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> A disproportionate share of the estimated 20 million police traffic stops in the United States each year involve black drivers, even though they are no more l

> A disproportionate share of the estimated 20 million police traffic stops in the United States each year involve black drivers, even though they are no more likely to break traffic laws than whites. Countrywide, it's a very small difference: > When it came to traffic stops in 2011, black drivers (13 percent) were stopped more frequently than white (10 percent) or Hispanic (10 percent) drivers. That is hardly a damning finding. Moreover, while blacks (7 percent) were slightly more likely than Hispanics (6 percent) or whites (5 percent) to be ticketed, they were also slightly more likely than whites to be let go with no enforcement action (2 percent versus 1 percent). https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/12/dojs-policing-statistics-dont-lie-ian-tuttle/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/12/dojs-policing-statist... https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp08.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp08.pdf Also: > findings suggest that citizen risk for specific police behavior is partially attributable to differential behavior prior to the encounter....officer decision-making and behavior requires consideration of other factors beyond a citizen's race. https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/PIJPSM-06-2013-0060 https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/PIJPSM-06-201... Not to say there's not a problem but it helps to have more info.

azinman2 9y ago
While I’m white, I have heard enough shocking anecdotes from my friends of color that confirms that if you’re not white you have a different relationship with authority. For example, one of my friends is African and high up at Google. He tells me he get stopped monthly driving his Lexus SUV while driving around Silicon Valley. They always ask him if that’s his car, and when he says yes, they will follow with “are you sure?” I would never get such a question. While I appreciate trying to dig into stats, but the question is what statistic is exactly relevant here? If you live in the US long enough I think the inequality of treatment and prejudice in society should become pretty self evident without needing various surveys for evidence, as those all will take a different slice rather than look at the whole pie.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  If you tell people constantly that they are being oppressed, they will start seeing it everywhere. When a white person is treated badly by cops, which happens all the time, they will just assume the cops were general assholes. When a minority gets treated bad by cops they assume it's racism. Do you know anyone that DOESN'T have some kind of bad story about cops? And then comments that show statistics critical of the oppression narrative will get downvoted. And told "we don't need evidence to support our beliefs." I know my father started to get pulled over a lot after the push against drunk driving. Because he worked late hours. And the cops were on edge looking for drunks driving home from bars. And cop to car ratio was much higher at that time. For every crime category we have data on, blacks are about as likely as whites to be arrested. In some cases like robbery, much less likely. https://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Fig-4.jpg https://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... The traffic stop data is anomalous if true. And may very well be explainable by other factors.
  - Cenk 9y ago
    In fact, black people are way, way more likely to be incarcerated, and get harsher prison sentences, than white people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black-men-sentenced-to-more-time-for-committing-the-exact-same-crime-as-a-white-person-study-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black... https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/#III.%20The%20Scale%20of%20Disparity https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-just... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarceration-black-americans-higher-rates-disparities-report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarce... http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      Because they commit more and worse crimes. They are not more likely to be arrested and convicted than a white person. And we know this because of surveys of victims and crime reports that record the race. Like that chart I posted. The only part of the system that shows any possible racial bias at all is sentencing. And it's only 19%, much smaller than claimed elsewhere. It's well within the margin of error in this stuff as well, given they can't possibly control for every relevant factor (e.g. if their crimes actually are 20% worse. In fact I can't see in this study they even controlled for region, and some states have harsher sentencing than others.) It's worth noting that ugly people get sentences twice as long as attractive people (but are also not more likely to be convicted.) That's 10 times the disparity observed for blacks. Judges give much harsher sentences before lunch, when they are hungry. Sentencing is just a shitty system that should be replaced. Some states have tried to replace it with statistical algorithms that predict recidivism. And people like you are the first to protest that.
- farseer 9y ago
  People of African descent are rarely found high up at google. When I worked there a decade ago, you wouldn't notice a black engineer roaming around for months on end. Not counting the chefs or the security staff of-course. While you can blame America for the inequality, you can hardly blame the cops or society for the prejudice your friend experienced. How often would the cop stop a black engineer in a lexus who didn't turn out to be a carjacker?
  - Cenk 9y ago
    Yes, you can. You can literally blame the cops. If they want to verify the ownership of the car, they can easily check the papers. It’s also about making the driver aware of the fact that they don’t think he could possibly be driving this car.
- cgriswald 9y ago
  I'd like to offer two thoughts. The first is that poor whites have much the same relationship with authority as people of color, but are almost completely excluded when it comes to any kind of social advocacy. This is the essence of racism: it separates people. Those poor white people would be great allies, but no one dealing with issue of race cares about them or enough about their allegiance to approach them in a way that does not alienate them. The second thought is on the nature of white privilege. All white people have privilege, but the privilege is this: We do not wear our status on our skin. So a black person can have high status but remain effectively low status while a low status white person can earn high status and be treated the way we should be treating everyone. But, people being people, we show our status in many other ways, and so for a lot of white people, white privilege is irrelevant because they have no capacity to capitalize on it. Hence, we get a bifurcated low status populace half of which believes prejudice==racism and that is the root cause of the issues; and a second half which believes those prejudices do not exist because they experience the same issues and incorrectly conclude that racism==prejudice does not exist (or is overblown) and/or feel oppressed themselves (which, of course, they are, but not by the people they think are oppressing them). Sadly, the reality is that racism is this system of bifurcation. As long as they are disunited, the system will not change. At best, the system will flip; and it is this flip that people like the GP seem to fear.
  - ataturk 9y ago
    What you're saying, it's all effed up. The whole "white privilege" thing is bs. I grew up kinda poor and I can tell you that the cops treat poor whites the same as they do poor blacks. It's the system of domination that is the problem, not skin color. Sure, there are racist cops, I've known plenty of them. But overall, the system does not care what color you are, only that you are part of the underclass that needs to be kept under control/dominated/coerced. That's what the police exist for. They sure as hell aren't there to uphold the law when we see every day how the elite break major laws and get away with it constantly. The US is a dramatically unjust country, but it's not because of racism, it is due to elitism and oligarchy, the same old song. They keep us divided in order to dominate us, keep watering down the currency, causing distractions, and on and on. It's not racism, it's control. We need to bring our elites under control before they start yet another war to whittle us down.
lifeformed 9y ago
Countrywide stats don't indicate the lack of a problem. It just means profiling is unevenly distributed. While it's not a big issue in some places, it can be a big problem in others. Also, of course there are other factors than race, but the stats show that race is a non-trivial bias.
ratboy666 9y ago
You quote > A disproportionate share of the estimated 20 million police traffic stops in the United States each year involve black drivers, even though they are no more likely to break traffic laws than whites. In response -- how do you know? In rebuttal: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/nyregion/study-suggests-racial-gap-in-speeding-in-new-jersey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/nyregion/study-suggests-r...

azinman2 9y ago

While I’m white, I have heard enough shocking anecdotes from my friends of color that confirms that if you’re not white you have a different relationship with authority. For example, one of my friends is African and high up at Google. He tells me he get stopped monthly driving his Lexus SUV while driving around Silicon Valley. They always ask him if that’s his car, and when he says yes, they will follow with “are you sure?” I would never get such a question. While I appreciate trying to dig into stats, but the question is what statistic is exactly relevant here? If you live in the US long enough I think the inequality of treatment and prejudice in society should become pretty self evident without needing various surveys for evidence, as those all will take a different slice rather than look at the whole pie.

Houshalter 9y ago
If you tell people constantly that they are being oppressed, they will start seeing it everywhere. When a white person is treated badly by cops, which happens all the time, they will just assume the cops were general assholes. When a minority gets treated bad by cops they assume it's racism. Do you know anyone that DOESN'T have some kind of bad story about cops? And then comments that show statistics critical of the oppression narrative will get downvoted. And told "we don't need evidence to support our beliefs." I know my father started to get pulled over a lot after the push against drunk driving. Because he worked late hours. And the cops were on edge looking for drunks driving home from bars. And cop to car ratio was much higher at that time. For every crime category we have data on, blacks are about as likely as whites to be arrested. In some cases like robbery, much less likely. https://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Fig-4.jpg https://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... The traffic stop data is anomalous if true. And may very well be explainable by other factors.
- Cenk 9y ago
  In fact, black people are way, way more likely to be incarcerated, and get harsher prison sentences, than white people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black-men-sentenced-to-more-time-for-committing-the-exact-same-crime-as-a-white-person-study-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black... https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/#III.%20The%20Scale%20of%20Disparity https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-just... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarceration-black-americans-higher-rates-disparities-report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarce... http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Because they commit more and worse crimes. They are not more likely to be arrested and convicted than a white person. And we know this because of surveys of victims and crime reports that record the race. Like that chart I posted. The only part of the system that shows any possible racial bias at all is sentencing. And it's only 19%, much smaller than claimed elsewhere. It's well within the margin of error in this stuff as well, given they can't possibly control for every relevant factor (e.g. if their crimes actually are 20% worse. In fact I can't see in this study they even controlled for region, and some states have harsher sentencing than others.) It's worth noting that ugly people get sentences twice as long as attractive people (but are also not more likely to be convicted.) That's 10 times the disparity observed for blacks. Judges give much harsher sentences before lunch, when they are hungry. Sentencing is just a shitty system that should be replaced. Some states have tried to replace it with statistical algorithms that predict recidivism. And people like you are the first to protest that.
farseer 9y ago
People of African descent are rarely found high up at google. When I worked there a decade ago, you wouldn't notice a black engineer roaming around for months on end. Not counting the chefs or the security staff of-course. While you can blame America for the inequality, you can hardly blame the cops or society for the prejudice your friend experienced. How often would the cop stop a black engineer in a lexus who didn't turn out to be a carjacker?
- Cenk 9y ago
  Yes, you can. You can literally blame the cops. If they want to verify the ownership of the car, they can easily check the papers. It’s also about making the driver aware of the fact that they don’t think he could possibly be driving this car.
cgriswald 9y ago
I'd like to offer two thoughts. The first is that poor whites have much the same relationship with authority as people of color, but are almost completely excluded when it comes to any kind of social advocacy. This is the essence of racism: it separates people. Those poor white people would be great allies, but no one dealing with issue of race cares about them or enough about their allegiance to approach them in a way that does not alienate them. The second thought is on the nature of white privilege. All white people have privilege, but the privilege is this: We do not wear our status on our skin. So a black person can have high status but remain effectively low status while a low status white person can earn high status and be treated the way we should be treating everyone. But, people being people, we show our status in many other ways, and so for a lot of white people, white privilege is irrelevant because they have no capacity to capitalize on it. Hence, we get a bifurcated low status populace half of which believes prejudice==racism and that is the root cause of the issues; and a second half which believes those prejudices do not exist because they experience the same issues and incorrectly conclude that racism==prejudice does not exist (or is overblown) and/or feel oppressed themselves (which, of course, they are, but not by the people they think are oppressing them). Sadly, the reality is that racism is this system of bifurcation. As long as they are disunited, the system will not change. At best, the system will flip; and it is this flip that people like the GP seem to fear.
- ataturk 9y ago
  What you're saying, it's all effed up. The whole "white privilege" thing is bs. I grew up kinda poor and I can tell you that the cops treat poor whites the same as they do poor blacks. It's the system of domination that is the problem, not skin color. Sure, there are racist cops, I've known plenty of them. But overall, the system does not care what color you are, only that you are part of the underclass that needs to be kept under control/dominated/coerced. That's what the police exist for. They sure as hell aren't there to uphold the law when we see every day how the elite break major laws and get away with it constantly. The US is a dramatically unjust country, but it's not because of racism, it is due to elitism and oligarchy, the same old song. They keep us divided in order to dominate us, keep watering down the currency, causing distractions, and on and on. It's not racism, it's control. We need to bring our elites under control before they start yet another war to whittle us down.

lifeformed 9y ago

Countrywide stats don't indicate the lack of a problem. It just means profiling is unevenly distributed. While it's not a big issue in some places, it can be a big problem in others. Also, of course there are other factors than race, but the stats show that race is a non-trivial bias.

ratboy666 9y ago

You quote > A disproportionate share of the estimated 20 million police traffic stops in the United States each year involve black drivers, even though they are no more likely to break traffic laws than whites. In response -- how do you know? In rebuttal: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/nyregion/study-suggests-racial-gap-in-speeding-in-new-jersey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/nyregion/study-suggests-r...