7 ms·

It seems as if you're saying violent crime is a function of race (crazy talk) instead of class status (arguable). Is it possible that, due to race-income inequ

It seems as if you're saying violent crime is a function of race (crazy talk) instead of class status (arguable). Is it possible that, due to race-income inequalities in America, that black males are also more likely to have low/no income at the same "much higher rate"?

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
The icky point is when you start looking at crime as a function of not just SES but also culture. A lot of people have a hard time nuancing culture from race even though a well traveled person would easily see the difference.
Bostonian 11y ago
Empirically, crime rates do depend on race, not just class. It's not crazy to recognize reality.
- DanBC 11y ago
  detected crime rates depend on race. That's not surprising when institutional racism creates a system focused on criminalising black people.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Look at murder rates that are harder to overlook. The murder rage amongst black men is about 8-10x more then white men. Obviously historical racism is the huge cause here. But you cannot just write off the crime rates due to different policing. Poor Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over and under policed. Gangs and criminals have free reign and then cops capriously make a show of force.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Poor Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over and under policed. They are under policed ("guardian" model) and overmuch hostilely occupied by the police ("warrior" model). They are the places most in need of effective community-oriented policing, and the places that get that kind of policing the least.
- ChrisArgyle 11y ago
  There's no way to advance a discussion by simply stating there is a correlation between crime and race. What solutions come from that? Genocide? Internment? Crime is a complex system that involves more than just the two axes race and violence.
  - rmxt 11y ago
    The racists and/or "human biodiversity" types have come out to play. Better to ignore the disingenuous comments and move on, as they tend not to be here for discussion. Articles on race and crime often draw out these sorts of "arguments". For those that actually believe the GP might have some ground to stand on, the least they could do is to link to some sources or resources.
    - millermp12 11y ago
      I would be genuinely interested in a rebuttal to elevated testosterone levels (the linked National Cancer Institute abstract). I almost always provide links to sources that provide a reasonably analytic angle. They are generally ignored or misunderstood. Because, you know, (structural) racism.
      - rmxt 11y ago
        The testosterone argument is a bullshit one in this context: the article you posted isn't trying to connect the dots in the disingenuous way you are, it's talking about prostate cancer. It does not attempt to suss out whether or not testosterone levels are the cause of crime, period. The misstep you are taking is assuming that testosterone causes crime, rather than correlates with it. Even this article [1], which you will probably salivate over, doesn't suggest that testosterone causes crime, merely that it correlates with misbehavior (in a very particular setting, namely prison). Here's [2] research that suggests that socioeconomic status mitigates the correlation between testosterone and misbehavior. At a minimum, this suggests that we have a chicken-egg dilemma between testosterone and misbehavior. The next question I would ask is: Do troubled settings and poor childhoods engender higher testosterone levels in adulthood? Lastly, above and beyond any correlation between testosterone and crime, how do you propose to use this information to inform policy decisions? My main gripe in this fantasyland of HBD-speak is that people use this information as "scientific" grounds for enforcing their racist policy predispositions. I'd like to hear where you think you would take this testosterone point, but all too often people (and unfortunately, I get the impression that you are one of them) imply that these few studies are grounds for damning and castigating entire populations because of their perceived inferiority and incorrigibility. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/019188699400177T http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/01918869940... [2] http://pss.sagepub.com/content/1/3/209.short http://pss.sagepub.com/content/1/3/209.short EDIT for posterity: I would like to point out that you posted your cousin/uncle link upthread after I posted my GP comment above. I wouldn't have made as strong a comment had I seen links or sources.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Empirically, a biker war is treated vastly differently in the press and by the police than a protest against a police killing.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Empirically, crime rates do depend on race, not just class. Some of that is racism in crime reporting and law enforcement behind the stats, and some if it is a real disparity, and at least some of that real disparity -- perhaps all of it -- results from the fact that black people in the US come from a cultural which has very different attitudes due to a very different experience with authority historically, with de jure discrimination and overt police repression of the black community extending into living memory (and even stronger farther back where it still exerts considerable cultural influence), which has a considerable impact on attitudes towards institutions of authority and the broader society. Piling more racism by the broader society on top of that is not going to alleviate that problem.
- Steuard 11y ago
  I knew quite a few people in college who used illegal drugs, some of them pretty regularly. (I doubt that I'm the only person for whom that's true.) That is crime. To my knowledge, not one of them were ever investigated, searched, arrested, prosecuted, or convicted of a crime. (Well, there was that one guy who had a close call at a border crossing on a trip to Amsterdam.) I can't think of any way in which their behavior would be reflected in formal criminal statistics. But let's not pretend that "crime" of this sort is not rampant among white students on college campuses around the country. A large fraction of the point here is that criminal statistics reflect who our society chooses to enforce its laws upon.
millermp12 11y ago
1) men commit violent crime at much higher rates than women. Why? 2) sexism? stupidity? Or perhaps "being male" (higher testosterone levels) 3) males who self-identify as black have about 15% more testoterone (courtesy of that racist institution, the National Institutes of Health) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741 4) is is really so crazy that a population with higher testosterone levels tends to be be bigger, and when they indulgent a violent proclivity, the outcome is more severe than when, say, a japanese women gets upset at the flower shop?

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

The icky point is when you start looking at crime as a function of not just SES but also culture. A lot of people have a hard time nuancing culture from race even though a well traveled person would easily see the difference.

Bostonian 11y ago

Empirically, crime rates do depend on race, not just class. It's not crazy to recognize reality.

DanBC 11y ago
detected crime rates depend on race. That's not surprising when institutional racism creates a system focused on criminalising black people.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Look at murder rates that are harder to overlook. The murder rage amongst black men is about 8-10x more then white men. Obviously historical racism is the huge cause here. But you cannot just write off the crime rates due to different policing. Poor Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over and under policed. Gangs and criminals have free reign and then cops capriously make a show of force.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Poor Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over and under policed. They are under policed ("guardian" model) and overmuch hostilely occupied by the police ("warrior" model). They are the places most in need of effective community-oriented policing, and the places that get that kind of policing the least.
ChrisArgyle 11y ago
There's no way to advance a discussion by simply stating there is a correlation between crime and race. What solutions come from that? Genocide? Internment? Crime is a complex system that involves more than just the two axes race and violence.
- rmxt 11y ago
  The racists and/or "human biodiversity" types have come out to play. Better to ignore the disingenuous comments and move on, as they tend not to be here for discussion. Articles on race and crime often draw out these sorts of "arguments". For those that actually believe the GP might have some ground to stand on, the least they could do is to link to some sources or resources.
  - millermp12 11y ago
    I would be genuinely interested in a rebuttal to elevated testosterone levels (the linked National Cancer Institute abstract). I almost always provide links to sources that provide a reasonably analytic angle. They are generally ignored or misunderstood. Because, you know, (structural) racism.
    - rmxt 11y ago
      The testosterone argument is a bullshit one in this context: the article you posted isn't trying to connect the dots in the disingenuous way you are, it's talking about prostate cancer. It does not attempt to suss out whether or not testosterone levels are the cause of crime, period. The misstep you are taking is assuming that testosterone causes crime, rather than correlates with it. Even this article [1], which you will probably salivate over, doesn't suggest that testosterone causes crime, merely that it correlates with misbehavior (in a very particular setting, namely prison). Here's [2] research that suggests that socioeconomic status mitigates the correlation between testosterone and misbehavior. At a minimum, this suggests that we have a chicken-egg dilemma between testosterone and misbehavior. The next question I would ask is: Do troubled settings and poor childhoods engender higher testosterone levels in adulthood? Lastly, above and beyond any correlation between testosterone and crime, how do you propose to use this information to inform policy decisions? My main gripe in this fantasyland of HBD-speak is that people use this information as "scientific" grounds for enforcing their racist policy predispositions. I'd like to hear where you think you would take this testosterone point, but all too often people (and unfortunately, I get the impression that you are one of them) imply that these few studies are grounds for damning and castigating entire populations because of their perceived inferiority and incorrigibility. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/019188699400177T http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/01918869940... [2] http://pss.sagepub.com/content/1/3/209.short http://pss.sagepub.com/content/1/3/209.short EDIT for posterity: I would like to point out that you posted your cousin/uncle link upthread after I posted my GP comment above. I wouldn't have made as strong a comment had I seen links or sources.
Zigurd 11y ago
Empirically, a biker war is treated vastly differently in the press and by the police than a protest against a police killing.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Empirically, crime rates do depend on race, not just class. Some of that is racism in crime reporting and law enforcement behind the stats, and some if it is a real disparity, and at least some of that real disparity -- perhaps all of it -- results from the fact that black people in the US come from a cultural which has very different attitudes due to a very different experience with authority historically, with de jure discrimination and overt police repression of the black community extending into living memory (and even stronger farther back where it still exerts considerable cultural influence), which has a considerable impact on attitudes towards institutions of authority and the broader society. Piling more racism by the broader society on top of that is not going to alleviate that problem.
Steuard 11y ago
I knew quite a few people in college who used illegal drugs, some of them pretty regularly. (I doubt that I'm the only person for whom that's true.) That is crime. To my knowledge, not one of them were ever investigated, searched, arrested, prosecuted, or convicted of a crime. (Well, there was that one guy who had a close call at a border crossing on a trip to Amsterdam.) I can't think of any way in which their behavior would be reflected in formal criminal statistics. But let's not pretend that "crime" of this sort is not rampant among white students on college campuses around the country. A large fraction of the point here is that criminal statistics reflect who our society chooses to enforce its laws upon.

millermp12 11y ago

1) men commit violent crime at much higher rates than women. Why? 2) sexism? stupidity? Or perhaps "being male" (higher testosterone levels) 3) males who self-identify as black have about 15% more testoterone (courtesy of that racist institution, the National Institutes of Health) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741 4) is is really so crazy that a population with higher testosterone levels tends to be be bigger, and when they indulgent a violent proclivity, the outcome is more severe than when, say, a japanese women gets upset at the flower shop?