Someone interviewed white people in New York about abolishing police and lots of them whole-heartedly agreed. They interviewed black people in New York about it, and they said it was insane to want to do that. That would fit these statistics.

From my understanding "abolish the police" means to reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding. For example in L.A. the police budget is about $3bn and the next biggest item is public works at $1.5bn. That's kinda a ridiculous amount. I saw a reddit post in /r/dataisbeautiful [0] that broke it down and showed some redistribution.

But of course "abolish the police" means a lot of different things to different people. I'm sure there are people that want literally no police but I'm also sure they are a minority.

That's kinda the problem we have today. We turn complex conversations and topics into their most extreme forms and so we can actually discuss them. And we presume the other person has an extreme view that opposes ours but we ourselves are smarter and now nuanced than the person we're "discussing" with. There's lots of examples. For example here we're discussing "should police exist" instead of "what should police be doing" and often people are even divided on the topic because "police stop bad guys" and "police are to serve the community and uphold the social contract."

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hflutt/rei...

>From my understanding "abolish the police" means to reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding.

sort of just depends on who you ask.

I have people within my social circle that want to literally abolish the police -- erase the concept entirely -- citing historical examples groups of people that had no such similar concept as a central policing group.

Because of fringe opinions like that I tend to take care when I read or say things like "'X' means this", because that's the power of language, some folks really do mean abolish the police, while some simply use such language with a somewhat 'hyperbolic' or satirical meaning.

Seconded, The power of language is incredibly important. "Defund the police", "Abolish the police", the many different ways it's being phrased are radical demands. If the people saying these things mean something else they should use another set of words. Because there are plenty of people in this movement who really want to tear things down.

Yep. When there's a New York Times OpEd titled "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police"[1] it seems inaccurate to tell people that this is simply a poorly worded slogan that really just means "reallocate funding."

I get the impression that the minority of protesters who started using the slogan "Defund the Police" meant "Defund the police." But then there were a number of people who were sympathetic to these protesters but also realized that getting rid of the police is a very extreme position, and they started rationalizing things by saying that the protesters _really_ meant something else ("When people say "Defund the Police" what they actually man is..."). Even when the people themselves keep saying, "No, we really mean get rid of the police."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

I don't see it as a lot different than "Starve the beast"[1]. "Starve" means kill by removing nutrition or sustenance. But do we literally take it to mean "cancel the government by removing funding"?

There's a difference between a slogan and a program. Somehow accuracy and correctness in slogans are only demanded when someone doesn't agree with the basic premise of the program.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Starve:

  ... transitive verb
  a: to kill with hunger
  b: to deprive of nourishment
  c: to cause to capitulate by or as if by depriving of nourishment

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/starve

Is that significantly different from what I said?

But you can't make a sign that says "We want to radically change the duties of law enforcement but we aren't exactly sure what that should look like and need to start a national discussion so that we can move forward and fix what is clearly a problem."

At least not a very good sign.

You could have a sign that said “fix the police”, “reform the police”, etc and it would more accurately describe your views than “abolish the police” (assuming you are indeed not a person who wants to abolish the police). And I’m sure you could come up with a lot of creative and compelling ways to say it. It’s not possible to fully describe the subtlety of your views in a protest sign, but at least you can make a sign that‘a compatible with your views.

I'm not disagreeing with you. I think "fix the police" is a more accurate slogan. But slogans are intended to prime someone about an idea (not to convey!) and generate emotion. But trying to read any slogan as a literal meaning is simply naive. Slogans have to be smaller than a tweet and look at what a clusterfuck conversations on twitter are. Hell, even here where we can type hundreds of words it is difficult to accurately convey complex ideas.

I said in another comment, communication has 3 components: what is said, what was meant, and what was heard. We have to recognize that these are 3 different things and frequently all 3 are different. Communication is extremely difficult. So try to say what you mean and try to hear what was meant. (obviously this is a saying and in of itself is limited and should be taken more as a baseline idea rather than a literal and absolute point to stand on)

"Defund police" isn't the same string value as "Abolish police". In your haste to demand correctness from others, you seem to be twisting words yourself.

The phrase “abolish the police” is used in the grandparent, great-grandparent, 4-parent, 5-parent, and 6-parent of my post.

You're right, fair enough.

I feel that this was missed so I'm reiterating.

>> But of course "abolish the police" means a lot of different things to different people. I'm sure there are people that want literally no police but I'm also sure they are a minority.

I'm under the opinion that you actually __AGREE__ with me considering

> Because of fringe opinions like that

If we presume "fringe" and "minority" hold similar meanings here.

> that's the power of language, some folks really do mean abolish the police, while some simply use such language with a somewhat 'hyperbolic' or satirical meaning.

This is what I'm driving at, except I want to change it up a bit

> that's the power of language, a few folks really do mean abolish the police, while most simply use such language with a somewhat 'hyperbolic' or satirical meaning.

We're discussing the power of language, so I think the distinction here is important. The fact that we're having this conversation was kinda my point. We're arguing over what people mean instead of arguing over what should be done. We're letting fringe/minority voices represent the majority opinions. This distracts us from the nuances and complicated discussions that we need to be having. I am claiming that the way these topics are being represented is itself a major issue, because of the power of language. We are being primed to view others opinions in ways that do not represent them. All that causes us to do is fight and never have the true discussion.

You can always find someone that has "X" position. The problem is that when you represent group "Y" with position "X" when "Y" doesn't hold that position. It is a problem that we have to discuss this before we discuss what needs to be done. I personally am deeply frustrated by this.

So I will ask: "What led to you responding to me in this way? What part was I unclear about?" Because to me it is clear, but given your response it is apparent that I wasn't.

EDIT: To the downvoters, I am honestly trying to get feedback into how I can better convey the message. Would you mind also leaving a comment along with the downvote? That way I can understand?

This a good example of misleading data. For instance, the school district budget doesn't appear because it's part of the budget for LA County not LA City. But If you look at it[1] and adjust per capita, you actually get almost twice the budget as the police. It also leaves out that a very large part of these budgets are pensions.

But beyond that, I've always felt that the attitude of "this is a lot of money, therefore we should cut it" to be a poor way of approaching things. We should allocate funds based on whether or not the return we get is worth it, not based on whether or not the number we invest sounds big. Cutting specific things that are unnecessary or saving money by making things more efficient seem like a good idea, but cutting budgets just to say that you're cutting budgets doesn't.

[1] https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/Doma...

It's funny, because I actually agree with you

> I've always felt that the attitude of "this is a lot of money, therefore we should cut it" to be a poor way of approaching things. We should allocate funds based on whether or not the return we get is worth it

The difference is I think: "When we're scrutinizing budgets we should look at the largest ones first." Which would be a pretty logical way to investigate.

So pretty much we're in agreement.

> From my understanding "abolish the police" means to reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding.

"Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

Can you clarify how this contradicts my comment? I am at a loss in how this shows me wrong. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent of your reply.

I think very few people want to get rid of the police. I think people are tired of the militarized police. They don't need MRAPS. They don't need to show up at a domestic call with full body armor and assault rifles. We need to end programs like 1033 that gave them access to military equipment. End no-knock warrants. Things like that.

Many people, including me, take simple English words rather literally. So the usage of "defund" is simply "prevent from continuing to receive funds". Thus, the entire movement is discredited in my mind as something insane.

It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting language "less accurately". I'll continue to agree that we need change, but I'm still more happy than unhappy with the basic existence of law enforcement.

> Many people, including me, take simple English words rather literally....

> It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting language "less accurately".

But, in this case, the literal interpretation is the "less accurate" one. Literal != accurate.

> It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting language "less accurately".

Do you feel the same way about "Starve the beast"?[1] Surely you understand the difference between a slogan and a program?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Some slogans tend to detract from their end goals, too. Not sure that comparing it to an unsuccessful republican slogan is really a good look.

While I agree that “defund the police” is a bad slogan, no fluent speaker of any language takes words and phrases literally. Human communication is chock full of idioms, allusions, allegories, and a number of other rhetorical devices that depend on a non-literal interpretation of words. It’s highly unrealistic for you to declare that you “take simple English words rather literally”, as that’s not how natural languages work.

There's a thing I constantly tell people. Communication often has three components: 1) What you mean to say, 2) What you say, 3) What was heard. As a communicator you should try to ensure that what you say and what you mean are the same. All the while you have to keep in mind your audience to ensure what was heard was what was intended. At the same time, as a listener your job is to try to understand the meaning and not what was said. Getting the intent is much harder and requires one to be aware of the limitations of language and communication as well as your own internal biases and often the biases of the one communicating (what assumptions are they operating under).

Additionally, analogies, slogans, sayings, and such are all simplified and reduced methods intended to prime a person to remember or think of a more complicated topic. Here "defund/abolish the police" is an easy to remember/say slogan (and can be easily written down and read from afar). It is much harder to communicate "we need to rethink policing in general, their funding, and what they should be doing. Currently we do not know the answer but are trying to drive a national discussion so that we can come to an agreement and fix what a large portion of us believe is a problem." The latter is much more vague and is trying to bring together people with wildly different opinions but do agree with that main point.

Reading __ANY__ slogan as an absolute and/or literal meaning is simply naive. It's hard enough to communicate accurately with the roughly 300 words in this comment, let alone slogans, which need to be smaller than a tweet.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

That’s a straw man.

I never claimed that anyone can make up their own definitions, only that setting the bar at “literal meaning” is unrealistic, as that’s not how language actually works.

See: catching a bus by the skin of your teeth so that you and your friends can have a night out and paint the town red.

Chances are you understood exactly what I meant, but taken literally that sentence is utter jibberish.

But "abolish the police" isn't jibberish, and is what some people actually, literally, mean. So how can I tell?

> So how can I tell?

In communication as the recipient your job is to try to understand what is meant, not what is said.

Conversely, as the communicator, your job is to say what you mean, and ensure what is said is in line with what is meant. The added complexity is that to do this you need to have a decent grasp on what recipients will hear (as in "understand intent," as opposed to the literal words that they physically hear)

How can you tell what’s an idiom, and what isn’t? Context clues. Do the same thing here.

Or, actually listen to people. Your call.

So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the police" banner, which context clues should I use to figure out what they really mean?

The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an unreasonable idea that you're not actually advocating. Do you think that makes for a good slogan?

Edit: I apologize. I missed where you said it's a bad slogan, and took your defense of it as implying it's good.

> So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the police" banner, which context clues should I use to figure out what they really mean?

The same ones you use to understand what the word "police" means. Human language isn't a direct, thought transmission mechanism (especially with short utterances). Ambiguity and uncertainty and reliance on shared context are inherent. The artificial language Toki Pona gives an exaggerated demonstration of this [1].

> The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an unreasonable idea that you're not actually advocating. Do you think that makes for a good slogan?

No one can ever cram the nuance of a complex political position onto a slogan to fit on a sign. Inevitably someone will misunderstand to some degree, then have to go on to read one of the hundreds of articles titled "what does 'defund the police' mean?" to correct your misunderstanding.

If you're searching for some optimal slogan, you're not going to find it. Sure there are alternatives, but a couple things count in "defund the police"'s favor: 1) it succinctly indicates the topic and 2) pretty clearly conveys the opinion that a radical break with prior reform efforts is needed. "Abolish the police" does the same, except it's more amplified.

[1] https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/tokipona

I’ve made it clear I think it’s a bad slogan, why are you insisting on the contrary?

Language has to be precise for any nuanced conversation to be effective, otherwise it risks becoming rushed, oversimplistic and divisive. --- Abolish = to end an activity or custom officially

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/abolish?...

1) "Abolish the police" = To end the police officially --- Defund = to stop providing the money to pay for something

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/defund?q...

2) "Defund the police" = To stop providing the money for police --- Reform = to make an improvement, especially by changing a person's behaviour or the structure of something.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/reform?q...

3) "Reform the police" = To improve the police by changing its behavior/structure --- The meaning of these sentences is very clear and is not open to discussion.

My opinion: 1) is simply anarchic and unrealistic in any form of civilization. 2) is similar to 1), but might suggested perhaps a privately funded police instead of publicly funded? (a whole can of worms there) 3) is the most realistic and practical option and seems to me to be what most people mean and what states are doing. It's not the most dramatic and "attractive" thing to write on a poster though...

There are many more views and opinions of course, these are just my takes in 10m of writing and thinking.

Regardless, attempts to make this into an oversimplified binarily sided discussion reveal, IMHO, a lack of reading and comprehension ability or an agenda that is alternative to understanding and resolving these issues as a collaborative democratic society.

> Language has to be precise for any nuanced conversation to be effective, otherwise it risks becoming rushed, oversimplistic and divisive. --- Abolish = to end an activity or custom officially

But language __ISN'T__ precise and that's why we are required to understand one another in "good faith." I've said in many comments that communication has 3 parts: what is meant, what is said, and what is heard. Dr. Suss and Lewis Carol exemplify this in their literature.

Not only that, but definitions of words are constantly changing. A dictionary always lags behind the true definition. After all, any linguist will tell you that words only mean what a society agrees that they mean (note the difference between "a society" vs "the speakers of that language"). We see this quite frequently. An perfect example is "capitalism" and "socialism," if you're go to is the dictionary then you're probably extremely frustrated with how most everyone uses these terms and will notice that different groups use the same words to mean completely different things!

Language really is a mess.

> Regardless, attempts to make this into an oversimplified binarily sided discussion reveal, IMHO, a lack of reading and comprehension ability or an agenda that is alternative to understanding and resolving these issues as a collaborative democratic society.

This, I completely agree with. But the reason this is "a lack of reading and comprehension" is because "comprehension" is the acknowledgement that language is of itself imprecise and that your job as a reader is the read what was meant, and not what was said.

> But language __ISN'T__ precise and that's why we are required to understand one another in "good faith." I've said in many comments that communication has 3 parts: what is meant, what is said, and what is heard. Dr. Suss and Lewis Carol exemplify this in their literature.

Agreed, good faith is definitely required in a healthy debate, and I quite liked those comments and communication model. I'll be looking through those references in future, thanks!

And yes language is a mess, however, just because language is not a perfect construct or even as good as we expected it to be, I don't think we should relativize too much and put too much of the onus of the discussion on the reader. (like I've seen in threads here, some could rationalize away some words like "Abolish ~= Reform, so I'll just join this side of the protest, I'm sure that's what they meant... despite the pitchforks and torches...")

In a healthy discussion I think it is as much of the sender's (speaker, writer) job to make sure he is understood as is the receiver's (listener, reader) job to make sure he understands. Awareness of such models as the ones you referred would already be quite good for most discussions. Although I suspect on most media we end up seeing two people having concurrent ideological monologues rather than a discussion with intentful listening and non-manipulative speaking...

Specifically for "Abolish VS Defund VS Reform", I think we can do better and I don't think those 3 words really differ that much between dictionary and everyday language, and if I'm wrong and they do differ, the issue still remains, do we remove the system entirely, change its resources or change its behavior.

> ...any linguist will tell you that words only mean what a society agrees that they mean (note the difference between "a society" vs "the speakers of that language"). We see this quite frequently. An perfect example is "capitalism" and "socialism," if you're go to is the dictionary then you're probably extremely frustrated with how most everyone uses these terms and will notice that different groups use the same words to mean completely different things!

BTW, another couple of perfect examples: "fact" and "literally"...

> We turn complex conversations and topics into their most extreme forms and so we can actually discuss them

As an outsider watching all this going on, it seems the last thing anyone seems to want is a discussion; you're either on board or a racist. It's all very odd.

As an insider it is quite frustrating. The discussions seem to be just polarized to ends that are both ridiculous. "No police vs police should be more violent." "Open borders vs deport everyone and build a wall." Etc. The vast majority of people don't hold the positions on the extremes, but we talk like they are the representative voice. And look even at these comments. I said "These people are not the representative voice" and people are responding "But I know people that believe this! They aren't the majority, but they exist!" How is that the top response to my comment?! The comment is ironically the problem I'm specifically addressing. But I don't know what is unclear and how to tackle this. Feedback needed.

> From my understanding "abolish the police" means to reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding.

No, it means abolish the police (the centralized, monolithic, paramilitary local law enforcement agencies.)

It also means to reorganize the law enforcement function within local government, and probably reduce the distribution of resources devoted to armed law enforcement. But just reorganize/reduce funding is the “defund” not “abolish” position, which are related but distinct viewpoints.

Abolition has a specific meaning in America. So when you use "Abolish" as the root word, people think you mean to completely ban it. If the conversation should have been around something else, "reduce police funding" is the same amount of words as "defund the police" or "abolish the police" and actually means what protestors say it means.

And therein lies the main problem with all of this "abolish the police" bullshit. It's driven mainly by upper middle class whites who live in low crime areas and rarely if ever need police, and think everyone is the same way. Watch the protest videos carefully - there are hardly any black people there in a lot of cases. In fact last night I counted more high end bicycles in a protest video than black people. It's a common occurrence nowadays to see a self-righteous 20 year old trust fund kid "educate" a black police officer on how to be black. This is utterly idiotic.

I interacted with the police exactly 3 times in 20 years I lived in my neighborhood. Once I got a ticket for the missing front license plate on my car (deservedly so, paid the fine). Once my mailbox was broken into, and a police officer stopped by to ask questions and see if I'd press charges if they found the thief (of course I would, but they never found the guy), and once I had to call police on a neighbor who thought it'd be a wonderful idea to blast music at full volume at 2AM in the middle of the work week. That's the extent of it. There's no crime in my neighborhood, violent or otherwise, by any meaningful metric. If I thought all neighborhoods were like this, of course I'd be in favor of simultaneously defunding police and abolishing the second amendment.

Having seen total lawlessness first hand during the "wild 90's" in Russia, I don't have such illusions. I once saw a dude on his knees with a gun pointed at his forehead within 200m of the Red Square, with police officers watching but not intervening in the proceedings, probably because the mobster with the gun was above their pay grade. Don't know if the guy got shot or not, I couldn't do anything anyway, so I entered the nearby subway station and went home, but the image seared into my mind. Remember, this was in the very center of a large city. You can imagine what kinds of crazy shit went on on the outskirts.

People in South Chicago or in the bad parts of NY have no such illusions either. That's why I support _gradual_ police reform and increased funding (you can't, as a rule, get better service by paying less), have a safe full of guns and ammo, and will vote strenuously against any politician, irrespective of party affiliation or just about any other views, who tries to "defund" the police or restrict 2A. I fail to see how such measures would be in anyone's longer term interest.

Who is "someone"? How many people did they ask? What were the questions?

Without the police would we have bands of marauding warlords tormenting the citizens that are much worse than the police? Maybe some people are less aware of what that would look like, and some are more aware. Especially when it comes to their families/loved ones.

Interesting, do you have a link?

Not OP, but this Vox article has some interesting information about race disparities in viewpoints of police.

[0] https://www.vox.com/2020/6/3/21276824/defund-police-divest-e...

Nice. This is very interesting. I suppose it would be hard to make any assumptions about the reasoning here. At least Vox interprets this as black people "view inadequate protection and inadequate service levels as part of the larger pattern of mistreatment." That's entirely reasonable. If someone were to believe that the police institution itself is not racist, and it's just the individual cops who are the problem, then it's fair to come to the conclusion that more policing may solve the very real issue of crime in black communities.

However, just like the author of the article, I agree that we would need to see a similar poll now after the George Floyd protests to see if the opinion still stands, but it's important to note.

Here is a post-George Floyd poll: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/86ijosd7cy/20200611_yahoo_race_p...

A plurality of African Americans (38-31) oppose cutting police budgets. African Americans are split 50-50 in whether we need more or fewer police on the streets. A supermajority (64-33) believe that the current police departments can be reformed.

A majority (51-17) support spending less on police and increasing funding for social programs, but try to reconcile this with the statistic above, where half want more police on the streets. (People might perceive this question as reduced budgets would hit management, etc., rather than beat cops).

Nice. However, since yougov experiences sample bias due to their data collection method being only online participants, and the sample size of black people isn't anywhere near even 5% margin of error (meaning it could be completely wrong) this study is not usable to draw conclusions on its own.

The sampling bias would have to be very large to throw off those numbers with 140+ African American participants.

Do you have a better poll that shows different numbers?

I don't but that's not really my point -- the poll itself isn't a problem, it's the lack of multiple polls that cautions me to draw concrete conclusions from it as rayiner did. 140 people out of 30 million is about 10% margin of error. Add sample bias to that and this poll alone is nowhere near conclusive, although as I indicated it's still useful to reflect on the issue.

> then it's fair to come to the conclusion that more policing may solve the very real issue of crime in black communities.

It depends upon what more policing means. I have been keeping a closer eye on what's happening in Canada, and it seems clear that the police are not trained or do not internalize training to handle certain situations particularly well. In extreme cases, this has resulted in situations being escalated and deadly force being used. Given complaints ranging from excessive force to racial profiling, it sounds like problem routinely plays itself out on a smaller scale. If a community is reluctant to trust the police, I doubt that they will see benefits from more traditional policing.

Some of the de-funding discussion has been about reducing police funding to allocate it to other social services, but I suppose that it could also be reallocated training officers who's primary purpose is community relations, responding to mental health issues, or handling criminal activity that is unlikely to require an armed response. This may make more sense than dumping responsibility onto social service agencies both due to the quality of training and the ability to immediately access police resources if escalation is inescapable.

Agreed. To a lot of people, policing means "solve disruptions in society" but that's an oversimplistic and unrealistic idea of what police are trained to do and what is even possible with an institution that treats violence as a necessary means to do their job.

And for the record, I am squarely in the defund camp, but also open minded to discussion.

It wouldn't explain the wide statistical variation between cities.

Black people are victims of crime that is perpetrated by people who are not police officers.

Link?

You're assuming that their information is accurate which we have no real reason to do.

From the article "It’s unclear how accurate Mobilewalla’s analysis actually is"

More specifically

> Datta told BuzzFeed News that his company, on average, has access to location data for 30% to 60% of people in any given location in the United States.

And getting down to it more: which 30-60% of people? I find it odd that when HN is talking about Covid they are so keen on finding the slightest bias in data/report and arguing over that, yet in posts like this most of the comments presume accuracy. I would expect the same scrutiny (which I think is good!) everywhere.

Not that I have an opinion about Mobilewalla's analysis but polling gets accurate results with far less than 30-60% sampling, so that, in and of itself, is not necessarily a problem.

> polling gets accurate results with far less than 30-60% sampling, so that, in and of itself, is not necessarily a problem.

I'd like to refer you to the sentence after I quoted the article.

>> And getting down to it more: which 30-60% of people?

Polling works hard to ensure that their data set is a representative demographic. We don't know that here. Considering that there are socioeconomic correlations between race, it isn't out of the question that this data is not representative. You could have 60% but if your data set isn't representative, you aren't going to draw accurate conclusions.

Polling has random sampling. We don’t know if Mobilewalla’s sampling is truly random or not.

And is there any bias inherent in that data along economic or racial lines? Given that black people are poorer on average in the US, any collection of data that’s biased based on cell phone cost might incidentally pick up a racial bias too.

Well, it could also be about the sort of data the company is collecting. Here in NYC there have been smaller protests in neighborhoods that are predominantly PoC, and this company may be only collecting data on the main large events.

Also, for a place like LA, there are systemic factors of poverty and homelessness in their Black populations that might make something like ownership of a permanent mobile number less likely [1].

Regardless, this practice of data harvesting should be illegal.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-13/column-a...

It's also possible that people who felt most at risk were also most likely to turn off their phones or leave them at home.

It's hard to know what kind of biases are in this data without access to it.

Another possibility: the Mobilewalla data is bad.

Interesting, but is it possible that it’s bad data? What app gave them permission to have this data —- is it possible that the app’s users are a similar demographic?

Just like voting, attending protests is a privilege to those who can afford to not be working 24/7. Lower-income jobs don't even have the concept of "time off" or flexible schedules.

Protests also have the risk of being wrongfully arrested or injured and not being able to get to work the next day.

Or maybe they simply didn't agree with the premise of the protests.

Of the people I've talked to in real life, most don't, so these numbers are not too surprising to me.

Some sort of factor, that exists most strongly in large urban centers, that discourages black people from acting out of line?

Perhaps, like, a racist police force?

I don't know why this is being downvoted, I think it's a perfectly valid point. The entire basis of BLM protests is about use of police violence against black people. If I were black and think I'm more likely to get the shit beat out of me (pepper-balled, rubber bulleted, tear gassed, etc.) at a protest I'm more likely to avoid it entirely.

Edit: On reflection, maybe the downvote was more about the tone that it was presented in?

The site guidelines ask people not to be snarky in comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html