# Racism: A bit too obvious?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 1, 2012, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905 "2012-07-01T15:07:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/21 "2012-07-03T04:12:11Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > Because blacks have a much higher crime rate than whites race profiling is an appropriate method of deterring criminals. Despite the departure of this particular promoter of hatred, I would point out that there is objective evidence that racial profiling is neither fair not effective. [Salon.com: Why Racial profiling doesn’t work](http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/08/22/racial_profiling/index.html) > [@](#): > > Harris points to a study of New York’s “stop and frisk” campaign in the late 1990s, when police were stopping people in the streets on a regular basis in an effort to confiscate illegal weapons and reduce crime. The campaign created tension between the police and minority communities, who thought they were being unfairly targeted for frisks. It turned out they were right. > > . . . New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer ordered a study of 175,000 “stop and frisk” records and found that although African-Americans composed only 25 percent of New York City’s population at the time, they made up 50 percent of the people who were stopped. Latinos were roughly 23 percent of the population and 33 percent of those stopped, while whites were 43 percent of the population and 13 percent of those stopped. > > Those findings interested Harris less than what the statistics indicated about the results: Police were going to a lot of trouble for little reward, especially when the people they stopped were African-Americans. > > Harris looked at what he called “hit rates” – the percentage of stops in which the police found drugs, a gun or something else that led to an arrest – and noted that the number of hits in general was very low for the number of stops that police made. But more interesting was that the rate for African-Americans was much lower than the rate for Caucasians. Police had a hit rate of 12.6 percent when they stopped Caucasians and only 10.5 percent when they stopped African-Americans. The hit rate for Latinos was 11.5 percent. > > “You might say that we have a difference of 2.1 percent between blacks and whites. But it’s actually a difference of 20 percent when you do the math right,” Harris says. And “the difference between whites and Latinos is about 10 percent.” > > Essentially, police were stopping more African-Americans than Caucasians but finding fewer criminals among the former. Why? Not because blacks commit proportionately fewer crimes than whites do (the data vary according to the type of crime and other factors) but because police were looking at the wrong factors when they stopped people, Harris says. > > “They’re focusing on appearance when they should be focusing on behavior,” he says. “When they’re not distracted by race, they’re actually doing a more accurate job” of picking out the right people. New York is safer because they dropped the racial profiling and began to use the more effective behavior profiling. ---
**Author:** ![aux203](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/77aa72/32.png) [@aux203](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aux203)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/22 "2012-07-03T15:45:59Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I’ll agree there. > > Racism is real and while I don’t like to think of myself as a victim, I’ve experienced it, but I’ve never seen it practiced that blatantly. At least not in the US. This honestly strikes me as amazing. This type of thing doesn’t even strike me as particularly egregious, and I’ve seen things much like it on multiple occasions in multiple parts of the country. The best is having white people give you their real opinions when they think no minorities are around. This is particularly common in business situations for some reason. > [@](#): > > Relevant pit thread–I hope folks will read that OP before responding to NDD here. Agreed. Like x a million ---
**Author:** ![Danger\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@Danger\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danger_Man)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/23 "2012-07-03T23:10:33Z")
“You might say that we have a difference of 2.1 percent between blacks and whites. But it’s actually a difference of 20 percent when you do the math right,” Harris says. And “the difference between whites and Latinos is about 10 percent.” How do you do the math right? ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/24 "2012-07-03T23:24:02Z")
> [@Danger\_Man](#): > > “You might say that we have a difference of 2.1 percent between blacks and whites. But it’s actually a difference of 20 percent when you do the math right,” Harris says. And “the difference between whites and Latinos is about 10 percent.” > > How do you do the math right? The difference in rates is 2.1, approximately 20% of 10.5. The difference in rates is 2.1 percentage points, which means that whites get 20% more hits than blacks. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/25 "2012-07-04T00:06:12Z")
Analysis of the NYC “Stop and Frisk” data limited by age and sex (ie., involving only males between 16 and 29) threw up even higher disparities in “hit rates”. We read a case last week which noted that 1 in 9 young white males stopped were carrying firearms, while 1 in 45 young black males were. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2012, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/26 "2012-07-05T03:14:25Z")
An african american sports radio talker cracked me up when he told of being subjected to extra scrutiny at an airport. He spoke of “being randomly selected from a group of white people.” I’m sure it wasn’t easy to find humor in that situation. ---
**Author:** ![Jamicat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@Jamicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamicat)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2012, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/27 "2012-07-05T22:30:58Z")
Maybe he didn’t turn that shit off? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/28 "2012-07-11T08:38:12Z")
In our place, it’s not so much one’s (obvious) race but more of one’s outward appearance. Let’s just say I get searched when I’m in jeans and t-shirts, whereas I’m good-morning-sir’d when I’m in a suite. That, even when I’m wearing my ID at all times. And no, they don’t search suites without IDs. So to give my opinion to the OP, it’s not obvious racism. It’s obvious bias to people they think are likely to commit crime or cause trouble. It’s stupid but with some basis. I’ll bet they’ve experienced it often enough. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/29 "2012-07-11T11:05:53Z")
> [@aux203](#): > > The best is having white people give you their real opinions when they think no minorities are around. This is particularly common in business situations for some reason. Ha! In the early 1990s in Kansas City, I used to run into this all the time. I was the first non-white person to work in that office (about 60 people) ever. I am South Asian. Most of the people were sales or service employees who dealt with large business customers. We hired one black saleperson. Several white employees including one of the managers told me that this would never work. The customers would not accept a black salesperson. His actual stellar performance seem to make no impression on them whatsoever. During the next annual culling, his name was put on the list to be laid off, even though he was one of the top 2 or 3 in sales within his level. This triggerred some involvement by HR in Washington DC. The black guy was taken off the list. I had come to Kansas City from Washington DC. People there were a little more circumspect about what they said about brown and yellow people about black people. Probably they were more used to dealing with brown and yellow people than the folks in Kansas City. The idea of someone who was neither black not white seemed to be quite confusing to them. One of the first questions I was asked was, “Why are Indian motel owners so jerky?” In 1995 I became the business manager for that branch. I hired a black receptionist, by far the most qualified applicant. All hell broke loose. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/30 "2012-07-11T13:37:26Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > One of the first questions I was asked was, “Why are Indian motel owners so jerky?” It’s a fair question. 😃 My stepdad is an Indian motel owner, so I know of which I speak. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/31 "2012-07-11T13:49:32Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > Ha! In the early 1990s in Kansas City, I used to run into this all the time. I was the first non-white person to work in that office (about 60 people) ever. I am South Asian. Most of the people were sales or service employees who dealt with large business customers. We hired one black saleperson. Several white employees including one of the managers told me that this would never work. The customers would not accept a black salesperson. His actual stellar performance seem to make no impression on them whatsoever. During the next annual culling, his name was put on the list to be laid off, even though he was one of the top 2 or 3 in sales within his level. This triggerred some involvement by HR in Washington DC. The black guy was taken off the list. I hear stories like this a lot, and they are told in this same way – with a vagueness just when I want the storyteller to be specific. It makes me crazy. The white employees and manager who predicted “this will never work” were not deterred by his actual stellar performance? How, specifically, did that conversation go? YOU: Hey, remember that guy you told me not to bring on as a salesperson? The black guy? You said our customers would never accept him? WHITE MANAGER: Yes? YOU: He’s in the top 2 or 3 in sales in his tier. Looks like the customers did accept him, eh? WM: No they didn’t! YOU: But he’s in the top… WM (Interrupting): No, they didn’t! I can’t hear you! LA LA LA LA!!! What are the actual conversations that happen when people are confronted with their error? ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/32 "2012-07-11T15:00:32Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I hear stories like this a lot, and they are told in this same way – with a vagueness just when I want the storyteller to be specific. > > It makes me crazy. > > The white employees and manager who predicted “this will never work” were not deterred by his actual stellar performance? How, specifically, did that conversation go? > > YOU: Hey, remember that guy you told me not to bring on as a salesperson? The black guy? You said our customers would never accept him? > > WHITE MANAGER: Yes? > > YOU: He’s in the top 2 or 3 in sales in his tier. Looks like the customers did accept him, eh? > > WM: No they didn’t! > > YOU: But he’s in the top… > > WM (Interrupting): No, they didn’t! I can’t hear you! LA LA LA LA!!! > > What are the actual conversations that happen when people are confronted with their error? Dude, I’m the very picture of the model minority. Do you actually think that I would confront someone about this? I just go along to get along. I am not joking. I was hoping to get promoted or at least not laid off, just like everyone else. Why should I rock the boat? But to be specific the exact words use to justify putting him on the RIF list was that he had no development potential. He was at the lowest level of sales, so he was dealing with accounts in the 200k to 500k revenue segment. The real money (for the company, and to some extent the salespeople) was in the next level up, 500k to 2M. The twisted logic was that the lowest level in sales is really a farm team for the next level. Of course there were plenty of people who remained at the lowest level, just barely making their numbers, for years. But thanks for substituting your fantastic version of the world for the one we actually live in. In the real world people have an infinite number of ways to justify what they are doing. We had an unwritten rule that that if you exceeded the quota for the next level up for three straight quarters, you would be promoted at the next opportunities. When this guy hit the mark, he was promoted. But not to the next level of account executive. He was promoted to field marketing specialist, a position for which he really was unqualified. But he wouldn’t have to meet customers, play golf etc. Mostly he ws training people, and preparing proposals/technical data sheets for other sales people. He left soon after and went to work for a start-up in the same business that is now a billion dollar company. He is an Area VP there now. When the Area Vice President walked in and was greeted by the new African American receptionist, he was steaming. He went in to see my boss, who called me in. They were “concerned” that the receptionist did not project the image of the company we wanted. As far as I could tell, she was professionally dressed, well groomed, very articulate and had Excel and Word skills. When I pointed this out, they just said, you just don’t understand. But to be fair, I later found out that my boss regarded the receptionist position as part of his harem, and he had a very specific type. Is that specific enough for you. Or do you need a transcript of each conversation? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/33 "2012-07-11T15:20:00Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > I’m having a hard time believing this, especially from someone who just signed up here. Sorry, and its not because you are a non-white. The scenario is just too damn obviously racist as you suggest. Racists require some degree of deniability in order to preserve their racism. What were they searching for ? > > Did any non-whites and/or blacks pass through without search ? > > What city did this occur in ? And this is why we don’t talk about racism when it happens. No matter what, we were wrong, or we’re lying, or we misconstrued it. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/34 "2012-07-11T19:18:31Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It’s a fair question. 😃 > > My stepdad is an Indian motel owner, so I know of which I speak. So why are they so jerky?😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905/35 "2012-07-14T08:16:12Z")
> [@L.mo5rg](#): > > So me and my friends were going to this theme-park, and it was a speciall halowwen themed night. They had a “random” search at the door. I was the only non-white person among my friends and I got randomly searched, everyone else in the random search queue was non-white. My black friend also gets randomly stopped by the police every now-and-then and gets asked how he had money to pay for his car, and if he stole it. I’m under no illusion that there is no more racism, but shouldn’t it be more subtle nowadays? Young men tend to pay higher premiums on car insurance than women. Some airlines won’t allow unaccompanied minors to sit next to a male passenger. It’s called statistical discrimination. Here is a defense of its moral [legitimacy](http://mises.org/daily/3545) by a statistics lecturer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racism-a-bit-too-obvious/626905.md?page=1)