>The death penalty is actually similar. Blacks are actually not killed that
>much more often than whites for the same kinds of murder, but if you kill a
>white person (whether you are white or black), you are far more likely to
>get the death penalty than if you kill a black person. The judicial system
>just does not treat the killing of a black person as seriously, whether they
>are killed by a cop or by a private individual.
I do not think it is true. It is 'cross-racial' murders (i.e. black perpetrator white victim, or white perpetrator black victim) that are more likely to receive more severe punishment than "within -race" ones.
Race alone is not a good predictor of police brutality either. A better predictor is the victim acting inconsistently with behavioral stereotypes. Thus, "uppity blacks" or "white trash" are more likely to be treated brutally by the police than "uppity whites" or "black trash."
A more general point is that "race" is not a very useful category to analyze the behavior of the criminal justice system. It tends to reduce complex reality to sound bites, sensationalize and demonize instead of explaining.
Unfortunately, sensationalism and simple demonization seem to be the hallmark of the US political discourse in general, which otherwise lacks both analytic depth and a historical perspective. The shallowness of that discourse, evidenced by the monumental idiocy of the mainstream media, is quite evident to an outsider.
wojtek