10 ms·
I believe you may have missed the term "all else equal" (or ceterus paribus) somewhere along the way. Your point is "well, duh" because your comparison is not
by tomrod 4y ago
I believe you may have missed the term "all else equal" (or ceterus paribus) somewhere along the way.
Your point is "well, duh" because your comparison is not valid. The way you are proposing, it compares apples and oranges.
To my understanding, the folks that study these kinds of things would split the situations you are describing into two groups, then compare group outcome statistics outcomes by race. Racism exists when the partial correlations are significant even when controlling for the other factors for a specific group.
So here, the poor person addicted to fentanyl has it worse when they are black. The wealthy person has worse outcomes when they are black. When that is consistent, then there is evidence of systemic racism.
There really is no value add comparing apples and oranges, which is what is happening when you make the comparison here. I recommend you reconsider your argument approach if you feel strongly that this comparison has merit as you've written it.
- _-david-_ 4y agoI don't believe there are any situations that are equal, except perhaps twins. No other situation can have "all else equal". This may be the crux of our disagreement. Black people may have worse outcomes as a whole, but an individual black person may not be worse off. You cannot assume an individual is identical to the group. Black people commit more crimes. Does that mean if you see a black person you can assume they are a criminal? I don't think you can, but it sounds like following your reasoning you can.
- tomrod 4y agoYou're mixing correct things (individual outcomes aren't representative of a group) with incorrect things (therefore we can say nothing about average outcomes for a group).
- _-david-_ 4y agoI am not saying we cannot say anything about group averages. I am saying if you take a random black person you cannot determine if they are well off or not based on race alone. You can say they are more likely to be worse off than if you took a random white person. I am fundamentally opposed to giving benefits to people just because they are in a group that typically does worse.