Talk:Killing of Breonna Taylor/Archive 3

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Archive 3

Archive 4

Race of the officers

Latest comment: 4 years ago103 comments15 people in discussion

In the beginning paragraph, the article reads "The white officers entered her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky..."

The fact that the officers are white is not relevant to the story, and seems kind of strange to include. Piece o Ham (talk) 18:59, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Per MOS:LEADREL, race belongs in the lead because it reflects that most sources use it to describe this event.—Bagumba (talk) 00:53, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

It obviously is relevant and isn't at all strange. But our opinions are irrelevant; it's based on the reports from reliable sources.--72.194.4.183 (talk) 08:22, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

It is obviously not relevant nor is it contained in the sources cited in the lede despite "because sources use it to describe this event" It is based on SYNTH and POV pushing as race is lacking from the reports of the vast majority of sources. Our opinions are irrelevant and short of an DNA test so should be any other sources listing races. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:46:C801:B1F0:684D:5F98:D2CF:E8E8 (talk) 06:35, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

This Reuters article today mentions Taylor being black, the officers being white, and even says the attorney general is black.—Bagumba (talk) 11:21, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
BBC.com: "A police officer has been charged over the narcotics raid that resulted in the fatal shooting of a black woman at her home in the US state of Kentucky ... Mr Cameron, a Republican who is the state's first black attorney general ... Ms Taylor's relatives and activists for whom her death has become a rallying cry had been calling for the three officers, who are all white, to be charged with murder or manslaughter."
The Guardian: "Taylor, a Black 26-year-old emergency room technician, was killed when three white police officers entered her apartment in the early hours of 13 March."
FoxNews.com: "Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was shot multiple times in March by white officers who entered her home during a narcotics investigation."
Los Angeles Times: "A day after grand jurors declined to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor — a Black woman who was shot dead at night inside her own apartment six months ago ... Taylor was killed in March by white officers who used a “no-knock” warrant filed under a narcotics investigation to barge into her apartment."—Bagumba (talk) 06:36, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@Thor 212002: Your change's edit summary was Removed the word "White" used to describe the police officers since it denotes racial profiling and rece does not condones the acts decribed in this article, the police actions and policy sould not be race diferentiated, also the addition of the "White" word in that location promotes racial hatred instead of just communicating the fact. However, we apply MOS:LEADREL to the lead and provide WP:WEIGHT based on the how reliable sources present Taylor's shooting. Wikipedia does not WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. The sources must reflect that first. The world is not color blind (yet).—Bagumba (talk) 07:42, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

It is still irrelevant-it may be relevant on the pages about motives behind the civil unrest that followed the shooting-but still has zero relevance to the shooting itself. The preponderance of RS still do not include race and of the ones that do few lead with it as WP has chosen. Besides it not belonging, it does not reflect the weight of the NPOV RS material. It is being used to create racial divisiveness. Zero of the RS cite race or racial animus as any factor in the actual shooting itself but want the implication out there regardless.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/us/breonna-taylor-police-shooting-invs/index.html https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/fact-check-debunking-7-widely-shared-rumors-in-the-breonna-taylor-police-shooting/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/04/report-details-why-louisville-police-wanted-search-breanna-taylors-home/5706161002/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/breonna-taylor-police-shooting-what-we-know-about-kentucky-woman- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/breonna-taylor-kenneth-walker-911-call-police-shooting/ https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-09-24/q-a-what-were-the-results-of-breonna-taylor-investigation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:46:C801:B1F0:392C:97DA:349:E03B (talk) 22:01, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Of the four links above which aren't 404ing for me, all four present photographs or video which make it manifest that Taylor has dark skin, CNN and USAToday present photographs and video that show the three involved police officers have light skin, and the CBS video only presents police and government officials speaking on the matter who have light skin. Race is definitely relevant to this topic and should be attributed in the article text as described in RS that deal with that aspect in their own coverage. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 02:38, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Redent. Looking at this, I don't see people mentioning their race. Although you can see that kind of stuff in the pics. Saying pictures show their race sounds like OR to me.

https://www.google.com/search?q=breonna+taylor+police+officers&sxsrf=ALeKk01-jScr8EGxt9cEW6WX82WqGBqp7g:1601530816691&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifvbOb15LsAhULvp4KHepBDZUQ_AUoAXoECDMQAw&biw=1094&bih=474&dpr=1.25 Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:43, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

This does not seem like an objection meant to be taken seriously, linking to a non-News non-Scholar general Google search with no search terms mentioning race and saying you can't see anyone mentioning race, when it is placed beneath Bagumba's bulleted list of links to RS−including Fox News−with quotes pointing out where each has mentioned the race of participants in the incident. (Also, in case you don't realize it: a Google search will not necessarily show you and me the same thing, and on top of that in the case of an ongoing news story like this the results will change from minute to minute, so although it can save time to paste a search URL into a talk page discussion it is not a particularly good way of demonstrating anything.) --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 06:06, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

The first sentence of the lede is laughable: "Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment on March 13, 2020, when a search warrant was executed by white officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD)." Why is it mentioning that the "search warrant was executed by white officers"? That the officers were "white" is irrelevant. Mention of the officers being "white" does not warrant a place in the lede. Bus stop (talk) 06:41, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I think that the fact you're laughing about that series of facts is very specific to you. Perhaps you could provide an example of an officer-involved shooting where you would consider the respective races of the shooters and the deceased to be salient, and would not laugh to see those facts mentioned in the lede of the article? And the criteria you make the distinction with. Because if you simply personally think that race should never be prominently mentioned in articles documenting officer-involved shootings no matter what the reliable sources say, what you're expressing here isn't relevant to Wikipedia. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 07:15, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps it would help if a reliable source was found that said there was evidence that the killing was racially motivated, or at least in part. Bob K31416 (talk) 12:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

That would be relevant if this article discussed motivations anywhere. But it doesn't. You might also notice that the words "motive" and "motivation" also don't appear in our articles shooting bias, race in the United States criminal justice system, discrimination based on skin color § Policing, arrests, and surveillance, or even police use of deadly force in the United States. Observing the significance of race in this incident does not involve hypothesizing some dastardly visceral hatred and malice aforethought on the part of the officers who did the killing. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 13:49, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Struthious Bandersnatch—you reference "the significance of race in this incident". Please tell us—what is the "the significance of race in this incident"? Bus stop (talk) 14:30, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Struthious_Bandersnatch OK, then what's the purpose of putting in "white" for the officers? How is it informative for the Shooting of Breonna Taylor? Bob K31416 (talk) 14:40, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@Bus stop and Bob K31416: I have some level of tolerance for trolling but I'm done here, when you're both acting like you just can't think of any reason why Fox News and the other sources would highlight the race of the individuals involved, in response to a comment in which I linked to several possible reasons they might. If it's really just beyond your mutual imaginations how any of this stuff could be connected, or any other possible reason why race might be a factor in an officer-involved shooting in the United States of America of all places and you can't fathom why any of these sources would say the things they're saying then sorry, I'm not here to hold your hands and lead you through American History 101 or Criminology 101 and describe every possibility and bit of context that might lead to those many separate journalistic decisions arriving at the same end point of mentioning race. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 15:07, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I note that you didn't answer my question but instead chose to make a personal attack. It looks like you don't have a good answer. That's OK, I can live with that.Bob K31416 (talk) 15:35, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Nah, I've got lots of good answers for for what I personally think could have happened and how it could fit into all of these other well-documented topics—but again, not here to hold your hand, and what you or I personally think has nothing to do with what this Wikipedia article should say. And if you feel attacked by me saying I won't hold your hand, feel free to haul me up on not-holding-your-hand charges: WP:NPA, if it really has any bearing, concerns accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence, and you're the one who's saying you can't come up with any reason why all of these sources would regard it as informative to mention race, who's then putting the question to me because you WP:DONTGETIT. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 16:04, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

It does not matter what the skin color of the officers are. Anyone can look up the officers' names and see that for themselves. Isn't this considered racist?

And no, contrary to popular belief, this was not a racially motivated killing. MrVikipedia (talk) 07:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@MrVikipedia: I moved your comment here because it's an existing thread on the topic.—Bagumba (talk) 13:14, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Struthious_Bandersnatch—you say "Perhaps you could provide an example of an officer-involved shooting where you would consider the respective races of the shooters and the deceased to be salient, and would not laugh to see those facts mentioned in the lede of the article?" Where the "races of the shooters and the deceased [are] salient" they should be mentioned. The issue that I am raising, Struthious_Bandersnatch, is that the "races of the shooters and the deceased" are of no known consequence in this particular incident. Should we just go about adding racial overtones willy-nilly whenever possible? There is no known racial component to this incident, therefore I am raising a question about the emphasis placed on a racial dimension in our coverage of the incident. We know the officers were white but why would we be mentioning that in the lede? Shouldn't we ask ourselves a few questions first? Was there a racial component to this incident? If so, can you tell me what that racial component might be? Bus stop (talk) 13:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Nice try at dodging the question, but of course if you can't even articulate your own alternative criteria for consistently deciding when race should be prominently mentioned in relation to an officer-involved shooting incident, your gut instincts are of course not going to supersede the Wikipedia policy of reporting what reliable sources say about a topic.

If you look at the Fox News article above it's not about the shooting itself but rather a protest-related incident a few days ago, and even in their one-sentence summary of the shooting they mention the race of the officers: Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was shot multiple times in March by white officers who entered her home during a narcotics investigation. (my emphasis) If indeed there is no known racial component to this incident you want to take it up with Fox News and the other sources. And if your gut instincts which can't be expressed as repeatable criteria allow you to see the truth past a Manichean delirium which confounds the rest of us, well désolé, monsieur but here it's Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 14:36, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I haven't the foggiest idea why you are referring to "gut instincts", Struthious Bandersnatch. Only sources can guide us in writing an article on a given subject. We address a given subject in accordance with applicable facts as provided to us by reliable sources and sources simply do not provide us with any reason to believe that race was a factor in this incident therefore why should race be mentioned in the lede? Sources do not show us that there was any racial animus in what transpired. Perhaps you disagree, in which case I think you should be substantiating an argument for a racial motive in this incident based on material found in reliable sources. I look forward to that input and I would be glad to discuss this question with you. Bus stop (talk) 16:18, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, you seem super confused and foggy, because you, Bob K31416, and that random IPv6 address are the only ones in this who have mentioned animus or racial motive—not any other editors in this talk page, not the article itself, and not any of the sources I've seen. You would appear to be tilting at windmills, some fearsome giants who are incorrigible in their desire to get content about "racial animus" and "racial motive" into the article, where there isn't any content like that at all in actuality. And there aren't any giants. But Bob here makes a fine Sancho Panza.

To be clear, though I probably should know better than to expound—I'm saying this stuff about racial animus or racial motive is all you guys, it's not in the sources and it's not in the Wikipedia article and it's not in the other editors working here. The normal Wikipedia research and editorial processes should continue gathering content from the sources and writing content for the article, without adding or subtracting details based on hypotheses or theories involving "racial animus" or "racial motive" not existing nor existing. The Wikipedia article should stay the way it is, not discussing motive in any way whatsoever, unless the sources start to talk about motive. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 16:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Struthious Bandersnatch—simple question: did race have anything to do with this incident? Can you show, by reliable sources, that race played any role in the incident which is the subject of this article? I assume not, or you or someone else, would have provided such a source by now. And if you are going to link to some citation, please be so kind as to cut and paste an excerpt of what you feel is relevant material from that citation. We're not here to promote narratives. Our purpose is to reflect sources. The role of sources can't be overstated. If race played no role—as seems to be the case—why are we stating races in the lede? You are not at liberty to make more of racial distinctions than are warranted by the case. Bus stop (talk) 17:44, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Ha. You have not responded to the question I put to you, Bus stop, but sure, I'll answer yours and even repeat the same source quote you ignored from two comments up. I welcome the opportunity to repeatedly showcase the RS basis for the article in this talk page.

Yes, race had something to do with the incident which is the topic of this article, and that's why when Fox News gives a one-sentence summary of the event they write, Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was shot multiple times in March by white officers who entered her home during a narcotics investigation. (my emphasis)

You appear to be operating on the theory that the only possible reason to prominently mention race when describing this topic, the way Fox News and the other sources are doing, is if a conclusion has been reached that there was a racial motive and racial animus on the part of the killers, and that this is being signified by neutrally stating the races of the parties involved. This theory seems to me to come from a bizarro alternate universe where Fox News, when editorially certain that visceral malicious heartfelt racial animus is involved in a story but government officials are denying it, mentions it only mildly and timidly rather than in high-dudgeon sensational language like this story about mistreatment and murder of Africans in India where they drop phrases like "daily indignities", "fear and insecurity", "strictly observed social hierarchies", "Prejudice is open in India", and "the worst kind of discrimination is reserved for the Africans."

And even were your hypothesis to be valid that all of these different sources have chosen to neutrally emphasize race as a way of expressing a conclusion about motivation and racial animus, the course of action you are urging is that Wikipedia must form its own, separate, conclusion asserting the absence of racial motivation and racial animus, and based on our own conclusion disregard and not include in our article the parts of all these sources which prominently mention the race of the individuals involved in the incident. Which obviously is the diametric opposite of We're not here to promote narratives. Our purpose is to reflect sources.

So in summation (which, to be clear, is repetition of points I've already made but you and other editors are WP:NOTGETTINGIT, they are points which you are avoiding acknowledging or responding to)

Mentioning the race of the individuals involved in this incident is not expressing any conclusion about motives on the part of the killers or racial animus and
Even if it were, your personal feeling that no conclusion of racial motivation or animus can be drawn in this particular case would not be a reason to elide the material from the sources mentioning the races of Taylor and the officers, which you are saying is evidence of such a conclusion on the part of the sources

--▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 07:27, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Struthious Bandersnatch—I asked you if race had anything to do with this incident. Despite your wordiness you are in effect conceding that race played no known role in the tragic death of Breonna Taylor. We should not emphasize, for instance by placing in the lede, factors that play no known role. The lede is for summarizing the article, but that does not mean repeating in the lede everything that is found in the body of the article. Many things found in the body of a well-written article are omitted in the lede. You are not at liberty to make more of racial distinctions than are warranted by the particular incident being addressed. There are black people and white people in this world but Wikipedia would not make the "bizarro" leap in reasoning to conclude that all interactions between white people and black people are racially-tinged or racist. The year is 2020. Our article should not be implying that the year is 1968. You need sources supporting that the racial distinctions in this incident played a role in the tragedy that ensued. This is the way Wikipedia operates—we require sources. You have not been able to find any sources to support your contentions of a racial component to the incident the article is writing about. In the absence sources we should consider the racial distinctions of people in this incident to be of no known significance, unless of course you can find a source supporting a role for race in the Shooting of Breonna Taylor. Racial distinctions are worthy of inclusion in the body of the article but racial distinctions are not worthy of inclusion in the lede. Bus stop (talk) 17:20, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

@Bus stop: So I guess your hypothesis is that all these sources are prominently mentioning the race of the victim and the killers... what, for no reason at all? Or because they're all implying that the year is 1968?

The gambit was patently obvious, this rhetorical thing you've been trying to pull off—elicit something from me to position as supposedly the real, reduplicative rationale why this Wikipedia article would mention race, rather than our policy to present what RS say, and then try to bat whatever I've said down like a straw man (and you furthermore seem to have the simplistic expectation that there would have to be a solitary, uniform reason for each of these sources to have individually made the decision to mention race, which is why you also ignored it when I linked to articles on several possibly related phenomena above—that answer didn't suit your rhetorical purposes—when in reality for each source it's probably a different lengthy array of possible reasons)—that rhetorical gimmick was not going to work anyways, but now you've given it all away by skipping the essential part where you trick me into claiming to know what the sources were thinking—and just launching into a screed where you're claiming "You don't have any sources!" in the face of repeated direct quotes and in which you resentfully refer to the twentieth-century Civil Rights Era. I guess you just couldn't wait to get that off your chest.

It's also too late to try to smoothly go from claiming that observing the respective races of the participants in this incident is laughable, and acting all confused as to why these many sources would point it out—no known consequence! no known significance!—to some kind of face-saving concession that it belongs in the body of the article.

Our Wikipedia policies are the actual reason to present the races of the participants and other details from the sources; each source's internal rationale to prominently mention race, like Fox News's internal rationale to mention that the officers are white in its one-sentence summaries of the event, need be no more than a black box to us in most cases.

Statements in the article are not warranted by the particular incident being addressed and the WP:TRUTH that an editor claims to know about it, they're warranted by the sources. Even, indeed, if those sources are all as atavistic as you and are actually implying it's 1968. Though to me it seems pretty obvious that is not the case; statistical analysis of the example phenomena I gave above—like shooting bias, racially disparate outcomes in the United States criminal justice system, and discrimination based on skin color in policing, arrests, and surveillance—were much more primitive in 1968, so I'd suspect if factors like those are involved sources are considering the 2020 versions of them. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 12:08, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

There is plenty of reason to include race here. Bus stop, once you're done laughing over a sentence that describes yet another killing of a Black person by white policemen, maybe you have a moment to consider that, again, it isn’t about intent. Or about whether officers were “racially motivated”. Bob K31416, this goes out to you too. You’re just going to have to accept that we go by reliable sources, even if that presents a different picture of the world then what you had constructed. Drmies (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Drmies, "we go by reliable sources", and reliable sources provide us with no information on any racial motive. This should be in the body of the article, not in the lede. Undue emphasis results from placement in the lede. Bus stop (talk) 14:22, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

You keep talking about "motive" as if that is the important thing. It may not be. I don't understand this obsession with motive--as if all racist acts have to be explicitly motivated. That is not how systemic racism works. Drmies (talk) 16:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Drmies—can we discuss one topic at a time? You are widening the scope of this discussion to Institutional racism, also known as "systemic racism". Bus stop (talk) 16:36, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Huh. It's the same topic. Everyone discusses this killing in terms of historical and systemic violence on the part of (white) police officers against Black people. Drmies (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Drmies, "Everyone discusses this killing in terms of historical and systemic violence". But Wikipedia follows sources. We adhere to the findings of sources. No source supports that race played any role in this exceptionally sad incident. You are not at liberty to make more of racial distinctions than are warranted by the case. Bus stop (talk) 17:54, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

WP:DUE doesnt require that we question the motive of why a subject is covered the way that it is. We reflect the weight that race is given in reliable sources.—Bagumba (talk) 14:00, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba—I didn't "question the motive". The sources provide no racial motive. This should be in the body of the article, not in the lede. Undue emphasis results from placement in the lede. Bus stop (talk) 14:22, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Bus stop: It's not an overt hate crime, if that is what you expect by "motive". Race is as oft-mentioned in this case as in the killing of George Floyd, where race has long been in the lead.—Bagumba (talk) 15:18, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba—I have to refer you to the essay other stuff exists. I happen to be discussing the Shooting of Breonna Taylor article. I'd rather not get into addressing possible problems at the other article to which you link. If we can stay on topic perhaps we can reach a rational conclusion on this question: should race be mentioned in the lede of this article? I say no. My reason, simply stated, is that no source is telling us that race played any role in what transpired. If you disagree then tell us, based on sources, how how race had any part in what transpired. Bus stop (talk) 16:28, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Bus stop: WP:OSE says: When used correctly, these comparisons are important as the encyclopedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes. So race is a "possible problem" for you there as well. ... simply stated, is that no source is telling us that race played any role: See "Critics See Racism In Breonna Taylor Decision As Attorney Pushes For More Details" Forbes, for an example. Seach engines can help too.—Bagumba (talk) 16:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba, In the first ref [1] in the lead of the article, it treated the race of the officers in the same way that I think Bus stop is proposing. It didn't mention it at the beginning but mentioned it farther down the page. Here's the excerpt.

A police officer has been charged over the narcotics raid that resulted in the fatal shooting of a black woman at her home in the US state of Kentucky.

Breonna Taylor, 26, a hospital worker, was shot multiple times as officers stormed her home on 13 March.

Brett Hankison has been charged, not with Ms Taylor's death, but with "wanton endangerment" for firing into a neighbour's apartment in Louisville.

Two other officers who were involved have not been charged.

Under Kentucky law, someone is guilty of wanton endangerment if they commit an act that shows "an extreme indifference to the value of human life".

This lowest-level felony offence can come with a five-year sentence for each count. Mr Hankison was charged on three counts.

What happened to Breonna Taylor?

Timeline of US police killings

Ms Taylor's relatives and activists for whom her death has become a rallying cry had been calling for the three officers, who are all white, to be charged with murder or manslaughter.

Bob K31416 (talk) 16:00, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Writing an encyclopedic article is different than a news article, where the news provider writes to an extent expecting that readers have some background knowledge of an ongoing event. In any case, here's the beginning of a sports article from BBC, where it doesn't assume any background: Taylor, a black woman, was shot multiple times as officers stormed her home in Louisville, Kentucky, on 13 March. Two white officers have not been charged while a third, also white, was charged with endangering 26-year-old Taylor's neighbours.[2]—Bagumba (talk) 17:12, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

If I understand your point about the example article I gave, it didn't mention that the officers were white until later in the article because it was expected that the reader knew they were white. Was that your point? Bob K31416 (talk) 18:01, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

What I am saying is that you can find news coverage back in the day that didn't (immediately) mention that Rodney King was black or that the officers that beat him were white. Still his article at Brittanica.com begins "Rodney Glen King ... was an African American construction worker whose videotaped beating by white Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers ..."[3]—Bagumba (talk) 02:38, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba, I can see that you're having to go far afield to find anything that might support your position, which for me shows it's weak. So that's enough for me since I don't expect that we will come to a meeting of the minds. No hard feelings. Bob K31416 (talk) 03:03, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I dont understand your "having to go far afield" comment. You found a source that didn't mention race in the immediate beginning, I gave you the counter BBC example where it was. I conclude that its position in a given news article is not a good measure, and used a non-recent case like King as a representative example. Yes, it's ok if we don't agree.—Bagumba (talk) 06:02, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Include, but not in this manner. ""The white officers entered her apartment ..." is just terrible writing. The racial stuff belongs in a context that explains its relevance: that the police were White, that the persons in the apartment were Black, and that BLM protests and other actions for racial justice tie Taylor's killing to an observable pattern of White-on-Black police violence. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:26, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
PS: Please note that an RfC at MoS is clearly coming to a consensus to write "Black" and "White" or "black" and "white", but not "Black" and "white". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:27, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Stick to the sources

Back to the issue originally raised (race of the officers being mentioned), we follow what WP:RS say per WP:DUE. Here's what I found after a quick search:

News from late May and June 2020

Publisher	Link	Race of Taylor mentioned	Race of any officer mentioned
AP	[4]	Yes	No
CNN	[5]	No	No
CBS	[6]	No	No
USA Today	[7]	Indirectly	No
NY Times	[8]	Yes	No
BBC	[9]	Yes	No
Courier Journal	Article body yes[10], Article body no: only on photo caption[11]	Yes/Indirectly	No
NPR	[12]	Yes	No

July 2020

Publisher	Link	Race of Taylor mentioned	Race of any officer mentioned
NY Post	[13]	No	No
NBC	[14]	Yes	No
CNN	[15], [16]	No	No
Marietta Times	[17]	Yes	No
Courier Journal	[18]	No	No

August to today 2020

Publisher	Link	Race of Taylor mentioned	Race of any officer mentioned
ABC	[19], [20], [21]	Yes	Yes, but by Crump
Fox News	[22], [23]	No	No
NY Times	[24], [25]	Yes	Yes, in first link
USA Today	[26]	No	No
BBC	[27]	Yes	No

~~I'm going to add to this a bit more~~ Done EvergreenFir (talk) 18:15, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

My takeaway is that we should mention the race of Taylor, but it appears WP:UNDUE to mention the officers' race(s). EvergreenFir (talk) 18:35, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: I had listed these above earlier:

Reuters "The other two officers who shot Taylor were not charged at all after Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Black Republican, concluded their use of force was justified ... The lack of charges against any of the three men, all of them white, for Taylor’s death triggered a new wave of the protests against police brutality and racism."
BBC.com: "A police officer has been charged over the narcotics raid that resulted in the fatal shooting of a black woman at her home in the US state of Kentucky ... Mr Cameron, a Republican who is the state's first black attorney general ... Ms Taylor's relatives and activists for whom her death has become a rallying cry had been calling for the three officers, who are all white, to be charged with murder or manslaughter."
The Guardian: "Taylor, a Black 26-year-old emergency room technician, was killed when three white police officers entered her apartment in the early hours of 13 March."
FoxNews.com: "Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was shot multiple times in March by white officers who entered her home during a narcotics investigation."
Los Angeles Times: "A day after grand jurors declined to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor — a Black woman who was shot dead at night inside her own apartment six months ago ... Taylor was killed in March by white officers who used a “no-knock” warrant filed under a narcotics investigation to barge into her apartment."—Bagumba (talk) 06:36, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

This is a reflection of the announcement last week of no direct charges for Taylor's death. If not now, what is your criteria for it being WP:DUE to add the officers being white to the lead? Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 02:52, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

@Bagumba: Hm... sorry I missed that. But that's a good point about how the media have added that. Based on the overall sources, I'm still not sure that it belongs in the lead sentence. Later in the lead might be appropriate though. EvergreenFir (talk) 03:05, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

EvergreenFir: If I understand correctly, your concern is WP:RECENTISM given the previous coverage from March through mid-September. Are you expecting 6–7 months of followup coverage mentioning the officer's race to balance that, or could observing over a shorter period be possible? It begs the question that if we accept that it's notable to the shooting that Taylor was black, why do we delay introduction of the officers' race when readers will generally then want to know the race of the involved parties, which is now prominent in sources.—Bagumba (talk) 04:15, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Publisher	Link	Race of Taylor mentioned	Race of any officer mentioned
Reuters	[28]	Yes	Yes
BBC	[29]	Yes	Yes
The Guardian	[30]	Yes	Yes
FoxNews.com	[31]	Yes	Yes
Los Angeles Times	[32]	Yes	Yes
The Washington Post	[33]	Yes	Yes
Associated Press	[34]	Yes	Yes
The Independent	[35]	Yes	Yes
The Telegraph	[36]	Yes	Yes

—Bagumba (talk) 06:13, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Note that 8 out of the 9 articles in Bagumba's list did not use "white" when first mentioning the officers. Bob K31416 (talk) 16:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Bob K31416: Are you open to "white" being mentioned later in the lead?—Bagumba (talk) 01:24, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba—should we just go about adding racial overtones willy-nilly whenever possible? Do you have a source supporting that race played any role in the Breonna Taylor shooting? Bus stop (talk) 02:01, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Bus stop: You might have missed my previous response to your same question.—Bagumba (talk) 03:18, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba—you linked to a Forbes article. Absolutely nothing in that article would support that race played any role in the shooting of Breonna Taylor. Bus stop (talk) 03:55, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, you spelled Forbes correctly.—Bagumba (talk) 04:06, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba—if you genuinely feel that anything in the linked-to Forbes article supports a contention that race played any role in the Breonna Taylor shooting—could you please cut-and-paste such material? Bus stop (talk) 04:19, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba, Since you asked, I looked for where it would be appropriate and noticed the last sentence of the lead, like XavierItzm did. A pattern I found in the sources is that they mentioned "white" sometimes when they were talking about protests. I don't think that the source currently used for the last sentence uses "white" in any way, but a source that uses white in that way when it is talking about protests should be findable. So in that case I would be fine with "white" being used in the last sentence of the lead with a source cited that uses it in the same way.

The revised version of the last sentence could be,

"The shooting of Taylor by white police officers led to protests across the United States, and the grand jury not indicting the officers for her death led to more protests."

All that's needed is a source that uses "white" in a similar statement. Bob K31416 (talk) 05:39, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I started looking at Bagumba's list and found that the first source in the list, Reuters [37], was useful for the above proposed sentence. Here's the relevant excerpt from the Reuters article.

"The lack of charges against any of the three men, all of them white, for Taylor’s death triggered a new wave of the protests against police brutality and racism."

Bob K31416 (talk) 13:21, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

To reiterate what I said below and expand on it: the racial identities of the people involved hasn't just been related to protests; it's of course been an element in national and international journalism on and public interest in the topic, which we're discussing, it's been an aspect of lawsuits related to the incident, it's been a focus of legislative action mentioned in the article responding to this and other incidents (2 of 3 sources about the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 mention Taylor and the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act is obviously named after her; the one non-primary source on that mentions she's black, but not that the officers are white), there are phenomena that may be motivating all of these reliable sources to include the races of Taylor and the officers such as shooting bias, race in the United States criminal justice system, and discrimination based on skin color § Policing, arrests, and surveillance, I'm noticing this incident is a topic discussed in legal and criminal justice journal articles already, and Fox News in one-sentence summaries of the incident mentions that the officers are white (albeit in one of those sentences also mentioning protests.) --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 14:28, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

We need to keep WP:SYNTH out of the article and use "white" in the context and way that the sources use it. Bob K31416 (talk) 14:48, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Bob K31416, and as I said the sources do not simply mention that the officers are white in the context of protests.

I listed the above phenomena not because I think any content about them should be added to the article absent coverage in RS, but because above in this talk page section, subsequent to a variety of quotes using the word "white" being presented by Bagumba, three of which did not mention protests and none of which mentioned motivations for the killing, you asked for evidence related to the motivation for the killing and then inquired about how mentioning that word could be informative about the killing.

So I'm just making sure we don't slide into a rut where mentions of "white" in sources not related to protests get treated as equivalent to the mentions of "white" which are related to protests as another narrow personal interpretation of the reason why RS would choose to include the word "white" in their coverage, which itself would be a case of the WP:SYNTH you're now saying you're worried about. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 15:39, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Let's see what others think about moving "white" from the first sentence of the lead to the last. Bob K31416 (talk) 01:32, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

That does not deal with concerns of presenting the officers' race as something related only to the protests. For some more examples of how broadly race is involved in this topic—measures relating to racial bias statistical collection, internal affairs, prevention of disparate outcomes, or training may have been included in the original version of the Settlement Agreement you added a link to earlier today, but all of the copies I can find online have had the "Exhibit 1" removed which contains the details of the police reforms the LMPD agreed to.

And after Chief Conrad was fired over the incident the job posting Louisville put out, which mentions Breonna Taylor shooting investigations in its introduction, specified that The police chief should have successful experience in a multi-racial community and the ability to lead in an environment that is focusing on race relations, that a review [of] tactics through a racial equity lens was requested by community member[s] or elected leaders and said that some of the common themes that LMPD employees would like to see a new chief address are:... Include training on systemic racism and better implicit bias training. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 18:48, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Struthious Bandersnatch—why are you adding race to the lede? Race (human categorization) is of no known significance in the Shooting of Breonna Taylor. No source is saying that race played any role whatsoever in the death that transpired in this tragic incident. You are misleading the reader by means of prominent placement of race in the lede. It belongs in the body of the article but not in the lede. We don't assume that just because they are white that they must be racist—a source would be required to support such a contention, and no such source has been produced—not by you—not by anyone else. Information of secondary importance has its rightful place in the body of the article. Information of little known significance/no known significance belongs only in the body of the article and not in the lede. You are not at liberty to make more of racial distinctions than are warranted by the case. Bus stop (talk) 02:56, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

It is incorrect (and disingenuous) to suggest that mentioning the officers' race(s) implies they are racist or has racist motives. It's also incorrect to say race played no role; RS clearly say that race is an important factor in the event and reactions to it. The "racial distinctions" you mention are precisely what make this event notable; but for race we'd not have an article about this. EvergreenFir (talk) 04:17, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

EvergreenFir, It doesn't seem that you're interpreting Bus Stop's points correctly. Re your point, "It's also incorrect to say race played no role; RS clearly say that race is an important factor in the event and reactions to it." — It might help if you could give an excerpt from a reliable source and suggest how info from that excerpt could be used in the article. I think that would help address Bus Stop's main point, as I understand it. Bob K31416 (talk) 11:30, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

It is very simple. The factor of race only arises in the aftermath of the shooting. In the shooting itself race plays no role. Wikipedia requires sources. This isn't some free-form, unstructured, shouting-match section of the internet. If anyone wishes to imply that race played a role in the shooting, according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, including our important policy of ignore all rules, they have to provide a source in support of that implication. I concur with Bob K31416 who says "It might help if you could give an excerpt from a reliable source and suggest how info from that excerpt could be used in the article." We are quintessentially reliant on reliable sources. Bus stop (talk) 15:38, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

First off, to reply to the comment Bus stop added and then deleted which does an even better job of exhibiting the very simple reasons why this editor is ignoring it every time they are presented with a quote from a source mentioning race the way they don't want to see it mentioned in this article: sources, and this article, mentioning that the officers are white does not conclude anything about their motives in the killing and does not conclude that they are personally racist. And mentioning that the officers are white does not conclude that whiteness equates with racism or that all people [are] in a perpetual state of hatred towards people who don't look like them.

Although it sure as hell is not our job to exonerate these officers of racism as you appear to believe you're trying to do by overriding Wikipedia policies to control with your own personal preferences how this article mentions race.

It is not the place of Wikipedia editors to decide for the reader that racism did or did not play a role in Breonna Taylor's death, or to declare that the race of those involved is of no known significance or of secondary importance or of little known significance or any of the dismissive epithets you've been bestowing on this aspect of the topic. It's enough that sources like Fox News give one-sentence summaries of the event mentioning the race of the officers like this: Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was shot multiple times in March by white officers who entered her home during a narcotics investigation. (my emphasis)

I think even you must realize on some level that you're shoveling pure bullshit when you say things like We don't assume that just because they are white that they must be racist—a source would be required to support such a contention.

No. No such source was needed by the current version of this article, any revision of the article that exists in its history, nor I would hazard to guess any version of the article that has been contemplated in the imagination of anyone who has edited it except for you.

There's so much wrong with that I'm not even going to dip my toe in on the rhetorical context, but suffice to say that between the fact that you can type that and press "Save" like it's some kind of serious argument involving Wikipedia policy and what this article says, you talk about laughing when you read the lede of this article, and you have some kind of fear or discomfort around any resemblance between now and 1968/the Civil Rights Era and feel the need to override Wikipedia policy to eliminate that impression because you get it from this article when the word "white" appears in the lede... you should take a hard look at why you respond to mention of race, and what you perceive to be mention of racism, this way. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 18:48, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I prefer to have User:EvergreenFir continue the discussion by responding to the last messages of Bus Stop and me. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:19, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Nothing is stopping EvergreenFir from continuing the discussion, which I also welcome. No need to speak as if they can't, simply because I've also responded after Bus stop addressed me twice and pinged me both times. (And upon reflection: if your reaction here has to do with how I've indented my comments, feel free to rearrange the indenting. None of the fora I spend time on have hierarchical indenting in their comment systems so sometimes my habits in Wikimedia talk pages apparently clash with those of people who spend time where hierarchical indenting is used.) --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 21:13, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

@Bob K31416: perhaps i'm not interpreting Bus stop correctly. It seemed Bus stop was saying race was not germane to the article. RS clearly show Taylor's race is. Specifically, it's relevant within the context of police use of force in the USA. That the officers are white matters here only because of that context (though we have plenty of cases where officers were PoC). I took Bus stop's comments to suggest that mentioning the whiteness of the officers [incorrectly] implied their actions were motivated by Taylor's race.

If i am interpreting Bus stop correctly, i'm happy to provide sources showing that (1) Taylor's race is notable and DUE, (2) her race matters in the context of police violence, and (3) that the officers are white is noteworthy because of the larger context the event occurred in. If i'm interpreting incorrectly, please clarify for me what point is actually being made. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:45, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

EvergreenFir: Bus stop's position is confusing when they stated earlier that If reliable sources say an individual is black, we dutifully convey that information to the reader. If reliable sources say an individual is white, we dutifully convey that information to the reader regarding George Floyd.[38]. They made a WP:VAGUEWAVE at WP:OSE earlier[39], but did not respond further regarding how Taylor's case is different.—Bagumba (talk) 07:05, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

User:EvergreenFir, Could you give the sources regarding item 3, with relevant excerpts? Bob K31416 (talk) 10:45, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

If people are going to accuse these police officers of shooting the woman because of her race, they are going to have crystal clear WP:RS that say so to back it up. If I understand correctly, not only are 2 not even being prosecuted at all for shooting the woman (i.e., they acted within the scope of their jobs), but one is being prosecuted for blindly shooting from outside (i.e., did not even know who he was shooting at. Does it get any more color blind than that?). Per WP:BLP, cast no aspersions on living people condemned of no crime.
On a different subject matter, if people want to play up any riots, demonstrations, protests, whatever, on the basis of skin color, and they have the WP:RS to support it, wear yourselves out. We go by the sources. XavierItzm (talk) 13:10, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

We have to use common sense, EvergreenFir, Bagumba, and thanks for pinging me. The officers did not want to die. They were fired upon from inside the apartment. One of the officers was hit in the leg. The officers fired back into the apartment. This had nothing to do with race. Nobody wants to die. Cops are allowed to defend their lives. The same applies equally to black cops and white cops. It is problematic to refer to the "white" police officers in the lede. We are implying that their race had some bearing on the tragedy of the death that transpired when race only arises as a factor in the aftermath of the shooting: protesters and attorneys argue after the shooting that the incident is emblematic of past and ongoing injustices against black people. But no one is arguing that the races of the individuals involved in this incident was a contributory factor in the death that resulted. It would be problematic to refer to the cops as "white" in the lede because doing so could invoke concepts such as racial prejudice which are not known to apply in this incident. You need a source showing that race played a role in leading up to the tragic results. We are having a dispute right now. What we need to do is examine what sources say. Therefore I'm asking you to please cut-and-paste an excerpt that you feel shows that race was a factor in the shooting. If you can post that here we can at least discuss the applicability of the wording in sources to the presence or absence of the disputed word "white" in the lede. Bus stop (talk) 16:04, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

@Bus stop: I don't think the officers' race(s) belong in the lead sentence. That would be WP:UNDUE. If there were a paragraph in the lead about the protests, that's where I'd suggest mentioning it because that's where it matters. You are absolutely correct that it is emblematic of issues; I don't know of any RS that said racial animosity played a role in the shooting itself (beyond implicit bias). Perhaps we're more in agreement than I realized.

@XavierItzm: I don't think anyone is trying to make that argument. As Bus stop said, this case is emblematic of the issue at hand.

@Bob K31416: For #3, I'd offer the following:

NY Times ([40]) explicitly states this by saying, "Ms. Taylor’s name and image have become part of the national movement over racial injustice since May, when her case began to draw national attention. Celebrities have written open letters and erected billboards demanding that the white officers be criminally charged for the death of a young Black woman."
Reuters ([41]) noted the officers' race when mentioning the protests after the grand jury ruling. It goes on to note that these protests are connected to George Floyd's killing by a White officer.
BBC ([42]) notes that Taylor's killing by White officers has become a rallying cry for activists.
The Guardian ([43]) plainly says, "Taylor, a Black 26-year-old emergency room technician, was killed when three white police officers entered her apartment in the early hours of 13 March."
LA Times ([44]) makes clear that the "national outrage" is "over police killings of unarmed Black people." It also noted that the police were White.
Fox News ([45]), when explaining the protest, notes that Taylor was Black and the officers were White.

I'll point out that I chose the word "noteworthy" because I don't think it's a key part of this case or the resulting protests. But RS do make note of it often enough to warrant inclusion in the body of the article at least. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:08, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

What you've just shown and said goes along with my thinking that "white" shouldn't be in the first sentence of the lead but should be in the last sentence of the lead, which is about protests. Looks like we agree. Bob K31416 (talk) 00:34, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Looks like users EvergreenFir, Bob K31416, and XavierItzm are all in agreement that the race of the police officers could be mentioned somewhere in the body of the article, or perhaps in the last line of the lead section. My preference is to agree with EvergreenFir and to mention this fact somewhere in the body of the article. Cheers to all, XavierItzm (talk) 22:03, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

There are certainly multiple places the race of the officers could be mentioned in the body of the article, but the racial identities of the participants in this event are a central aspect of its notability and of its coverage in sources. In addition to significance relating to the shooting itself, subsequent protests, lawsuits, and legislation already mentioned in the article which may be leading all of these sources to prominently mention the fact that the officers are white,

The police report filed immediately after the incident listed Taylor's injuries as "none", but I would be quite surprised if paperwork filed in the immediate aftermath also did not show that Mattingly, who authorities have been saying was shot in the thigh by Kenneth Walker, was injured. (Walker was charged with first-degree assault and attempted murder of a police officer, but the charges were dropped within weeks.)
Mattingly had nearly two weeks to prep and had a lawyer present for his interview by Sergeant Jason Vance who during the interview described the raid involving at least seven officers and a battering ram as the most passive way in to serve the warrant but the statements of Walker, the surviving black participant in the incident, were taken within hours. Walker waived the right to a lawyer, but who knows what sort of representations were made to him to gain his compliance in contrast with Mattingly; maybe they gave him the impression that he had a constitutional right to defend himself with a firearm and a constitutional right to equal treatment under the law, whereas in reality he was about to be charged with attempted murder. The president of the Fraternal Order of Police of the city, who one would expect represents the officers, called Walker a "danger to the community" and one of "the most violent offenders."
As the article already observes in a thoroughly-cited paragraph, On September 23, 2020, a state grand jury indicted Hankison on three counts of wanton endangerment for endangering a neighboring white family of three when shots he fired penetrated their apartment. Bullets also entered the above apartment of a black family, but no counts were filed. If the prosecutor, who does stuff like issue press releases in response to Facebook comments, decided based on his own knowledge that Hankinson is a white officer that he didn't like the possible publicity impression that charging a white officer with wantonly endangering a black family might give, that is yet another reason for the reader to know up-front that Hankinson and the other officers are white.

EvergreenFir, I appreciate that you are one of the editors involved in this discussion who is willing to acknowledge the existence of the many sources that mention that the officers are white in the same way that many revisions of the lede of the article have. But you say that mention of the protests is where it matters to also mention race, then go on to mention implicit bias in passing in the context of the shooting as though it doesn't matter in that respect. However things like implicit bias and other aspects of systemic racism are absolutely huge here. The University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law is now teaching a course entitled "Breonna Taylor's Louisville: Race, Equity and Law" overseen by the dean, there's so much material and so many interrelated topics. I'm of course not saying that we should reproduce the entire content of a graduate-level university course in this article but to write the article as if these aspects don't matter or are of marginal significance would not be encyclopedic.

Since in the same paragraph you say I don't know of any RS that said racial animosity played a role in the shooting itself, I have to reiterate that no revision of this article has made any claim about racial animosity, nor has any proposed wording, so this is not a valid counterargument to anything that has been said in this talk page nor a policy-based or "stick to the sources" reason to change the article. Furthermore I have to point out that the editors who have been variously urging removal of the word "white" from the article, or its relegation to the body text or one specific facet of the topic, have actually been making a have-it-both-ways argument in which they openly state or imply that any wording indicating that the officers are white in connection to the shooting event itself expresses that the officers had a motive involving racial animosity, by which logic also all of the reliable sources mentioning that the officers are white would be documentation by Wikipedia standards that racial animosity played a role in the shooting. Hence the refusal to acknowledge the existence of all the sources using the word "white" and the repetitive demands for quotes they've already been furnished with.

Finally, to respond to Bus stop's cri du cœur that Nobody wants to die and that this applies equally to more than one race of cops (my emphasis), ignoring like the prosecutor and so many others that Kenneth Walker's actions were in self-defense, and XavierItzm's related exclamation that Per WP:BLP, cast no aspersions on living people condemned of no crime: WP:BLP also applies to Breonna Taylor as a recently deceased person—a person who not only was never condemned of any crime, but whom the prosecutor explicitly did not even charge with a crime, nor did a grand jury deliberate about charging her with crimes as one did the officers and then get advised to only charge a single one of them with endangering a white family. Yet this article mentions an investigation into drug dealing operations in the lede and is stuffed full of details insinuating that Taylor was involved in drug dealing operations, many of those details being conflicting statements from an individual who was charged, who also contradicts himself and denies involvement on her part.

I am not saying that none of these details which could be read to allege a not-even-charged participation by Taylor in a criminal enterprise should be in the article—they are attested to by reliable sources, though as far as I can see not so frequently as the fact that the officers are white, and some measure of coverage is appropriate to encyclopedic documentation of the event, especially in combination with an emphasis that prosecutors decided not to charge her. But the extreme disparity of concern, taking the form of overwrought one-sided appeals that "nobody wants to die" and that the officers, specifically, are "condemned of no crime", accompanied by tying oneself in logical knots, persistently acting as if sources don't exist, and egregious misapplication of Wikipedia policy, all supposedly to exclude the shadow of a possibility that a reader who, like these editors, automatically assumes that someone is racist upon hearing that they are white, might make that assumption before reading any further into the article—that extreme disparity of concern is itself overt and conscious racism. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 04:45, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

So yesterday Bus stop went through and in a series of edits changed every single race-related detail in the lede, completely ignoring this lengthy discussion of the significance of race in this incident. I have reverted most of the changes and restored some of the wording that was present at the point this discussion was added to the talk page, given the concern they have expressed below about the status quo of this supposedly "well-developed" article. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 08:48, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for pinging me, Struthious Bandersnatch. You say "There are certainly multiple places the race of the officers could be mentioned". I think the question is not where the race of the officers could be mentioned but where the race of the officers should be mentioned. We should not go around adding racial overtones willy-nilly wherever possible. You say "Although it sure as hell is not our job to exonerate these officers of racism as you appear to believe you're trying to do by overriding Wikipedia policies to control with your own personal preferences how this article mentions race." It would only be possible to "exonerate these officers of racism" if these officers were previously accused of racism but they were not. Neither you nor anyone else has been able to present a reliable source which supports an accusation of racism. We mention they are white. But their whiteness is not known to have had any bearing on the shooting death addressed in this article. "Whiteness", "blackness", etc., only arises in events subsequent to the shooting—namely protests and legal argumentation. Here you are adding "white" to the first sentence of the lede. The police were white but that descriptive term does not belong in the first sentence of the lede. Race (human categorization) had no bearing on the shooting. There is no reliable source supporting that race (human categorization) had any bearing on the shooting. Bus stop (talk) 13:12, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

No comment on ignoring this whole discussion to change every detail about race in the lede, huh?

I notice you decided to take a second pass at the comment you left here for five hours and then deleted, though. It's okay to retract a comment after a few minutes without leaving any trace but any longer and you're supposed to mark it as struck out, not simply erase it.

protests and legal argumentation ...and disparate treatment in regards to having injuries documented, and disparate treatment in regards to being charged, and disparate treatment with regards to being interviewed, and legislation, and yes, race bears on the shooting itself, because even if you keep pretending with doe-eyed innocence that you have no idea why anyone would think so, as EvergreenFir pointed out above there's implicit bias, and there's a whole host of other factors.

Accused of personal racism? Who knows. Doesn't actually matter because the article does not accuse the officers of personal racism. But by all means, continue to willy-nilly give me opportunities to fill up this talk page with evidence of how significant an aspect race is in this incident. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 13:40, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah so if you edit your comment after someone has already replied, you're also per WP:TALK#REPLIED supposed to indicate that you've made a change and what you've changed.

In the diff you link to in the course of surreptitiously modifying your talk page comment, my edit comment states that I am restoring the wording of the lede to what it said at the beginning of this talk page discussion of the officers' race... and also predicts that you were going to act confused as to why I did it anyways, even though I clearly said what I was doing. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 14:26, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

________________ format to separate old from new.Bob K31416 (talk) 14:22, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Good job Evergreen. As posted originally the majority of sources do not cite race and even less lead with it. The article needs to be fixed to reflect it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:46:C801:B1F0:F5BB:3B86:E159:625A (talk) 03:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Looking at the May/June table, we can see that the no/indirectly are about 1/2 and the yes are about 1/2. We can also see that only the NYT, BBC and NPR lead with Taylor's skin color; the other media either don't mention it or mention it half way down/a bit down.

This raises the question: does Wikipedia need to open up with skin color as the 5th word of a 7,000-word article? Currently the lead section ends as follows: «Taylor's death and the non-indictment of the police officers for it led to protests across the United States». How about race is mentioned in this last sentence of the lead section, like so:
Taylor's death, who was black, and the non-indictment of the police officers, who are white, led to protests across the United States.
XavierItzm (talk) 07:17, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

As I've pointed out above, even Fox News is now mentioning the race of the officers when it provides a one-sentence summary of the event (emphasis mine in all cases)

here is another example: Protests have erupted in Louisville, Ky., after the grand jury declined to charge officers in the fatal shooting of Taylor, who was shot multiple times March 13 after her boyfriend fired at officers who had entered her home during a narcotics raid by white officers, authorities said.
here Fox News identifies Hankinson as white when discussing him individually: Hankinson was fired on June 23. A termination letter sent to him by interim Louisville Police Chief Robert Schroeder said the white officer violated procedures by showing 'extreme indifference to the value of human life' when he 'wantonly and blindly' shot 10 rounds of gunfire into Taylor’s apartment.
here, in June, Fox News wrote a story entirely about black protesters protecting a white police officer during a related protest, though it did not mention the race of the officers involved in the incident itself.

But the racial identities of the people involved hasn't just been related to protests; it's of course been an element in national and international journalism on and public interest in the topic, which we're discussing, it's been an aspect of lawsuits related to the incident, it's been a focus of legislative action mentioned in the article responding to this and other incidents, I'm noticing it's a topic discussed in legal and criminal justice journal articles... one of our sources in this article even says that the European Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile decided to not even investigate a Tuscan Grand Prix race driver for making disallowed political statements, when he wore a t-shirt saying “Arrest the cops that killed Breonna Taylor" to an FIA-sponsored anti-racism event and then during the race itself.

So, the lede should not give the impression that the races of Taylor and the officers are relevant only to protests.

Also I'm noticing that EvergreenFir's tables, in addition to not including the links from the bulleted list in the above discussion already shown through quotes to include the race of the officers, are doing things like linking to this Fox News page in which it's clearly visible from both still photos and video footage that the officers have light skin, but the table shows a big red "No" for whether the race of any officer is apparent. Did you compile all the tables while leaving that aspect of their coverage out?

Furthermore, WP:DUE does not attach to this: that Taylor is black and the officers are white is not a minority view or a fringe theory and sources which don't mention those things in their text, or which convey them by showing photographs or video, are not arguing against those facts. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 09:22, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

________________ format to separate old from new.Bob K31416 (talk) 14:22, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Enough of the whitewashing already. Plenty of sources, besides the ones already mentioned: "Mr. Cameron has said that jurors were told that the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor — Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove, both of whom are white — were justified in their actions", "The killing of another Black American at the hands of white police officers...", "none of the three white officers who collectively fired 32 gunshots...", "he demonstrators called for all three officers, who are white, to be held to account...". Leaving out "Black" or "white" here is leaving out a thing that is of obvious importance, or this plethora of reliable sources wouldn't comment on it. Denying that is...well, reading over this discussion is like watching the Andy Griffith Show with one eye and the PBS Newshour with the other. Drmies (talk) 02:03, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

You've essentially provided sources that support the point being made here that "white" shouldn't be in the first sentence of the lead. Here are the first sentences of each of your sources.

"Two very different accounts emerged on Friday from either side of an apartment door in Louisville, the one that police officers knocked off its hinges in March as they delivered a search warrant at the home of Breonna Taylor."[46]

"In grand jury testimony made public on Friday, a law enforcement officer said police in Kentucky did not end up searching Breonna Taylor’s apartment on the day she was shot and killed by police who had arrived with a search warrant."[47]

"A second night of anti-racism protests got off to a tense but mostly peaceful start in Louisville, Kentucky, on Thursday, a day after a grand jury decided not to bring homicide charges against police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor."[48]

"A grand jury weighing evidence in one of the country’s most contentious police shootings indicted a former Louisville police detective on charges of reckless endangerment on Wednesday for his role in the raid on the home of Breonna Taylor, but the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor six times faced no charges."[49]

Bob K31416 (talk) 09:21, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Drmies—can you tell me what "Andy Griffith Show" and "PBS Newshour" are intended to symbolize? Bus stop (talk) 15:01, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Race of the officers—Part Ⅲ

So I was explaining to Bus stop below that I don't regard their personal preferences sufficient reason to override the status quo ante of the lede for this discussion and that's why I partially reverted a series of edits they made which changed all race-related details in the lede. Further discussion up above where I announced it after I made the change.

Furthermore, as I've said above, the arguments Bus stop has made are based on ignoring Wikipedia policy and ignoring what sources say, as far as I'm concerned, and hence are not material to Wikipedia editorial consensus in my view. So the question is, how do we move forward?

Seems to me we could ⑴ keep slogging it out, ⑵ hold an RfC, or ⑶ pursue a Dispute Resolution option. There are quite possibly other options; I don't get to this particular part of the process much. So do any people still reading this have a preference for one of those options or a new idea?

Bus stop—do you have a preference for one of those options, or a different idea on how to move forward? --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 04:53, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

You are exacerbating the problem, Struthious Bandersnatch, by refusing to edit in small, incremental edits, as I have been suggesting at the Edits versus rewrite section on this page. Bus stop (talk) 05:18, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

...What problem? Is the Δkb magnitude of my individual edits, all by itself, somehow making racial issues more significant to the topic of this article? Neither you nor the other editor below could come up with a link to a single recommended Wikipedia editing practice related to your demands, much less a mandated one, and you have not actually explained what problem it would supposedly cause.

Nor, for that matter, why my editing practices should be tailored to your preferences in any way whatsoever, anyhow. This is how I do things; there are entire articles I've created in a single edit, years ago, that have not been touched by a human hand since—just bots come through to monkey around with them. No one has ever complained before, in fourteen years, and right now you're about the last Wikipedia editor in the world I'm inclined to do a special favor for because you supposedly have some special problem where you need to have tiny edits.

Let me also make this clear: if you just keep bringing up novel unrelated issues rather than seeking progress on the normal Wikipedia path of content dispute resolution I'm going to regard this talk page discussion as resolved. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 05:48, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Struthious Bandersnatch—you say "there are entire articles I've created in a single edit". As has been pointed out to you by another editor in the Edits versus rewrite section, this is a "relatively-mature page". Bus stop (talk) 06:30, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Well then, if I can actually take your word that I'm not going to find further enormous glaring gaps in coverage like all the stuff about the warrant that was missing and all the stuff from Walker's legal team's own ballistics analysis or the KSP ballistics report, there just won't be much more for me to add, will there? But if this is just a pretext and I find that other major swathes of important details concerning the topic have mysteriously not made it into the article, I will add them in edits of any size I please. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 06:48, 12 October 2020 (UTC)