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Which part do you disagree with: > but overpolicing and imprisoning them for nonviolent crime isn't. Yet they can't imagine doing the same to white people. wa

Which part do you disagree with: > but overpolicing and imprisoning them for nonviolent crime isn't. Yet they can't imagine doing the same to white people. was and is (relatively) commonly stated. I claim that to believe this is alright, you must implicitly value black safety less than white safety. I'm open to counterarguments.

philwelch 6y ago
I don’t think anyone actually supports the idea of “overpolicing and imprisoning [black people in particular] for nonviolent crime”. I think your understanding of the situation is that black people are “overpoliced” and disproportionately imprisoned for nonviolent crimes. This is why you want to change the situation, which is a logical conclusion. I think people who disagree with you about the conclusion you reach didn’t get there by sharing your understanding of the situation, shrugging their shoulders, and saying it was fine. I think they perceive the underlying situation itself differently than you do. It’s not a difference in values. They might be wrong, but people are wrong about things all the time.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  If I tell someone that "Black people are incarcerated at a 3x higher rate for drug crimes they commit at the same rate as white people", and they argue that that is Black people's fault, what should I conclude? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667342) Is willful ignorance acceptable?
  - philwelch 6y ago
    I don’t think the person you were arguing with was expressing, as a value statement, the idea that black and white people should be policed differently purely based on their race. I think you’re jumping to that conclusion a little. And I don’t really want to continue this because I have a hard time trusting that you’re going to listen to me in good faith, either.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      > I don’t think the person you were arguing with was expressing, as a value statement, the idea that black and white people should be policed differently purely based on their race. I agree. But that's not what I asked. The statement I originally made was that "overpolicing and imprisoning <black people> for nonviolent crime isn't. Yet they can't imagine doing the same to white people." Which I do think is fairly clearly demonstrated. There's a subtle shift, but a relevant one. Creating new systems of oppression based on race is racist, but letting existing systems that treat races unfairly is okay, even though the results would be the same. I want to reiterate: I don't believe this person claims that black people should be policed different purely based on their race, but it does seem that this person is comfortable with that being the way the world operates. And way back, the statement we started from was "black lives matter". And in general I hold that to mean "black lives matter just as much as any other race". How do we square the value statement "black lives matter just as much as any other race" with the acceptance of over-policing of black communities as justified? I don't see how we can. But again, I'm open to other interpretations.
      - philwelch 6y ago
        > How do we square the value statement "black lives matter just as much as any other race" with the acceptance of over-policing of black communities as justified? Many black communities are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, and increasing the police presence there protects them from that crime and hence saves many of their lives. Maybe it hasn’t worked out that way, but here we are again arguing how we perceive the situation, not the underlying values we’re trying to optimize for. I might listen to you mention the drug charges and say, “fine, let’s legalize weed”. I might listen to you talk about how black people distrust their local police departments and vice versa and I might counter by advocating for community-oriented policing. You might convince me that none of that works and the basic concept was wrong-headed. But nowhere in this process do we actually disagree about the basic value you mentioned.
        joshuamorton 6y ago
        > Many black communities are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, and increasing the police presence there protects them from that crime and hence saves many of their lives. Sure, and that was the common understanding 20-30 years ago. (see: Dem and black community support for various crime bills, "Superpredator", etc.). But our understanding of the situation has evolved (based on evidence, I should add!). > I might listen to you mention the drug charges and say, “fine, let’s legalize weed”. I might listen to you talk about how black people distrust their local police departments and vice versa and I might counter by advocating for community-oriented policing. You might convince me that none of that works and the basic concept was wrong-headed. But nowhere in this process do we actually disagree about the basic value you mentioned. But now you're arguing for a bunch of policies supported by various sects of Black Lives Matters supporters, all of which could be summed up in various ways as "reduce police interactions with black people". My point is that there are people who don't accept that. Who insist that nothing should change. The argument goes something like this: (1) Because black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime (2) police will naturally interact more with black people so (3) black people will also be arrested more for nonviolent crimes, and therefore (4) nothing needs to change. This breaks down somewhere between one and two, for a variety of reasons. The amount of violent crime isn't proportional to the amount of overpolicing, a lot of the forms of overpolicing don't actually reduce violent crime, etc. These are the people who I think it's reasonable to have suspicion of. People who agree that some form of action is necessary, cool! But people who think the status quo is fine and dandy, that's the group where I can't quite square things (and I'll note that the person who I linked earlier was in that group).
  - malandrew 6y ago
    It's possible to come to conclusions about that situation that aren't explained by racism. Correlation is not causation. If I live in a neighborhood that has a greater incidence of violence, it's reasonable to assume that such a neighborhood might experience more policing. A neighborhood that has more policing in inherently one where you're more likely to be caught afoul of any law, violence not withstanding. I had friends that lived in the boonies that saw a police officer maybe once a month if that. At the time I lived in the suburbs. I saw a cop maybe once a week. Now that I live in a city I see a police officer roughly once a day or every other day. If you see cops more often, it's more likely that you'll commit a crime in their presence and be incarcerated. To get a more definitive answer on the magnitude of effect racism has, it would be important to control for other factors so you have a more fair comparison. For example, if you take people of race X, Y and Z that are all of the same socioeconomic status and live in the same neighborhood, what is the likelihood that each are arrested for non-violent crimes? The meta point here is that policies can disproportionately affect people with certain characteristics without any intent to disproportionately impact people with certain characteristics. Racism may very well be the cause of the phenomena you've highlighted, but the data presented thus far is mostly inconclusive and at best suggests an amount of racism that explains far less of the discrepancy than accompanying confounding factors. The sundry multivariate analysis I've seen (example [0]) attempted generally arrive at the conclusion that yes there is some racism, but that the magnitude of the impact of racism on outcomes is greatly overstated relative to other explanations. That doesn't mean that we still shouldn't address that injustice, but it does mean that there may be lower hanging fruit we might want to address first if our goal is a maximal improvement in justice instead of a modest improvement in justice. Not that we should eventually address all injustices, but resources are finite and it's fair to have a discussion about how to prioritize tackling different injustices and come to agreement on criteria we use to prioritize tackling different injustices. Basically of that 3x rate, what percent is explained by racism and what is explained by other factors? What are those other factors and what is the contribution factor of each towards the 3x discrepancy. [0] https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-ana...

philwelch 6y ago

I don’t think anyone actually supports the idea of “overpolicing and imprisoning [black people in particular] for nonviolent crime”. I think your understanding of the situation is that black people are “overpoliced” and disproportionately imprisoned for nonviolent crimes. This is why you want to change the situation, which is a logical conclusion. I think people who disagree with you about the conclusion you reach didn’t get there by sharing your understanding of the situation, shrugging their shoulders, and saying it was fine. I think they perceive the underlying situation itself differently than you do. It’s not a difference in values. They might be wrong, but people are wrong about things all the time.

joshuamorton 6y ago
If I tell someone that "Black people are incarcerated at a 3x higher rate for drug crimes they commit at the same rate as white people", and they argue that that is Black people's fault, what should I conclude? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667342) Is willful ignorance acceptable?
- philwelch 6y ago
  I don’t think the person you were arguing with was expressing, as a value statement, the idea that black and white people should be policed differently purely based on their race. I think you’re jumping to that conclusion a little. And I don’t really want to continue this because I have a hard time trusting that you’re going to listen to me in good faith, either.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > I don’t think the person you were arguing with was expressing, as a value statement, the idea that black and white people should be policed differently purely based on their race. I agree. But that's not what I asked. The statement I originally made was that "overpolicing and imprisoning <black people> for nonviolent crime isn't. Yet they can't imagine doing the same to white people." Which I do think is fairly clearly demonstrated. There's a subtle shift, but a relevant one. Creating new systems of oppression based on race is racist, but letting existing systems that treat races unfairly is okay, even though the results would be the same. I want to reiterate: I don't believe this person claims that black people should be policed different purely based on their race, but it does seem that this person is comfortable with that being the way the world operates. And way back, the statement we started from was "black lives matter". And in general I hold that to mean "black lives matter just as much as any other race". How do we square the value statement "black lives matter just as much as any other race" with the acceptance of over-policing of black communities as justified? I don't see how we can. But again, I'm open to other interpretations.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      > How do we square the value statement "black lives matter just as much as any other race" with the acceptance of over-policing of black communities as justified? Many black communities are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, and increasing the police presence there protects them from that crime and hence saves many of their lives. Maybe it hasn’t worked out that way, but here we are again arguing how we perceive the situation, not the underlying values we’re trying to optimize for. I might listen to you mention the drug charges and say, “fine, let’s legalize weed”. I might listen to you talk about how black people distrust their local police departments and vice versa and I might counter by advocating for community-oriented policing. You might convince me that none of that works and the basic concept was wrong-headed. But nowhere in this process do we actually disagree about the basic value you mentioned.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        > Many black communities are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, and increasing the police presence there protects them from that crime and hence saves many of their lives. Sure, and that was the common understanding 20-30 years ago. (see: Dem and black community support for various crime bills, "Superpredator", etc.). But our understanding of the situation has evolved (based on evidence, I should add!). > I might listen to you mention the drug charges and say, “fine, let’s legalize weed”. I might listen to you talk about how black people distrust their local police departments and vice versa and I might counter by advocating for community-oriented policing. You might convince me that none of that works and the basic concept was wrong-headed. But nowhere in this process do we actually disagree about the basic value you mentioned. But now you're arguing for a bunch of policies supported by various sects of Black Lives Matters supporters, all of which could be summed up in various ways as "reduce police interactions with black people". My point is that there are people who don't accept that. Who insist that nothing should change. The argument goes something like this: (1) Because black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime (2) police will naturally interact more with black people so (3) black people will also be arrested more for nonviolent crimes, and therefore (4) nothing needs to change. This breaks down somewhere between one and two, for a variety of reasons. The amount of violent crime isn't proportional to the amount of overpolicing, a lot of the forms of overpolicing don't actually reduce violent crime, etc. These are the people who I think it's reasonable to have suspicion of. People who agree that some form of action is necessary, cool! But people who think the status quo is fine and dandy, that's the group where I can't quite square things (and I'll note that the person who I linked earlier was in that group).
- malandrew 6y ago
  It's possible to come to conclusions about that situation that aren't explained by racism. Correlation is not causation. If I live in a neighborhood that has a greater incidence of violence, it's reasonable to assume that such a neighborhood might experience more policing. A neighborhood that has more policing in inherently one where you're more likely to be caught afoul of any law, violence not withstanding. I had friends that lived in the boonies that saw a police officer maybe once a month if that. At the time I lived in the suburbs. I saw a cop maybe once a week. Now that I live in a city I see a police officer roughly once a day or every other day. If you see cops more often, it's more likely that you'll commit a crime in their presence and be incarcerated. To get a more definitive answer on the magnitude of effect racism has, it would be important to control for other factors so you have a more fair comparison. For example, if you take people of race X, Y and Z that are all of the same socioeconomic status and live in the same neighborhood, what is the likelihood that each are arrested for non-violent crimes? The meta point here is that policies can disproportionately affect people with certain characteristics without any intent to disproportionately impact people with certain characteristics. Racism may very well be the cause of the phenomena you've highlighted, but the data presented thus far is mostly inconclusive and at best suggests an amount of racism that explains far less of the discrepancy than accompanying confounding factors. The sundry multivariate analysis I've seen (example [0]) attempted generally arrive at the conclusion that yes there is some racism, but that the magnitude of the impact of racism on outcomes is greatly overstated relative to other explanations. That doesn't mean that we still shouldn't address that injustice, but it does mean that there may be lower hanging fruit we might want to address first if our goal is a maximal improvement in justice instead of a modest improvement in justice. Not that we should eventually address all injustices, but resources are finite and it's fair to have a discussion about how to prioritize tackling different injustices and come to agreement on criteria we use to prioritize tackling different injustices. Basically of that 3x rate, what percent is explained by racism and what is explained by other factors? What are those other factors and what is the contribution factor of each towards the 3x discrepancy. [0] https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-ana...