7 ms·

I believe what he is referring to is the fact that people self-censor their own thoughts, and fear the social repercussions if they don't. For example, I studi

I believe what he is referring to is the fact that people self-censor their own thoughts, and fear the social repercussions if they don't. For example, I studied econometrics, and one regression that is often run is regressing CRIME (a dummy variable for whether someone has committed a crime) on a number of right hand side variables, include BLACK, a dummy variable for being Black. Now it is a well known fact that no matter how many right hand side variables you include, the coefficient on BLACK will always be significant and positive. That is, even after accounting for income, education, etc., Black people commit more crime. Now we are allowed to say this in class, because it is already understood that by getting this far into a PhD, you have proven yourself not to be an evil racist. For example, everyone knows that the positive coefficient on BLACK must be a result of complex social interactions and not genetics. But ordinary people aren't so sophisticated, so they are not allowed to even know that the coefficient on BLACK is significant. They would certainly be accused of racism for stating the true fact that Blacks commit more crime even after accounting for these other variables. And I assure you that none of us PhD's would come to their defense when they were accused of this. After all, that person might actually be a racist. So thoughtcrime is thinking bad things about race, which can include true things if you're not in the inner circle of people who are allowed to discuss such matters openly.

detcader 13y ago
"They would certainly be accused of racism for stating the true fact that Blacks commit more crime even after accounting for these other variables" Has this ever happened?
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  Yes. First, whenever a person is called a racist for saying "X is a safe area because it has fewer Black people". Or much more likely, (I've seen this so many times) it is implied that people who fear areas that have high crime and also large number of Black people, or who associate Black people and crime, are racist. While these people don't use the world "regression" or "coefficient" the reasoning and evidence is the same. Finally, in "Bowling for Columbine" Michael Moore accuses Charlton Heston of racism when Heston suggests that US crime rates are higher not because of guns, but because of "demographics". (I'm not sure that Heston is 100% right here because race only accounts for some of the differences between crime in the US and other countries, and using race as a right hand side variable in cross-country comparisons doesn't have as much validity)
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Well, in the case of Heston and "demographics", I'd have no problem calling that racist because he almost certainly means it as "black people are inherently less intelligent and/or more prone to crime", while ignoring the centuries of systematic and brutal oppression based race.
    - gizmo686 13y ago
      You need to be able to state that we observe black people to be less intelligent before you can begin to discuss possible explanations. Once you can say the above, then you can begin asking why it is so, and you may determine that it is in-fact because of a systematic oppression.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        You only need to be able to state that if it is in fact what is observed. Which of course it is not, because "intelligent" is an extremely vague and ill-defined concept. That's really the root of the problem, I think. People take data like, "blacks scored X percent lower on the John Doe IQ test (1987 edition)" and in turn say "black people are less intelligent". Then when you criticize it, they tell you not to shoot the messenger and they're just reporting what the data says. This kind of shortcut is pretty common, of course. "People with net worth below X have a higher rate of conviction" becomes "poor people commit more crimes" and nobody really bats an eye. But that doesn't mean it's correct, it just means that people generally don't care. Do this in the context of race, though, and suddenly people do care. And why shouldn't they? There's a long history of abuse in this area. IQ tests have long been biased toward the culture (and thus, almost inevitably, its majority race) of those who create the tests. People have then taken the results from these tests, concluded that their disfavored race is inherently inferior in some way, and used that to justify all kinds of bad treatment. And of course this is not a solved problem, not by a long shot. Truly unbiased IQ tests are an open problem, and then there's a whole extra layer of exactly what IQ is, why it's worth measuring, and what it leaves out. By all means, discuss the data. But don't use the data to reach an unsupported conclusion that sounds kind of like data, proclaim it as fact, and then complain about "political correctness" when you get shut down. And think very, very carefully about what exactly the data says, versus what you think it implies, before making factual statements.
- crassus 13y ago
  From here[1]: "I had a distinguished colleague - Stuart Nagel - whose tale is worth telling. He taught public policy and one day explained that black businesses in Kenya were uncompetitive against Indian-run enterprises since blacks where too generous in granting credit to friends and family. He had been invited by the government of Kenya to study the situation and suggested better business training for black Kenyans. The topic was indisputably part of the course and thus totally protected by AAUP academic speech guidelines. Stuart was also extremely liberal on all racial issues. Nevertheless, to condense a long story, an anonymous letter from irritated black students complained of Nagel's "racism" and included the preposterous change of "workplace violence." After a protracted and bungled internal university investigation, two federal trials (I testified at one), he was stripped of his teaching responsibilities and coerced into retirement. Interestingly, having been charged as "racist," his departmental colleagues, save two conservatives, abandoned him. A few years later, partially as a result of this emotionally and financially draining incident ($100,000 out-of-pocket for legal fees), he committed suicide. I can only speculate that he believed that years spent being a "good liberal" (including service in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division) would insulate him from being denounced as a "racist." Nor would he have anticipated that the university would spend the hundreds of thousands in legal fees to punish a famous tenured faculty member who "offended" two students. Nagel's sad saga undoubtedly provided useful lessons to many others. Stupidity can really be dangerous, even in a university. Better keep quiet." [1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-some-people-seem-to-still-think.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-s...
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    thanks for sharing that, and you also confirm my claim that, in the eyes of many, (perhaps Nagel himself) only being a proven "non-racist" would give him the right to have this opinion.
  - mturmon 13y ago
    This was written by Robert Weissberg. The same one who was dumped by National Review when they determined he was too racist. The one who has written about that favorite topic of racists, the difference between IQ of whites and other races. What a great source for solid information.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> For example, I studied econometrics, and one regression that is often run is regressing CRIME (a dummy variable for whether someone has committed a crime) on a number of right hand side variables, include BLACK, a dummy variable for being Black. Now it is a well known fact that no matter how many right hand side variables you include, the coefficient on BLACK will always be significant and positive. That is, even after accounting for income, education, etc., Black people commit more crime. You can't directly measure how much crime is committed by people of different races, so any purported measure of this uses some other proxy, most likely convictions of crime. Of course, relative rates of conviction for crime may not reflect relative rates of commission of crime. Particularly, they may be distorted by biases in (among other things): * Crime reporting, * Prosecution, * Courts and juries
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  That is an unimportant nitpick, precisely the kind of objection that people are taught to raise in the face of "racist" facts. I assure you that the academics involved, all certified non-racists (and mostly non-economists if you don't trust them), are aware of this and either consider the bias to be small (in comparison with the effect being measured) or have corrected for it.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    No, the fact that the supposed fact cannot actually be supported except by assuming the non-demonstrable non-existence (or irrelevance) of several other kinds of bias is not an "unimportant nitpick", as it means that the "fact" is nothing of the sort, but a conclusion based in non-falsifiable conjecture. (Note that I haven't said anything about whether or not its "racist" -- that's your deal -- I'm just saying that characterizing it as a fact is unjustifiable.)
    - 001sky 13y ago
      No, the fact that the supposed fact cannot actually be supported except by assuming the non-demonstrable non-existence (or irrelevance) of several other kinds of bias... Is this a parody of logic? Your point is not clear, regardless.
mturmon 13y ago
Social policy has a long history of people who jumped to easy conclusions ("blacks are criminals") based on simple, stupid analyses like the one you describe. Perhaps the self-censorship is actually a wise response to this history of stupid racial stereotyping. As an example of intelligent people who let themselves believe comfortable things, think about Francis Galton, eminent statistician and despicable eugenicist.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  How is calculating the rate at which Black people commit crimes, after accounting for observable social and economic conditions, "stupid"? I never discussed exactly what the causal effect was. Some people think Black people are genetically prone to crime. Others think that the history of slavery and its political and social repercussions can explain the crime gap. But when you accuse people who are trying to establish the base facts of racism, you are hindering the discovery of the truth. Self-censorship in this regard is not helpful.
newnewnew 13y ago
A similar point was made recently by Ron Unz[1], in an article that got him fired from the American Conservative magazine. The correlation between race and crime is shockingly strong. Are people generally aware of the data? There are even more uncomfortable facts that are too extreme for Unz that are blogged about by only the most hardened thought criminals. For example, have you ever wondered if racial crime stats showed the same relative patterns in other nations, including those with no history of African slavery? By what mechanisms would racial crime rates show the same pattern in Switzerland and the United States? The answers are fascinating, but they won't get you tenure. [1] http://www.ronunz.org/2013/07/20/race-and-crime-in-america/ http://www.ronunz.org/2013/07/20/race-and-crime-in-america/
- ewoodrich 13y ago
  Perhaps the mechanism could be systemic societal assumptions of black individuals being likely criminals, and therefore reduces to the social stigma of pursuing criminal activity (since the individual already has been prejudged). Or something else. More importantly, what are we supposed to do with this alleged discovery. I can't say I like the possible "solutions"....
  - newnewnew 13y ago
    In my own mind, the implications for policy are minor and would be good ideas in the absence of racial considerations anyway. It means being slower to see disparate impact of anti-crime measures as evidence of racism. It means encouraging pro-social behavior and discouraging violent culture. The introduction of federal welfare destroyed the black family - only one in five American black children live with both parents. Why not link welfare benefits to public service, or replace it with government jobs repairing parks and schools? Use financial incentives to encourage two-parent families. Give a 20% pay raise for people on the public dole who are married and live with their spouse. Today, strong encouragement of pro-social culture would be called "racist". But it would be better for all involved.
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    How about we first agree about what is true, then figure out what the best course of action is, rather than repressing the truth, or reserving it for a select few.

detcader 13y ago

"They would certainly be accused of racism for stating the true fact that Blacks commit more crime even after accounting for these other variables" Has this ever happened?

yetanotherphd 13y ago
Yes. First, whenever a person is called a racist for saying "X is a safe area because it has fewer Black people". Or much more likely, (I've seen this so many times) it is implied that people who fear areas that have high crime and also large number of Black people, or who associate Black people and crime, are racist. While these people don't use the world "regression" or "coefficient" the reasoning and evidence is the same. Finally, in "Bowling for Columbine" Michael Moore accuses Charlton Heston of racism when Heston suggests that US crime rates are higher not because of guns, but because of "demographics". (I'm not sure that Heston is 100% right here because race only accounts for some of the differences between crime in the US and other countries, and using race as a right hand side variable in cross-country comparisons doesn't have as much validity)
- mikeash 13y ago
  Well, in the case of Heston and "demographics", I'd have no problem calling that racist because he almost certainly means it as "black people are inherently less intelligent and/or more prone to crime", while ignoring the centuries of systematic and brutal oppression based race.
  - gizmo686 13y ago
    You need to be able to state that we observe black people to be less intelligent before you can begin to discuss possible explanations. Once you can say the above, then you can begin asking why it is so, and you may determine that it is in-fact because of a systematic oppression.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      You only need to be able to state that if it is in fact what is observed. Which of course it is not, because "intelligent" is an extremely vague and ill-defined concept. That's really the root of the problem, I think. People take data like, "blacks scored X percent lower on the John Doe IQ test (1987 edition)" and in turn say "black people are less intelligent". Then when you criticize it, they tell you not to shoot the messenger and they're just reporting what the data says. This kind of shortcut is pretty common, of course. "People with net worth below X have a higher rate of conviction" becomes "poor people commit more crimes" and nobody really bats an eye. But that doesn't mean it's correct, it just means that people generally don't care. Do this in the context of race, though, and suddenly people do care. And why shouldn't they? There's a long history of abuse in this area. IQ tests have long been biased toward the culture (and thus, almost inevitably, its majority race) of those who create the tests. People have then taken the results from these tests, concluded that their disfavored race is inherently inferior in some way, and used that to justify all kinds of bad treatment. And of course this is not a solved problem, not by a long shot. Truly unbiased IQ tests are an open problem, and then there's a whole extra layer of exactly what IQ is, why it's worth measuring, and what it leaves out. By all means, discuss the data. But don't use the data to reach an unsupported conclusion that sounds kind of like data, proclaim it as fact, and then complain about "political correctness" when you get shut down. And think very, very carefully about what exactly the data says, versus what you think it implies, before making factual statements.
crassus 13y ago
From here[1]: "I had a distinguished colleague - Stuart Nagel - whose tale is worth telling. He taught public policy and one day explained that black businesses in Kenya were uncompetitive against Indian-run enterprises since blacks where too generous in granting credit to friends and family. He had been invited by the government of Kenya to study the situation and suggested better business training for black Kenyans. The topic was indisputably part of the course and thus totally protected by AAUP academic speech guidelines. Stuart was also extremely liberal on all racial issues. Nevertheless, to condense a long story, an anonymous letter from irritated black students complained of Nagel's "racism" and included the preposterous change of "workplace violence." After a protracted and bungled internal university investigation, two federal trials (I testified at one), he was stripped of his teaching responsibilities and coerced into retirement. Interestingly, having been charged as "racist," his departmental colleagues, save two conservatives, abandoned him. A few years later, partially as a result of this emotionally and financially draining incident ($100,000 out-of-pocket for legal fees), he committed suicide. I can only speculate that he believed that years spent being a "good liberal" (including service in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division) would insulate him from being denounced as a "racist." Nor would he have anticipated that the university would spend the hundreds of thousands in legal fees to punish a famous tenured faculty member who "offended" two students. Nagel's sad saga undoubtedly provided useful lessons to many others. Stupidity can really be dangerous, even in a university. Better keep quiet." [1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-some-people-seem-to-still-think.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-s...
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  thanks for sharing that, and you also confirm my claim that, in the eyes of many, (perhaps Nagel himself) only being a proven "non-racist" would give him the right to have this opinion.
- mturmon 13y ago
  This was written by Robert Weissberg. The same one who was dumped by National Review when they determined he was too racist. The one who has written about that favorite topic of racists, the difference between IQ of whites and other races. What a great source for solid information.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> For example, I studied econometrics, and one regression that is often run is regressing CRIME (a dummy variable for whether someone has committed a crime) on a number of right hand side variables, include BLACK, a dummy variable for being Black. Now it is a well known fact that no matter how many right hand side variables you include, the coefficient on BLACK will always be significant and positive. That is, even after accounting for income, education, etc., Black people commit more crime. You can't directly measure how much crime is committed by people of different races, so any purported measure of this uses some other proxy, most likely convictions of crime. Of course, relative rates of conviction for crime may not reflect relative rates of commission of crime. Particularly, they may be distorted by biases in (among other things): * Crime reporting, * Prosecution, * Courts and juries

yetanotherphd 13y ago
That is an unimportant nitpick, precisely the kind of objection that people are taught to raise in the face of "racist" facts. I assure you that the academics involved, all certified non-racists (and mostly non-economists if you don't trust them), are aware of this and either consider the bias to be small (in comparison with the effect being measured) or have corrected for it.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  No, the fact that the supposed fact cannot actually be supported except by assuming the non-demonstrable non-existence (or irrelevance) of several other kinds of bias is not an "unimportant nitpick", as it means that the "fact" is nothing of the sort, but a conclusion based in non-falsifiable conjecture. (Note that I haven't said anything about whether or not its "racist" -- that's your deal -- I'm just saying that characterizing it as a fact is unjustifiable.)
  - 001sky 13y ago
    No, the fact that the supposed fact cannot actually be supported except by assuming the non-demonstrable non-existence (or irrelevance) of several other kinds of bias... Is this a parody of logic? Your point is not clear, regardless.

mturmon 13y ago

Social policy has a long history of people who jumped to easy conclusions ("blacks are criminals") based on simple, stupid analyses like the one you describe. Perhaps the self-censorship is actually a wise response to this history of stupid racial stereotyping. As an example of intelligent people who let themselves believe comfortable things, think about Francis Galton, eminent statistician and despicable eugenicist.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
How is calculating the rate at which Black people commit crimes, after accounting for observable social and economic conditions, "stupid"? I never discussed exactly what the causal effect was. Some people think Black people are genetically prone to crime. Others think that the history of slavery and its political and social repercussions can explain the crime gap. But when you accuse people who are trying to establish the base facts of racism, you are hindering the discovery of the truth. Self-censorship in this regard is not helpful.

newnewnew 13y ago

A similar point was made recently by Ron Unz[1], in an article that got him fired from the American Conservative magazine. The correlation between race and crime is shockingly strong. Are people generally aware of the data? There are even more uncomfortable facts that are too extreme for Unz that are blogged about by only the most hardened thought criminals. For example, have you ever wondered if racial crime stats showed the same relative patterns in other nations, including those with no history of African slavery? By what mechanisms would racial crime rates show the same pattern in Switzerland and the United States? The answers are fascinating, but they won't get you tenure. [1] http://www.ronunz.org/2013/07/20/race-and-crime-in-america/ http://www.ronunz.org/2013/07/20/race-and-crime-in-america/

ewoodrich 13y ago
Perhaps the mechanism could be systemic societal assumptions of black individuals being likely criminals, and therefore reduces to the social stigma of pursuing criminal activity (since the individual already has been prejudged). Or something else. More importantly, what are we supposed to do with this alleged discovery. I can't say I like the possible "solutions"....
- newnewnew 13y ago
  In my own mind, the implications for policy are minor and would be good ideas in the absence of racial considerations anyway. It means being slower to see disparate impact of anti-crime measures as evidence of racism. It means encouraging pro-social behavior and discouraging violent culture. The introduction of federal welfare destroyed the black family - only one in five American black children live with both parents. Why not link welfare benefits to public service, or replace it with government jobs repairing parks and schools? Use financial incentives to encourage two-parent families. Give a 20% pay raise for people on the public dole who are married and live with their spouse. Today, strong encouragement of pro-social culture would be called "racist". But it would be better for all involved.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  How about we first agree about what is true, then figure out what the best course of action is, rather than repressing the truth, or reserving it for a select few.