6 ms·

This is a good case of how two important ideas are being conflated to the detriment of the larger lesson to be learned, I think. As far as I can tell, Prosecuto

by Jun8 9y ago

This is a good case of how two important ideas are being conflated to the detriment of the larger lesson to be learned, I think. As far as I can tell, Prosecutor Worthy is making two arguments: (1) Black (assume PoC approx. equals black in this context) rape victims are treated differently than white ones. She bases this on the fact that 86% of unsolved victim cases are from black people (compared to ~40% of the population being black, I don't have the exact figure, took this from danielvf's comment above). (2) That economic class also plays a role in the discrepancy, although this point seems to be less important to her. The "not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women" comment is unfortunate, not only because this uses a stereotype but also because it seems she doesn't have the data for this. The 40% vs 86% discrepancy is staggering, but it would be interesting to verify analytically how class plays a role. I would be extremely surprised if a wealthy black person's rape kit were treated differently than a similar white person in this county. And compare that with other poor, mostly white counties across the nation. They key, I think, here is class, rather than race. NOT that race is not important, but that can't be the 99% of teh story, as implied here. Cornel West makes this point more bluntly in his recent criticism of Ta-Nehisi Coates (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-nehisi-coates-neoliberal-black-struggle-cornel-west https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-neh...).

pmichaud 9y ago
Just to expand, even if it does turn out to be a race-based correlation (like we controlled for class, and the discrepancy was still present), we still don't know why. One version is that a bunch of essentially similar cases come in, then the cases for white people are prioritized over the cases for PoC, because of racism. And therefore they get solved at a disproportionate rate. That's one potential explanation, that may have some potential solutions. There are a bunch of different potential explanations though. Maybe white people are more likely to be raped at parties, whereas PoC live in areas with less police enforcement so they are more likely to be raped by random strangers, so the crime is harder to solve. Maybe black people are understandably less likely to talk to the police while they investigate anything, so it's harder to get witness testimony and the like. Maybe there was a successful awareness effort targeted at black people, so they are now more likely to report when they are raped, whereas white people only report it when the case is especially egregious and egregious cases have more physical evidence. I'm just making all these up to demonstrate that there are all kinds of potential explanations of why there's a difference between races even if the individual investigators try just as hard on these cases and the cases are assigned without bias. In basically all these cases the answer about how to improve this situation is different, so it's worth knowing the details. I think it deserves further study.
- dogecoinbase 9y ago
  a race-based correlation (like we controlled for class, and the discrepancy was still present) Racism runs deep, doesn't it?
nemild 9y ago
I agree that this is a worthy area of inquiry. If you're interested in data, I highly encourage this type of research - and the data is probably out there to do this. I do data analysis on news coverage, and there's data to show that we have a predilection to hear about the West (even compared to other geographically close regions): https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html As you point out, hard to determine how much of this predilection is due to economic similarity or geography versus cultural/racial/religious. Beyond that, my gut is that we can actually derive empathy scores across countries or races based on data like this.
emodendroket 9y ago
I agree with you to a point, but what I would say to you is this: even before we take outright racism into account, poverty is highly racialized (that is to say, you can guess a person's socioeconomic status with much better accuracy than chance with no other information than the person's race), and a stranger might take a black person for someone of lower socio-economic status even if he actually isn't such a person. Stories like Henry Louis Gates' arrest may get disproportionate attention (some of the uproar seemed to make an unseemly argument -- not that, in general, the police shouldn't arrest a man trying to enter his own home, but rather that a Harvard professor shouldn't be subject to that treatment), but they do illustrate this latter point.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sangnoir 9y ago
> She bases this on the fact that 86% of unsolved victim cases are from black people You're misrepresenting what she said - she explicitly called out class (not just race) and it you're agreeing with here. Her full quote is: > can use Detroit as an example, 86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently. And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true ... It's just true. ... Race is at the center of this in many ways as well, unfortunately, we know that across the criminal justice

by Jun8 9y ago

pmichaud 9y ago

Just to expand, even if it does turn out to be a race-based correlation (like we controlled for class, and the discrepancy was still present), we still don't know why. One version is that a bunch of essentially similar cases come in, then the cases for white people are prioritized over the cases for PoC, because of racism. And therefore they get solved at a disproportionate rate. That's one potential explanation, that may have some potential solutions. There are a bunch of different potential explanations though. Maybe white people are more likely to be raped at parties, whereas PoC live in areas with less police enforcement so they are more likely to be raped by random strangers, so the crime is harder to solve. Maybe black people are understandably less likely to talk to the police while they investigate anything, so it's harder to get witness testimony and the like. Maybe there was a successful awareness effort targeted at black people, so they are now more likely to report when they are raped, whereas white people only report it when the case is especially egregious and egregious cases have more physical evidence. I'm just making all these up to demonstrate that there are all kinds of potential explanations of why there's a difference between races even if the individual investigators try just as hard on these cases and the cases are assigned without bias. In basically all these cases the answer about how to improve this situation is different, so it's worth knowing the details. I think it deserves further study.

dogecoinbase 9y ago
a race-based correlation (like we controlled for class, and the discrepancy was still present) Racism runs deep, doesn't it?

nemild 9y ago

I agree that this is a worthy area of inquiry. If you're interested in data, I highly encourage this type of research - and the data is probably out there to do this. I do data analysis on news coverage, and there's data to show that we have a predilection to hear about the West (even compared to other geographically close regions): https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html As you point out, hard to determine how much of this predilection is due to economic similarity or geography versus cultural/racial/religious. Beyond that, my gut is that we can actually derive empathy scores across countries or races based on data like this.

emodendroket 9y ago

I agree with you to a point, but what I would say to you is this: even before we take outright racism into account, poverty is highly racialized (that is to say, you can guess a person's socioeconomic status with much better accuracy than chance with no other information than the person's race), and a stranger might take a black person for someone of lower socio-economic status even if he actually isn't such a person. Stories like Henry Louis Gates' arrest may get disproportionate attention (some of the uproar seemed to make an unseemly argument -- not that, in general, the police shouldn't arrest a man trying to enter his own home, but rather that a Harvard professor shouldn't be subject to that treatment), but they do illustrate this latter point.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sangnoir 9y ago

> She bases this on the fact that 86% of unsolved victim cases are from black people You're misrepresenting what she said - she explicitly called out class (not just race) and it you're agreeing with here. Her full quote is: > can use Detroit as an example, 86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently. And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true ... It's just true. ... Race is at the center of this in many ways as well, unfortunately, we know that across the criminal justice