# A difficult question about race and sterotypes **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 20, 2015, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190 "2015-02-20T13:32:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/81 "2015-02-21T03:31:40Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Preventing shoplifting in a poor neighborhood IS about protecting your bottom line. Shrinkage is enormous in poor neighborhoods and keeping a watchful eye allows you to maintain lower prices for everyone else. You basically end up watching pretty much everyone that walks through the door. My experience has been that shrinkage is enormous regardless of the neighborhood. I agree that watching everyone is a good model, but there is no point to focusing on any particular “type” of person where you don’t bother to watch other “types.” ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/82 "2015-02-21T03:32:45Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > She’s more likely to work where someone is hiring, regardless of her personality. > > So what was your intended point? Posts 36, 37, and 40 elaborate on the point. In any case, there are few people in the US (certainly fewer than 148,000) who can equally well find a job as a librarian or a sales assistant and who therefore are likelier to work for whichever job is currently hiring. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/83 "2015-02-21T03:37:06Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > That depends on the circumstances. > > I know of one grocery store where the vast majority of the shoppers were white and a small minority were black. But virtually all the shoplifting was done by blacks ( **according to the store manager** ) so on rare occasions that a black entered they were watched like hawks. > > It’s a bit more complicated in that instance, because the store was at the border of a middle-class white neighborhood and a ghetto-type black neighborhood, so it wasn’t just about skin color. **But that’s how that manager identified the targets.** meh This is just a repetition of New York’s Stop-and-Frisk policy where the cops were detaining far more black and Latino kids, but proportionally finding far more weapons and contraband on whites. The cops “knew” that they needed to stop more minorities, even though they would have been more successful had they not limited their searches to “those” people. If the manager is spending most of his effort looking at black kids, he is going to discover more shoplifting among black kids, regardless who is really doing the shoplifting. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/84 "2015-02-21T05:52:22Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > (snip) > > Ditto racial profiling. Most black youths don’t steal. A few steal small amounts. A very few are violent and dangerous. But selectively treating them all with heightened fears they will steal is highly inefficient, even if you know a few of them will shoplift. Let’s change the analogy from race to gender to see it from another angle. Most men don’t rape. Only a small percentage of men are rapists. But if I’m walking down a dark alley at night and I encounter another person, I am hyper vigilant if that person happens to be a man, in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of men are not rapists. (I am female btw) Certainly another woman could be up to no good & I could be her target for foul play, but given the crime statistics, I tend to be much more suspicious of men under such circumstances. Clearly I am guilty of gender profiling. Is that “highly inefficient” or is it practical? ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/85 "2015-02-21T06:39:29Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Or he could, you know, hire more people, so that he can apply proper surveillance on _everyone_. Or just, I don’t know, install a security camera. Paraphrasing:“just spend way more money cus money is free to you capitalist pigs” ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/86 "2015-02-21T06:45:56Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > Clearly I am guilty of gender profiling. Is that “highly inefficient” or is it practical? Probably highly inefficient. If it makes you feel better then go for it. ---
**Author:** ![GoodOmens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@GoodOmens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GoodOmens)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/87 "2015-02-21T13:44:36Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > My problem is I know what you’ll are saying is correct, morally, ethically and logically, but, I still think that if I were the shop owner I would be suspicious. You ask whether it would be fair to preferentially watch certain groups of people over others. It’s clearly not fair. It may, however, be pragmatic, and may be the correct course of action as a business owner protecting your property, especially if you can come up with a proper heuristic for determining “suspicious looking person.” But it’s clearly not fair. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/88 "2015-02-21T14:55:17Z")
> [@GoodOmens](#): > > You ask whether it would be fair to preferentially watch certain groups of people over others. It’s clearly not fair. It may, however, be pragmatic, and may be the correct course of action as a business owner protecting your property, especially if you can come up with a proper heuristic for determining “suspicious looking person.” > > But it’s clearly not fair. Unless you’re going to engage in rigorous data collection, you’re NOT going to come up with a proper heuristic based on race. The proper heuristic is clearly to look for behavioral cues. When a business owner is tempted to do something wrong in order to increase profits–whether it’s to bribe officials, fraudulently sell inferior product, engage in illegal labor practices, buy and resell stolen goods, or discriminate against customers by race–it’s meet for the law to step in and try to prevent this behavior. Sure, there may theoretically be cases in which it’s going to increase profits to discriminate (although again it’s highly unlikely that a store owner will make a rational decision in their discrimination). But theoretically there may also be cases in which selling spoiled meat dipped in bleach will increase profits. We won’t stand around wringing our hands about the poor business owner who does that; instead, we’ll figure out how to penalize anyone who does that. I don’t think there’s much more to say about whether the discrimination is rational. But even if we discuss that, who cares? Shouldn’t we be focusing instead on how to change the calculation for business owners so that this sort of unethical behavior is no longer rational for them? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/89 "2015-02-21T15:25:06Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > As general knowledge it’s useful to keep in mind. But anyone who dismisses everything they’ve learned from experience because science sometimes shows that experience to be wrong is making a mistake.If someone researched your particular store, this makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, a lot less. > > (Useful to know anyway, as it may shed some light on it even at your store, but you can’t over-ride all your specific experience based on a study of some other situation.) The problem is that this attempt at dismissing evidence is the main way for pseudo scientists to justify all their nonsense; regardless if it is creationism, 911 conspiracies, moon landing hoaxes, anti vaccination, denial of human caused climate change and yes, prejudice. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/90 "2015-02-21T16:08:51Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > Clearly I am guilty of gender profiling. Is that “highly inefficient” or is it practical? Incredibly inefficient. That is, if you are suggesting you treat fully half the population as potential rapists. I suspect, however, that you don’t treat all men (at least of a certain age) automatically as potential rapists and use other cues, especially behavioral, to make that judgment. I would take it as a sign of the need for professional help if somebody judged all young men, regardless of context, to be imminent threats for rape. Nobody has yet suggested that race or gender or religion or other traits should be entirely ignored. The suggestion is that the oversimplification of threat identification to a **single** trait is a bad idea. As noted above with race, that’s the thing to do - use all available data and not just a single trait. Using a single heuristic - like gender or race or religion or being ginger - is usually a very poor way to judge a person or the potential harm they may do. A multivariate judgment may include race or gender or religion as one component of many, but it doesn’t use it to nearly as high a degree as profiling proponents suggest. ---
**Author:** ![Leonard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a6a055/32.png) [@Leonard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leonard)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/91 "2015-02-21T17:34:40Z")
About the only advantage that racial profiling has is the incredible speed in which we can categorize someone. It’s probably that ease of use that leads it to be overused and it’s value over emphasized. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/92 "2015-02-21T21:30:07Z")
Hey, most bigger retailers have certain things they look for, and those things are not race. However, one of those things is baggy, loose clothing. This pulls in a lot of people who think they’ve been targeted by race. (Young black men, Muslim women.) But they haven’t been. And yes, I know that “Muslim” is not a race. Still, what does it matter if they’re scrutinized more closely? I used to have a big floppy shoulder bag, which I loved. When I went into any store wearing that bag I always had a salesperson close at hand. It took me a few times to realize it was the purse. As long as you’re not routinely strip-searched because of it, what’s the problem? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/93 "2015-02-23T16:11:31Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > But that is not what was suggested. It was basically, “should I watch young Black kids”, which is likely not going to work out as a net positive for a number or reasons. My point was that there are a dozen other questions you should be answering and addressing first before you even consider having a discriminating profiling policy as a means of theft prevention. I am not saying shoplifting doesn’t hurt the bottom line, I am saying it usually a drop in the bucket for a store that has addressed shrinkage in a general sense. If I know that the black kids in my store are likely to be from the poor neighborhood and the white kids are likely to be from the middle class neighborhood. Then I suspect I would engage in a bit of profiling. If its a poor mixed neighborhood, I would just watch all the kids. There is nothing about poor black kids that makes them more criminal than poor white kids. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190/94 "2015-02-23T16:13:40Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > My experience has been that shrinkage is enormous regardless of the neighborhood. > > I agree that watching everyone is a good model, but there is no point to focusing on any particular “type” of person where you don’t bother to watch other “types.” We had a store in a suburb of new jersey where shrinkage was almost non-existant. Not because New jersey breeds more law abiding people but because the neighborhood was better and you had to drive to the store (in a strip mall) rather than just walk into it on your way home from school. Actually come to think of it, we still insisted that kids leave their bags at the front door. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-difficult-question-about-race-and-sterotypes/713190.md?page=4)