5 ms·

I doubt you'll find anyone saying this stuff doesn't happen to white folks at all. The issue is that given the same set of circumstances, a black person is mor

I doubt you'll find anyone saying this stuff doesn't happen to white folks at all. The issue is that given the same set of circumstances, a black person is more likely to be searched/shot/whatever than a white person. In the case of police shootings, yes some white dudes have been shot as well as black dudes. But if you look at all the cases of police shootings in the FBI database and compare the cases of white dudes waving knives at cops vs the sample of black dudes waving knives at cops, the police are N times more likely to shoot and kill the the black dudes. (I can't recall exactly what N is but I think it was 5 or 6). If you're going to "burst bubbles" when talking about privilege, I encourage you to learn about intersectionality first. Otherwise you're bursting a straw man version of the concept, which doesn't achieve anything. Privilege exists on multiple axes, and you still have white privilege even if you're poor and don't have class privilege.

kbenson 10y ago
If the premise of the GP is that it's a class/wealth problem, not a race problem, and police disproportionately use excessive force or degrading tactics against the poor, you haven't really provided a counter example. Since black people are more likely to be poor (and racism, institutional and otherwise, likely plays a role in this), you would see more cases of excessive force used against them under this premise. It's entirely possible, and I think quite likely, that both are occurring. The question then arises as to which is a stronger factor. I suspect that they are close enough in strength that it may change from region to region, city to city.
JPKab 10y ago
Feel free to post the source for your statistic, because the studies I've seen showed that blacks are much, much more likely to be subject to police encounters a (probably due to a mixture of profiling and densely populated, high crime areas caused by a legacy of red lining and other discriminatory housing policies). "But if you look at all the cases of police shootings in the FBI database and compare the cases of white dudes waving knives at cops vs the sample of black dudes waving knives at cops, the police are N times more likely to shoot and kill the the black dudes." This study directly contradicts your statement: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evid... Another thing that drives me crazy about these "privilege" discussions is how insanely qualitative and emotion driven they are. What's the outcome for a white kid born in a trailer park vs. a black kid born in a wealthy suburb? Is class privilege completely nullified by racial privilege, meaning the white kid is likely to earn more than the black kid as an adult? The data doesn't show this, and puts a much heavier weight on class and geography being the bigger barriers. The result of these emotionally driven discussions is that once again, Americans are focused on race being a primary driver of inequality and distracted away from the much bigger issue of class. It's a very convenient tactic for the corporate elites who own our government and want to prevent real change. Racism is a convenient target, because it allows people to blame a problem whose solution doesn't involve massive overhauls of tax policy to better redistribute the wealth that is accumulating with the .01%.
- Domenic_S 10y ago
  Rich black man in a dress shirt drunkenly waving a Wusthof in one hand and a glass of wine in the other in his granite-countered kitchen vs. a dirty white trash kid in a torn hoodie brandishing a machete. Who gets shot? Details matter.
- quinnchr 10y ago
  Except it's not an emotionally driven discussion, it's an issue that has been studied for decades. Saying "it's an issue of class not race" is not a hot take on the issue, it's a distraction that had been quantitatively disproven over and over again. Believe it or not people have done quantitative studies on the interaction of race and class. You can go read pretty much any study on intergenerational income mobility and find what you want to know: At every single income level blacks are less likely than whites to transition from their parents income bracket to a higher one [0] And by the way it's not just police shootings that are the issue. Minorities are overrepresented at literally every stage of the criminal justice system. They're more likely to be searched following a traffic stop [1]. More likely to be charged with a more serious crime [2]. More likely to receive worse bail terms [3]. And more likely to receive longer sentences [4]. Please try to not let your emotions overwhelm the mountain of evidence pointing to the fact minorities really do have a different experience than white people. [0] https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/economic-perspectives/2014/1q2014-part1-mazumder-pdf.pdf https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/economic-per... [1] https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/TrafficStops/DrivingWhileBlack-BaumgartnerLoveEpp-August2014.pdf https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/TrafficStops/DrivingWhileBlack-Ba... [2] http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/NSPI201213.pdf/$file/NSPI201213.pdf http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/NSPI201213.pdf/$fil... [3] https://www.pretrial.org/download/research/Testing%20for%20Racial%20Discrimination%20in%20Bail%20Setting%20Using%20%20Nonparametric%20Estimation%20of%20a%20Parametric%20Model%20-%20Gelbach%20and%20Bushway%202011.pdf https://www.pretrial.org/download/research/Testing%20for%20R... [4] http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/summerprog/2009/nijworkshop/SteffDemuth2000FederalStudy.pdf http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/summerprog/2009/nijworkshop/Steff...
  - lutorm 10y ago
    Just because minorities on average have a different experience than white people doesn't mean there are not white individuals who have exactly the same experience as some minorities. Telling those white people that their experiences don't matter because white people on average have a better experience isn't likely to make them feel better, though.
ta_donk_gt 10y ago
I think alienating two-thirds of the population and focusing on only a subset of the problem is generally counterproductive. I can support the gp with another anecdote of growing up in an overwhelmingly white small town watching cops harass, beat up, (and much worse that I'm not even going to mention) plenty of poor white folks. Race is just a proxy for a power imbalance that cops seek out and abuse, and focusing on race will guarantee the actual problem is never addressed. I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, but as far as murders by police, the numbers are generally 50% white, 25% black, 15% hispanic, and 10% other ([1] shows one year). The U.S. population is 60-75% white (depending how it is measured), 12% black, 12-25% hispanic (depending how it is measured). So, these numbers seem to show that if you are black, you are 2x the average, white you are roughly 0.8x the average, hispanic right about 1x the average as far as likelihood of being killed by a cop. That puts black at about 2.5 as likely as white. Point is, if you are black, you are absolutely more likely to have these problems than if you are white. This distracts from the actual problem though. The actual problem is the power imbalance that is being exploited by the cops in these situations, and race is just being used as a shortcut by the cop's brain to identify a power imbalance that can be exploited. Again, focusing on race will guarantee the actual problem never gets addressed (even if it might make you feel like a really great person). [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootings-in-2015-approaching-400-nationwide/2015/05/30/d322256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootin...
- r_smart 10y ago
  >That puts black at about 2.5 as likely as white. You are ignoring the representation of blacks in violent crimes, where they are disproportionately highly represented [0]. If a population represents between 30% and 50% of the violent crime, you would expect them to represent between 30% and 50% of the police shootings, no? [0]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
  - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
    If true, that would further my point, which is that race is not the underlying problem with police shootings and use of force. One additional note on this comment, sort of inversely related to my previous comment, focusing on race here also is not going to solve any problems. There are underlying issues leading to these statistics that are independent of race and are being ignored.
BurningFrog 10y ago
> If you're going to "burst bubbles" when talking about privilege, I encourage you to learn about intersectionality first. Otherwise you're bursting a straw man version of the concept, which doesn't achieve anything. Privilege exists on multiple axes, and you still have white privilege even if you're poor and don't have class privilege. I've read a lot of Social Justice texts the last few years, and it's usually a mix of moralistic preaching, loudly asserting articles of faith as fact, and tearful wonderment at the moral superiority of the author and their ingroup over the common people. "Intersectionality" writings are often the least coherent, as they try to make quite disparate theories of injustice fit together in some Grand Unified Theory. I won't rule out that there is intellectually honest writing that quantifies these alleged real world phenomenons in a verifiable and falsifiable way. But if so, it is hiding real well.
- westoncb 10y ago
  I've done a little looking into this after trying to read the wikipedia article on intersectionality. This paper is interesting: http://kathydavis.info/articles/Intersectionality_as_buzzword.pdf http://kathydavis.info/articles/Intersectionality_as_buzzwor... If you examine this particular use of the concept though: >... I encourage you to learn about intersectionality first. Otherwise you're bursting a straw man version of the concept, which doesn't achieve anything. Privilege exists on multiple axes, and you still have white privilege even if you're poor and don't have class privilege. —you can see that the concept of intersectionality isn't actually used: they are just saying it was the victim's lack of class privilege (that caused them to be discriminated against) in this case, rather than something race related (and that this doesn't negate their white privilege). Intersectionality is related to issues of individuals belonging simultaneously to multiple social groupings and claims that the interactions of these groupings must be taken into account—but at least in the above quote, I'm pretty sure all the term adds is a sort of attempted intimidation factor.
PravlageTiem 10y ago
Your borderline autistic model of privilege is being used as club to justify systemic abuse from the same authoritarian forces you are attempting to describe with your faulty model. You should feel bad, but I know you won't.

kbenson 10y ago

If the premise of the GP is that it's a class/wealth problem, not a race problem, and police disproportionately use excessive force or degrading tactics against the poor, you haven't really provided a counter example. Since black people are more likely to be poor (and racism, institutional and otherwise, likely plays a role in this), you would see more cases of excessive force used against them under this premise. It's entirely possible, and I think quite likely, that both are occurring. The question then arises as to which is a stronger factor. I suspect that they are close enough in strength that it may change from region to region, city to city.

JPKab 10y ago

Feel free to post the source for your statistic, because the studies I've seen showed that blacks are much, much more likely to be subject to police encounters a (probably due to a mixture of profiling and densely populated, high crime areas caused by a legacy of red lining and other discriminatory housing policies). "But if you look at all the cases of police shootings in the FBI database and compare the cases of white dudes waving knives at cops vs the sample of black dudes waving knives at cops, the police are N times more likely to shoot and kill the the black dudes." This study directly contradicts your statement: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evid... Another thing that drives me crazy about these "privilege" discussions is how insanely qualitative and emotion driven they are. What's the outcome for a white kid born in a trailer park vs. a black kid born in a wealthy suburb? Is class privilege completely nullified by racial privilege, meaning the white kid is likely to earn more than the black kid as an adult? The data doesn't show this, and puts a much heavier weight on class and geography being the bigger barriers. The result of these emotionally driven discussions is that once again, Americans are focused on race being a primary driver of inequality and distracted away from the much bigger issue of class. It's a very convenient tactic for the corporate elites who own our government and want to prevent real change. Racism is a convenient target, because it allows people to blame a problem whose solution doesn't involve massive overhauls of tax policy to better redistribute the wealth that is accumulating with the .01%.

Domenic_S 10y ago
Rich black man in a dress shirt drunkenly waving a Wusthof in one hand and a glass of wine in the other in his granite-countered kitchen vs. a dirty white trash kid in a torn hoodie brandishing a machete. Who gets shot? Details matter.
quinnchr 10y ago
Except it's not an emotionally driven discussion, it's an issue that has been studied for decades. Saying "it's an issue of class not race" is not a hot take on the issue, it's a distraction that had been quantitatively disproven over and over again. Believe it or not people have done quantitative studies on the interaction of race and class. You can go read pretty much any study on intergenerational income mobility and find what you want to know: At every single income level blacks are less likely than whites to transition from their parents income bracket to a higher one [0] And by the way it's not just police shootings that are the issue. Minorities are overrepresented at literally every stage of the criminal justice system. They're more likely to be searched following a traffic stop [1]. More likely to be charged with a more serious crime [2]. More likely to receive worse bail terms [3]. And more likely to receive longer sentences [4]. Please try to not let your emotions overwhelm the mountain of evidence pointing to the fact minorities really do have a different experience than white people. [0] https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/economic-perspectives/2014/1q2014-part1-mazumder-pdf.pdf https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/economic-per... [1] https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/TrafficStops/DrivingWhileBlack-BaumgartnerLoveEpp-August2014.pdf https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/TrafficStops/DrivingWhileBlack-Ba... [2] http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/NSPI201213.pdf/$file/NSPI201213.pdf http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/NSPI201213.pdf/$fil... [3] https://www.pretrial.org/download/research/Testing%20for%20Racial%20Discrimination%20in%20Bail%20Setting%20Using%20%20Nonparametric%20Estimation%20of%20a%20Parametric%20Model%20-%20Gelbach%20and%20Bushway%202011.pdf https://www.pretrial.org/download/research/Testing%20for%20R... [4] http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/summerprog/2009/nijworkshop/SteffDemuth2000FederalStudy.pdf http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/summerprog/2009/nijworkshop/Steff...
- lutorm 10y ago
  Just because minorities on average have a different experience than white people doesn't mean there are not white individuals who have exactly the same experience as some minorities. Telling those white people that their experiences don't matter because white people on average have a better experience isn't likely to make them feel better, though.

ta_donk_gt 10y ago

I think alienating two-thirds of the population and focusing on only a subset of the problem is generally counterproductive. I can support the gp with another anecdote of growing up in an overwhelmingly white small town watching cops harass, beat up, (and much worse that I'm not even going to mention) plenty of poor white folks. Race is just a proxy for a power imbalance that cops seek out and abuse, and focusing on race will guarantee the actual problem is never addressed. I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, but as far as murders by police, the numbers are generally 50% white, 25% black, 15% hispanic, and 10% other ([1] shows one year). The U.S. population is 60-75% white (depending how it is measured), 12% black, 12-25% hispanic (depending how it is measured). So, these numbers seem to show that if you are black, you are 2x the average, white you are roughly 0.8x the average, hispanic right about 1x the average as far as likelihood of being killed by a cop. That puts black at about 2.5 as likely as white. Point is, if you are black, you are absolutely more likely to have these problems than if you are white. This distracts from the actual problem though. The actual problem is the power imbalance that is being exploited by the cops in these situations, and race is just being used as a shortcut by the cop's brain to identify a power imbalance that can be exploited. Again, focusing on race will guarantee the actual problem never gets addressed (even if it might make you feel like a really great person). [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootings-in-2015-approaching-400-nationwide/2015/05/30/d322256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootin...

r_smart 10y ago
>That puts black at about 2.5 as likely as white. You are ignoring the representation of blacks in violent crimes, where they are disproportionately highly represented [0]. If a population represents between 30% and 50% of the violent crime, you would expect them to represent between 30% and 50% of the police shootings, no? [0]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
- ta_donk_gt 10y ago
  If true, that would further my point, which is that race is not the underlying problem with police shootings and use of force. One additional note on this comment, sort of inversely related to my previous comment, focusing on race here also is not going to solve any problems. There are underlying issues leading to these statistics that are independent of race and are being ignored.

BurningFrog 10y ago

> If you're going to "burst bubbles" when talking about privilege, I encourage you to learn about intersectionality first. Otherwise you're bursting a straw man version of the concept, which doesn't achieve anything. Privilege exists on multiple axes, and you still have white privilege even if you're poor and don't have class privilege. I've read a lot of Social Justice texts the last few years, and it's usually a mix of moralistic preaching, loudly asserting articles of faith as fact, and tearful wonderment at the moral superiority of the author and their ingroup over the common people. "Intersectionality" writings are often the least coherent, as they try to make quite disparate theories of injustice fit together in some Grand Unified Theory. I won't rule out that there is intellectually honest writing that quantifies these alleged real world phenomenons in a verifiable and falsifiable way. But if so, it is hiding real well.

westoncb 10y ago
I've done a little looking into this after trying to read the wikipedia article on intersectionality. This paper is interesting: http://kathydavis.info/articles/Intersectionality_as_buzzword.pdf http://kathydavis.info/articles/Intersectionality_as_buzzwor... If you examine this particular use of the concept though: >... I encourage you to learn about intersectionality first. Otherwise you're bursting a straw man version of the concept, which doesn't achieve anything. Privilege exists on multiple axes, and you still have white privilege even if you're poor and don't have class privilege. —you can see that the concept of intersectionality isn't actually used: they are just saying it was the victim's lack of class privilege (that caused them to be discriminated against) in this case, rather than something race related (and that this doesn't negate their white privilege). Intersectionality is related to issues of individuals belonging simultaneously to multiple social groupings and claims that the interactions of these groupings must be taken into account—but at least in the above quote, I'm pretty sure all the term adds is a sort of attempted intimidation factor.

PravlageTiem 10y ago

Your borderline autistic model of privilege is being used as club to justify systemic abuse from the same authoritarian forces you are attempting to describe with your faulty model. You should feel bad, but I know you won't.