5 ms·

OK, so let's say people agree with you all the sudden. Now that you've framed it as a race thing, what sort of policy are you going to implement based on what

by badsock 10y ago

OK, so let's say people agree with you all the sudden. Now that you've framed it as a race thing, what sort of policy are you going to implement based on what you decide? If you're going to take any kind of punitive action against people based on their race, that's not a "offending the PC police" thing, that's a human rights violation. If it's not punitive, then that's affirmative action, which you already have and has been discussed to death. What's the point of framing the discussion around race, given that the result of going down that avenue isn't useful, and that the discussion itself is going to be bitterly divisive?

h4nkoslo 10y ago
You're misunderstanding me. I am saying that the raw statistics indicate that dealing with crime in serious way requires imposing not-crime on the black population. That is just a point of fact, and Eric Holder's subordinates at least agree with me. Mechanisms to do this run into exactly the sorts of problems you mention (all of the plausible solutions appear to be either "racist" or empirically ineffective). There are discarded social technologies from <1970 that evidently succeeded in reducing both the black crime rate, and probably also the extent to which black crime affected whites & was thus basically ignorable. Examining those technologies in depth & figuring out what if anything is useful sort of exceeds the bounds of a tiny comment box. But let's please get accurate diagnoses first of the decision calculus facing, say, Rahm Emanuel as he decides what policies to implement, and why he doesn't seem to be able to crack the problem. Giuliani was able to mostly solve the problem in New York, but he was able to do things like eliminate freedom of movement for blacks, avoid effective criticism due to his protection of large swathes of the media community, import replacement populations to drive out his more troublesome constituents, finance it via a boom in his city's FIRE economy, etc. It's not clear that that would work in, say, Detroit, or that those policies were in retrospect conformal with contemporary ethics.
- panic 10y ago
  Men commit more crimes than women. Do you think we should eliminate freedom of movement for men? "Import replacement populations" of women to drive them out? The reasons people commit crimes are complex. Visible attributes like skin color or gender do not cause people to commit crime, and using statistics to argue this is incorrect and racist.
  - h4nkoslo 10y ago
    For whatever reason you're refusing to engage with the existence of black crime as a problem, and deflecting to whether I secretly believe in particular causal mechanisms or am arguing for heresy. In fact I've been clear in not advocating for particular causes. I've also been clear in not advocating an Emperor Giuliani solution. It rather reinforces my point that there is unlikely to be a good solution to the problem when the response to pointing out very simple and agreed-upon statistics about black crime, and that any solution would presumably disproportionately affect blacks - is to point and shout "racist". That's what I'm saying. A solution to vastly disproportionate black crime would probably be, ipso facto, racist. Incidentally, I agree with you that men commit essentially all violence, to say nothing of violent crime. There's pretty much societal consensus that measures disproportionately targeting male crime are A-OK, eg, the fact that young men are far more likely to be stopped by the police than young women, or disparities in sentencing between male and female crime, or the use of sex-offender registries, etc. In fact management of large groups of men has been a concern for literally millennia. For instance, maintaining order in militaries, or in prisons, or managing boomtowns. "Import women" has been a solution (promoting female immigration to boomtowns, or brothels and baggage trains in <1900 militaries), as has been the imposition of hierarchies with recursive responsibility for enforcing order (militaries in general & prisons) or sequestering violence from the population at large (prisons & to some extent militaries). We've actually gotten pretty good at it through the use of social technologies we haven't thrown away.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- abvdasker 10y ago
  Guiliani was able to mostly solve the problem in New York... he was able to do things like eliminate freedom of movement for blacks Where do I even begin with this? Let's ignore for just a second the part where you seem to label black people a "problem population". Praise for any public policy that restricts citizens' rights specifically on the basis of race must be rejected outright. There are ways to fight crime without trampling on the rights of law abiding citizens. What disturbs me most is that you don't even seem to realize that your example of Guiliani's supposedly successful crime policy is an almost textbook definition of institutionalized discrimination. As an African American living in Manhattan the policies you advocate are obviously objectionable to me. Behind the "Modest Proposal" rhetoric in your posts rests the belief that it's somehow defensible to limit the rights of black people (or any population) based on a greater prevalence of crime.
  - h4nkoslo 10y ago
    Let's ignore for just a second the part where you seem to label black people a "problem population". Let's not. I don't "seem to", it's kind of the crux of my argument (see below). Do you not think it's fair to describe the situation on the south side of chicago as "a problem"? Are there hordes of rogue Ents pillaging it, or is it maybe the local population's actions? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/06/chicago-hits-500-murders-2016-after-deadly-labor-day-weekend/89905916/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/06/chicago-hits-5... Praise for any public policy that restricts citizens' rights specifically on the basis of race must be rejected outright "Praise for", or "assessment of"? I'm only doing the latter here. There are ways to fight crime without trampling on the rights of law abiding citizens. Effective ways? If you've cracked the case, stop writing immediately and call up Mayor Rahm; your Nobel awaits you. What disturbs me most is that you don't even seem to realize that your example of Guiliani's supposedly successful crime policy is an almost textbook definition of institutionalized discrimination No, I get that. I explicitly labeled those efforts as an example of institutionalized suppression of a problem population, which I in turn labeled as unethical given the current regime. My syllogism is simple. 1) Crime is primarily a problem of non-asian minority populations 2) Efforts to target that crime would need to focus on that population, either explicitly, or via an algorithm laundering the inference (eg, the sorts of algorithms in the actual article) 3) But that would be racist 4) So they won't be done under the present regime 5) Somehow they solved it in the past though. We should understand the mechanisms in case they are useful. Further Study Needed. Inability to distinguish advocacy for assessment makes polite conversation difficult. I can't figure out why I should care that you're black, or that a policy would be objectionable to you specifically. I can think of 500 reasons and counting in Chicago alone to contemplate nexuses of crime, why we are currently institutionally unable to pursue empirically successful solutions, and if there are alternate mechanisms for doing so.
- badsock 10y ago
  Well, I think you hit the nail on the head: contemporary ethics are pretty down on things like stripping constitutional rights like the freedom of movement from a group of people based on race. A lot of people spent their lives bringing about this shift in ethics; some of them died violently for their efforts. Not having fundamental rights abrogated because you share some phenotypes with some bad people is a substantial philosophy with deep roots in the reactions to the breadth and depth of injustice that went down in the 19th and 20th centuries - much more than just "PC goggles". My take is that if you removed all of the crimes committed by black and hispanic people, the US would still have a murder rate that is multiples of that in many other developed countries. Clearly there is some other factor - one which is objectively larger than race - that should be the top focus.
  - h4nkoslo 10y ago
    My take is that if you removed all of the crimes committed by black and hispanic people, the US would still have a murder rate that is multiples of that in many other developed countries. Clearly there is some other factor - one which is objectively larger than race - that should be the top focus. That's inaccurate. The European population in America has a crime rate inline with or a bit lower than European populations in Europe, certainly not "multiples". http://www.unicri.it/services/library_documentation/publications/icvs/publications/ICVS2004_05report.pdf http://www.unicri.it/services/library_documentation/publicat...
    - nl 10y ago
      The parent poster said the murder rate, not the crime rate. I agree the crime rate is what should be compared though. Where are you finding the US crime rate by ethnicity? I haven't read all 283 pages of the doc you linked, but a more direct reference would be great.
      - Senji 10y ago
        http://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/ http://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/
      - 10y ago

by badsock 10y ago

h4nkoslo 10y ago

You're misunderstanding me. I am saying that the raw statistics indicate that dealing with crime in serious way requires imposing not-crime on the black population. That is just a point of fact, and Eric Holder's subordinates at least agree with me. Mechanisms to do this run into exactly the sorts of problems you mention (all of the plausible solutions appear to be either "racist" or empirically ineffective). There are discarded social technologies from <1970 that evidently succeeded in reducing both the black crime rate, and probably also the extent to which black crime affected whites & was thus basically ignorable. Examining those technologies in depth & figuring out what if anything is useful sort of exceeds the bounds of a tiny comment box. But let's please get accurate diagnoses first of the decision calculus facing, say, Rahm Emanuel as he decides what policies to implement, and why he doesn't seem to be able to crack the problem. Giuliani was able to mostly solve the problem in New York, but he was able to do things like eliminate freedom of movement for blacks, avoid effective criticism due to his protection of large swathes of the media community, import replacement populations to drive out his more troublesome constituents, finance it via a boom in his city's FIRE economy, etc. It's not clear that that would work in, say, Detroit, or that those policies were in retrospect conformal with contemporary ethics.

panic 10y ago
Men commit more crimes than women. Do you think we should eliminate freedom of movement for men? "Import replacement populations" of women to drive them out? The reasons people commit crimes are complex. Visible attributes like skin color or gender do not cause people to commit crime, and using statistics to argue this is incorrect and racist.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  For whatever reason you're refusing to engage with the existence of black crime as a problem, and deflecting to whether I secretly believe in particular causal mechanisms or am arguing for heresy. In fact I've been clear in not advocating for particular causes. I've also been clear in not advocating an Emperor Giuliani solution. It rather reinforces my point that there is unlikely to be a good solution to the problem when the response to pointing out very simple and agreed-upon statistics about black crime, and that any solution would presumably disproportionately affect blacks - is to point and shout "racist". That's what I'm saying. A solution to vastly disproportionate black crime would probably be, ipso facto, racist. Incidentally, I agree with you that men commit essentially all violence, to say nothing of violent crime. There's pretty much societal consensus that measures disproportionately targeting male crime are A-OK, eg, the fact that young men are far more likely to be stopped by the police than young women, or disparities in sentencing between male and female crime, or the use of sex-offender registries, etc. In fact management of large groups of men has been a concern for literally millennia. For instance, maintaining order in militaries, or in prisons, or managing boomtowns. "Import women" has been a solution (promoting female immigration to boomtowns, or brothels and baggage trains in <1900 militaries), as has been the imposition of hierarchies with recursive responsibility for enforcing order (militaries in general & prisons) or sequestering violence from the population at large (prisons & to some extent militaries). We've actually gotten pretty good at it through the use of social technologies we haven't thrown away.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
abvdasker 10y ago
Guiliani was able to mostly solve the problem in New York... he was able to do things like eliminate freedom of movement for blacks Where do I even begin with this? Let's ignore for just a second the part where you seem to label black people a "problem population". Praise for any public policy that restricts citizens' rights specifically on the basis of race must be rejected outright. There are ways to fight crime without trampling on the rights of law abiding citizens. What disturbs me most is that you don't even seem to realize that your example of Guiliani's supposedly successful crime policy is an almost textbook definition of institutionalized discrimination. As an African American living in Manhattan the policies you advocate are obviously objectionable to me. Behind the "Modest Proposal" rhetoric in your posts rests the belief that it's somehow defensible to limit the rights of black people (or any population) based on a greater prevalence of crime.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  Let's ignore for just a second the part where you seem to label black people a "problem population". Let's not. I don't "seem to", it's kind of the crux of my argument (see below). Do you not think it's fair to describe the situation on the south side of chicago as "a problem"? Are there hordes of rogue Ents pillaging it, or is it maybe the local population's actions? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/06/chicago-hits-500-murders-2016-after-deadly-labor-day-weekend/89905916/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/06/chicago-hits-5... Praise for any public policy that restricts citizens' rights specifically on the basis of race must be rejected outright "Praise for", or "assessment of"? I'm only doing the latter here. There are ways to fight crime without trampling on the rights of law abiding citizens. Effective ways? If you've cracked the case, stop writing immediately and call up Mayor Rahm; your Nobel awaits you. What disturbs me most is that you don't even seem to realize that your example of Guiliani's supposedly successful crime policy is an almost textbook definition of institutionalized discrimination No, I get that. I explicitly labeled those efforts as an example of institutionalized suppression of a problem population, which I in turn labeled as unethical given the current regime. My syllogism is simple. 1) Crime is primarily a problem of non-asian minority populations 2) Efforts to target that crime would need to focus on that population, either explicitly, or via an algorithm laundering the inference (eg, the sorts of algorithms in the actual article) 3) But that would be racist 4) So they won't be done under the present regime 5) Somehow they solved it in the past though. We should understand the mechanisms in case they are useful. Further Study Needed. Inability to distinguish advocacy for assessment makes polite conversation difficult. I can't figure out why I should care that you're black, or that a policy would be objectionable to you specifically. I can think of 500 reasons and counting in Chicago alone to contemplate nexuses of crime, why we are currently institutionally unable to pursue empirically successful solutions, and if there are alternate mechanisms for doing so.
badsock 10y ago
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head: contemporary ethics are pretty down on things like stripping constitutional rights like the freedom of movement from a group of people based on race. A lot of people spent their lives bringing about this shift in ethics; some of them died violently for their efforts. Not having fundamental rights abrogated because you share some phenotypes with some bad people is a substantial philosophy with deep roots in the reactions to the breadth and depth of injustice that went down in the 19th and 20th centuries - much more than just "PC goggles". My take is that if you removed all of the crimes committed by black and hispanic people, the US would still have a murder rate that is multiples of that in many other developed countries. Clearly there is some other factor - one which is objectively larger than race - that should be the top focus.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  My take is that if you removed all of the crimes committed by black and hispanic people, the US would still have a murder rate that is multiples of that in many other developed countries. Clearly there is some other factor - one which is objectively larger than race - that should be the top focus. That's inaccurate. The European population in America has a crime rate inline with or a bit lower than European populations in Europe, certainly not "multiples". http://www.unicri.it/services/library_documentation/publications/icvs/publications/ICVS2004_05report.pdf http://www.unicri.it/services/library_documentation/publicat...
  - nl 10y ago
    The parent poster said the murder rate, not the crime rate. I agree the crime rate is what should be compared though. Where are you finding the US crime rate by ethnicity? I haven't read all 283 pages of the doc you linked, but a more direct reference would be great.
    - Senji 10y ago
      http://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/ http://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/
    - 10y ago