"Is this what we're protesting about?"

A reply to a mostly white libertarian "alt-intellectual" group where someone asked "is this what we're protesting about" posting a graph at the number of deaths caused by US police being in the double digits:
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Looking at any issue, it's helpful to consider things from three angles:​​

1) personal stories from experiencing the issue

2) definitions, measurements, indexes, policies, etc.

3) the systems that lead to producing the stories

Qualified Immunity -- which is a fairly recent protection and gives way for relative impunity and lack of meaningful accountability, is what I'd consider one of the top systemic issues that results in more brazen acts of police violence when coupled with certain paradigms baked into the training (tactical combative minus stringent value for reasonable escalation/de-escalation or adherence to Rules of Engagement that are connected to enforcement and serious consequences) would be one systemic issue.

This arguably leads to relatively uniform distribution of police brutality incidents despite diversity of police "force" (again, a term that easily connects to misguided but nonetheless militaristic paradigms--much like the distinction between "civilians" and "officers" which orients an us vs. them relationship rather than one of service and membership as civilians who uphold law in public interest).

There's also the influence of police unions which often add a layer of insulation from accountability.

That said, it's apparently very difficult to retrieve data on deaths from police interaction for a variety of reasons (i.e. in Detroit if someone were to be injured during a police encounter, but dies in a hospital from that injury, it doesn't get counted and often won't be registered on any searchable record other than the coroner's--policies may vary depending on the city and how good they are at providing transparency or data accessibility).

For people who have experienced historic discrimination, with living elders who knew great grandparents only 3 generations ago who were enslaved, the social factors compound into reason for visceral upset.

https://theappeal.org/qualified-immunity-explained/

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Deeper yet, is the intrinsic history between slavery and policing, at least from the south, but also the behaviors (i.e. breaking into a house unannounced; even imposing curfews) continue to echo many of the tactics, attitudes, and obvious impacts which are felt more deeply in Black communities because of the continuous injury and outright oppression that often goes unaddressed. News of a neighbor or extended community member getting attacked, harassed, or getting a gun drawn on them by police with no explanation adds to the tension. Seeing executions on television and online in social media further amplifies it.

https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816

And then finally there's a disproportionate silencing effect that eventually escalates to a spectrum of protest behaviors.

One might not agree with all of them, but in a zen kind of way, it obviously exists, so read with an eye for the sake of empathy more than anything else:

"Beyond the misattributed quotes and bad memes and poor logic made in his name, the real tragedy of King’s legacy is that the white people who so frequently invoke it in the name of peace do so with a fundamental perversion of his message. Nonviolence — as it is discussed and fetishized in proximity to the poor and/or marginalized — is so often only dragged out in response to any uprising of those people. The riot is a language, yes, but the response to a riot is also its own language; a language of doublespeak. The call is for peace and love, but the true demand is for complete silence altogether. An NFL player takes a knee without speaking, and is threatened and hated, called a violent thug and a racist. For those of certain skin colors, no protest can be peaceful enough.

And it’s funny how that works. The people who have the most justifiable anger, the most rightful case for rebellion are the ones most frequently told to settle down, to embrace nonviolence. They are the ones told to follow the example of a man who met his end with a bullet, fired from a racist’s gun."

Couple it with how poorly the public education system educates citizens for effective civic engagement to begin with, and add racial barriers in education to the mix:

The conventions of school segregation policy--which the school district funding system was designed to bias favor toward certain communities similar to the way gerrymandering or redlining works--and then later when Brown v. Board of Education came into effect, one can argue the privatized education movement in part evolved as a way to maintain segregation through wealth (similar to how redlining insurance as a discriminatory policy no longer remains legal but in practice by income and geographic distribution its legacy has similar effect but over class at this point). The ingredients for unrest and outrage are probably a bit easier to understand even if not all of them are something we might relate to from experience.

https://timeline.com/by-the-end-of-his-life-martin-luther-king-realized-the-validity-of-violence-4de177a8c87b