Well @katliamom, given that you recently repeated the statement “women make 75 cents for every dollar that a man makes” in another thread, without understanding the context of why that statement is widely discredited , it doesn’t surprise me you made the same types of errors here.
You jumped to a conclusion that I don’t believe in Driving While Black. I have little doubt that blacks get pulled over more often. But to me the number of police interactions should reflect the underlying crime rate. So if a group commits 3x as many crimes, I expect them to get pulled over 3x as often. But a naive person might think of that as discrimination. If that group gets pulled over 6x as often, that to me suggests blatant discrimination. To me that is the context for making the right analysis.
As to whether blacks are subject to an excess number of stops relative to the underlying crime rate, I have no idea. I am happy that Stanford is building a Stanford of police stops, but I fear that naive analysis will lead to cries of racism when it may not exist. But if there is an excess number of stops relative to what is expected, I will be the first person to say so.
Note that in all my responses I point to data, and the reasoning for my analysis. I invite those disagreeing with me to do the same.
White privilege – is the privilege to ignore facts and data that are inconvenient to one’s world view… or one’s own (privileged) experience.
BTW, you do realize that there once was data and analysis proving the inferiority of the non-white races, don’t you? That there was once data and analysis proving the US didn’t land on the moon? That there was once data and analysis proving vaccines caused autism?
Do you not question your data and analysis when it disagrees with an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary? Clearly, you don’t. You just dismiss it as contrary “mental gymanstics.”
I am not white. And despite the picture on the left, I also do not have orange hair or small hands.
The data sources that I have used in my arguments are crime statistics from the FBI, and reports on murders provided by sources such as the Washington Post and the Guardian. Do you believe that those sources are highly biased?
ETA: Another source is the data analysis by Roland Fryer. Do you believe he is highly biased?
Biased? Not necessarily. Reflective of the true reality? Not necessarily.
Any study which depends on the reporting from police and the courts (who have a reason to try to look clean and a reputation to uphold) and an often victimized population (which has reason to not report crimes in part because it fears even worse treatment) has a huge margin of error.
The summer of 2015, when it seemed like every week we saw with our own eyes videos showing the blatant murder of black men by police – for which not one cop went to prison – made me highly suspicious of “data.” Because it can be manipulated. And misrepresented. And in fact represent the very prejudices of its authors.
Then I got involved with an organization that works with the main jail in my city. That opened my eyes even more. To the extent that justice is highly, acutely aware of money – and suspects’ color. Guess what. The less dark you are, and the more money you have, the better treatment you’ll receive. It’s just that simple.
I’ve seen it, and recommend it to everyone interested in the subject. Also, “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson, a superb book that came out a couple years ago.
Here is a simple question: How many videos did you see of white men being killed by police during this same time? I suspect not that many. Yet we know that numerically, more white men are shot than black men due to the much larger percentage of white men in the population.
So the media picture you received of unchecked police violence solely against black men was biased, when in fact the situation is unchecked police violence against everyone. There was no malicious intent here to be biased. But the way that narratives get created is that once one story catches on (like the false “hands up, don’t shoot” story out of Ferguson), other stories that fit the narrative, including legitimate ones, get much more play because they attract viewers. And given that any news out of anywhere in America can be instantly spread throughout the country, it is easy enough to find confirming stories that perpetuate the narrative.
This last part about news spreading instantly is important, because humans are not wired to correctly interpret anecdotes that come from a population of 350M people. With regards to evolution, humans are highly wired to give anecdotes a great deal of importance. Our distant ancestors, upon seeing a friend being eaten by a lion, did not comission a study on the dangers of lions. No, they told everyone to avoid the lion, and the species continued as a result. Up until about five hundred years ago, most people in the world lived in rural areas and heard news only from a few hundred other people. This is what we are wired for.
Today we can instantly hear about child kidnappings anywhere in the US, and as a result a large percentage of the US population believes that it is unsafe for children to play outside alone now compared to 30 years ago, when just the opposite is true. Such is the power of anecdotes that it can lead to exactly the wrong conclusion.
@doschicos 13th should be required viewing for everyone.
@hebegebe No one is saying every cop is racist but you seem to want to disregard the implicit bias that exists. You know why you don’t see news stories about whites being shot? It’s because they don’t demand it. See when whites start holding cops accountable for excessive force then maybe we will see a change. When an unarmed white is killed you don’t see marches etc. The key words are unarmed black men, and there Is a larger percentage of them killed than whites. Police have become far too militarized, and everyone should be screaming about it. Honestly I wish Whites would start protesting because that’s the only way we will see a change.
Regarding this particular case, I don’t think Yanez is a racist. I do believe he has implicit bias against black men which led to him being scared and shooting Philando.
Young black men are 9x more likely to be killed despite only being 2% of the population. That stat is not the media pushing a narrative.
That stat needs context, because by itself it is highly misleading. It compares two highly disparate groups that should not be compared. Comparing to the population as a whole includes women, who are much less likely to be killed, and it includes children and older people, who are much less likely to be killed.
The obvious thing to do is to compare young black men to all young men, regardless of race. But of course that would substantially decrease the 9x to something like 2x. You should ask yourself what the motives were of providing the inflated 9x number. Was it incompetence with regards to using statistics? Or worse, did someone intentionally use a misleading number to push a narrative?
@utex2011do your own research. Why would I lie about that stat? We only account for 13% of the population so its no stretch that YOUNG black men would only account for 2 percent of the entire population.
@hebegebe No it doesn’t drop to 2x it drops to 5x. But let’s pretend it drops to 2x you act as if that’s a good thing
Ooh, I should be grateful that my son two times more likely to get shot by cop.
“Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same”
So this was a comparison of similarly aged men. But I get it, doesn’t fit your narrative.
With all due respect, imo if you are going to make a declaration that is pretty powerful using a statistic, the person who posts the assertion should be the one who provides the evidence for that assertion (and the evidence should include a link, not just a quote). The responsibility should not fall on the other forum members reading the post to go and fact check it.
My statement above in no way should imply that I think this shooting was at all justified.
If you reread your original 9x quote, you will see it wasn’t clear that you were explicitly talking about police shootingsI had assumed you were talking about the rate of killings of young black men in general. As others have said, you should provide a cite.
Let’s assume for a moment the 5x metric is correct. If you had the numbers at your fingertips @partyof5, and you knew the right comparison number was 5x, why did you choose 9x? What narrative are you tring to push?
I noticed that you did not ask yourself the key question: What is the crime rate of young black males relative to the others? Is it greater or less than the 5x you reported?
This is critically important. If there is a report of a crime committed by say a middle aged white male, should the police pull over middle aged white males, or should they pull over people at random for the purpose of fairness, including say asian grandmothers? Will the latter approach be fair to asian grandmothers, or an effective use of taxpayer dollars?
I think what happened to Philando Castile was just unforgivable. And while I wasn’t on the jury, based on what I saw, I would have pushed to convict. There will likely be a civil case that follows this where the burden of proof is much lower, where hopefully the Castile family can prevail. But of course nothing can bring his life back.