See definitions ‘B’ and ‘C’.
This is a perfect example of your tendency to equivocate. (Look that one up yourself.)
Your statement took the form of “If A then B.” What nether region did you pull "A"from, if not my statement to holmes? You know, the one you quoted in your response?
Dumbass. Weasel.
Well, I got it from here (emphasis added):
I read that as saying you only needed to know how rare White on Black rape is to predict that she was lying. If that’s not so, then why did you “expect” it to be the case based on how rare that type of rape is? Frankly, if that’s not what you meant, then you worded that post very poorly because that’s the way it reads.
Fine. As for the part of a judgement made on race, see my comment above.
The situations are not similar. In the case of Demographis, we have the data and (AFAIK) no significant evidence that the data has been misreported. If you have some, then put it out there for us to see.
In the case of making a judgement about the rape case, we need more than just the statistics about rape. We’re not trying to figure out what the odds are that a Black women would be raped by a White man, we’re trying to find out what the odds are that she would be lying about it. Once again, just because “X is rare” does not mean that “reports of X have a low probability of truth”. If you can’t see that, then there is no point in us debating this any further. I’m not doubting the statistics for White on Black rape (in fact, I’m the one who finally dug them up for North Carolina).
Look at a similar example for demographics: Native Americans. They make up less than 5% of the US population. That’s less than the % of all rapes that are White on Black rapes in North Carolina. Are the census takers therefore supposed to doubt everyone who checks “Native American” on the census form simply because it is a “rare” event? If the final census produced a figure of 15%, then we’d want to go back and re-check, but no single reporting event should send up a red flag. Similarly, if we suddenly saw the % of rapes in NC that were White on Black jump to 20%, we might want to figure out why that was. Maybe there’s a rash of lying Black women out there, or maybe there’s a sudden influx of White men who are fixated on Black women.
But no single event of White on Black rape need raise a red flag because we know that it does happen in some % of the cases.
See A.
BTW, why did you only pick the defintions that would justify name-calling? If* that ain’t weasly, I don’t know what is.
*See A
My assessment of the likelihood of her story was preliminary, and subject to revision when and if better evidence became available. It seems to me you are accusing me of making it a conclusion. I don’t think I can make myself any clearer.
Again, what evidence do you have that the data about white-on-black rape is misreported? I still don’t see why you think “the data might be misreported” is a conclusive refutation in one case but not in every other.
In the first case, you are assuming that the statistics are valid, and attempting an explanation. In the second case, you are asserting that assuming the statistics are true is unsupportable. Why the difference?
Regards,
Shodan
No, I am not. I just said I accepted your statement that you weren’t making a final judgement. But whatever prelimary judgement you were making could not have been based on race, and yet you say it looks like she is lying (again, “looks like”, not “is”) as would be predicted. Predicted by what?
None. I never said it was.
A preliminary assessment is a conclusion. You concluded “preliminarily” that this was probably a false allegation.
I’m trying to figure out what things you knew about this case when you made this “preliminary assessment”, though. Can you lay those things out for us?
I didn’t even use stats to reach my conclusion. I deduced the answer from my understanding of race relations and rape.
I never said anything about the stats being “unsupportable”. Unsupportable for what? This makes no sense.
And I meant what I said. Finding a reliable way of determining the incidence of rape may be perfectly attainable, (e.g. it’s not in the realm of the impossible). We just won’t be able to verify it.
I was tipped to the issues being discussed about statistics from the other thread, and wanted to weigh in. Let me say first that you with the face is absolutely correct about the complete lack of relevance for judging the veracity of a specific reported crime based on the rate of that crime happening in other samples.
However, I was curious whether the stats being bandied about were odds ratios or relative risk statistics. Comparing two prevalence rates for two groups of different sizes, for the purposes of making inferences about risk or likelihood, is almost always misleading. (See for example the non-sensical argument from a year or two ago about the risk of death while driving in California versus the risk of death to soldiers in Iraq).
It appears that such comparisons were actually what was occurring, but I went looking for the actual stats to illustrate this point. I was not able to find the actual stats, merely more percentages, but I did find something interesting.
Again, these types of stats should be irrelevant, but for those who still struggle with this concept, please explain this. If you look at the very same data source that Huerta88 did, only for the years 1996 to 2003, you find years during which the rate of white on black rape was not only “vanishingly small” but during which it exceeded black on white rapes. Specifically, for example in 2002, 14.2% reported rapes by black women involved a white perpetrator, versus 13.1% of reported rapes by white women involving a black perpetrator. See also 1996, when the same was true, and 2000, when the percentages were exactly the same.
Now, these appear to involve very low cell counts as well, but do demonstrate that the interpretation of Huerta88’s stat as illustrative of a generally low prevalence of rapes of black women by white men is quite unfounded.
Ah, so the cite doesn’t actually have anything to do with white-on-black rape at all. I can certainly see why it was relevant, then.
No, not at all. I was personally surprised to find that the incidence of white on black rape was reportedly zero or very close to this. I’m personally unsurprised to find that the data turns out be be looking rather wobbly. The thing was, while the data said what it said, I didn’t think it did an ounce of good to attack it by trotting out such lines as [ul]“You can’t know that the reported stats reflect the real ones! Why, there could be any number of reasons why there are lots of unreported rapes - such as white serial killers preying on black victims, who then can’t report a damn thing” or [li]“How can you possibly believe white men don’t rape black women? What, you think white men can’t get it up for black women? Honey, I personally know differently!”, or even “I don’t care what the data says. It’s simply irrelevant, take my professional word for it… are you really too ignorant to know what I mean? LOL!”[/ul] There are much better ways to examine dubious data, such as looking at the techniques used to gather it - as someone with your level of proclaimed expertise should know perfectly well.[/li]
Uh-huh. And of course you’re well qualified to psychoanalyze me over a message board. :dubious:
By the rarity of white-on-black rape. So I guess in that sense it is based on race, but not on the idea that a black woman is inherently unreliable.
But you were asserting (if I understood you correctly) that the data were unreliable because we don’t know the rate of misreporting. Can’t that be said of any statistic?
We are talking past each other, and I don’t know how to address this. Sorry.
You would need to read my posts to determine that.
It’s been twenty pages. Repetition on my part isn’t going to help you.
Again, read the quote. See the phrase “assuming the statistics are true”? That’s what is unsupportable. It is what is conveyed by your following;
Being able to verify something is pretty much the same thing as saying that the assumptions on which it is based are supportable.
If all you are saying is “I know the statistics aren’t true, but I can’t prove it”, then that was clear fifteen pages ago.
:shrugs:
Have a nice weekend.
Regards,
Shodan
“True” for what? The truth of the stats wholly depend on how you interpret them.
If the rate for white-on-black rape was 5% of all interracial rapes that are reported, then the appropriate interpretation is this:
“Five percent (5%) of interracial rapes that are reported are white-on-black”.
This is the most accurate and precise interpretation because there’s a lot of evidence that rape is underreported.
Quite right. But you can’t get from there to “But the apparent imbalance would be observed to disappear if only there was not so much underreporting”, do we agree?
sigh
Cite for where I made any ridiculous assertions like that?
Oh, I can’t trawl all the way back through this trainwreck looking for one particular piece of luggage. What then is the purpose of pointing out, in the context of the hypothetical (5% of reported interracial rapes are white on black), that rape is greatly underreported? Either you accept that the balance would remain much the same if the reporting levels were higher, or you assert that it would not. 'Sgotta be one or the other, surely?
Because when you equate the stat to occurence (which was you and others repeatedly did), you are assuming that the number reflects all counts, both reported and unreported.
The reason why I talked about serial killing rapists is to illustrate how a potentially large number of rapes may go unreported simply because the victims are murdered. Interpreting the DoJ stats to mean that this type of crime almost never occurs is wrong if only for the fact that you can’t know what someone doesn’t tell you.
I never said the reason why the white-on-black rape is disproportionate to norm is absolutely because these crimes are extra-underreported. I said it could potentially be because they are extra-underreported. We don’t know, so we have to be careful about our assumptions.
BTW, a scientists tries to keep the “either or” thinking to a minimum. You do an awful lot of it.
Necessarily. You have to go with what you have. You can’t simply multiply entities.
Quite. But for this to have any even hypothetical value in accounting for the disproportion, you have to assume that a disproportionate number of rape/murders, or whatever, are going on. You talk about scientists. As I understand it, the scientific method is to form a hypothesis, and then devise a means of testing it - not just to form the hypothesis.
Of course. But we also have to weigh the possibility that what is reported is what is in fact the case. There’s no point gathering data merely to assume that it is probably wrong. Better to identify possible flaws in the data gathering and try to fix 'em than just flat-out assume the crime is underreported, or there are lots of victims who are murdered and the bodies rendered unexaminable, or little green aliens from the planet Zod have edited the computer files.
It’s the whole computer programming, working with logic for a living, thing. If I’ve overlooked a third alternative, it’s quite in order to point out the omission - I wouldn’t want to perpetrate a false dilemma. But merely reasoning “either X or ~X” is not inherently fallacious.
“You have to go with what you have” for what? Making predictions about the credence of a individual case? I would have thought this notion would have been squashed by now.
Um, no. You have to assume the possibility of such, in addition to other reporting barriers.
And in testing that hypothesis, you minimize as many assumptions as possible.
…what is reported, yes. It doesn’t tell you much about what isn’t reported, though.
Your “either or” thinking keeps tripping you up because it’s not about something being true or wrong. It’s about being complete or incomplete. You collect data to get some understanding of what is going on in a population, but you do it knowing that there will always be some inherent limitations. So you make sure you’re careful with your interpretations.
I keep saying this, and I know it makes people mad, but this really isn’t that difficult to conceptually understand. Have you ever worked with data obtained through passive surveillance?
No, your ‘if’ above is ‘D’. “On the condition that.”
How about you answer my question? If your remark to me was a hypothetical, how is it that the phrasing so resembles mine? Where did you get the idea that I thought the slavemaster remark to be ‘not a nasty one’? Can you be a little more specific than to tell me to look up a word in the dictionary? Did you really think that to be a responsive answer?
Here are your words again. You really cannot escape them, you know.
Explain to me how this hypothetical of yours came about, or honor my request for an apology.
Yes, that’s exactly the idea. Maybe not “unreliable” in general, but certainly unreliable in reporting the accuracy of rape.
No, that’s not it. I said that if you wanted to use statistics to address the question you would look at statistics of false rape reports, not the number of actual rapes. It’s not that the statistics (for actual rape) are unrelaible, it’s that they are irrelavent. Because there is nothing inhernet in the rape itself that makes it an impossible act-- what we don’t know is whether the woman was lying or not. If the woman had reported being abducted by aliens, I wouldn’t believe her becaue we have no evidence that such events have ever happened in the entire course of human history, and my operating assumption is that aliens don’t exist on earth. (That would change, of course, if we verified that alien space ships had recently been spotted in the solar system).
You don’t deserve an apology because you are dishonest when it comes to recounting what I say to you and not even particularly slick at it.
This is what I wrote to you:
(emphasis all mine)
Any fool can see I was asking you to peruse the thread a little bit and then report back on what your opinion of the thread is. The implication is that if after doing that, you don’t agree that that’s nasty, then I don’t know what would.
I did not deserve to be called a lying weasel just because you misinterpreted a very innocuous request. I should have blasted you right after that attack, but I didn’t because I was in the middle of grown folks conversation. If* anyone should be stomping their feet for an apology, it’s me.
The original remark was mine. It was not a reference to any individual poster on here (hence was expressed in terms of “they,” not “she”). And it was intended as [hyperbole]/[/hyperbole].
Who is the “they” that I posit? Well, any group of people who seem unduly attached to the notion of victimization or patterns of victimization which don’t necessarily exist, or who would tilt the scale in favor of a dubious (for whatever reason) accusation as against the rights of accuseds not to be improperly deprived of liberty, particularly when the scale-tipping is done for reasons of racial politics.
I have posited that there is a continuum between the non-plausible allegations of Tawana Brawley some years ago and the dubious allegations in this case, and have drawn a link between the respective supporters (or as I have tendentiously called them, agitators) who in both cases loudly “spoke up” for the “victim.” YMMV and you may or may not be interested in my argument that far from ignoring rape or sexual violence against black women, our society is sufficiently solicitous of the need to prevent it that even less-than-plausible (no, not based on one data point, based on all of them in aggregate) allegations are given great play by prosecutors and the press. Again, YMMV, but that is the common theme I see in this case and the Brawley case.
In this context: the “slavemaster” terminology of course came straight from the ever-helpful Rev. Jackson (I’ve quoted him upthread, invoking this specific lurid imagery re the Duke case). The “want to be raped” part came from the sick fact that Brawley herself is still (or at least was still, ten years after the fact) insisting that she had been raped, which in the face of what we all know is just about indistinguishable from “wanting to [have been] raped and to be believed.” (By the way, the “believed” part is inspired by Spike Lee’s “Tawana Told The Truth” tag in (I think) DTRT, which suggests to me that the emotional investment I posit some people as having in dubious claims was not just a fringe phenomenon, and I think it still exists).
So to the extent that anyone here does not find or put themselves in what I call the Brawley continuum, does not view the comparative rarity of white on black rape as somehow depriving them of a politically-valuable chit (as opposed to being a fortunate thing), and does not sympathize with the Black Panthers who are menacing the “rapists,” and does not drink the Kool Aid of victims-never-lie, the hyperbolic remark wasn’t even inspired by or directed specifically at them.