ISTM that he’s saying the original article in Buzzfeed was trolling (in Buzzfeed), not that anyone is trolling here.
No idea what the rules are on that, but that does appear to be what he’s saying, FWIW.
To clarify, I meant that women were considered property of their husbands. My distinction was person vs. property. I see now that I wasn’t clear there; sorry about that.
The breakdown of the logic here really improves my understanding of your finding the argument problematic. I cannot think of a better way to present the argument at the moment, and hope someone else can restructure and/or improve the argument.
Thank you for clarifying. I don’t think I have a satisfying response. I also have no problem believing that women are inherently less criminal and just don’t commit as many crimes warranting long term incarcatation, but I do have trouble believing that black men are inherently more criminal than white men. I’m not sure how much of this is my own bias. My only real argument for the former is that testosterone and aggression are strongly linked, which would explain why women commit fewer violent crimes. Otherwise I am, unfortunately, at a loss.
That’s very possible, but it seems like a false dichotomy.
“Inherent” and “bias” are not the only two possible explanations for these discrepancies. Socio-economic factors are probably more important than either of these.
[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps]
ISTM that he’s saying the original article in Buzzfeed was trolling (in Buzzfeed), not that anyone is trolling here.
No idea what the rules are on that, but that does appear to be what he’s saying, FWIW.
[/QUOTE]
This is exactly what I was saying. I am definitely not accusing anyone in this thread of trolling, sorry to have come off like that.
But that article is pure 100% unmitigated trolling BS!!!
Your claim is not particularly coherent. The OP picked that article to post on this board. When you declare that the material posted is a matter of trolling, the clear implication is that it was selected by the poster in order to troll.
If you wish to condemn the linked article for being poorly written, feel free. (I don’t think it is a very good piece, myself.) I am not sure how an opinion piece that is simply floating around the internet can be an act of trolling. If there is no specific audience to infuriate and from which to elicit reactions, it does not actually meet the definition of trolling. Being posted in this forum with a specific audience to agitate, it could be an act of trolling, but that would require that the poster intended that reaction. If you think that the Original Poster was seeking a violent reaction, report the post to the staff. If not, leave the buzzword “trolling” out of your criticism.
[ /Moderating ]
Okay first off, with all respect I strongly disagree that my post did contained the “clear implication” that the OP was trolling.
How do I know it that was not the clear implication? The poster immediately after you, who politely corrected you, seemed to see it quite clearly. But whatever, if we’re still at odds - I see no problem here - I’ll take it to ATMB.
[quote=Dostoyevsky]
Your thoughts on this list?
[quote]
My thoughts are that is just a BS trolljob article and we should pay it no mind. DFTT.
Listen I am not throwing the term “trolling” around willy nilly, I know it’s a charged term. My hope is that people glimpse how this kind of thing works so we don’t get suckered in further… and my news feed doesn’t fill with crappy articles like these just because everybody feels the need to comment on them.
My contention is that this is NOT just “an opinion piece that is simply floating around the internet” and I am by no means simply condemning it as poorly written (although it definitely is) and full of BS (although it definitely is).
I am saying that it is a troll post, generated to stir things up for the sake of pageviews and shares. It is deliberately stupid, controversial, and shallow. The upshot is traffic, attention, and pageviews for BuzzFeed and that posts’s author.
This is not just a poorly written article that has generated controversy, the generated controversy was the point of the article. These kinds of articles are simply written to be viral to the exact kind of people who would share them, both to support or condemn the article. It creates a pretty specific viral response.
It’s all about metrics (pageviews, shares, tweets, plus ones, time on site, comments, repeat visitors) and ad revenue.
The writing process typically involves:
[ul]
[li]Find trending topic[/li][li]Write something incendiary that is guaranteed to stir up controversy[/li][li]Profit![/li][/ul]
There might also be some good old astroturfing in the comments as well, to make sure that things degenerate as intended.
This really is what content like this is about.
I am involved in the internet marketing world (pretty deep into) it and trust me, it is worse than you think (or better, if you like a world driven entirely by data).
These kinds of “articles” are going to keep popping up more and more, because the social engagement metrics (shares, comments, virality) that determine what kind of content that content creators generate, has proven that nothing makes for virality like controversy.
What I am hoping is that people recognize what’s going on so we can stop getting sucked into somebody else’s manufactured argument.
By the way, I am well aware of the charged nature of the term “troll” and I am using it DELIBERATELY, so that people will clue in that this kind of article really is no different!
The whole reason it exists is to push buttons and set things off in very specific ways.
So I think my trolling accusation stands, and that the only appropriate response to trolljob articles like that is “GTFO troll” and I can’t wait until people get what these kinds of dumb ass articles are all about and I don’t have to see them in my news feed anymore.
Don’t get sucked in!
I believe you only plucked out some stats to fit your pre-conceived notions. I don’t think you’re doing it maliciously or deceptively (like some people… :rolleyes:), but there is more on that chart than you’ve cited.
First thing that’s wrong with the chart: it only lists violent crimes. I mean, that’s like the first thing I noticed. That entire PDF seems to be only about violent crime. That’s fine if that’s the stat you want, but its not fine when we’re talking about systematic bias against blacks and minorities in the whole criminal justice system. Remember, the post of mine you responded to with this link was about crimes by race and how the justice system treats them, not just violent crime.
If your contention is that there is no white privilege and that blacks really deserve to be blamed for crimes (or simply that there is no white privilege and people blaming blacks for stuff is a myth or a separate issue), then there are more things than violent crime that needs to be looked at. But by drawing a parallel between crimes committed and incarceration rates, you’re basically expressly saying that blacks are in jail because they commit the crimes, and that’s how its supposed to be. That cannot be proved here by looking at a stat of only some crimes, nor can you prove it by looking at just the crimes and not incarceration rates.
Second, you claim that black offenders (or rather, perceived black offenders) are out of proportion to the total population of blacks, but you use only the 50.8% stat to illustrate that. Why? There is a much more comprehensive stat a few lines above the one that you used. This stat lists total crimes of violence and their perceived offender’s races. Whites comes in at 59% while blacks only come in at 22.4%.
According to wiki, there are 72.4% whites in this country and 12.6% blacks. So if we compare and contrast the two statistics, then we can say that of the violent crimes in this country, 59% are perceived to come from whites out of a population of 72.4% and only 22.4% of violent crimes are perceived to come from blacks out of a population of only 12.6%. Of their percentage, whites commit more than twice the perceived amount of violent crimes AND they have a much larger population than blacks. So why are there so many blacks in jail, on parole, or seen as criminals? The answer: white privilege. This statistic from the DoJ (appendix table 3) says that per 100000 people, the estimated number of inmates held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails (June 2010) is (I added all the numbers for all ages and both men and women, FYI):
White: 12591
Black: 70551
Hispanic/Latino: 28952
So per 100000 people, only about 12% of whites are in jail but 70% of blacks are? Even though whites are perceived to commit more violent crime by rate and net total? How does anyone explain that other than white privilege? Are we somehow just really really good at catching black people? Maybe they are terrible criminals, leaving clues everywhere? I can see it explained by nothing except white privilege, that whites are not perceived to be criminals so their prosecutions are less intense, they have less scrutiny, they get lesser punishments, and overall they just have an easier time committing crimes and getting away with it than blacks.
That was a deliberate choice on my part, and I’ll explain why. Drug crime can be found wherever you look for it, and you have to look for it. Drug possession is a victimless crime, and virtually no one calls 911 to report that their friend has some marijuana in their room. But people do call 911 to report that they’ve been robbed, raped, or beaten (at least 44% of the time they do, according to the survey). Murdered people don’t report it, but their bodies are found, and/or people report them missing.
Therefore, the police can create massive racial inequities in drug-crime convictions by just focusing their attention on certain neighborhoods. They cannot create equally-strong effect on crimes with victims.
[QUOTE=YogSosoth]
If your contention is that there is no white privilege and that blacks really deserve to be blamed for crimes (or simply that there is no white privilege and people blaming blacks for stuff is a myth or a separate issue), then there are more things than violent crime that needs to be looked at. But by drawing a parallel between crimes committed and incarceration rates, you’re basically expressly saying that blacks are in jail because they commit the crimes, and that’s how its supposed to be. That cannot be proved here by looking at a stat of only some crimes, nor can you prove it by looking at just the crimes and not incarceration rates.
[/quote]
My contention is that black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. I don’t this is due to any inherently difference in black people, but instead a combination of poverty (meaning not having as much to lose), alienation from mainstream life (meaning ignorance of other ways to live), and an honor culture (which means slights must be avenged with blood, instead of through the police or by shrugging it off. We have that here in the South amongst whites too, and the result is a high homicide rate.).
Black people may commit a disproportionate amount of drug crimes, but there’s no way for us to ever know (beyond surveys about drug use, I guess), because of the nature of victimless crimes. I’m not that worried about it, being a pro-legalization libertarian.
To be honest, I actually did have the 22.4% figure in that post originally as well as the 50.8% sample, but I removed it because I thought I must be misinterpreting what it meant. If you look at the “Black only” column, all but 2 entries are less than 22.4%, so I couldn’t fathom how the average could be 22.4%. Looking at it again, it’s because the number of offenses for one of those two categories (Attempted/threatened violence) is very large relative to the total, and the category with the most offenses (Assault) also has a fairly low “Black only” rate of 21.4%.
So, the answer to “Why?” is: I goofed. I endorse the 22.4% figure, now that I understand it.
Quick correction: while it is true that white people are reported to commit more violent crime by net total, they are not reported to commit more violent crime by rate. The white population, which is 72% of the nation, commits 59% of the violent crime. The black population, which is 12.6% of the nation, commits 22.4%. The black rate is higher.
Moving on: The explanation is the drug crimes. 48% of federal inmates are in prison for drug offenses, and I’ve no reason to think state prisons are any different. And, per the ACLU:
That’s where the massive gap is: lots and lots of black people in prison for drug offenses.
So, to summarize:
-
Black people do commit a disproportionate amount of the crimes that matter (non-drug crimes).
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Thanks to unequal police attention and bias in sentencing, they share prisons with massive numbers of black people doing crime for crimes that don’t matter.
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Even when just dealing with violent crimes, there are biases at work in conviction, sentencing, and especially execution.
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Thus, it is both true that black people commit more crimes (at a higher rate, that is), and that systemic bias is to blame for the sheer degree of racial disproportion in our nation’s prisons.
Some of your post was kind of odd, can you clarify please? You say that:
But you also say:
So you’ve acknowledged that you are really only considering violent crime. And you also believe believe blacks commit violent crime at a higher rate. But you try to link the two with the above?
In almost every category, whites commit more crime and at a higher rate. I don’t think this supports your contention that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime unless you consider 1.5% to be disproportionately large.
I pulled the numbers from wiki regarding demographics again and your crime statistics by race.
1,060,485 (22.4%) violent crimes are committed by 38,929,319 blacks = 2.7% of blacks (assuming no repeats) commit violent crimes.
2,793,242 (59%) violent crimes are committed by 223,553,265 whites = 1.2% of whites (assuming no repeats) commit violent crimes.
So yeah, maybe if you say that blacks commit “More than double!” the rate of violent crime, it might sound bad, but in actuality its only 1.5% more in rate. Is that really what you are worried about, 1.5% more (and more than million less net total)?
Recall that I got into this topic and a discussion with you over disagreements on my assertion that “White Privilege” in the Buzzfeed article is real. I think it is and I don’t think what you’ve shown me disproves that at all. And there is more that puzzles me:
From here, you now seem to agree with me that there is White Privilege! Am I reading that right? Sure, maybe you don’t call it that, you call it systemic bias, but the reason why such a thing exists is because of White Privilege. Is that not an accurate interpretation of your post?
Right, for the reasons I gave.
More crime, sure. Being 72% of the population makes that inevitable. But at a higher rate? That’s not the case, at least not with violent crime. Do you have evidence of crimes that are committed at a higher rate by whites than blacks? Fraud was mentioned earlier, and I’m sure there are some crimes where this is the case (SEC violations, for instance, or rural-biased crimes like DUI or poaching). But “almost every category”? That demands some strong evidence.
By my math, 2.7 per 100 is 225% more than 1.2 per 100, not 1.5% more.
And yes, I am worried about it, the black community has enough obstacles and disadvantages already, without having so many of them be the perpetrators, and victims, of violent crime…and victim/perpetrators in the indefensible War on Drugs.
Re-reading my first post in this thread, #51, I can see how you came to this conclusion. In that post, I pointed out why I though the article was pretty useless (hyperbole, and poor phrasing), but I never came out and said that white privilege was a real thing (only implied it, with “it cloaks some solid points with awful phrasing” and “absolutism and clumsy word choice undercuts a potentially-useful article.”) I did state it in post #66, though.
I jumped in later, with regard to claims that black people don’t commit more crimes on a per-person basis than white people do. It’s true I didn’t specify violent crimes at that time, but as stated before a) those are the crimes society should care about, and b) those are the crimes that can be measured independently of the criminal-justice system, via crime victimization surveys. That has value beyond just the demographic aspect; as noted, only something like 44% of violent crimes get reported to police, if the NCVS is to be believed. I also didn’t clarify that “commit more crimes” meant “commit (non-victimless) crimes at a higher rate”, and not in raw-numbers, though that is what I meant.
Yes, there is white privilege.
However, just because white privilege exists, and just because the criminal justice system is biased against black (and Hispanic) people in terms of sentencing and convictions, that doesn’t automatically mean that black people don’t commit more violent crimes per-person than white people do. The two are not mutually exclusive. Make sense?
The word privilege refers to something you have earned. To call it white privilege is to either say that white people earned that privilege or to say that they shouldn’t have that privilege. This is just the wrong way of looking at things. Everyone should have the “privileges” that white people have.
And, no, a video game concept doesn’t make it any better. It’s still ultimately about how wrong it is that “white people” is the easiest class, when what’s wrong is that the other classes are more difficult.
It’s not white privilege. It’s non-white discrimination. That’s what needs to be fixed. It’s not just the word–it’s the entire concept of looking at the world based on what other people have rather than what you deserve. As long as you do that, you will at best never get what you want, or at worst tear everyone else down to your level.
I’m not offended by the term “white privilege.” I don’t think people are awful for using it. I just think it’s the wrong way of looking at a real problem. I think using the term, with the mindset that inherently goes with it, does more harm than good.
No it doesn’t.
Really? And where did you get that odd notion?
In fact, pretty much any definition or discussion of the word uses terms such as “granted,” “bestowed,” “enjoyed by,” “available to,” etc.
I have never encountered the notion that it must be earned. Certainly, there are cases in which one may earn privileges, but those are specific situations that have no bearing on the general meaning of the word.
The only ones I can think of are third grade and juvie.