicit biases can be reduced through positive contact with stereotyped groups (e.g., for a review, see Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005) and through counter-stereotyping, whereby individuals are exposed to information that is the opposite of the cultural stereotypes about the group (e.g., Kawakami et al., 2005, 2009).

The former mechanism provides further justification for community policing methods, such as permanent assignments and positive police interactions and partnerships with the diverse individuals within a community. The latter mechanism provides the theoretical rationale for use-of-force role-play training (including computer simulations) that randomly pairs the demographics of subjects to scenarios that do and do not result in threat or danger to officers (see Correll et al., 2007).

Research from the University of Chicago in 2007 and 2009 compared community members’ and police officers’ decisions to use lethal force in simulations of dangerous situations. Both groups had anti-black biases in reaction time. But these police officers were actually less likely to act on it:

That is, ultimately the officers made the right decision and were not impacted by race.  The researchers attribute this finding for the officers to frequent, high quality, role play (e.g., Simunitions, computer scenarios) training in the use of force that can serve to extinguish the race-crime implicit bias for force decisions.

While it is clear police officers have the same subconscious biases as the rest of us, not all police officers experience the same training. Could the absence of bias-reducing training play a role in police killings of blacks like Tamir Rice, or is that “bunk,” as Hildreth suggests?

Scientific studies and analysis of real-world cases help us see that blacks are more likely to receive longer prison sentences and the death penalty than whites who commit the same crimes. They are more likely to be pulled over and searched while driving lawfully than whites driving lawfully. Large percentages of blacks report racist words and actions, large and small, as constants in life. Wise’s Colorblind documents many studies, for those who want to go in-depth.

Unarmed Americans killed in the first half of 2015 were twice as likely to be black than white. True, this is an analysis of a real-world case, not a controlled study. Yet someone like Hildreth would perhaps read that statistic and conclude unarmed blacks are more likely than unarmed whites to be disrespectful, to disobey, to get aggressive. These are very old, racist ideas, and one might wonder if conservatives have scientific studies to support them.

By being unaware of or downplaying the role of subconscious and conscious racism that research shows to be prevalent, conservatives, black and white alike, encourage others to solely blame the victim, to view police shootings without any scientific context. This perpetuates racist myths about the mentalities and behaviors of black people. Which, as the 2006 study suggests, could lead to more black deaths.

To think that subconscious anti-black biases, which nearly all whites (and even some blacks) have, could affect behavior during simulations, prison sentencing, hiring, and police stops and searches, but not the use of lethal force against civilians is naivety of the highest order.

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