4 ms·

Whites probably are prosecuted less for minor things like pot or jaywalking or what have you. But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priori

by cb18 11y ago

Whites probably are prosecuted less for minor things like pot or jaywalking or what have you. But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priority for a justice system, things like rape and murder, it is the simple, uncomfortable fact that blacks outpace all other races by a wide margin. If you think that demonstrating that blacks are incarcerated at higher rates than whites somehow disproves the above facts and somehow proves that whites commit more rapes and murders than blacks but are not caught/incarcerated, then for that to be the case, given the amount of rapes and murders that blacks commit, there would have to be a huge number unsolved rape and murder cases. Are there a huge number of unsolved rape and murder cases? No there aren't, the number of unsolved cases is probably not even 15% of the solved and prosecuted cases. Maybe you should develop a simple command of the facts before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism.

dang 11y ago
> Maybe you should develop a simple command of the facts before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism This breaks the HN guidelines. Please comment civilly or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
onion2k 11y ago
But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priority for a justice system, things like rape and murder, it is the simple, uncomfortable fact that blacks outpace all other races by a wide margin. That isn't really a function of skin colour though. Black people don't commit more murders because they're black - they commit more murders because they live in under-resourced, under-educated, poor communities that have been created by decades of racism by employers and authorities. A white person and a black person are equally likely to commit a murder given the same set of circumstances, but the way society works means black people are more likely to face those situations. Implying that blackness is a causal factor is both entirely wrong and hugely racist.
- JesperRavn 11y ago
  This thread is about Black crime rates, not their causes. As I said in my post, even if poverty was the only cause, it would still be hard to expect Whites to ignore the racial crime gap, since White people also avoid lower SES Whites who are likely to commit crimes. In fact, poverty alone does not explain the crime rate gap. You can call this view "hugely racist" but I don't see how you can rule out a whole set of other causes a priori. And I'm not mainly referring to genetics, but rather other sociological causes as are discussed in[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Theories_of_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
  - onion2k 11y ago
    It's racist to take crime caused by a sociological factor rather than a genetic factor and call it "black crime". You should be talking about "poor crime" or "under-educated crime" or "reoffender crime" if you believe sociological factors are the cause. Conflating them with skin colour, and thus implying skin colour is the cause, is pretty much the definition of racism.
    - ams6110 11y ago
      We track crime by all kinds of measures. Race, gender, age, income, education... why is one metric less significant than another? If it is, why do we track it at all?
      - onion2k 11y ago
        The fact that black people commit more crime isn't less significant, it's just that it's only half the story. If we said "people living in poverty are 5* more likely to commit crime" then the obvious solution is for everyone to work harder to raise people out of poverty. By saying "black people are 5* more likely to commit crime" it defers responsibility for the crime rate away from society as a whole and on to the black community alone - even though it's the fact they're far more likely to live in poverty that's the real cause, and that's something society as a whole should be working to fix.
tptacek 11y ago
before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism. I want to believe this was intentionally meant to be hilarious.
- cb18 11y ago
  That's what I thought of saying to dang, "But it was funny right, a good zinger?"

by cb18 11y ago

dang 11y ago

> Maybe you should develop a simple command of the facts before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism This breaks the HN guidelines. Please comment civilly or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

onion2k 11y ago

But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priority for a justice system, things like rape and murder, it is the simple, uncomfortable fact that blacks outpace all other races by a wide margin. That isn't really a function of skin colour though. Black people don't commit more murders because they're black - they commit more murders because they live in under-resourced, under-educated, poor communities that have been created by decades of racism by employers and authorities. A white person and a black person are equally likely to commit a murder given the same set of circumstances, but the way society works means black people are more likely to face those situations. Implying that blackness is a causal factor is both entirely wrong and hugely racist.

JesperRavn 11y ago
This thread is about Black crime rates, not their causes. As I said in my post, even if poverty was the only cause, it would still be hard to expect Whites to ignore the racial crime gap, since White people also avoid lower SES Whites who are likely to commit crimes. In fact, poverty alone does not explain the crime rate gap. You can call this view "hugely racist" but I don't see how you can rule out a whole set of other causes a priori. And I'm not mainly referring to genetics, but rather other sociological causes as are discussed in[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Theories_of_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
- onion2k 11y ago
  It's racist to take crime caused by a sociological factor rather than a genetic factor and call it "black crime". You should be talking about "poor crime" or "under-educated crime" or "reoffender crime" if you believe sociological factors are the cause. Conflating them with skin colour, and thus implying skin colour is the cause, is pretty much the definition of racism.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    We track crime by all kinds of measures. Race, gender, age, income, education... why is one metric less significant than another? If it is, why do we track it at all?
    - onion2k 11y ago
      The fact that black people commit more crime isn't less significant, it's just that it's only half the story. If we said "people living in poverty are 5* more likely to commit crime" then the obvious solution is for everyone to work harder to raise people out of poverty. By saying "black people are 5* more likely to commit crime" it defers responsibility for the crime rate away from society as a whole and on to the black community alone - even though it's the fact they're far more likely to live in poverty that's the real cause, and that's something society as a whole should be working to fix.

tptacek 11y ago

before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism. I want to believe this was intentionally meant to be hilarious.

cb18 11y ago
That's what I thought of saying to dang, "But it was funny right, a good zinger?"