Official Protest Thread

[JWeinCom]

sundin13 said:

JWeinCom said:

At no point did I say that black people did not commit crimes commit crimes at a rate that is disproportionate rate to their population size..

However, if you want to say that "it must be the case" that racism is caused by the murder rate, as was done, then you need to actually know what the murder rate is, and how other indicators of racism vary along with it.  In that context a ten percent difference can be very significant.  

If you want to draw a conclusion, being able to collect data is step one.  If you're not getting your data from proper sources, and don't see the problem with that, or if you're claiming the data shows something which it does not show instead of actually checking its methodology, that's a problem.  If you haven't gotten step 1 right, then you can't move on.

Admittedly I probably should have just quit trying a while ago.  I can be stubborn sometimes. So if you think there's something worth discussing, you can go for it. I'm out.

The fact that you never made that argument is kind of my point. You don't disagree with the fundamentals of his argument, yet most of your discussion has been based around these fundamentals (ie Your preoccupation with the particulars of the statistics he used). This preoccupation regarding something that no one really contests, has largely prevented you from actually discussing the meat of the issue: what does this information say about racism and police brutality.

I personally don't think a 10 percent difference really makes much of a difference from our side. If you were to be collecting the data yourself and writing a scientific article about how violent crime rates contribute to racism that might be relevant, but no one here is attempting to do so.

What I see as Ghost's core argument is the following (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Ghost): High violent crime rates among the black population relative to whites, contributes to racist attitudes towards black individuals, specifically from police.

I personally think this is a quite interesting argument and discussion. I'll just quickly list out a few issues I have with this line of thinking:
1) The cause of police racism is largely irrelevant. If they are unable to do their jobs impartially, they should not be doing this job.
2) High violent crimes rates among the black population are in many ways, a result of generations of racism. You cannot blame violent crime for racism when you also acknowledge that racism can be blamed for violent crime.
3) These generations of racism are not just a thing of the past, or felt in remnants through various systems, but instead they are directly programed into our justice system. Significant parts of our justice system are built upon a foundation of policing and criminalizing black individuals, which is why such radical reform is necessary.

Basically, I don't think the argument is incorrect in a vacuum, but once you put it in context, it largely stops mattering. I believe Ghost at one point asked about whether a decrease in violent crime rates among the black population would reduce racism within the police and justice system, and to an extent, I believe it would (though there are many other contributing factors). However, at the same time, a decrease in the racism with the police and justice system, would reduce violent crime rates among the black population. This is a positive feedback loop in many ways, but we have a collective responsibility to address these issues through systemic reform. Simply sitting back and hoping that our failures will stop having the effects we know them to have isn't justice and does nothing to help fix the core issues here.

Note: I put this comment as a response to Ghost, as it is designed to address his arguments, even though it was a response to J.

I'm not going to reply to the main points you made, but after thinking about it more, I think your last post was mostly correct. People can get frustrated when they think their point is not being heard and dig in further and further, especially on certain topics that are important for them (which for me is actually more statistics than racial justice)... and that's kind of what happened.

So, thanks for giving me a much needed "hey you're being a bit of a dick". Sometimes we all need a reminder.

Last edited by JWeinCom - on 17 June 2020