My understanding is that the whole reason there's a "hands up, don't shoot" thing going on is because of the incredibly higher chance of a black person being shot by police than a white person, often with the flimsiest of justifications. Even in the case of Vonderrit Myers, which you say was justified due to Myers having used a gun, it seems especially egregious considering how the police originally claimed that Myers was facing forward when he was shot yet the autopsy later revealed that he was shot from behind. That's without mentioning the fact that most of the shots were in the lower extremities while the fatal shot just happened to be through the face. Even so, consider how often white people have actually fired guns at living targets (or at least wielded them in a threatening manner) yet are taken into custody alive while black people get shot dead for something as simple as
carrying a toy sword as part of a cosplay. Then the media jumps in and decides to frame the dead black person who got shot as a thug by digging up whatever dirt there is on them while a white guy shooting up his classmates is portrayed as a nice kid who just so happened to have mental issues, which also contributes to the demonisation of mental illness.
I have a problem with donniedarko saying that taking away "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" as a slogan just leaves them with "Black Lives Matter" and "No Justice, No Peace" as if those are easily dismissable slogans. The whole reason "Black Lives Matter" became such an important slogan is tied into what I said in that last paragraph - that black people often get killed for the poorest of reasons (if there's a reason in the first place) while white people who also endanger other members of the public at least get taken alive more often than not. The implication is that it's okay to kill black people because apparently nobody cares enough if you do, so "Black Lives Matter" came about as a way of contradicting this systematic racism - systematic racism that was ironically represented by non-black people trying to change it to "All Lives Matter" and missing the point severely.
First off, do you have actual statistics for how many black people are killed by cops versus how many white people are killed? Everyone has been throwing that around a lot without actually proving it. This may just be a perception thing, you realize that, right?
Second, I don't disagree with you. It's very obvious black people are treated differently by the police than white people. In fact, black people are treated differently by other black people.
Go here for this quote about a game where you play a police officer shooting people and making decisions about who requires lethal force:
"In effect, we have a more impulsive trigger finger when confronted by black men and are more cautious with whites. This is true of black players as well, apparently because they absorb the same cultural values as everyone else: Correll has found no statistically significant difference between the play of blacks and that of whites in the shooting game."
On the Cracked.com podcast a few weeks back they talked about a study where people were flashed pictures of people and they had to hit a button in less than a second if they believed the person shown was perceived to be threatening. In that study black people and white people hit the button for pictures of black people more than white people.
The real problem with the black community in the US is one of perception (funnily enough, I think perception, or misperceiving reality, is the cause of pretty much every single thing that's wrong with society).
That said, I stand by what I said. No one who's on the fence about these issues wants to jump on board with a group of people who are ignoring facts.
Regarding Myers, he shot at the officer and that gave the officer the right to shoot him. The reason he was shot in the back was because it was dark and because the officer knew Myers was a danger because, well, he shot at the officer. It's always been the case that officers can use deadly force when the suspect is considered dangerous. Being shot in the back doesn't matter if Myers already showed that he was willing to kill someone.