It opened my eyes. The ACLU has a lengthy breakdown of police discrimination in Minneapolis. But wait, I say, I am an enlightened white person, and I never see any of this!
I wonder why?
I’m also beginning to understand why right-wingers hate the ACLU so much. They keep documenting the unpleasant facts!
Actually, you need to know a little more. Here’s an eyewitness account of what happened at the recent Minneapolis shooting.
I was at the #4thprecinct tonight when white supremacists shot 4 (maybe 5) protestors.
I sat in the hospital for a little while talking to the girlfriend of one of the men shot. He was where he was because he was trying to keep protestors calm in the face of those racists. He just turned 19. He was in surgery when I left (his family showed up).
It took 20 minutes for the ambulances to get there after the shots happened. I had to call 911 twice to get someone to pick up. When protestors screamed at the cops inside the precinct that people had been shot, the cops answered with “this is what you wanted” before shutting their doors. Four armed men got away after shooting up a crowd outside of a precinct.
“this is what you wanted”. Fuck you too, Minneapolis police.
Oh, please. You know damn well that the right-wingers will simply crow triumphantly that this graph proves that blacks are inordinately prone to criminal behavior, just like they’ve been warning us all along.
1.or you know maybe black teenagers tend to comit more crimes than their white counterparts?
2.care to provide any evidence of racial profiling?
3. white people tend to get arrested and convicted for shoting theaters and schools more often than other racial groups. Does that mean that white people are racially discriminated against or does it simply mean that in reality they tend to shoot up school and theters more often? BY your logic police should arrest black people for school shootings they did not commit in order to make the stats more balanced.
I rest my case.
1. FBI crime reports show that ~70% of crimes are committed by whites, and ~30% by blacks. So no.
2. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=disproportionate+minority+incarceration
3. White people are not disproportionately arrested and convicted for school shootings. If anything, there’s an underrepresentation of white people in prison for school shootings, seeing as most of them shoot themselves afterwards.
There is of course some truth to that, as crime rates correlate to wealth and quality of life. it’s the perfect system, discriminate against a group and they’ll confirm your own biases.
#2 Needs more all-caps.
Did you actually read the linked report? It’s not just Black people are arrested at a higher rate than white people therefore discrimination. They’re talking about low level arrests that are heavily determined by police discretion (e.g. loitering or noise violations). Moreover, arrests for driving infractions happened at a much more disproportionate rate during the day than at night – strongly suggesting racial profiling.
Could it be that blacks simply commit more crime per head ?
johnymohican, did you actually look at the study linked to? The introduction notes that low level crimes include such things as drinking in public, trespassing, disorderly conduct, and “lurking.” These are the sort of crimes that police officers will have a lot of discretion in dealing with, allowing them to say give one suspect more chances than another to leave the scene before they’re arrested for trespassing, or indeed deciding that one person is trespassing while another doing exactly the same thing isn’t.
This reminds me of a frustrating “debate” I once had with someone who claimed that because Asian people were disproportionately less likely to be arrested (as shown on the graph) it “proved” that there was no such thing as white privilege, and therefore the obvious facts of racial profiling magically stopped existing.
Wow, #1, I am suddenly confronted with proof of your psychic powers in #2.
@timgueguen
” These are the sort of crimes that police officers will have a lot of discretion in dealing with, allowing them to say give one suspect more chances than another to leave the scene before they’re arrested for trespassing, or indeed deciding that one person is trespassing while another doing exactly the same thing isn’t.”
ok. and where’s the evidence that police to this disproportionately to black people as opposed to white people. any evidence you might present or is it just your imagination?
@qwints
” They’re talking about low level arrests that are heavily determined by police discretion (e.g. loitering or noise violations). “”
you still havent provided any evidence of this arrests occuring because of racial profiling
” Moreover, arrests for driving infractions happened at a much more disproportionate rate during the day than at night – strongly suggesting racial profiling.”
wow? really? so police dont have any lights? theyre completly blind during the night? Are you seriously believing what you are saying? this has got to be the dumbest explanation i have heard in a while.
@pz meyers
“this graph proves that blacks are inordinately prone to criminal behavior
which i never said. but its really a good thing that you need to invent racist scenarios in order to confirm your worldview in which racism is rampant and you as the white college professor saves the entire world from it. It really shows that racism is not as present as people like you make it out to be.
Blacks are more criminal
@2
1. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=disproportionate+minority+incarceration
2. FBI crime stats list the vast majority of crimes (60%!) being committed by whites, rather than the 28-30% committed by African Americans
3. To address your point about school shooters; no, white school shooters are not overrepresented in the justice system. If anything, they’re underrepresented, seeing as many kill themselves before they can be apprehended. African Americans, on the other hand, are disproportionately represented in the prison population.
Sorry, but you can’t see the evidence in the OP. Prima facie evidence of racism.
Or do you have a problem with a police force that actually treats ALL citizens equally, which would mean the numbers arrested should be close to the population numbers?
The Minneapolis PD is composed entirely of people who don’t have a racist bone in their bodies.
Like Robocop.
Looks like the Sam Harris fanboys, read racists, jumped in the wrong thread. If Johny and Paul cared they could find a multitude of studies showing systemic racism is a real thing with real life implications, but they are probably too busy complaining about a lack of white history month and looking for examples of reverse racism.
“which would mean the numbers arrested should be close to the population numbers?”
aaa…thats not actually true at all. The arrest numbers should be close to the number of actual criminals comiting crime. By your racist logic 1 in every 10 wallstreet higher ups convicted for fraud should be black simply due to the fact that blacks represent approx 1 in 10 of american population,
@HappyNat
so easy for you to use the suffering of certain individuals in order to further your hate of Sam HArris, Do you think that the black guy being beaten up, hogtied and paralized in the back of the police van would apprecite you using his situation to go against someone you disagree with?You are truly vile.
…seriously. The terrorists got away?
The cops let them go?
and you guys are arguing about graphs? fuck, really?
Holy shit, clean up on all the aisles!
Unfortunately, the graph you’ve chosen to call out is bad, and doesn’t say what you want it to. In isolation, “PoC commit more crimes” is just as good an explanation as “policing is biased.” The day/night traffic stop is the much clearer example. The racists in this thread give themselves way by their inability to do anything but strawman that argument, as in post 11. No, johny, no one claimed police are totally blind at night, or that lights don’t exist. Merely that at night, it’s significantly harder to judge, at a glance, the race of a clothed individual in the darkened interior of a moving vehicle. Do you dispute that? If not, then you should see how that would affect any potential race bias in an officer’s decision to chase down a car. What other hypothesis can you offer for the significant difference in the day vs. night racial bias?
I know that they won’t get fired, but I so want every sworn officer who was in that precinct house fucking fired today. They can appeal through arbitration if they think they can prove that they had a really, really good reason to ignore multiple attempted murders outside their police station.
…And they should still deny every single appeal until they know which cop said “this is what you wanted” to the protesters just to make sure that sick jerk never spends another day with a badge.
So, one lesson I’ve learned is that if you ever protest the police, if you get shot it’s not their problem. Basically, the police can refuse to do their jobs if someone happens to be critical of them in the least. And, as unsurprisingly, this extends to people they assume are less subservient, which is why cops are so slow to respond in minority areas.
cops are also not heroes – they will not face danger, as in this situation, to protect the public. They are ‘warriors’ fighting against an ‘enemy’ where they prefer one sided battles.
Personally, in light of what went on all members of the precinct should be jailed as accessories to attempted murder for not intervening. We need a special ‘police court’ kind of like military court where cops will be tried for their mistakes, with higher penalties and lower levels of evidence required.
johnymohican
Oh lovely. A defender of the racist status quo in the United States. I haven’t had to read regurgitated bullshit talking points in at least an hour or two.
Regarding your points-
#1-do you have evidence to support your theory?
#2-clearly you haven’t done your own research to explore how prevalent racial profiling is among law enforcement in the United States. You can start here, here, and here. Each of those links covers either what racial profiling is, or gives examples of it in police departments.
Hey you apologists for racism, it seems you have a problem with how reasoning works.
Simplified it goes like this – you formulate null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis. You try to find data that shoot down your null hypothesis. If you find any, the alternative hypothesis becomes tentative explanation untill it is falsified and replaced by another hypothesis that better fits the data.
You cannot simply argue “blacks are more arested because they commit more crimes and this is proven by the fact that they are more often arrested”. That is circular reasoning and anyone who calls themselves a sceptic and/or rationalist should recognise it as invalid.
So lets look: you cannot prove negative, therefore the basic null hypothesis is “cops are not biased against black people”. Alternative hypothesis is of course “cops are biased against black people”.
Is there data that falsifies the null hypothesis? HELL YES, and lots of it. For example unarmed black people who commited only minor offense or nothing wrong at all and have done exactly as asked by police – like reaching for an ID when asked to show it – are more likely to be deadly shot by cops than armed white people who just commited mass shootings. Or, like in this one case, white people carry openly arms and shoot unarmed black people and cops do nothing to catch the perpetrators of violence and blames the victims.
QED.
@John Small Berries #1: I wanted to write just that and then I suffered nearly fatal eyeroll when I read #2. That really did not take long for racist idiots to come out of the woods.
Paul Bell @13:
Where is your evidence of this you racist asshole?
@17
If only 28-30% of crimes are committed by black people, compared to the 69-70% committed by white people (according to the FBI crime rate data), why are black men more than six times likely to be incarcerated than white men (according to a pew research poll)
@the queer shoop
“A defender of the racist status quo in the United States”
which i never said. your links are basicly a definiton of racial profiling, and opinion piece and a link to a document related to ferguson. Got anything on minneapolis?
@vivec
According to your own sources because of per capita data.
This is a quote from the fbi source you gave me:
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter
white:4,101
Black:4,203
If you take into consideration there are 5 times more white people in the usa than black people then you might get the picture. Also i think the fbi includes lationos as whites while your second sources only refers to white people of european descent.
@29
That’s a nonsensical response. Try again.
If more violent crimes are committed by whites why do black people make up an equal or greater amount of the prison population.
OK, I am just reading the article linked in OP and my jaw dropped with a thunk. Quote (emphassis mine):
People can be punished for intent? Without concrete evidence? WTF? That sounds like cops have basically the right to punish someone because they look funny.
And after it is shown, in this specific figure, that black people are more often punished because basically cops “felt like it”, we still got idiots asking for evidence from Minneapollis…
@johnymohican #2
1) This covers a lot of information about how that whole “black people are criminals more often” thing works. If the system chooses to go after black people more often they will look more criminal.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime-rates-your-st_b_8078586.html
2) this is the evidence of racial profiling
3) there should be a look into why white people shoot up theaters more often since that is an actual pattern instead of an imaginary one, but theaters or cops in theaters should not target whites for special scrutiny
#11
That lights comment is just plain dumb. It’s about perceptual contrast during the day.
#12
Your behavior supports the conclusion that you do think that blacks commit more crimes. It’s a reasonable conclusion given your willingness to attack the article and blog post. You certainly fear something here and since your defensiveness in #2 includes a exaggerated fears about the opposite situation in 3) I think it’s a safe conclusion.
#17
Defend that charge of racist logic. Racism has actual characteristics and you seem to think that it’s merely a weaponized term to toss around.
#18
I do not believe that you care about suffering, and your need to use other people who are not here as a weapon is cowardly and a very common tactic that racists use. People as tools instead of people. If that person were here I would listen to them and you are not a stand-in for them.
#28
Racial profiling has actually characteristics like racism. Defend your claim about Tony’s links.
I can literally go for days, by the way.
The fact that non-white minorities make up a portion of the prison population disproportionate to both their crime rate and their population percentage is an incredibly well studied and supported observation and has been for decades. I’ve got sources flying out my ears.
Racism in arrests and sentencing
Racism in the courts/sentencing
No question about racism in the legal system.
Your turn to provide third party evidence to support your claims.
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
1. your first link is an opinon piece from huftington post which states that statistics are racist.
3.” there should be a look into why white people shoot up theaters more often since that is an actual pattern instead of an imaginary one”
ahhh yes the tipical leftwing racist…. when its about the white race its a pattern, when its about other races its just a racist statistic. make up your mind.
#11- most racist comment by far in this thred
12-so requesitng evidence is a sign of racism- it definetly falls into your pattern
#17- considering you used the term racism in one post more than i used it in this entire thread your comment could make an irony meter explode without safety measures
#If that person were here I would listen to them and you are not a stand-in for them.-compared to the poster i was responding to who attacked sam harris out of the blue with a topic related to policing in minneapolis. Are you serious or just a parody of a loon?
#28-dont know exactly what i need to defend but you might need to do some searching deep down inside you to find some logic.
There have been many academic studies about disproportionate policing by race. Some are summarized in this New York Times piece from October 24:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traffic-stops-driving-black.html
I don’t think it refers to Minnesota per se, but so what? It’s clearly a systemic issue, and many of the racist decision made are almost certainly by people who do not consider themselves racist: subjective self-assessment is not reliable. See also the capital punishment stats.
Obviously, this is not directed at the regulars here, who are well aware of the situation.
@johnymohican #35
You have no idea what racism is do you?
You seem to be defining it as “any attempt to look at differences between races”. Care to demonstrate otherwise?
johnymohican @28:
I never said you *said* that. But you *are* defending the racist status quo in the United States with your comments. IOW, you don’t have to state something outright for people to parse the ideas inherent in your words.
Oh, so you think Minneapolis is somehow a special snowflake and immune to the problems of racial profiling that plague other police departments around the country? I guess I assumed you were aware of the universal existence of implicit biases. Especially the racial ones. But fine. You want specific evidence of something that’s well known and studied (but curiously won’t make the effort yourself to look it up):
ACLU finds severe racial disparities in low-level arrests by Minneapolis police:
@37
He’s not going to provide anything but ad-hominems and sophistry by this point. There’s been like 8 or so different data sources inked, and he has yet to respond to them in a way that actually discounts the findings.
@ johnymohican
lmao
“This graph shows blacks are arrested more because they commit more crimes!”
(“actually, the link shows that those “crimes” are police discretionary offenses”)
“So where’s the evidence that blacks are getting arrested more for discretionary offenses? Huh?”
Right there in the graph dumbass.
It’s clear johnymohican is neither informed enough or honest enough to engage with reasonably. I mean, FFS, xe doesn’t even know that racism doesn’t require intent, and that outcomes that have a disproportionately negative impact upon People of Color are racist.
@johnymohican
Now you are getting very interesting. When you quoted me as saying,
…you conveniently left out a critical following portion.
If theaters or cops did that it would be racial profiling against whites.
Looking at the characteristics of groups is not racist. What one individual chooses to do with perceived group characteristics when interacting with another is what racism is about.
Holy crap, has someone linked the post to Stormfront or some shit?
Vivec: @39:
I’m sure anything anyone presents will be “opinion pieces” that will be handily ignored, despite the data contained within them.
Man, someone else got to it first, but was going to comment on the silly assed idea that, “Well, sure, even if its happening other places, where is the evidence its happening in this specific place.” Kind of expect him to keep pushing this issue, until its like, “Yes, but can you prove that racial profiling and harassment of minorities is happening in the basement, where I am sitting typing this! You can’t, can you!” And, given what he is defending, he would still be wrong.
@43
Given the TL;DR bigoted screed we just got on a different post (One of the Harris ones), I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. It reeks of pseudo-intellectual racist.
@44
Oh yeah, totally. Even like, the pictures of graphs that I linked, with no actual discussion. He’ll either claim that, or some middling argument about whether it’s per capita or not.
Minneapolis was also the location of “pointer gate” last year – a sad effort by the cops to strike out at a mayor who was trying to hold them accountable.
#11, Tonight, go outside and stand by the road. Now for every car coming AS THEY ARE DRIVING, go ahead and tell me what the race of the driver is.
You can’t because their headlights will obscure any view you have. If you’re looking from behing, you will barely see the back of their hair let alone any skin. From the side, you’d have about a half-second to look into a DARKENED window and spot the driver. remember that until they are beside you, headlights still prevent observation.
So yes, the cops cannot tell the race of a driver at night, UNTIL they have already pulled them over and have flashlight in hand. But that’s not the topic…we’re talking about the moment when a cop decides to pull someone over. and the stats are clear…nighttime removes the race from the equation, and things balance. As soon as the cop can see the race, like in daylight, the minorities get pulled over more dramatically.
Lighting is literally the only factor making the 2 scenarios different. This is scientific as a testable hypothesis more than most studies by the very nature of it, and yet you dismiss it?
Just because you don’t like the results of a study doesn’t make them any less true.
@45: Why yes. My living room? Totally prejudice-free. Back yard? Some species discrimination going on there; I don’t like gophers and the dogs tend to chase any immigrant cats. Down the street? Seems peaceful to me on the surface but there are those who are afraid of homeless people. In the park three blocks away? Well some folks do get moved on by rent-a-cops and even actual cops but I’m sure they have their reasons, right? The important thing is that statistics do prove that my living room is pure!
[Note to anyone who needs it: I am using sarcasm. Careful or I’ll wheel out the litotes.]
@tony the queer shoop
“and that outcomes that have a disproportionately negative impact upon People of Color are racist.”
so basicly because lets say black people are arrested at half rate than whites for forcible rape, despite having 5 times less times the number of whites, we should other relax the rape legislation or free some black rapists because according to you the current rape legislation has an “disproportionately negative impact upon People of color”.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/43tabledatadecoverviewpdf
Same source as Vivec providing me.
“Looking at the characteristics of groups is not racist. What one individual chooses to do with perceived group characteristics when interacting with another is what racism is about.”
but thats what the kkk is also doing. theyre also pointing out race stats. what you are doing is race realism.
@ johnymohican
So no explanation about what you think racism is?
You are another data point for projection being a standard tactic of authoritarian bigots. You go on about “typical liberals”, but are fitting a stereotype of xenophobic bigots that think they can toss around “racism” when people point out groups that act racist.
@50
Nope. What we’re saying is that the fact that whites commit commit crimes at twice the rate of blacks but make up nearly the same amount of the prison population is evidence of discrimination.
Disprove that or go away.
@johnymohican #51
The KKK is treating individual black people like an imaginary stereotype they keep in their heads. The graph posted above is based on the actual behavior of groups. Is it racist to focus on black people more when it comes to research into sickle cell anemia?
Define racism.
@vivec
thats not what tony is saying. and Nerd of Red Head made a similar:”why arent criminals in jail proportionate to their races” type comment at 14. what i presented is one of the consequences of this fallacious type of thinking
“The KKK is treating individual black people like an imaginary stereotype they keep in their heads. ”
actually a lot of them use crime stats as spropaganda. see the dude that shot up the black church (although he wasnt a clan member).
@johnymohican #56
Stop being a coward. Define racism.
Paul Bell @13: So, you’re saying blacks were treated in such a way that they had to become criminal, and thus that white people would behave in a criminal manner if treated the same… so you’re saying the history of racial injustice in this country is to blame for the crime statistics, and racist whites have brought that all on themselves.
Courageous of you to say that! Of course, you couldn’t possibly mean one arbitrary type of human is more criminal than any other arbitrary type. That would just be insane. Nope. Has to be social factors.
So, yeah. Imagine what it would take for you to act like you think blacks act. To gain the reputation with your type of person that blacks have. Now imagine enough of that happening to your type of people… You’d feel like a right bastard realizing you’ve done that all your life, wouldn’t you?
@55
It’s what I’ve been saying all thread, and you have yet to refute it.
POC are disproportionately imprisoned compared to both their population size and the percentage of crime they commit. Disprove that.
AKA not crimes at all in most of the western world.
Allowing police to arrest people for such petty offenses, any of them “unavoidable” over the course of a lifetime, are hallmarks of an authoritarian police state, one where your ass is always in prison by default and out because the police decide to be nice to you.
If one group is then more heavily affected than other groups without any evidence of them being much more prone to the behaviour, it’s clear evidence of discrimination.
Hey! I don’t know what happened, but the podcast for this episode is a repeat of the episode from May 31, with Art Kallenbach, about guns and gun control. I can’t find the one with Kavin Senapathy.
DAMNIT WRONG BLOG! Sorry PZ… you can delete that if you want.
(For the record, that was meant to be a comment on Stephanie Zvan’s blog post about the most recent episode of Atheists Talk with Kavin Senapathy… so everyone has some context.)
This fucking thread.
Fuck me sideways.
(Well done, those of you ready and willing to stand up to the bigotry with actual facts that point to the invisible and impossible rampant racism.)
Nope, liar and bullshitter. We are pointing out, with evidence, you are nothing but bullshitting troll. In order to remove racism from society, it must be looked at from all sides. And the side that pretends, like you, that racism has been removed from society despite the overwhelming evidence saying otherwise, is the problem, as they are institutional bigots.
Looking at racism isn’t racist. Ignoring the effects of racism, or happy with those effects, is racist.
I hate to play the centrist, it’s not my style, but here I sort of have to take that position. I don’t doubt that Police pay more attention to black people, but neither do I doubt that black people commit more crimes. Honestly if you deny either of those facts you expose yourself as ridiculously partisan.
I would love to see a study that dives into this and tries to get to the bottom of it.
Vivec: thanks for standing up to the racist rubbish on this thread, but I think you should change one of your arguments. You can’t compare the rate of criminal activity to the rate of incarceration the way you do because they’re drawn from different denominators. The rate of criminal activity on the FBI data is derived the percentage of crimes, where the rate of incarceration is derived from the percentage of population. Apples and oranges, as they say. There are plenty of other data available to demonstrate the point (not that the johnymohicans and Paul Bells of this world will care).
@67
I’m not really seeing the problem with saying:
I’m not directly comparing the values between the various polls, just pointing out the observations that the polls demonstrate.
Shorter johnymohican:
jm: “That graph doesn’t prove racism.”
Everyone else: “Graphs by and large do not count as evidence in and of themselves, but they can illustrate the extent of the problem. If you want the primary evidence, here it is.”
jm: “But a small part of that’s just an opinion piece from a nogoodnik lefty news rag.”
Everyone else: “Sheesh, it’s an opinion piece with links to primary research. Here, we’ll provide our own direct links to make it easy for you. And what about all those other primary sources we linked to?”
jm: “That graph doesn’t prove racism.”
repeat ad infinitum
@66
So the various data sources that show black people do not, in fact, commit crimes are just making shit up? Because I absolutely deny that black people commit more crimes, and have multiple datasets as evidence.
Any links, Vivek?
@71
See: almost every post I’ve made in this thread.
But here are a couple.
Steven, it’s pretty trivial to see that most people arrested for a crime in the US are white. See e.g. Crime in the United States 2014
And if Steven’s point is that a Black person is more likely to commit crime because Black people are arrested at a higher rate than white people, see Brony’s link at #32.
Hasn’t this derailing gone on quite long enough?
“The function, the very serious function, of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” – Toni Morrison
Come on now. Haven’t these people derailed all over this post enough?
Steven @66:
Can you direct me to the credible evidence that supports your belief that black people commit more crimes? Links to Stormfront, Breitbart, and Fox “News”, which are not credible sources, do not count.
And tomorrow, the city of Chicago is set to explode. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m very afraid this one’s gonna get ugly.
Steven @#66 neither do I doubt that black people commit more crimes
It’s more complicated than that. “Commit more crimes” is probably not a useful metric even if it were the case; I’d suggest that looking at the economic cost of the crimes would probably be more illuminating. Of course then you might see that a couple Wall St executives, stock market manipulators, Bernie Madoffs, or the guys at Enron committed “more crimes” (in terms of social impact) than everyone else together.
Seriously, I don’t even think counting crimes even makes sense. It’d be interesting to see if there’s a racial factor in dollar values of crimes as well as sentencing. Does “more crime” make sense when you’re talking victimless crimes? Or what about economic impact?
I think to believe there is no racial discrimination by police in discretionary arrests or whatever is delusional. However, it is not just about race. I think similar issues occur in the U.K. among white underclass youth. Poverty and class issues affect people of color in the U.S. disproportionately and thus it is probably difficult to completely untangle the variables. The graph displayed of course proves nothing as there are alternative explanations. However it is extremely useful as an observation that should lead to hypotheses that need to be tested. This is how empirical science generally works. If there were no observations that needed explaining then nobody would ever discover anything. The graph dramatically screams out a need for explanation.
Gee, telling scientists like PZ, myself, and others how empirical science works. Sometimes, even bad data speaks for itself. The intermediate hypothesis is racial profiling. Care to find empirical evidence to support your null hypothesis of NO racial profiling….
Gee, Nerd do you read? I’m suggesting there is support for NO racial profiling?
“I think to believe there is no racial discrimination by police in discretionary arrests or whatever is delusional. “
millssg99@79: that it’s difficult to untangle the variables doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been done.
Here for example is an empirical article which does untangle those, albeit in a rather different context (that of violence, not arrests).
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/labor/seminars/adp/pdfs/adp_ajph.pdf
They interviewed 3k families in Chicago and found a relation between violence and various factors that come down to how completely family structure has been disrupted. In their sample, blacks are more violent than whites who are more violent than latinos. And most of the difference in the violence rate is, indeed, socioeconomic. Why are socioeconomic conditions so different by race? That’s largely the legacy of racist housing and employment policies.
I bet someone has done this kind of analysis on arrest statistics (I haven’t seen it in the links mentioned above, nor did I find one at a cursory glance but maybe I missed it).
Regardless, even if SES covers all the difference (which I doubt), that point about why socioeconomic conditions are different means that it’s still down to racism.
Nerd has a track record of reading sentences that are a bit mangled and assuming the worst even when the rest of the comment makes the intent clear.
numerobis I don’t disagree with this except I still don’t think race is what it is ALL about. I think experiences like in the U.K. show the same kinds of things can happen without race being a factor. You can’t just say it’s all about race because I don’t think anything supports all SES is ALL about race. However, I don’t discount that possibility, I just think you have a hard time explaining SES variability and crime and arrests within race if that is true.
Just for the record I was supporting PZ’s posting of the graph. As I read through the comments I saw several people saying the graph was bad or didn’t support the claim. Technically that is true, but it misses the point. You better have an explanation that supports your position if it isn’t race. The graph demands an explanation and I personally believe race is an important factor. But just as I said in my post I don’t think it is *just* about race.
I think this is confusing. What is “it” referring to in “it’s all about race”? When you’re trying to explain the disparity between whites and minority groups (in the US, e.g.), minority groups are disadvantaged socioeconomically because of racism. That is, things that fall under the umbrella of “socioeconomic status” are some of the many negative effects of racism, but of course not the only ones.
On the other hand, if you were trying to explain crime rates generally (or some such thing), then of course socioeconomic factors other than racism can help, factors like income and education and so forth. But they couldn’t explain the disparity we see between poor whites and poor blacks, for example, or between uneducated whites and uneducated blacks. The “it” that needs to be described/explained then is not at all the same thing.
So maybe this is just an issue with miscommunication or misinterpretation. But it is certainly possible to disentangle all of those different factors, if we gather enough relevant information and use it appropriately. No reason why we can’t actually do that, instead of merely speculating about it.
Well, there it is: the stupidest thing I will read all week.
Millssg99, look at the linked paper in the OP and scroll down to the traffic data. From 12 AM to 9 AM, when it is hard to determine the race of a driver, the difference in ratio of blacks to whites is 9X when the color of the driver can be more easily identified. This suggests strongly that the implied socio-economic factors of ~2-3X at night are insufficient to explain the three-fold difference. If that three -fold difference isn’t due to racism, what is it due to?
I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.
Also, it does kinda come off as an attempt to derail when you come on a thread ostensibly about discrimination towards african americans and say that it’s “not all about race”.
Just saiyan.
Nerd the point I was trying to make was supporting the graph despite the fact that it in and of itself proves nothing. Yes that specific data you point out is extremely suggestive as to racial profiling but of course that isn’t displayed in the graph. Secondly for the record I believe there is racial profiling/discrimination whatever you want to call it from the police through the courts to prisons to parole boards or whatever. I’ve never seen any statistics that convinced me otherwise and I think it is common sense when you see studies on explicit and implicit racial bias. I hope all of that is clear.
Having said that I still am not convinced by anything I have ever seen that ALL the differences (say in the graph shown) is due to race. There are plenty of other possibilities such as SES. Now even if SES variability by race is ALL due to racism that doesn’t mean ALL the difference in arrest statistics for example is due to racial discrimination by cops. They could be color blind and the discrimination could be occurring at a point other than where it is being measured – e.g. arrests. The cause (such as racism) MAY not be happening at the point of measurement (such as arrest records) and instead may be indirect. Having said that the difference in day/night arrests is suggestive that there are direct racial causes at the point of arrest – but that doesn’t explain it all imho.
However, I am not convinced that group differences in say SES are ALL due to racism. They might be the case but you can’t just assert that. That claim is often imported by assertion whenever someone points out another cause. All of those claims have to be empirically supported. Just to be clear I do believe that part and maybe a very lare part of SES differences are due to racism, but I have never seen anything that convinces me that is the ONLY cause. There is so much variability within race of all kinds of things including SES that it is clear there are many significant factors other than race impacting these differences and you can’t just assert that’s all there is. Nothing I have said should minimize the racial component of any of this and I did not intend to do so, if that is how it was interpreted.
So I was trying to support PZ and his graph and I think it makes a very important point. Perhaps I should have stopped there and there we could have avoided this. I certainly wasn’t trying to derail anything. I was trying to agree. I probably just talk to much and have likely to committed the same error again in this comment.
My comment #87 appears to be missing a couple of sentences due to inadvertant html tags (italicized below).
From 12 AM to 9 AM, when it is hard to determine the race of a driver, the ratio of black to white is <4X, and just above 2X, for the early morning hours, when socio-economic factors like missing/burnt out lights, expired tags and other maintenance problems are visible and likely causes to be pulled over. The rest of the day, the difference in ratio of blacks to whites is >4X, and even up to 9X when the color of the driver can be more easily identified. This suggests strongly that the implied socio-economic factors of ~2-3X at night are insufficient to explain the three-fold difference. If that three -fold difference isn’t due to racism, what is it due to?
I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.
millssg99:
What? Who or what else are you thinking of? Someone or something that might be directly or indirectly responsible for a police department’s arrest record, for example, other than what is the responsibility that department itself. Bigfoot? Aliens? The big bang?
I mean, of course you can’t somehow deduce that no conspiracy of other actors (or whatever wacky set of conditions you might propose) is influencing arrests made by the police. But why even mention that bare possibility, without something definite to talk about and some empirical evidence to support that?
You can’t just assert that there’s more. What, specifically, are the alternatives you’re considering? Describe it in any amount of detail you like — just say anything that amounts to a functional description that others like myself will be able to comprehend — and tell me where your empirical evidence is to support that.
So far, it amounts to “variability within race, ergo something.” But that’s just a lot of noise, to put it politely. Less politely, what the fuck are you talking about, if (as I’ll assume) you’re not trying to bullshit us?
consciousness razor
Let’s say direct racial discrimination by police is the cause of most of the difference in arrest rates. But SES is also contributing some difference as well. Then not ALL the difference is due to racial discrimination on the part of the arresting officer. That would be true even if for example ALL of the SES was due to racism. You then could claim ALL of the difference in arrest records were due to racism, but not ALL due to racism on the part of the arresting officers or police department. It’s as simple as that.
You can measure differences as one point say in arrest records or employment rates when the cause is occurring somewhere else. So demonstration that arrest records or employment rates are different among races doesn’t mean that the racism is occurring by police or employers. Maybe there is racism is in the educational system contributing to both of these things.
Because there is massive variability of say SES within races, then race does not determine SES. It may be the case that ALL the group differences are due to race, but without demonstrating that you can’t assert it. Given that so much besides race causes SES differences you have a huge burden to demonstrate that all group differences are due to race and I don’t think anyone has done so. I may be wrong but I haven’t seen anything that convinces me.
I’m not trying to bullshit anyone. I don’t understand why someone can’t believe that racism is pervasive and institutional and still not have to believe it explains everything it is claimed to explain. I’ll grant you that I don’t necessarily explain myself well and concisely. I have no explanation for that either.
Given that the murder rate is higher in improvised Black communities its easy to understand why there are more police interactions. The cops want to catch the perp that looks like the criminal that will most likely in a murder be someone in your same ethnic group. This leads to heavy policing and more chances that a police interaction will happen.
So does overt racism:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/fbi-says-racist-organizations-have-been-infiltrating-police-departments-for-years/205796/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/26/politics/doj-police-racially-offensive-text-messages/
Racism leads to over aggressive policing of POC. How does one tell the difference?
Nobody here has said that it’s all determined by race. Class, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, nationality… those are just some examples of other factors that play a role. We’re all very far from claiming that racial groups are the only ones facing discrimination or injustice. It’s a strawman, or at best a lecture we don’t need to be taught in this thread.
You don’t need to assert with, no? Seems a little odd, to tell us what we can or can’t assert, as if assertions were going to be involved no matter what. But, just so you know, I could assert all sorts of crap, without demonstrating a thing — in fact, people do that stuff a lot. It’s just that we shouldn’t and don’t need to.
Yet, I’m comfortable asserting that the sun will rise tomorrow, the next day, and every day for a long time to come. I think the evidence is in my favor on that one. I can’t “demonstrate” that, in a certain sense, depending on the standards of evidence you think are required, and I don’t need to do so to be reasonably justified in believing it is true. I’m comfortable saying that “I know” such facts and that radical skepticism about them isn’t actually warranted, since all knowledge ought to be subject to some level of doubt, scrutiny, the mere possibility of making some kind of a mistake, or whatever it is that you’re worried about here.
It’s especially unwarranted, when the alternative isn’t even spelled out in any detail whatsoever, like in your case. I can at least imagine what it would take for the sun to not rise tomorrow…. but I really have no clue what you’re thinking of. Give me something definite, if you think there is such a thing. Then we could ask ourselves about probabilities, examine the reasoning, or otherwise see where that leads us. Just something.
What do you mean by “all group differences”? Do you mean all differences between all conceivable groups, or the specific question about all differences between racial groups (i.e., differences in their treatment, status, and so on)?
Concerning the latter question, I’m honestly at a loss coming up with something other than racism. Do you think non-whites are inferior, or something about them intrinsically makes them prone to being disadvantaged somehow? If not, what are these other causes supposed to be like? What else, besides racism, explains the racist outcome that you think you can explain? Not explaining the differences of all outcomes between all groups, but that difference specifically, the one that is (or was) the subject of this thread.
You had told me that perhaps someone or something else is racist, besides the police in the course making an arrest. I agree with that — there’s lots of racism, individually and systematically, all over the place. But now your contention is that it isn’t just about racism but about something else as well. What would you say that is, and why should we believe that, other than the totally inconsequential fact that it’s logically possible for there to be some other thing?
Not that it makes a difference here…. But are you a police officer, or do you have any close relationships with one? I’d like to know that this isn’t just about fishing for ways to avoid responsibility. Perhaps you’ll give me something substantial to think about, after all, but it hasn’t happened yet.
What am I supposed to do with that?
Would you say that you’ve looked for things that should convince you? Or do you simply not know, after genuinely trying to see anything that should convince you? Are you asking us to help you with this somehow, or are you reporting your findings to us after having done some actual work? If the latter, what specifically are those findings supposed to be?
Vivec: I don’t want to get too bogged down on this because I’m definitely on your side and, frankly, our racism-apologist friends have been doing their damnedest to derail the thread (unsuccessfully IMHO, but still). But here’s the problem…
Datum 1: 28% of criminal arrests are attributed to black people
Datum 2: Black people are 6x more likely to be incarcerated than whites
Robust Deduction: Black people are overly represented in the prison population
Non-Robust Deduction: This over-representation is due to racism
You’re not wrong, but the argument you use is not sufficient to make your claim. Of course, there are plenty of arguments and data that *do* show that racism is at play, and many of these arguments have already been raised and linked to in this very thread. And of course the racist pox-brains in this thread have been doing their very best to pretend that the rest of the evidence doesn’t exist. It’s actually kind of funny, in a very sad way, that this little gap in the argument is what the racists cling to even when that gap is abundantly filled by multiple lines of evidence and this evidence is brought to their attention.
Yeah, USAmerica is totes post-racial. I stopped updating the racism discussion thread because there just wasn’t any more material to post, what with relations between people of whiteness and people of colour being completely peaceful and loving, and everyone being treated with impartial equality within all the institutions and systems in the country. Yeah.
Like what the fuck. The cops in Minneapolis pretty much told a crowd of frightened black people that they deserve to be shot at, and did nothing to find some armed and dangerous criminals willing to shoot into a large crowd of people. In fact, they did worse than nothing, since they shut the doors and refused shelter to people whose lives were incontrovertibly in danger (shut? possible even locked, since how else would you keep people out?). I’m not even going to talk about those 20 minutes it took emergency medical services to arrive on scene.
But no, it’s all about the socioeconomic factors and not fucking racism rearing its ugly head in the police department.
The fuck do criminal arrests have to do with the fact that the police refused to help black people in fear for their lives because something in their way of thinking deemed them not worthy of time and assistance and compassion. And I don’t care what those people were protesting in front of the department (well I do but that’s beside the point right now), but they are the community the police should be protecting – and when that protection was needed, the police fucked off and fucked up.
Alternatively, of course, the police are just chickenshit when actually faced with dangerous situations, and all that bleating about ‘endangered lives’ and ‘working on the front lines’ and ‘protecting the community’ is just pitiful attention-seeking bullshit to cover up how scared and terrifyingly incompetent they really are.
The police in Minneapolis dropped the ball, and they dropped it hard in all kinds of ways, and to me, that makes them complicit in the shooting, and anyone on duty that night should be fired. And I hope that anyone who thought about speaking out to their colleagues, and didn’t, and who can still stomach working beside these people on a day-to-day basis, is having a serious re-think of their own values, and some serious doubts about the integrity and dependability of their colleagues. And maybe some thoughts about improving police-community relations by suggesting some sensitivity training for the entire department. At the very least.
@96: While your statements about robust conclusions are technically true in isolation, given the context and amount of data available that do show that prejudice is a major factor in the disparity, concluding anything other than that the police are selectively arresting minorities for trivial offenses is bordering on denialism. I see your point about possible alternate interpretations of the data, but the context does not support alternative hypotheses.
I see millssg99 is actually just a merchant of doubt — the hallmarks being unreasonable expectations and argument from personal incredulity. How much would we need to push before he cites The Bell Curve?
rq (who my phone wants to correct to “equally”): indeed. The Feds will hopefully notice that this is rather indicative of the mood there.
Hsxqbk
Me: “Oh wow, I haven’t read Pharyngula in sooooooooooo long!”
*reads comments*
*slowly backs away*
Audley!!!
Hello, hello! ♡
Again, from Chicago. The video in the article shows the shooting from last year; it was just released to the public last night, in response to a judge’s ruling. Content warning: It’s a fucking execution. The pertinent bit starts at about 4:35 in the attached video, if you want to jump to it.:
http://wgntv.com/2015/11/24/chicago-releases-dash-cam-video-of-officer-shooting-laquan-mcdonald-warning-graphic/
It’s worth noting that all the cops’ reports that I’ve encountered as this shitstorm unfolded said that the guy ‘lunged’ at the shooter with his knife.
Hi, Audley!
Sorry to leave this racist mess all over the floor. If you told me you were coming, I would have vacuumed.
Jeff Chang @ 93:
Improvised Black communities, eh? Uh huh. Care to talk about the effects of white flight?
@caine
so much racism aganst whites… so white people arent even allowed to live where they want. you are racist filth
johnymohican @ 108:
Oh, do fuck off.
Why do racist trolls always describe themselves?
Ah yes, nothing racist about “the city is too full of black people, better flee to the suburbs!” Clearly, we’re the racist ones. What a fucking troll.
Also, glad he never actually attempted to address the data we provided as evidence. Just dodged it and did more sophistry
Crip Dyke:
There’s not much you can do when racists kick in your door and piss on the rug, is there? ;)
It’s so nice to, er, see you!
johnymohican
“Improvised Black communities, eh? Uh huh. Care to talk about the effects of white flight?”
People like to live among themselves. I don’t you will scream that my Chinese Grandmother is racist because she prefers a community of Asians.
@113
There’s nothing wrong with individual people wanting to live in a community with people with shared experiences.
However, “People like to live among themselves” is absolutely not a universal tendency at all (I want as much diversity as possible wherever I live) and it’s telling that white people in particular saw fit to flee the cities en masse the second there were “too many minorities” there.
Note that the various minorities didn’t all flee the cities to get away from each other. How interesting. It’s almost like it was racism, and not “people wanting to live among themselves”
@johnymohican
So are you ready to define racism for me yet?
Interesting. So we have the “dictionary athiest”, a person who hyper-focuses on the definition of a word in order to avoid it’s actual, real-world functional use. And now this interesting inverse, a person who will avoid the definition of a word to avoid showing that they are not using it by any real definition that matters. I’m going to have to think of a name for this if there is not already one.
Clearly johnymohican thinks that it’s simply an insult to be applied to anyone that tries to look at any patterns in racial groups that they find inconvenient. Which is really ironic because I learned my most effective lessons in social conflict when more than one group managed to hammer some information past my own privilege. It’s one of the few ways to use white privilege that ends up being a moral good. Of course I want to see these patterns. I get to help people, I get to burn some weakness and ignorance out of people I was raised around, and I get sharper skills. I pity people who choose wallow in the misery of ignorance.