Do Black Lives Really Matter to Liberals?

If black lives matter, and we all know they do, we need to work to end the unnecessary and early deaths of black people. It’s not enough to look at one minor source of black mortality – shootings by law enforcement officers – and ignore the reasons for the vast majority of black deaths.

While hard numbers are not readily available, the best estimates available put the total number of people killed by the police across the country in any given year at significantly less than 1,000. For example, the best estimate for 2011 shows that the police killed 607 individuals.

According to the CDC, roughly 290,000 blacks die each year. If we include blacks killed by abortion, the total becomes ~590,000.

If we use the CDC number, that means that if every single person killed by police in the U.S. were black, 0.2% of blacks would die from police action; if we include unborn blacks who are killed, the value is 0.1%.

Clearly, if black lives truly matter, fixating on how less than 0.2% of blacks die is not the best way to help blacks.