Yeah, I’m not even talking about the race of the stranger. Jesse Jackson said he feels relief when someone’s walking behind him and it turns out to be a white person. I don’t think that’s an isolated case. Maybe that’s because of an possibly incorrect belief that you are more likely to be victimized by a random black person than a random white person, but there definitely seems to be judgement, and not even snap judgement.
So maybe we should be aware of that and try to be better? It’s human to have reactions to things, but we should try to think about our reactions and be self aware of them in case we are being unfair.
I disagree with that.
It is not a racist policy, but, if you do look at the outcomes, you can still see how systemic bias is affecting minorities, even if it is not the fault of a particular individual or policy.
To take an extreme example, if we go before Brown vs Board of education, if I have a policy that says that you must have certain grades and classes on your transcripts, and due to the difference in education given to black and white students, many more white students achieve those grades in those classes, it is not my policy that is racist, but my policy is exposing systemic racism.
Sure, but would you change your policy to overcome the systemic racism?
And Jesse Jackson was saying that it was a racist thought to have. He was admitting that he even feels racial bias, even when there is no reason for it. He was opening the door for others to be able to express similar sentiments and confront their racial biases, not giving them permission to be racists.
Depends on the reason for my policy.
If I have a policy that you need to be able to write computer code, because I am hiring a computer programmer to do work for me, then whether or not the policy ends up having a disparate racial outcome, I need people that can code.
If I have a policy that requires “Squirrel hunting and basting 101: The miracles of mayonnaise” as a class, and I know that it is a class that is only offered at white schools, then yes, I would change my policy to better overcome that systemic racism.
I just wanted to add to this thread before it leaves that while I dont get into statistics, out and facts I will listen to.
For example. I never realized old color film like Kodachrome wasnt designed to acurately photograph dark brown and black skin. I do remember taking pictures of my black friends and being dissapointed whenit made them look much darker than they were. Watch this video.
Also certain facial recognition programs and systems dont pick up black faces easily.
Finally I once read that a certain computer program designed to search a persons hard drive for pornography is based on searching for certain pixel color patterns. However thos are geared to white skin tones.
From here, perhaps also relevant:
A barber once told me the reason he didnt cut black hair was he didnt feel trained in black hair. Specifically the tighter curls. It wasnt taught in his barber school.
But then I dont know how black barbers are taught either. They might not know how to cut straight hair.
Another issue: Swimming
Growing up I guess I took it for granted all kids my age learned to swim but later I found out many black kids dont care to swim because inner city areas dont have good pools or many lightly dark skin tones dont get too much sun because that makes them even darker.
I watched a video of one youth camp designed to help kids break down color and racial barriers that broke down at swim time when most of the black kids didnt swim much and stayed in the shallow end of the pool while the white kids dived off the diving board and swam in the deep end.
I don’t recall him saying it was a racist thought, nor do I recall him saying he didn’t have a good reason to think that. He said it pains him to think that, not that it was unjustified. Has he clarified that he thinks you are just as likely to be victimized by whites or are you reading between the lines?
There is no straw man. Read up on Disparate Impact law. For an example look at EEOC vs Freeman where checking a potential employee’s credit was deemed illegal by the EEOC but was ruled against in court.
Here is an article on the study that showed black men are twice as likely to be registered sex offenders.
Victim surveys show that the races are prosecuted and arrested at the same rate that they commit crime. The relationship between crime and poverty is not straightforward as you indicate. For example, hispanics have a poverty rate close to black americans but have a much lower crime rate.
Only if that is the only thing you know about him. Everyone should be treated as an individual and not a representative of their race.
How do you know this?
I’m saying that systemic bias is not real and that fighting it is therefore a waste of time.
That doesn’t directly follow.
The sellers of two extremely popular drugs – nicotine and tobacco – are not especially violent. Looking at drug offenses in isolation does not tell us how much the violence is caused by the criminalization of drugs, which would not exist in different circumstances.
And even if the demographics were exactly the same after a genuine criminal justice reform, that does not negate the possibility of institutional racism. One reason why reform is so difficult might be general indifference, owing to the demographics of the criminal population. People might be more tolerant of injustice if it is perceived to be against Them rather than Us.
Those are completely different from sexual assault. You were talking about sex offenders. Can you let me know in what state, at least, you plan on stopping with the goal posts?
Disparate impact is things like preferentially hiring from certain neighborhoods, or from applicant pools that are advertised in specific areas. You aren’t really saying that you are hiring preferentially one race over another, but the application of what you are doing does.
That you would then relate that to rejecting candidates for being convicted of sexual offenses is completely unrelated.
Agrees with what I just said. Convicted.
It says nothing of the sort in the abstract, and I am not going to pay for access to try to hunt down what you are trying to cite. Can you please quote the part that backs this claim?
I did not say it was straightforward, that’s just your unfounded presumptiveness again, but they are certainly related. I don’t pretend that the problems are simple, nor do I think the solutions are simple either. You do get quite a bit of crime in wealthier neighborhoods too, but it usually goes uncaught and unpunished. Everything from drug use, to drug sales, to domestic violence and child abuse, to embezzling and fraud goes on in those neighborhoods.
So, if the only thing you know about someone is the color of their skin, then you should use that as a measure of how suspicious you are of them? That is pretty much the basic definition of racism.
Interestingly, I have found myself realizing that in certain situations, I judge a bit on an inverse racism scale. When I go to the bank, I find that the minorities overall are much better at their jobs than the white people. I see this as because they have to be better than the white people to just get in the door. But, seriously, if I am dealing with a white person at a bank, they are a spectrum between entirely incompetent to excellent. When I deal with a minority, they are on a spectrum from extremely competent to excellent.
When people are more like us, we overlook their flaws. When people are less like us, we see their flaws as defining them.
I’m white. I’m very aware of the opportunities that are granted to me due to the color of my skin. I am very aware of the better treatment that I receive pretty much everywhere I go.
I’m saying that you are wrong and I would hope that your statement comes out of naivety and ignorance, but I know that it doesn’t.
That’s kind of unprovable and unfalsifiable - if it is uncaught and unpunished, how do you know what the crime rates are?
You don’t have to pay - the Crime Victimization surveys are available for free. If you look, for instance, at the figures for rape and sexual assault, you see that the percentage of whites raping blacks is estimated at 0%, because there were less than ten cases in the survey sample. Cite - pdf.
Therefore, the notion (for instance) that there are large numbers of whites getting away with raping blacks is not backed up by the data. And that reinforces what is discovered from other sources like the Uniform Crime Report. Obviously these are different data sources with different goals and methodologies, but the point is that the proportions of the different races are not radically different between the two - people report crimes committed against them by the different racial groups in roughly the same proportion that the different groups are arrested or convicted of those crimes.
Interesting that you begin by saying this is racism, and then go on to do the same thing yourself.
Regards,
Shodan
Because these are the neighborhoods that I live in. These are the neighborhoods in which I see people commiting crimes that if they were in poorer neighborhoods, they would be caught.
I fail to see how your cherry picked stats back up your insistence that there is no bias in society.
Thank you for refuting a point that I did not make.
Interesting that you would take that part out of context in order to try to make some sort of point. How do I do the same thing myself, when I state a specific observation that I have experienced? It’s not prejudice, as it is not judgement ahead of time. It is observation and judging people based on exactly what they do.
It does say quite a bit that you can’t tell the difference between judging someone for how they perform, and judging them based on their skin color.
Not really. It would be racism if he saw two new tellers, one white and one black, and then went to the black teller expecting better service than the white teller.
Filtering by sex offending has a disparate impact, filtering by credit score also has a disparate impact. They are both examples of race neutral policies that could lead to different results for races that have nothing to do with racism and can not be solved by trying to eradicate racism.
The idea that there are huge amounts of crime done by white people going unreported is obviously incorrect. Firstly because victim surveys show very similar patterns to arrest and conviction rates. In the Victimization survey that Shodan linked to Sexual assualt/rape victims identified their attacker as black 32% of the time. According to the FBI 29.1% of people arrested for rape were black. Secondly, since in most crime the victim is the same race as the perpetrator either black people are lying about who is committing crimes against them or white people are vastly under reporting the amount of crime that takes place against them. It is not believable that white people are only reporting half the crimes done to them either to the police or to surveys.
What opportunities are you granted because of your skin color?
Right, but filtering by sex offense is directly related to the job. Filtering by credit score is not.
These are babysitters, not financial managers.
You are looking at that backwards. The numbers would not be skewed by an underreporting of white victims, it would be skewed by an underreporting of black victims.
And, given the general perceived relationship between black people and the police, seems perfectly reasonable.
This forum is not long enough to list them all.
Do you want examples of personal life, professional life, financial life, business life, or just walking down the street?
I am afraid I don’t this is very authoritative - how do you determine the crimes rates in the other neighborhoods, the ones you don’t live in? And why don’t these crimes that you think you see show up in the Victimization Surveys?
What do you say to someone who claims that black people are less likely to be above average at something? Why is their observation subject to confirmation bias, and yours isn’t?
Black people in America, overall, are disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime. This is backed up by statistics. Why is it wrong to think that, whereas thinking black people make better bank tellers is just something you have observed and should be taken seriously?
Regards,
Shodan