# Taking precautions against men, blacks vs. black men **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 1, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096 "2014-10-01T16:56:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/21 "2014-10-02T15:15:22Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > That’s the part I see the most. “In this modern PCI age I can’t even act reasonably without someone accusing me of racism” is a common theme. “Why is okay when “the blacks” or “the women” do X, but if I did it, I’d be called racist or sexist?” O, think about what motivates this particular thread. Okay, I get what you’re saying now. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/22 "2014-10-02T15:24:53Z")
[QUOTE=Velocity] Bear in mind that if you lock car doors when strangers approach, if it’s a black man, he may reasonably believe you locked the doors because of race. [/QUOTE] Who cares what he thinks? Gavin de Becker (in _The Gift of Fear_) makes the same point I attempted to make when I taught self-defense, especially women’s self-defense. **Pay attention to your gut.** People tell you who they are. You just have to listen. If you are wasting time worrying if your perceptions are politically correct or not, your attention is direceted inward, and you aren’t listening. That’s how people get hurt. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/23 "2014-10-02T15:29:21Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Many people consider it \*acceptable \*to take precautions against men - not unreasonable, considering that the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by men. This is the exact sort of specious logic that leads people to be suspicious of leaving men alone with children. Afterall, the vast majority of child molesters are men. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/24 "2014-10-02T15:42:44Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > This is the exact sort of specious logic that leads people to be suspicious of leaving men alone with children. Afterall, the vast majority of child molesters are men. Specifically, it’s what [RationalWiki](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_transposed_conditional) calls the “Fallacy of the Transposed Conditional.” [Here’s one good explanation:](http://www.businessinsider.com/common-fallacies-2014-5) > [@](#): > > **Conditional probability fallacies** > > This is a fallacy based on a misunderstanding of how conditional probabilities work, especially when applied to small subgroups of a population or very unlikely events. The probability that A happens given B does not actually equal the probability that B happens given A. > > This is a big practical problem with racial profiling. On 9/11, all of the terrorists that attacked New York and Washington were Muslims. This led some people to conflate Islam and terrorism. > > The issue is that the population of Muslim terrorists is very small, and the population of Muslims is very large. As a thought experiment, suppose there are 1,000 terrorists in the world, and suppose 90% of that group consists of Muslim extremists. The fallacious idea then is that this means that 90% of Muslims are terrorists. But there are over a billion Muslims in the world, and only 900 of them are terrorists. So, the probability that a randomly chosen Muslim is a terrorist is incredibly small — on the order of 0.00009%. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/25 "2014-10-02T16:15:15Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > My favorite precaution to take in the presence of a black man is a Trojan Magnum. Thread winner right here. [QUOTE=Machine Elf] This is the exact sort of specious logic that leads people to be suspicious of leaving men alone with children. Afterall, the vast majority of child molesters are men. [/QUOTE] Agreed. Life is too short to be that fucking paranoid. I think it’s worth pointing out, though, that any woman who gets attacked by a strange man is going to be blamed for not being more cautious. I’ve heard folks on this very board liken women walking by themselves in isolated places to flaunting an expensive watch in a poor neighborhood. It’s not uncommon for a man to think it’s perfectly sensible to avoid strange men unless the strange man being avoided happens to be himself. I’m not sure how to win that game. This is doubly stupid because most assaults don’t happen that way. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/26 "2014-10-02T16:43:46Z")
> [@Machine Elf](#): > > This is the exact sort of specious logic that leads people to be suspicious of leaving men alone with children. Afterall, the vast majority of child molesters are men. I think my wife’s just worried I’ll drop him or teach him some bad habits.☹ > [@Velocity](#): > > Bear in mind that if you lock car doors when strangers approach, if it’s a black man, he may reasonably believe you locked the doors because of race. Yeah, but he’s on the other side of a locked door, so who cares?😃 ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/27 "2014-10-02T16:56:13Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Who cares what he thinks? > > Gavin de Becker (in _The Gift of Fear_) makes the same point I attempted to make when I taught self-defense, especially women’s self-defense. > > **Pay attention to your gut.** > > People tell you who they are. You just have to listen. If you are wasting time worrying if your perceptions are politically correct or not, your attention is direceted inward, and you aren’t listening. That’s how people get hurt. How does someone “tell you who they are” by walking down the street near your car? ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/28 "2014-10-02T18:33:24Z")
I spent 20 years living in the city with the highest murder rate in Florida. I lock my doors. All the time. Car door, house door. I have a charley bar under my front doorknob and a bar on the slider. I live in a second-floor apartment in a mostly-crime-free town in Massachusetts. It’s habit. But really, people. Lock your damn car door when you get in. There, no angst about if the person walking down the street thinks you locked the door because of him/her. P.S. I also really like Gavin de Becker’s books. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/29 "2014-10-02T18:37:16Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > How does someone “tell you who they are” by walking down the street near your car? By what they do. Also by tiny bits of body language. By things we don’t necessarily pick up on logically – those signals end up as “gut reactions”. For example, I would be concerned if I were at a stop light and someone walking down the sidewalk paid undue attention to me, or moved from the far side of the sidewalk to one closer to my vehicle. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/30 "2014-10-02T18:37:45Z")
In this day & time IMO any woman who is alone, anybody really, who does not lock their car doors 99% of the time is asking for trouble. Situational awareness is not paranoia or racism IMO. And I don’t have to even be consciously thinking about danger, it is just running in the background. The warning bell will go off if I do not catch it in the forefront. I pay attention to my gut. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/31 "2014-10-02T18:56:17Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > It means that you will change your liberal attitude when the coons attack you. Heard this crap all my life and I was actually stabbed by a drunken black girlfriend one night. Hasn’t stopped me from dating another black girl but it really irks some of my associates that I am “making the same mistake” again. 😕 Coons? ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/32 "2014-10-02T19:11:31Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > If a woman does happen to have some race bias it is not fair to call her a racist. A common scene in Los Angeles is young black men standing out in front of stores around mini malls routinely harrassing nearly every white women that walks past them. They represent a small fraction of black men no doubt but they also represent 100% of the men who have insulted that woman recently. You can’t expect that everyone can just ignore this. And if this group of young black men behaved similar behavior but dressed in Armani suits, Gucci loafers, and apparently just off a 9-5 job? This example is a nice demonstrating that the idea of judging solely by race or gender doesn’t happen in the real world, and the OP is a bit of a red herring. There’s a lot of nice assumptions here that we can analyze. The fact that these men are young is one. So, would it matter if they were in the 80s and needed walkers to move about? Would they pose much of a threat even if they made harassing comments? They hang around in groups in mini-malls. So, they presumably aren’t supporting traditional suburban families with 9-5 jobs? Are they dressed a certain way? Presumably not in suits. What does their clothing say about their social status? Are they really only harassing white women? Or do we just not notice as much when the harassment occurs to minority women? So, race/gender is really an oversimplification here. This hypothetical woman isn’t judging relative risk based on race/gender but by a mix of a range of visual and aural cues that signals the age, race, gender, social status, economic status, etc of this group of men to heuristically make that judgment. And that makes sense, even if sometimes our estimate of true risk can be totally off the mark. Clearly, you aren’t judging people solely by their gender or race (or a mix of only these two) or even suggesting it. But some people do, and it supports their arguments for gender/race prejudice better if they can pretend people ignore all that other stuff. And this may be where you are getting a bit off the mark. This hypothetical woman is probably not going to judge much risk at a similarly aged group of suited men on a Sunday who have come to a mini-mall directly from a church across the street, off-color remarks notwithstanding. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/33 "2014-10-02T19:50:45Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Coons? It’s an example of what people say without using the N-word but keeping with the flavor of the original message. The point being that I should have learned not to date that type of person just because one out of millions did a stupid thing when drunk. The point of my post in this thread is to direct your fear to individuals who are posing a high possibility of harming you; not a whole race of people just because. In fact, I’ve always wondered why that particular name was used to refer to black people, because raccoons aren’t black. 😕 I guess I just don’t get racism and wouldn’t make a good Klan member. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/34 "2014-10-02T20:12:16Z")
And then there is someone like Jesse Jackson: “There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” > **[Jesse Jackson fears black youths: racism? - The Race Card Project](http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/)** > > Michael Trigoboff Tigard, OR Even Jesse Jackson said a few years ago, “There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”... ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/35 "2014-10-02T20:15:17Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > It’s an example of what people say without using the N-word but keeping with the flavor of the original message. The point being that I should have learned not to date that type of person just because one out of millions did a stupid thing when drunk. The point of my post in this thread is to direct your fear to individuals who are posing a high possibility of harming you; not a whole race of people just because. > > In fact, I’ve always wondered why that particular name was used to refer to black people, because raccoons aren’t black. 😕 I guess I just don’t get racism and wouldn’t make a good Klan member. According to old Wikkipedia ([Turkey in the Straw - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_Coon)), it grew out of the ministrel tradiation. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/36 "2014-10-04T00:38:08Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > How does someone “tell you who they are” by walking down the street near your car? Did you read the book? No, of course you didn’t or you wouldn’t have asked the question. Read the book. ---
**Author:** ![Boogly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Boogly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boogly)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2014, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/37 "2014-10-04T01:46:10Z")
This is dumb. Sex doesn’t matter. Color doesn’t matter. If the person is being sketchy then take precautions. ---
**Author:** ![PurpleClogs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f04885/32.png) [@PurpleClogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PurpleClogs)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2014, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096/38 "2014-10-04T02:13:54Z")
I lock my doors because there’s a strange **person** \*\*\*\* nearby, regardless of race or gender or dress or whatever. There have been crimes reported where a woman stops the car at a light or at the gas station and a person casually opens their passenger door and grabs their purse from the seat and takes off running. The lock is there, I use it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-precautions-against-men-blacks-vs-black-men/700096.md?page=1)