Sure, Ike. Bring up race in regards to transportation! You LIberals are all alike. Why can’t you come after him in a white helicopter? hmmmm?
reprise, you’re right. AFAIC, both show the absolute absurdity of those kinds of profiling initiatives. They are time-wasting feel-good programs that do nothing to address the problem of crime.
Spider, I for one applaud your efforts. It’s rare on this board to find someone willing to put their neck on the line, and call a spade a spade. Kudos, my friend.
Who has denied that proportionately, blacks are overrepresented in the roster of violent criminals? I haven’t.
But you never answered the question that I posed in the GD. Is the average violent criminal a black guy? And will profiling black guys put a dent in violent crime?
Just because I think through these types of questions doesn’t make me a bigot.
Mr. Spider, perhaps you would get a little more respect and consideration if A: you didn’t immediately mock and assume the worst of everyone who disagrees with you, and B: would link to these vaunted FBI sites that you mention (that’s what “citing” is, after all). Not that I doubt your statistics or anything… just giving you some advice, buckaroo.
I’m no ** Barking Spider **, but I have a personal interest in the area of crime statistics. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports may be found at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm. The 2001 report isn’t complete yet, but the 2000 UCR is availible.
From http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_00/00crime4.pdf:
The 2000 Census http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_QTP3_geo_id=01000US.html reports that whites, with a population of 211,460,626, make up 75.1% of the population. Blacks make up 12.3% with 34,658,190.
So, whites are committing their fair share of crimes, and blacks commit about double their share. These are collected facts.
So, with regard to crime, Barking Spider was correct.
Returning to the UCR, we see that 625,132 arrests were made for violent crimes in the year 2000. Using the earlier racial statistics, I believe we can reasonably infer that whites were arrested for approx. 435,717 violent crimes; blacks with approx. 174,411. This may be skewed, as racial statistics are not available for specifically violent crimes.
I conclude that if one were to implement a fingerprinting of U.S. citizens based on racial profiling, targeting blacks would be best with limited resources, targeting whites would be best if one had a large enough budget to do so, as they do commit more crimes than any other “ethnic group”, race, whatever you may call it.
Personally, I suspect that the whole fingerprinting idea is intrinsically flawed due to the unreliable nature of fingerprints (as pointed out in the thread that inspired this one.)
Regards.
Forget to uncheck “Automatically parse URLs”, that third URL should be http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_QTP3_geo_id=01000US.html
mythos, those are arrest statistics, and one cannot infer that merely being arrested is automatically synonymous with guilt for a crime.
I work in corrections, after years of working in poor/high crime neighborhoods. People often get arrested in poor urban areas for things that would not get one arrested in a suburban/upscale setting. So let’s not make too many extrapolations from something like rates of arrest. The FBI statistics mean just this: Blacks are getting arrested at a higher rate than whites. More data is needed before we can assume as true other hypotheses , such as rates of criminality. Being arrested doesn’t automatically make one a criminal.
Seems to me if profiling was a crime cure-all, one would profile based on those traits that that MOST criminals share in common, not just SOME of them.
If you’re going to profile, profile the poor.
Profile the uneducated.
Profile people with penises.
But why profile on race, since it’s evident that both whites and blacks commit crime?
If according to your stats, mythos, blacks commit 28% of the crime, even if we madly arrested all black people for prevention’s sake, you’d still have a ridiculous amount of crime out there. Is that an efficient way to stop crime? Or is that just a sure-fire way of unfairly penalizing a minority population and fostering resentment in an already stigmatized community?
Or look at it this way: Is it fair to fingerprint me, a harmless biologist who’s idea of an adventure is stomping around in a salt marsh all day (and just happens to be black), whilst ignoring Bobby Ray, a white guy who doesn’t have two pennies to rub together and who’s never held a steady job in his life? Who’s more likely to hold up a liquor store, him or me?
Please tell me that this was just an unfortunate choice in words.
Barking Spider, you are making some huge assumptions and I’d like to answer some of your accusations, as someone who agrees with those who call you a bigot.
Let’s get this straight right off the bat: you are assuming that people are calling you a bigot because they do not like the statistics that you post and wish to attack you. In actuality, the accusations of bigotry are because of the conclusions you reach from the data, not the data itself. I’ll demonstrate.
You post that black people are statistically more likely than white people to commit crimes. You then assume (presumably) that black people are somehow inherently more criminal, or otherwise somehow naturally different, and thus racial profiling is necessary. However, you haven’t determined cause and effect in the statistics – you see the effect, and you presume the cause. I for one arrive at a different hypothesis for cause – that is, blacks are statistically more likely to commit crimes because they are statistically much more likely to be poor. Thus, the real cause of crime is not being black, it is poverty. We’ve seen this ring true in other places.
Of course, you could then argue that race is the cause of poverty (the implication being that blacks are somehow more lazy). Again, this would be putting a racial slant on the cause based on the effect, and I would disagree. Instead, I would argue that the cause is simply that blacks have always been at a disadvantage because poverty tends to breed poverty. That is, if you are born poor, you are likely to make less money than someone who is born rich (for a variety of reasons – access to education being one of the obvious, but hardly the only one). Historically, blacks have been poor, and while things are improving, they haven’t equalized with whites yet.
Thus, I reach completely opposite conclusions from your statistics, as I’m sure others do. That is why when you post statistics and then claim that it is only logical to have racial profiling (institutionalized bigotry), I would call you a bigot. Your personal racist views are influencing your view of the data.
Qadgop, point very well taken. I hadn’t considered the fact that many blacks are arrested unjustly for trivial (or false) offenses. I shall look for conviction statistics, in the interest of curiosity.
Monstro, I do not advocate racial profiling of any kind. However, since this thread was (seemingly) in part inspired by your and Barking Spider’s comments on racial profiling, I went ahead and threw out my own conclusion, which presumed the use of some type of profiling. If you recall, Barking Spider advocated profiling blacks, and you pointed out that whites commit more crimes, and that profiling was wrong to begin with. I agree.
You are correct, poverty is (it seems) a true cause of crime, race is clearly not. But, again, fingerprinting everyone below the poverty line is still unjust, as is fingerprinting all blacks, whites, or “foriegners”.
Furthermore, as well as being unjust, racial (or economic, for that matter) profiling is ineffective. Race does not influence behavior. One must work to remove the conditions that do. Obviously, Bobby Ray, particularly if he had a juvenile record (purely in my experience), would be more likely to commit a crime, particularly violent crime, than a biologist of any race, since, again, race does not influence behavior.
Fluiddruid, the ONLY reason I got involved in that particular Great Debate was because Monstro put forth the opinion that Whites are the ones committing the crimes and should be the ones getting fingerprinted.
Why don’t you call her a bigot for her statement? She was the one calling for racial profiling of Whites.
All I was doing was rebutting her charges that Whites are the ones committing the crimes.
It’s called irony, you flaming pinhead.
She was pointing out that not only blacks commit crimes, that whites (or Whites with a capital W, as you seem to Serlinly prefer) commit crimes too, that the color of one’s skin is not a determining factor in the likelyhood to commit a crime.
Fluiddruid said it best. The statistics don’t prove any inherrent flaw in one "race’ or another, only that there is a trend. On what does that trend hinge? My money goes to socio-economic environment – not DNA.
**Mythos45 ** said:
.
NO, you have that backward. It was Monstro who first suggested profiling, of Whites, because “they’re the ones who are doing the crimes”.
It was only after that that I jumped in.
Not only are YOU a bigot, but you’re an idiot. Notice no one is calling me a bigot except for you. And why is that? Because everyone seems to be able to READ except for you.
We can’t blame Affirmative Action for your illiteracy, so what’s your excuse?
Mythos, thanks for clarifying and providing stats.
Can you honestly sit there and say you believe I WASN’T being tongue-in-cheek when I posted this, Barking Spider.
And just what’s bigoted about this statement, huh?
And this one? What’s bigoted about this one, pray tell?
Did your eyes stop working when I posted this? Would a bigot post something like this?
Because I sure as hell know a bigot would post something like this in a conversation about–of all things–terrorism and profiling:
It must feel good to call people “racist”. That way, you ensure youself that you are not alone.
Barking Spider – the great defender of “The Whites”.
You are utterly transparent.
I’m “white”, for lack of a better classification – don’t speak for me, douche-lick.
Barking Spider
was followed by:
I disagree with your statement of “vastly disproportionate amount of crime”. See my statistics above. I used the 2000 Uniform Crime Report and 2000 Census to procure my statistics, do yours not jibe with mine? Do you have a source that reports a vast difference?
That said, I was in fact incorrect, and monstro was first with his/her remarks, which you responded to. You have my sincere apologies.
Please note that I do not consider you a bigot, as your opinions seem to be informed, rather than irrational.
yes, it is.
Allow me to state that as a working class white male I do not want to be profiled, I read monstro’s statement as a reason profiling is rediculous- it draws on meaningless data as a reason to disenfranchise people.
White people don’t commit crime, black people don’t commit crime, arabs don’t commit crime: criminals commit crime.