3 ms·

> Socioeconomic factors are > not the major ones ... is your opinion, contradicted by the available evidence. You finish with a suggestion to call things "

> Socioeconomic factors are > not the major ones ... is your opinion, contradicted by the available evidence. You finish with a suggestion to call things "by its real names", so I will: pushing a false narrative of cultural superiority is racism. Begone.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
Cultures advance. Some are more refined and progressive than others. The practice of throwing homosexuals to their deaths is obviously not enlightened. Of course other cultures have their faults, too, but to argue that comparing cultures is racism is willfully ignorant.
- peteretep 10y ago
  The parent comment stated that differences were due to culture and not baseline economic status. This is inspite of evidence. What alternative explanation - other than racism or ignorance - is there for that mistruth?
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Culture != race.
    - MK999 10y ago
      Shouting "racism!" is a good way to shut down the discussion Shouting "culture!" doesn't really work as well.
DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
Wouldn't that be called "culturism"?
edblarney 10y ago
"... is your opinion, contradicted by the available evidence" This is false. In fact - the evidence points much more strongly towards 'behaviour' than it does 'economic status'. (By the way, I'm not making the case entirely that 'ethnicity is it' - rather, saying that there's tons of evidence to support it. I believe that it's rather more complicated). 'Economic status' is loosely correlated with crime in the USA for example. More crime is committed in poorer areas. Ok - so are they poor and therefore commit crime - or they have bad behaviours and are therefore poor? The problem is - 'ethnicity' is considerably more correlated with crime, particularly violent crime. For example, poor African Americans commit considerably more violent crime than their poor White or Asian peers. Now - you could argue it's due to 'racism' etc. - and that's a good point, but it only goes so far. Also - I'd argue that this is not about 'racism' - it's about 'ethnicity'. What is 'ethnicity' but a group of values, behaviours, norms, viewpoints, beliefs, patterns etc? Two groups with different ethnic backgrounds are likely to have very different outcomes overall in life. That's just reality - and it doesn't have to have anything to do with race. I'm not actually making an argument one way or another - I think there's a lot to be said for how hard it is go grow up poor, or how hard it is to grow up facing racism and injustice - but at the same time - behaviours, mannerism, values etc. will define most of an individuals future - and those are passed down to children from their parents, and close community members, i.e. ethnicity. So it would be basically crazy to ignore this issue as well.
- peteretep 10y ago
  Can we exit crazy world for a moment and say that "there's tons of evidence" doesn't cut it unless you provide that evidence? The level of rampant irrationality here is disheartening.
  - w0utert 10y ago
    Well I'm not from Sweden so I cannot comment on that, but it's a well-known and documented fact that e.g. here in the Netherlands, ethnicities other than 'Dutch' are over-represented in about every negative statistic that is being tracked, amongst which are crime statistics. I could point you to cbs statline, which is the goverment statistics body, but it's in Dutch so I don't know if it's of any use to you, see [1] and particularly [2] for an overview table of crime statistics grouped by native, non-native, non-native+non-western, etc. Whether these groups are over-represented because of socio-economic status, cultural factors, genetics or whatever seems largely irrelevant to me if you ask me, especially if you are reasoning about immigration in the context of public safety. None of these factors are controllable, and typically immigrants from distressed countries will both fall in the 'different culture' and 'low economic status' category at the same time. For public safety, the root cause why they are over-represented in 'bad lists' seems irrelevant to me. Let's be clear that I don't mean to pass judgement on immigration policy, just pointing out that if you are creative with statistics you can prove or disprove almost anything to be related to everything, depending on your agenda. Correcting a statistic 'immigrants are over-represented in crime statistics' by saying 'but not compared to swedes with low economic status' seems like a pretty desperate attempt to paper over the fact that accepting large number of immigrants will not improve public safety, so to say. [1] http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/ http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/ [2] http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?DM=SLNL&PA=81947NED&D1=0-1,12,18,22,25-28,39,45,49,52-53&D2=0&D3=0&D4=0-4&D5=(l-2)-l&HDR=G2,G1,G3,G4&STB=T&VW=T http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?DM=SLNL&PA=81947...
    - readittwice 10y ago
      Same for Austria. Immigrants are both over-represented both in prisons and criminal statistics.

aaron-lebo 10y ago

Cultures advance. Some are more refined and progressive than others. The practice of throwing homosexuals to their deaths is obviously not enlightened. Of course other cultures have their faults, too, but to argue that comparing cultures is racism is willfully ignorant.

peteretep 10y ago
The parent comment stated that differences were due to culture and not baseline economic status. This is inspite of evidence. What alternative explanation - other than racism or ignorance - is there for that mistruth?
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Culture != race.
  - MK999 10y ago
    Shouting "racism!" is a good way to shut down the discussion Shouting "culture!" doesn't really work as well.

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago

Wouldn't that be called "culturism"?

edblarney 10y ago

"... is your opinion, contradicted by the available evidence" This is false. In fact - the evidence points much more strongly towards 'behaviour' than it does 'economic status'. (By the way, I'm not making the case entirely that 'ethnicity is it' - rather, saying that there's tons of evidence to support it. I believe that it's rather more complicated). 'Economic status' is loosely correlated with crime in the USA for example. More crime is committed in poorer areas. Ok - so are they poor and therefore commit crime - or they have bad behaviours and are therefore poor? The problem is - 'ethnicity' is considerably more correlated with crime, particularly violent crime. For example, poor African Americans commit considerably more violent crime than their poor White or Asian peers. Now - you could argue it's due to 'racism' etc. - and that's a good point, but it only goes so far. Also - I'd argue that this is not about 'racism' - it's about 'ethnicity'. What is 'ethnicity' but a group of values, behaviours, norms, viewpoints, beliefs, patterns etc? Two groups with different ethnic backgrounds are likely to have very different outcomes overall in life. That's just reality - and it doesn't have to have anything to do with race. I'm not actually making an argument one way or another - I think there's a lot to be said for how hard it is go grow up poor, or how hard it is to grow up facing racism and injustice - but at the same time - behaviours, mannerism, values etc. will define most of an individuals future - and those are passed down to children from their parents, and close community members, i.e. ethnicity. So it would be basically crazy to ignore this issue as well.

peteretep 10y ago
Can we exit crazy world for a moment and say that "there's tons of evidence" doesn't cut it unless you provide that evidence? The level of rampant irrationality here is disheartening.
- w0utert 10y ago
  Well I'm not from Sweden so I cannot comment on that, but it's a well-known and documented fact that e.g. here in the Netherlands, ethnicities other than 'Dutch' are over-represented in about every negative statistic that is being tracked, amongst which are crime statistics. I could point you to cbs statline, which is the goverment statistics body, but it's in Dutch so I don't know if it's of any use to you, see [1] and particularly [2] for an overview table of crime statistics grouped by native, non-native, non-native+non-western, etc. Whether these groups are over-represented because of socio-economic status, cultural factors, genetics or whatever seems largely irrelevant to me if you ask me, especially if you are reasoning about immigration in the context of public safety. None of these factors are controllable, and typically immigrants from distressed countries will both fall in the 'different culture' and 'low economic status' category at the same time. For public safety, the root cause why they are over-represented in 'bad lists' seems irrelevant to me. Let's be clear that I don't mean to pass judgement on immigration policy, just pointing out that if you are creative with statistics you can prove or disprove almost anything to be related to everything, depending on your agenda. Correcting a statistic 'immigrants are over-represented in crime statistics' by saying 'but not compared to swedes with low economic status' seems like a pretty desperate attempt to paper over the fact that accepting large number of immigrants will not improve public safety, so to say. [1] http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/ http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/ [2] http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?DM=SLNL&PA=81947NED&D1=0-1,12,18,22,25-28,39,45,49,52-53&D2=0&D3=0&D4=0-4&D5=(l-2)-l&HDR=G2,G1,G3,G4&STB=T&VW=T http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?DM=SLNL&PA=81947...
  - readittwice 10y ago
    Same for Austria. Immigrants are both over-represented both in prisons and criminal statistics.