Why #BlackLivesMatter should be #PoorLivesMatter

Almost everyone killed by the police is poor, and police killings are racially proportionate to US poverty—there are two times more white Americans than black in poverty and two times more white Americans than black killed by the police each year. Because poor white and poor black people are equally likely to be killed, police killings aren’t part of a race war. They’re part of a class war.

People who reduce the problem to race only see that the police kill a racially disproportionate number of black Americans, which is undeniable—black people are 13.3% of the US, but 25% of people killed by the police are black.

But if you look at the intersection of race and poverty, it becomes obvious that police killings are racially proportionate to American poverty. In 2014, the Kaiser Foundation reported twenty million white Americans and ten million black Americans were in poverty—a ratio of two to one. Politifact noted, “Over the span of more than a decade, 2,151 whites died by being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks”—a ratio of two to one.

Because Black Lives Matter only considers race, other truths about class and police killings are hidden, such as the fact that American Indians are more likely to be killed by the police than black people. Here’s the Counted’s breakdown of people per million killed by police…