It appears you've also misunderstood my comment (or I've misunderstood yours). Your claim is that Pinker's comment was a non sequitur, as arrest-proportional killings don't convey information about whether the killing were necessary.

But in the context of a conversation that assumes that the population-relative skew of killings is driven by racism, it's not a non sequitur at all: it provides evidence against the ubiquitous, confident claim that the population skew is due to explicit racism by the police. It's still possible that a black men being arrested has a higher chance of being killed _relative to the necessity of doing so_, but nobody has even tried to make that case statistically.

If I've misunderstood your point, perhaps you could clarify, instead of giving a petulant, low-effort response.

It seems you are suggesting it's possible for killings to be driven by racism, but for the skew of killings not to be driven by racism.

It's a very fine distinction, which I am not interested in validating or invalidating, but I'm thinking it's not relevant to why Pinker's tweet was ill-received when he wrote: "Data: Police don't shoot blacks disproportionately." and "Problem: Not race...". He just wasn't that finely tuned.

> It seems you are suggesting it's possible for killings to be driven by racism, but for the skew of killings not to be driven by racism.

Well more precisely, I'm happy to accept that population-disproportionate killings of black men are due to racism, but understanding the facts is important to understanding how that racism manifests. Ie, if it matches the arrest rate and/or the violent crime rate, we're facing a much broader racial justice problem than simply throwing an IAT at every cop in the country. I don't understand why Pinker's tweet wouldn't be interpreted in that light.