Maybe it was a Hate-Crime

Great Debates
141

Assuming 50% of the white population is male, 37.5% would be white males. These stats are also interesting: since 75% of the population is white, and only 65% of hate crime victims are white, it looks like (surprise surprise) white people are proportionately underrepresented as hate crime victims.

Note that black victims are overrepresented, but you see a similar pattern: males are attacked more frequently than females. My WAG is that hate crimes are often committed by men against men, or else they’re committed against families, and the men are the ones who file the police report. But I have nothing to back that guess up; there may be other explanations for why men seem to be the primary victims of hate crimes.

Daniel

142

So, all he did was verity his incompetence of statistical analysis? Here, allow me to introduce you. http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/vita.html

143

Similarly, allow me to introduce you: Appeal to authority.

After y’all get acquainted, perhaps you can tell me how his credentials have fuckall to do with his stupid agreement with a racist’s incompetent statistical analysis.

You’re not doing any better on the sloppy arguing front.

Daniel

144

Razorsharp:

Oh! Stop! Yer killin’ me here!

Horseshit, Sparky. Here’s a little something to mull over: the Big Bad Media is far more interested in being right than hewing to an overarching imaginary party line.

I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. But judging by your past performance, I would fully expect you to piss and moan if they did, and remain puzzlingly silent if they didn’t.

Y’know, sorta like you do with the Carr case. Using it as what you believe is a truncheon, then someone goes to the trouble of pointing out to you that your points (if I believed in smilies, one would be rolling his eyes here) are nonexistent and that use of the Carr case only makes you look even whinier, whereupon you don’t mention it again. Repeat ad infinitum.

And I’m still waiting for other examples of The Media crapping all over those poor, put upon white people. Barring that, I know that you’re just spewing nonsensical bullshit all over the place.

Really, isthis the best that oppressed white people can hope for? If so, they might wanna look into someone capable of rudimentary thought.

Waste

145

Well, good to see that this little shin-dig is still doing, and that the OP continues to stumble along blindly. Hey, Gadarene, did you like those in-depth and illuminating responses to your questions? I’m generally not one to say “i told you so,” but… :slight_smile:

Thanks for the statistical analysis, Dead Badger. If anyone’s interested, i actually found the report upon which Razorsharp’s Dr Williams based his analysis. As far as i can tell, he got his figures on page 41 of this pdf file, in the section “Percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, based on race of victims, by type of crime and perceived race of offender”.

Disaggregating the numbers, i arrive at a figure of 1,276,030 interracial crimes of violence involving whites and blacks, which is the same number the good doctor gives. When he says that about 90% of these interracial crimes were committed by blacks on whites, and about 10% by whites on blacks, he is about right. The actual figures that i arrive at are:



Black on white:        1,140,670 (89.39%)

White on black:           135,360 (10.61%)

What he ignores is some of the other figures that you can glean from that page, to wit:

  1. When a black person commits a crime of violence, there is a 56.32% chance that the victim will be white, and a 43.86% chance that the victim will be black.

  2. When a white person is the victim of a crime of violence, there is a 72.9% chance that the offender will be white, and a 16.7% chance that the offender will be black (numbers don’t add to up to 100% because of other races, and unknown races).

Now, none of these figures tell us a great deal by themselves, but they certainly provide some room for doubting that there’s some massively under-reported epidemic of black-on-white violence.

For example, paragraph (1) shows that, despite the overwhelming predominance of whites in America, black criminals still choose white victims almost as often as they choose black ones. Obviously this has much to do with simple proximity, as we have all been suggesting in this thread. But if black-on-white hate crimes were the huge issue that Razorsharp makes out, surely all those evil blacks would be actively hunting down a much larger proportion of white people than they currently are.

And, as paragraph (2) shows, if white people are worried about the level of violent crime that they suffer, then the first place they ought to look is among people of their own color, because they’re much more likely to be a victim of a white person than they are of a black person.

As for Lib’s question, according to this report from the 2000 Census, people who identify as only white make up 75.1 percent of the US population, and men make up 49.1 percent of whites, which means that white men make up 36.9 percent of the US population.

Even if we include people who define themselves as white in combination with another race, white men still only make up 37.8 percent of the US population.

146

I’m sure that a man with the credentials of Dr. Williams doesn’t have the knack for statistical analysis as, say, some tie-dyed shirt & Birkenstock wearing, faux Deadhead dancing in the street at Belle Cher.

147

Speaking of which, were you planning to address the fact that your own figures utterly contradict your own conclusions, or are you going to attempt to ignore them?

Regarding the interracial statistics themselves, the relative makeup of the black+white population is roughly 86%/14% respectively (excluding all other ethnicities). So 89%/11% ratios of crime is hardly a surprise, given economic factors. So much for that argument, eh?

Cheers Daniel - I don’t particularly enjoy whipping out the calculator myself, but it’s amazing how manipulative figures can be if you don’t take the time to work out what they’re actually saying…

148

It was his own analysis. You seem to have a reading comprehension problem, that’s why things seem sloppy to you.

149

No it wasn’t: he verified the numbers, but his analysis was either nonexistent or identically incompetent.

But that’s irrelevant. With this singularly ironic post, you’re still dodging the issue: my statistical analysis holds up, and you’ve yet to raise a substantial challenge to it.

Making silly and incorrect guesses about my character and my activities at a misspelled local festival doesn’t quite rise to the level of “substantial challenge.”

Daniel

150

Due respect, appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authority in question is indeed expert in the field of discussion. You may, for example, state Hawking’s opinion as a weighty contribution in a discussion about about physics, but not in a discussion about political philosophy. And just to be clear, even when abused it is a rhetorical vice rather than a logical fallacy.

151

The first part I understand; Dr. Williams is an economist, not a criminologist nor a statistician, and therefore is speaking outside his field of expertise. He is patently incompetent at examining statistics, assuming we are being charitable and not calling him a liar.

The second part I disagree with: several authoritative site (Nizkor, skepdic, and The Philosophical Pages refer to it as a fallacy (albeit, in the case of the last cite, an informal fallacy).

Daniel

152

But to be fair, the man is an economist - not a criminologist. He quotes simplistic figures and draws fallacious conclusions from them, using them to justify his assertion that multi-cultural societies are “inherently unstable”. Speaking as an academic myself, I’m unhappy with the reasoning that he is an academic, therefore his reasoning must be sound. There’s nothing inherently mystical about academics, it is the process of peer review that I believe gives their published conclusions weight. Writings outside their area of expertise on topics where they apparently have an axe to grind should be taken with a pinch of salt, as with any columnist’s opinion. This is not to say that they are wrong, but IMHO his brief statistics do not support the point he tries to make, as I’ve explained above.

Or, what Daniel said. Accursed preview!

153

Well, it is a fallacy, but a fallacy of rhetoric, not of logic. Logical fallacies are formal; rhetorical fallacies are informal. By formal, we mean having to do with the formulae of the system. Consider, for example, the following logical argument: “All men die. You are a man. Therefore, you will die.” Despite any rhetorical appeal whatsover that you might interject — no matter whether relevant or not — the argument is valid.

154

I wasn’t defending the man, just clarifying a point. I honestly do not understand either side of this debate. But then, I view crime differently than most of you.

155

Fair enough; your phrasing looked at first blush like you were denying it was a fallacy, but I see now you left room for its being a rhetorical fallacy.

In any case, the underlying argument here appears totally false, and Razorsharp is using the appeal to authority as a fallacy (rhetorical) to obscure the argument’s falseness. He refuses to defend the substance of the argument–understandably, given the argument’s stupidity. When pressed on the “appeal to authority” fallacy, he resorts to the “ad hominem” fallacy (also rhetorical, I know).

At this point, I think this “great” debate is pretty well resolved; unless Razorsharp comes up with something else remotely substantive, or unless someone with more intellectual rigor comes along to pick up his sputtering torch, I’m done here.

Daniel

156

Meaning?

157

In what sense?

158

Normally I’d suggest starting a new thread in which to discuss various understandings of what crime means: the argument here is over understandings of statistics, not over understandings of crime, and Libertarian ought to be (and I’m guessing is) perfectly capable of following the different statistical analyses.

However, given the uselessness of this thread at this point, why not hijack it into a philosophical meditation on the nature of crime?

Daniel

159

Owing to my political leanings, I define crime as the usurpation of rights. I define rights as authority that accrues to property ownership. Property includes the body and mind. An assault on a person is therefore a crime. Theft and vandalism, as assaults on property, are also crimes. But hate is not a crime. Neither is bigotry or prejudice. That is not to say that a person cannot be both a criminal and a bigot, but still… My philosophy allows force or deception only for defense or retaliation against tyranny (= crime). Punishing thought is anathema to my worldview.

160

Sure, sure–but hate is not a crime in the US, either. However, if you commit a crime against property or body, your state of mind will be considered in sentencing, and if you have certain states of minds or intents, then your sentence will be harsher than otherwise.

Say I beat a guy to death. If I was clearly drunk and was just trying to put a little hurt on him, I’ll get manslaughter. If he called me a drunk Irishman and I decided to kill him for that insult, I’ll get second-degree murder. If his estranged wife paid me $10,000 to kill him, I’ll get first degree murder. If I leave a note on the dead Senator saying, “I’ll keep killing senators until the US withdraws from Iraq!” I’ll get charged with terrorism. If I turn around and say, “Do any more of you whities want the same treatment, or are you gonna get the hell out of our neighborhood?” I’ll get charged with a hate crime.

Motive and intent are very often figured into which crimes someone is charged with. Unless you think that killing someone should be the same crime whether or not the killing was premeditated or even intentional, you accept that a person’s state of mind can be figured into what to charge them with.

This is not at all the same thing as a “thought crime”, where someone’s thoughts, independent of any action taken because of those thoughts, are used to charge them with a crime.

Daniel