5 ms·

It's a bit simplistic to speak only about migrants. In the case of Islamic terrorism, I've heard it commented that recruits come from the children of migrants

by barking 10y ago

It's a bit simplistic to speak only about migrants. In the case of Islamic terrorism, I've heard it commented that recruits come from the children of migrants rather than the migrants themselves. This certainly seemed to borne out by the London 7/7 bombers and the Charlie Hebdo attackers to name two cases. Prison populations in western countries also seem to have disproportionate numbers of ethnic minorities. I also heard that Canada refuses to break down crime figures by ethnicity/race as a matter of public policy. If that is true it seems that there is a fear that the figures might look bad for minorities. In the interests of community harmony, authorities commonly seem to want to accentuate the positive and sweep any negativity under the rug.

koonsolo 10y ago
This political correctness can have a serious backswing when people go to vote. As we have seen in US, and as we will see in Europe.
- jl6 10y ago
  I understand that one motivation behind not providing crime breakdowns by ethnicity is to avoid providing information that might be used without context to justify hate. But it is also a little racist to try to hide the problem, as if criminality is inherent to the ethnicity and cannot be solved, so may as well be ignored.
  - qofcourse 10y ago
    Quite true - and the level of Orwellian thought-control that bureaucrats are engaging in, in order to hide facts because it might "justify hate" - is much more terrifying than the hate itself.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    Collecting data about ethnicity is always problematic because the definitions are fundamentally fluid. Finnish people were considered Asian in some American states in the early 20th century. Should they be included in crime statistics with Chinese? Also, if police are required to collect this data, who else is? Should you be able to look up the registered ethnicity of a person similar to how anyone can look up tax returns in Sweden (and other Nordic countries)? If not, why not?
  - DarkKomunalec 10y ago
    But pointing out the positive statistics of immigrants (e.g. https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-role-in-american-entrepreneurship https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-r... ) - is okay? Ignore the data supporting one side of the debate, and of course the other side will seem more convincing.
- tomlock 10y ago
  Not sure what stats back up this claim. I've heard people say this movement is anti-globalization, about the economy, anti-PC, anti-establishment - yadda yadda yadda. Everyone has a theory, and it seems like people just choose the one they like best. Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him?
  - ra1n85 10y ago
    >Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him? Polls also predicted him to have less than a 10% chance of winning the election. Not all data is good data.
    - tomlock 10y ago
      Most analysis showed he had some chance of winning, and he won by a relatively low margin. If you rolled a ten sided dice once and it came up with a ten, would you feel repeated tests that showed there was a 10% chance of that outcome should be ignored in future?
    - pavlov 10y ago
      If the polls had said "0.1% chance", I would agree with you. But a 10% chance is actually quite high odds. Things much less likely than that happen to everyone, every day. The predictions were essentially right. Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning the election, but Trump successfully rolled the dice with his 10% odds: he campaigned in some critical states that were expected to go blue and won them over by a narrow majority.
    - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
      So now I'm confused. Does a low approval rate matter, is it "bad data"? What defines "bad data"? Say the statistics running around this thread specifically about crime in countries, broken down by race and type or crime, or broken down further by region within counties too. How does one determine "good data" vs "bad data" here?
      - 10y ago
- badsock 10y ago
  Trump got less votes than Romney. Your backswing is just the same old bigots getting a momentary upper hand because of the way the chips happened to fall in the last election. Whether they can leverage that into more lasting power remains to be seen.
pavlov 10y ago
... authorities commonly seem to want to accentuate the positive and sweep any negativity under the rug. Like the Trump administration, and the Hungarian government... No, wait, they do the exact opposite. I guess all authorities are not the same after all? And it's not just black and white either. Governments around the world consist of people with incredibly different backgrounds and political agendas. There is no single "authorities". It is a common refrain these days that governments are trying to hide the facts to advance some kind of shadowy globalist agenda. It's good to be critical, but you need to be equally critical of sources that claim to be telling you the real truth. Your comment contains three claims, and they're all either "I heard" or "seem to have". We should try to do better.
- barking 10y ago
  Ok, I spent 10 minutes googling. "Police in Ontario were forbidden to compile race-based crime statistics." https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/08/17/a-thorny-history-of-race-based-statistics.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/08/17/a-thorny-history... "Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-charlie-hebdo-attackers-kids-france-radicalised-paris https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-charlie-he... "The men responsible for the carnage [7/7 attacks] all grew up in Britain" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/77-bombings-london-anniversary-live-profiles-of-the-four-bombers-who-killed-52-people-in-london-10369984.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/77-bombings-l... "According to the Young review, the disproportionate representation of young black and Muslim prisoners in the UK is now greater than that in the US." https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/24/rise-proportion-black-ethnic-minority-young-prisoners-stop-and-search https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/24/rise-proport...
  - concinds 10y ago
    Many European countries also ban the collection (not just publication) of any statistics that involve ethnicity. Not just statistics on ethnicity and crime, but even simple demographic statistics (how many people in this city are X) are banned, regardless of how those stats are collected.
collyw 10y ago
>In the case of Islamic terrorism, I've heard it commented that recruits come from the children of migrants rather than the migrants themselves. So do you think the problem is likely to be greater in 20 years time?
- barking 10y ago
  I don't know. As they say, past performance is not a guarantee of future results. What's your opinion?
  - collyw 10y ago
    I thought that phrase was relative to financial markets, not a general thing. My feeling is that things will get worse. But by then we will have climate change starting to hit, and an unsustainable population. I guess I am pretty skeptical about the future overall.

by barking 10y ago

koonsolo 10y ago

This political correctness can have a serious backswing when people go to vote. As we have seen in US, and as we will see in Europe.

jl6 10y ago
I understand that one motivation behind not providing crime breakdowns by ethnicity is to avoid providing information that might be used without context to justify hate. But it is also a little racist to try to hide the problem, as if criminality is inherent to the ethnicity and cannot be solved, so may as well be ignored.
- qofcourse 10y ago
  Quite true - and the level of Orwellian thought-control that bureaucrats are engaging in, in order to hide facts because it might "justify hate" - is much more terrifying than the hate itself.
- pavlov 10y ago
  Collecting data about ethnicity is always problematic because the definitions are fundamentally fluid. Finnish people were considered Asian in some American states in the early 20th century. Should they be included in crime statistics with Chinese? Also, if police are required to collect this data, who else is? Should you be able to look up the registered ethnicity of a person similar to how anyone can look up tax returns in Sweden (and other Nordic countries)? If not, why not?
- DarkKomunalec 10y ago
  But pointing out the positive statistics of immigrants (e.g. https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-role-in-american-entrepreneurship https://hbr.org/2016/10/immigrants-play-a-disproportionate-r... ) - is okay? Ignore the data supporting one side of the debate, and of course the other side will seem more convincing.
tomlock 10y ago
Not sure what stats back up this claim. I've heard people say this movement is anti-globalization, about the economy, anti-PC, anti-establishment - yadda yadda yadda. Everyone has a theory, and it seems like people just choose the one they like best. Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him?
- ra1n85 10y ago
  >Trump at the moment has a very low approval rating - maybe not everyone got what they read into him? Polls also predicted him to have less than a 10% chance of winning the election. Not all data is good data.
  - tomlock 10y ago
    Most analysis showed he had some chance of winning, and he won by a relatively low margin. If you rolled a ten sided dice once and it came up with a ten, would you feel repeated tests that showed there was a 10% chance of that outcome should be ignored in future?
  - pavlov 10y ago
    If the polls had said "0.1% chance", I would agree with you. But a 10% chance is actually quite high odds. Things much less likely than that happen to everyone, every day. The predictions were essentially right. Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning the election, but Trump successfully rolled the dice with his 10% odds: he campaigned in some critical states that were expected to go blue and won them over by a narrow majority.
  - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
    So now I'm confused. Does a low approval rate matter, is it "bad data"? What defines "bad data"? Say the statistics running around this thread specifically about crime in countries, broken down by race and type or crime, or broken down further by region within counties too. How does one determine "good data" vs "bad data" here?
    - 10y ago
badsock 10y ago
Trump got less votes than Romney. Your backswing is just the same old bigots getting a momentary upper hand because of the way the chips happened to fall in the last election. Whether they can leverage that into more lasting power remains to be seen.

pavlov 10y ago

... authorities commonly seem to want to accentuate the positive and sweep any negativity under the rug. Like the Trump administration, and the Hungarian government... No, wait, they do the exact opposite. I guess all authorities are not the same after all? And it's not just black and white either. Governments around the world consist of people with incredibly different backgrounds and political agendas. There is no single "authorities". It is a common refrain these days that governments are trying to hide the facts to advance some kind of shadowy globalist agenda. It's good to be critical, but you need to be equally critical of sources that claim to be telling you the real truth. Your comment contains three claims, and they're all either "I heard" or "seem to have". We should try to do better.

barking 10y ago
Ok, I spent 10 minutes googling. "Police in Ontario were forbidden to compile race-based crime statistics." https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/08/17/a-thorny-history-of-race-based-statistics.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/08/17/a-thorny-history... "Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-charlie-hebdo-attackers-kids-france-radicalised-paris https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-charlie-he... "The men responsible for the carnage [7/7 attacks] all grew up in Britain" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/77-bombings-london-anniversary-live-profiles-of-the-four-bombers-who-killed-52-people-in-london-10369984.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/77-bombings-l... "According to the Young review, the disproportionate representation of young black and Muslim prisoners in the UK is now greater than that in the US." https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/24/rise-proportion-black-ethnic-minority-young-prisoners-stop-and-search https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/24/rise-proport...
- concinds 10y ago
  Many European countries also ban the collection (not just publication) of any statistics that involve ethnicity. Not just statistics on ethnicity and crime, but even simple demographic statistics (how many people in this city are X) are banned, regardless of how those stats are collected.

collyw 10y ago

>In the case of Islamic terrorism, I've heard it commented that recruits come from the children of migrants rather than the migrants themselves. So do you think the problem is likely to be greater in 20 years time?

barking 10y ago
I don't know. As they say, past performance is not a guarantee of future results. What's your opinion?
- collyw 10y ago
  I thought that phrase was relative to financial markets, not a general thing. My feeling is that things will get worse. But by then we will have climate change starting to hit, and an unsustainable population. I guess I am pretty skeptical about the future overall.