[When] the demographic skew in homicides is acknowledged, it tends to be unhelpfully labeled “black-on-black crime” — that is, murder as the inevitable result of a tangle of dysfunctional pathologies exhibited by black people. The proponents of this view say that any honest discussion about race and crime — and thus, race and policing — has to grapple with what they say is a deeply rooted flaw in the culture of black communities. And so we’ve dealt with this problem using the blunt instrument of policing, not imagination or even empathy.