Many African Americans have long felt that they are not treated as equal to whites in this country, a view that no doubt has its genesis in the scourge of slavery and was further promulgated at the birth of the Union. Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution for eg. declared that an enslaved black would be counted as three-fifths of a white inhabitant of that state. That assertion was first proposed by James Wilson, Pennsylvania’s delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and a future Supreme Court Justice. While such a valuation was primarily used to determine State representation in Congress it nonetheless appeared to subconsciously associate a lower value for blacks than that of whites in our society that pervades even to this day.

As an economist I generally do not interject into matters of a highly emotive nature. After all economics is very objectively driven with rational responses to challenging issues, whereas issues of social justice tend to ignite emotions and inflame the passions. Nevertheless recent crises within our society have called into question the worrying question of the true worth or value of Blacks in America today, one that I would be loathe to ignore. By way of full disclosure I’m a valuation specialist. My expertise is in valuing what are termed ‘hard-to-value’ assets. I assess a value for intangible assets and intellectual property rights. I research values for non-traded technology and marketing assets that are transferred to related parties. I’ve also developed an expertise in evaluating athletic performance and related skill-sets. However, I’ve never attempted to value the economic worth of Blacks in America. That is a complex task. It requires a thorough understanding of the differentials in lifetime earnings potentials, promotion possibilities, barriers to entry into certain fields of endeavor, even access to institutions for career advancements. Clearly it is very challenging indeed.

Yet for all these challenges there is enough anecdotal evidence that Black lives are not worth as much as we as a society would like to believe. an analysis of FBI data from 2012 by Vox showed that police killing of blacks accounted for 31 percent of all killings in 2012, even though blacks made up just 13 percent of the U.S. population, a two-and-a-half times disparity. While this data may indeed reflect the fact that many of those killings were related to criminal behavior, and some may even be justified killings another chilling statistic is even more damning. Of those police killings that occurred when the victims were NOT attacking at the time when they got killed (read that victims like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddy Gray, Alton Sterling and Philando Castille) the data suggests that 39 percent of them were black. That’s fully three times higher than the black population, a truly disproportionate number.

A review of selected killings of unarmed blacks at the hands of the police reveals the following:

Date	Person	Result	Verdict
March 1991	Rodney King	Beaten by 4 LA cops	All 4 cops acquitted of State charges but 2 officers found guilty in federal court of violating King’s civil rights.
Feb 1999	Amadou Diallo	Shot & killed by 4 NYC cops who fired 41 bullets at him	Acquitted by Jury in Albany, NY.
July 2014	Eric Garner	Choked to death by a NYC cop	Grand jury decided not to indict the police officer.
August 2014	Michael Brown	Shot to death by a Ferguson, MO policeman	Grand jury decided not to indict the police officer.
April 2015	Freddie Gray	Died at the hands of 6 Baltimore cops (depraved indifference)	At present 3 of the 6 officers involved have been acquitted with 2 others yet to stand trial, and 1 expecting a retrial.
July 2016	Alton Sterling	Shot to death by 2 Baton Rouge policemen	To date no charges have been brought against the officers involved in the shooting
July 2016	Philando Castille	Shot to death by a St. Anthony, MN policeman	To date no charges have been brought against the officer involved in the shooting

The struggle for many blacks is that these killings for the most part continue to go unpunished which compounds the issue of the unjustified killings. The pain gets amplified within the black community.

Many African Americans had always felt that James Wilson’s valuation of Blacks in America was wrong. We all felt that Blacks were not worth three-fifths of a white. Alas what we did not realize was that judging by the acquittals after the ghastly killings James Wilson’s valuation may now prove to have been too high.

Keith Thompson is a Senior Economist in Transfer Pricing with an agency within the US Department of the Treasury, and an adjunct Economics professor with Ramapo College of New Jersey.