4 ms·

> 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

> 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 The statement I originally made was that "overpolicing and imprisoning 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).
  - philwelch 6y ago
    > 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". I think community-oriented policing is actually intended to increase police interactions by adding more non-adversarial interactions in order to establish trust. I don’t think “reduce police interactions with black people” is necessarily desirable if that includes things like ignoring 911 calls from black neighborhoods. In fact, that strikes me as deliberate failure to provide equal protection under the law, and could be even more ruinous to black communities than the status quo. “Reduce police interactions with black people” is yet another thing that might sound like a good idea at the time, but would ultimately lead, in my opinion, to unintended negative consequences for the very black lives it’s intended to protect. Even if your ideal solution would turn out to have fewer police interactions, setting that as a goal is just begging for Goodhart’s Law to manifest itself. Also, I think you’re minimizing nonviolent crime. DUI, car theft, burglary, and arson are all “nonviolent crimes”. We can’t just ignore them. A neighborhood where these things happen frequently is made more dangerous and impoverished by them. So when you talk about having more police presence in black neighborhoods resulting in more non-violent criminals behind bars, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you drive drunk through a black neighborhood, you might run over a black kid, and that black kid’s life sure as hell matters so I hope the police are around to catch you before that happens. If you’re talking about drug crimes and arguing that the enforcement of those laws is worse than the offense, then maybe you should just repeal those laws. And if I disagreed with you about drug laws I might argue the point with you. > 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 We got into this mess by agreeing that some form of action was necessary. Stopping to make sure we aren’t just making things worse is reasonable.
malandrew 6y ago
> it does seem that this person is comfortable with that being the way the world operates. This isn't a very charitable interpretation. There is no lack of injustice in the world. There are more injustices in the world than any single human can possible wrap their head around much less devote attention to caring about. Just because someone prioritizes other concerns does not mean they are uncaring about a concern you care about, just as you prioritizing the concern you care about do not imply that you're unconcerning about the injustice the other person is prioritizing.

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).
- philwelch 6y ago
  > 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". I think community-oriented policing is actually intended to increase police interactions by adding more non-adversarial interactions in order to establish trust. I don’t think “reduce police interactions with black people” is necessarily desirable if that includes things like ignoring 911 calls from black neighborhoods. In fact, that strikes me as deliberate failure to provide equal protection under the law, and could be even more ruinous to black communities than the status quo. “Reduce police interactions with black people” is yet another thing that might sound like a good idea at the time, but would ultimately lead, in my opinion, to unintended negative consequences for the very black lives it’s intended to protect. Even if your ideal solution would turn out to have fewer police interactions, setting that as a goal is just begging for Goodhart’s Law to manifest itself. Also, I think you’re minimizing nonviolent crime. DUI, car theft, burglary, and arson are all “nonviolent crimes”. We can’t just ignore them. A neighborhood where these things happen frequently is made more dangerous and impoverished by them. So when you talk about having more police presence in black neighborhoods resulting in more non-violent criminals behind bars, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you drive drunk through a black neighborhood, you might run over a black kid, and that black kid’s life sure as hell matters so I hope the police are around to catch you before that happens. If you’re talking about drug crimes and arguing that the enforcement of those laws is worse than the offense, then maybe you should just repeal those laws. And if I disagreed with you about drug laws I might argue the point with you. > 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 We got into this mess by agreeing that some form of action was necessary. Stopping to make sure we aren’t just making things worse is reasonable.

malandrew 6y ago

> it does seem that this person is comfortable with that being the way the world operates. This isn't a very charitable interpretation. There is no lack of injustice in the world. There are more injustices in the world than any single human can possible wrap their head around much less devote attention to caring about. Just because someone prioritizes other concerns does not mean they are uncaring about a concern you care about, just as you prioritizing the concern you care about do not imply that you're unconcerning about the injustice the other person is prioritizing.