The new, or old, apartheid: people shot dead by police in the US in 2016?

As a person who grew up in Apartheid South Africa these statistics bring back very bad memories. I have so many regrets about my life in South Africa; I could have done a lot more than I did. My advice to Americans is to try and live your lives so that you don't have any regrets. 

This year, 512 people have been shot and killed by police in the United States. July 12, 2016 Dear Gavin, The shooting death of Philando Castile by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, on 7 July pushed the issue of the use of deadly force by police back into the US national headlines. Data collected by the Washington Post suggests that the use of deadly force is on the rise. So far this year 512 people have been shot and killed by police in the United States. This is a 3% increase from the same period of 2015 and roughly equal to the number of people that have been killed this year in mass shootings in the US. As in 2015, 27% of those killed so far in 2016 have been black, 51% white. However, blacks continued to be shot at 2 times the rate of whites. Mental illness played a role in roughly one-quarter of the incidents in 2015 and 2016. In addition, the share of killings of unarmed people has remained below 10%. One statistic that has notably changed is the share of black women killed in police shootings: in cases involving female deaths, the share of blacks has risen to 35% in 2016 from 24% in 2015.