3 ms·
Black people in America have a measurably lower life expectancy than white people [1]. For people born in 2015, it's down to about 5%, but as recently as 1970,
by ken 6y ago
Black people in America have a measurably lower life expectancy than white people [1]. For people born in 2015, it's down to about 5%, but as recently as 1970, it was over 10%. That's a lot of years of life being cut short.
(There are well-known social causes for this which are direct consequences of racism, like access to quality health care, housing, education, credit, etc.)
COVID-19 deaths aren't taking nearly that many years. According to [2] (about 1.5 weeks old), 1 in 1850 (or around 0.05% of) black Americans have died from COVID-19. Even if this continues for the rest of the year, it still can't hold a candle to plain old racism.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/015.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/015.pdf
[2]: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race
- wendyshu 6y agoThis is a causal claim but you've only adduced correlations.
- MickerNews 6y agoYou can never prove causality.
- Matumio 6y agoAll general statements are false. Joking aside, you can sometimes prove causality. It's just not as easy as proving a correlation. The most broadly accepted method would be a RCT (randomized controlled trial), though it is often unethical or unfeasible. You can also build on causal assumption that everyone agrees on. (Like: A person's gender cannot be caused by a government policy. A person winning the lottery is not caused by anything other than playing the lottery.) From such knowledge you can build a causal graph, and (in some cases) draw new causal conclusions from statistical data. Long story short: you cannot just dismiss a correlation as being useless for any proof of causality.
- rabuse 6y agoThis doesn't factor in diet and lifestyle choices, which have a very dramatic effect on life expectancy.
- sfj 6y agoA lot of is to do with black on black homicide. Murder is the leading cause of death for Black men, ages 15 to 34. Their murderers are other Black men 93 percent of the time. Is this also caused by racism?
- therealdrag0 6y agoI sympathize with a lot of these problems, but I wonder if the police issue getting all the attention is going to prevent these other issues from getting serious attention. :|