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So just compare It to police officers in other Western countries...

shard972 6y ago
What other western countries have 13% of the population as Africans?
harry8 6y ago
There's a dead comment in reply to this. I disagree with it as strongly as anything I've seen on HN. I think it racist. I don't think it should be hidden. It highlights a mentality that needs to be known about and considered including any possible sensible response to it. Also I've seen it before here not many year ago with comments like "can only compare US to Brazil not any Europen country" To what extent do these, not uncommon - even here, sets of beliefs contribute to the problems of violence in policing? Not something that seems to me like a good idea to pretend does not exist or is minor or fringe.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Also I've seen it before here not many year ago with comments like "can only compare US to Brazil not any Europen country" Can you explain why you feel that's terribly unfair? I don't know why somebody would pick Brazil specifically, but you might easily say "compare the US to countries with a similar income inequality". Take the gini coefficient for simplicity [1] and compare the US to Côte d'Ivoire, Argentina, Haiti, and Malaysia or Mexico, Madagascar, El Salvador, and Rwanda, depending on whether you take the CIA's numbers or the World Bank's. If you look at the list, you'll see that the European countries are closer together and in a different area of the list, the US isn't in their group. Wouldn't that be a better indicator for "similar countries" than average internet speed or NATO membership status? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
  - harry8 6y ago
    The rationale for Brazil was explicitly the same one in the dead comment. But yeah, that's pretty radical what you're saying too. Maybe it's fair that you should only compare the richest nation on earth with much poorer developing nations with a short track record of democracy. Not sure I'd agree.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > Not sure I'd agree. Why? Income inequality is correlated with crime rate, why wouldn't you use that to find comparable countries? Seems useful to me, similarly to comparing diabetes rates in countries with similar levels of obesity, not based on average hair color or amount of trees per square mile. > the richest nation on earth You'll need to define what "richest" means, I guess. The highest GDP? Largest military spending? Does that mean a lot to somebody that is poor in the US? Would that person possibly be better off in a European country with public health insurance, a vast social safety net, high welfare etc, even though it's not "the richest country on earth" by your standards?
      - harry8 6y ago
        The USA can /afford/ to be better. Comparison with other wealthy nations seems to me to be the right benchmark. I mean the richest nation on earth bar none. The amount of wealth in the nation. Literally that. The USA cannot plead poverty as an excuse for why anything is worse there than any other nation. Do you see it now?
        luckylion 6y ago
        Put like that, I agree. If the US fundamentally changed their culture towards being less individualist and more collectivist, a lot of things would change with it. I don't think US-citizens by and large want that change bad enough to accept restrictions upon their freedoms and an end to low taxes, European-level wealth redistribution does not seem to be popular in the US. I suppose they'd like the result without doing it. Unfortunately that's like wanting to be great at tennis without wanting to put in the training: understandable, but not happening.
  - jpttsn 6y ago
    Nations also interact, muddying the “compare” waters further. Where I live, we drive cars, but we don’t fight the overseas oil wars. We’ve outsourced all that brutality to the US. That lets us smugly reap the benefits and point fingers at Americans for the violent, backwards, gun-toting culture.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      I don't know that the US would need to have a violent society to be a military super power. China is on its way, and so far at least they seem to have managed to avoid that, so maybe those things are not related.
      - jpttsn 6y ago
        The point is that the study participants interact; it’s misleading to compare nations by the stat. The extent to which China is a military superpower interplays with other participants.
        luckylion 6y ago
        > The point is that the study participants interact; it’s misleading to compare nations by the stat. So what though? Do European countries like the UK (that are usually with the US when it's time to bomb somebody in the Middle East) outsource their domestic violence? Really, you need to provide some evidence for "we have less crime, less murders, less police violence because the US has more". "The US has more income inequality because it has to fight wars for the European countries" doesn't follow either, so please don't.
        jpttsn 6y ago
        Yes, my belief is that 1) nations outsource violence to the superpower 2) the superpower’s military prowess comes at the cost of a warlike culture at home. Your belief is (?) that the US aggregate violence/whatever is in no meaningful way confounded with the levels you measure in (say) EU nations: any confounding is small enough to make no difference? We have a population of 200 (nations) of very diverse size and age, all related by historic and present competition and cooperation. Is there any fair shot at comparing apples to apples? What sort of “evidence” would you reasonably concede to?

What other western countries have 13% of the population as Africans?

There's a dead comment in reply to this. I disagree with it as strongly as anything I've seen on HN. I think it racist. I don't think it should be hidden. It highlights a mentality that needs to be known about and considered including any possible sensible response to it. Also I've seen it before here not many year ago with comments like "can only compare US to Brazil not any Europen country" To what extent do these, not uncommon - even here, sets of beliefs contribute to the problems of violence in policing? Not something that seems to me like a good idea to pretend does not exist or is minor or fringe.

luckylion 6y ago
> Also I've seen it before here not many year ago with comments like "can only compare US to Brazil not any Europen country" Can you explain why you feel that's terribly unfair? I don't know why somebody would pick Brazil specifically, but you might easily say "compare the US to countries with a similar income inequality". Take the gini coefficient for simplicity [1] and compare the US to Côte d'Ivoire, Argentina, Haiti, and Malaysia or Mexico, Madagascar, El Salvador, and Rwanda, depending on whether you take the CIA's numbers or the World Bank's. If you look at the list, you'll see that the European countries are closer together and in a different area of the list, the US isn't in their group. Wouldn't that be a better indicator for "similar countries" than average internet speed or NATO membership status? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
- harry8 6y ago
  The rationale for Brazil was explicitly the same one in the dead comment. But yeah, that's pretty radical what you're saying too. Maybe it's fair that you should only compare the richest nation on earth with much poorer developing nations with a short track record of democracy. Not sure I'd agree.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Not sure I'd agree. Why? Income inequality is correlated with crime rate, why wouldn't you use that to find comparable countries? Seems useful to me, similarly to comparing diabetes rates in countries with similar levels of obesity, not based on average hair color or amount of trees per square mile. > the richest nation on earth You'll need to define what "richest" means, I guess. The highest GDP? Largest military spending? Does that mean a lot to somebody that is poor in the US? Would that person possibly be better off in a European country with public health insurance, a vast social safety net, high welfare etc, even though it's not "the richest country on earth" by your standards?
    - harry8 6y ago
      The USA can /afford/ to be better. Comparison with other wealthy nations seems to me to be the right benchmark. I mean the richest nation on earth bar none. The amount of wealth in the nation. Literally that. The USA cannot plead poverty as an excuse for why anything is worse there than any other nation. Do you see it now?
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Put like that, I agree. If the US fundamentally changed their culture towards being less individualist and more collectivist, a lot of things would change with it. I don't think US-citizens by and large want that change bad enough to accept restrictions upon their freedoms and an end to low taxes, European-level wealth redistribution does not seem to be popular in the US. I suppose they'd like the result without doing it. Unfortunately that's like wanting to be great at tennis without wanting to put in the training: understandable, but not happening.
- jpttsn 6y ago
  Nations also interact, muddying the “compare” waters further. Where I live, we drive cars, but we don’t fight the overseas oil wars. We’ve outsourced all that brutality to the US. That lets us smugly reap the benefits and point fingers at Americans for the violent, backwards, gun-toting culture.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    I don't know that the US would need to have a violent society to be a military super power. China is on its way, and so far at least they seem to have managed to avoid that, so maybe those things are not related.
    - jpttsn 6y ago
      The point is that the study participants interact; it’s misleading to compare nations by the stat. The extent to which China is a military superpower interplays with other participants.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        > The point is that the study participants interact; it’s misleading to compare nations by the stat. So what though? Do European countries like the UK (that are usually with the US when it's time to bomb somebody in the Middle East) outsource their domestic violence? Really, you need to provide some evidence for "we have less crime, less murders, less police violence because the US has more". "The US has more income inequality because it has to fight wars for the European countries" doesn't follow either, so please don't.
        jpttsn 6y ago
        Yes, my belief is that 1) nations outsource violence to the superpower 2) the superpower’s military prowess comes at the cost of a warlike culture at home. Your belief is (?) that the US aggregate violence/whatever is in no meaningful way confounded with the levels you measure in (say) EU nations: any confounding is small enough to make no difference? We have a population of 200 (nations) of very diverse size and age, all related by historic and present competition and cooperation. Is there any fair shot at comparing apples to apples? What sort of “evidence” would you reasonably concede to?