Observe that in the recent crisis, blacks and hispanics had two or three times higher default rate, even when controlled for income and credit rating. So had bankers applied that policy, they would have been right. A protected minority candidate with the same apparent credit worthiness as a white candidate is far more likely to default.
I am not convinced this situation is at all analogous. Consider the following three facts: 1) The geographical distribution of blacks, hispanics, and whites is not random—there is considerable segregation by race; 2)In the aggregate, blacks and hispanics have lower average credit rating than whites; 3)If your neighbor defaults/is foreclosed, your own property value falls.
This would suggest that more higher-credit minorities would get dragged down by their neighbors than would white homeowners with equal credit scores. But an individual’s intelligence is not dependent on the intelligence of his neighbor, at least not at remotely the strength of causation that his property value is related to the property value of his neighbor.
La Griffe du Lion has claimed that the same is true in academic achievement—that blacks with the same IQ and GPA as whites have lower levels of achievement, though I do not recall what evidence he presented for this claim.
GPA is a good basis for comparison within a school, but it is not a good basis for comparison between schools, so this is not surprising, considering that the average majority-minority school is less well-resourced than the average majority-white school. (I would suggest that standardized measures like the SAT are better than GPA, but unfortunately that is a highly imperfect solution as well.
All three claims could be simultaneously true if we suppose that accomplishment reflects IQ and character, and that assessing an IQ indicator alone is not sufficient to swamp one’s priors.
I would say that the claim “Blacks on average have worse character than whites” is far more dubious on a simple empirical level than “Blacks on average have lower IQ than whites” (and the precise determination of “character” is doing a lot of work in this formulation). This makes the situation worse, not better.
This would suggest that more higher-credit minorities would get dragged down by their neighbors than would white homeowners with equal credit scores. But an individual’s intelligence is not dependent on the intelligence of his neighbor, at least not at remotely the strength of causation that his property value is related to the property value of his neighbor.
So instead of evidence that the bankers should have redlined members of certain groups, this then would be evidence that they should have redlined certain neighborhoods.
Which of these questions do you think would have served the banks better:
A)Will this applicant remain financially solvent if the average home in their neighborhood drops in value by 30%?
B)Will this applicant remain financially solvent if the average home owned by a black family drops in value by 30%?
I do not think it correct to term it redlining unless the answer is actually going to be “no” for any individual in a given neighborhood regardless of their financial position.
A person in a white neighborhood was substantially less likely to experience a thirty percent drop in value. (Compare East Palo Alto with Palo Alto west of the freeway.)
Homes in areas with large numbers of Hispanics and/or blacks, primarily those with large numbers of Hispanics had the largest proportion of foreclosures, and such neighborhoods had the most severe drops in price, for example Gilroy in California, so discriminating by neighborhood or race or both, regardless of the individual merits of the applicant, would have served the banks better than a race blind or neighborhood blind policy
I would say that the claim “Blacks on average have worse character than whites” is far more dubious on a simple empirical level than “Blacks on average have lower IQ than whites”
Would you now?
Would you also arrange for your daughter to wait for you on Martin Luther King Boulevard?
Assume that Prismatic was making a claim about “worse” being different for each English speaker, and each of our models of others differ, and argue against that point instead.
the precise determination of “character” is doing a lot of work in this formulation
So what your saying is that if it’s not safe for your daughter to wait in a certain neighborhood that doesn’t qualify as the neighborhoods residents having worse “character” for your and/or Prismatic’s definition of “character”?
Would you also arrange for your daughter to wait for you on Martin Luther King Boulevard?
Sam0345 is making the assumption that I am white. This happens to be correct (at least, as far as most people are concerned since sometime in the mid-20th century), but I don’t think there was anything in my analysis to justify that assumption.
Thus we can assume that Sam0345 thinks my putative daughter is white. The problem is, while it may be unsafe for my putative white daughter to wait on the corner of MLK Blvd, there are also majority-white neighborhoods where it would be unsafe for a black individual to linger (and I mean because they risk being assaulted, not because the police would harrass them). This makes “neighborhoods you wouldn’t want to linger in” a muddled proxy for “average character of the residents.”
Would you also arrange for your daughter to wait for you on Martin Luther King Boulevard?
Sam0345 is making the assumption that I am white.
I am not making that assumption: Blacks are race realists—they know what neighborhoods are dangerous better than anyone. If you search twitter for racist references to recent violent incidents, most of the people complaining about the violence in explicitly racial terms are black.
There are also majority-white neighborhoods where it would be unsafe for a black individual to linger
Don’t be silly. If blacks were in danger of racist attack, you would have a better poster boy than Emmet Till. Till was not attacked by a white mob for being black, but by a husband for groping that husband’s wife, something that is apt to happen regardless of the race of groper and gropee.
Every day there are incidents where a black mob attacks a random white screaming racist epithets, indicating that the attack is motivated simply by whiteness. If the equivalent thing had ever happened to a black, that black would be the poster boy, not Till. Till was killed by a husband for making a pass at that husband’s wife, not by a white for being black, while every day whites are beaten and often killed purely for being white.
ETA: what this means is that assuming I wouldn’t arrange for my daughter to wait for me on MLK blvd., that doesn’t mean MLK blvd. is worse than other places unless I would arrange for my daughter to wait for me at those places. So I am criticizing the form of the argument.
Above, Konkvistador at least phrases it properly. My problem with sam0345′s post is that he seems to sacrifice clarity for offensiveness.
This is unlike normal arguments over political correctness, in which all sides agree some tradeoff between positive values of communicating clearly, being correct, not making people feel offended, etc. is appropriate.
My problem with the above post is that it sacrifices accuracy for offensiveness, as if that were a positive value, rather than, say, a worthless thing, which might be the typical extreme anti-PC position.
I am not convinced this situation is at all analogous. Consider the following three facts: 1) The geographical distribution of blacks, hispanics, and whites is not random—there is considerable segregation by race; 2)In the aggregate, blacks and hispanics have lower average credit rating than whites; 3)If your neighbor defaults/is foreclosed, your own property value falls.
This would suggest that more higher-credit minorities would get dragged down by their neighbors than would white homeowners with equal credit scores. But an individual’s intelligence is not dependent on the intelligence of his neighbor, at least not at remotely the strength of causation that his property value is related to the property value of his neighbor.
GPA is a good basis for comparison within a school, but it is not a good basis for comparison between schools, so this is not surprising, considering that the average majority-minority school is less well-resourced than the average majority-white school. (I would suggest that standardized measures like the SAT are better than GPA, but unfortunately that is a highly imperfect solution as well.
I would say that the claim “Blacks on average have worse character than whites” is far more dubious on a simple empirical level than “Blacks on average have lower IQ than whites” (and the precise determination of “character” is doing a lot of work in this formulation). This makes the situation worse, not better.
So instead of evidence that the bankers should have redlined members of certain groups, this then would be evidence that they should have redlined certain neighborhoods.
Which of these questions do you think would have served the banks better:
A)Will this applicant remain financially solvent if the average home in their neighborhood drops in value by 30%?
B)Will this applicant remain financially solvent if the average home owned by a black family drops in value by 30%?
I do not think it correct to term it redlining unless the answer is actually going to be “no” for any individual in a given neighborhood regardless of their financial position.
A person in a white neighborhood was substantially less likely to experience a thirty percent drop in value. (Compare East Palo Alto with Palo Alto west of the freeway.)
Homes in areas with large numbers of Hispanics and/or blacks, primarily those with large numbers of Hispanics had the largest proportion of foreclosures, and such neighborhoods had the most severe drops in price, for example Gilroy in California, so discriminating by neighborhood or race or both, regardless of the individual merits of the applicant, would have served the banks better than a race blind or neighborhood blind policy
Would you now?
Would you also arrange for your daughter to wait for you on Martin Luther King Boulevard?
Assume that Prismatic was making a claim about “worse” being different for each English speaker, and each of our models of others differ, and argue against that point instead.
So what your saying is that if it’s not safe for your daughter to wait in a certain neighborhood that doesn’t qualify as the neighborhoods residents having worse “character” for your and/or Prismatic’s definition of “character”?
Sam0345 asks:
Sam0345 is making the assumption that I am white. This happens to be correct (at least, as far as most people are concerned since sometime in the mid-20th century), but I don’t think there was anything in my analysis to justify that assumption.
Thus we can assume that Sam0345 thinks my putative daughter is white. The problem is, while it may be unsafe for my putative white daughter to wait on the corner of MLK Blvd, there are also majority-white neighborhoods where it would be unsafe for a black individual to linger (and I mean because they risk being assaulted, not because the police would harrass them). This makes “neighborhoods you wouldn’t want to linger in” a muddled proxy for “average character of the residents.”
Would statistically speaking your Black daughter be safer on Robert E. Lee Boulevard or on MLK Boulevard?
I am not making that assumption: Blacks are race realists—they know what neighborhoods are dangerous better than anyone. If you search twitter for racist references to recent violent incidents, most of the people complaining about the violence in explicitly racial terms are black.
Don’t be silly. If blacks were in danger of racist attack, you would have a better poster boy than Emmet Till. Till was not attacked by a white mob for being black, but by a husband for groping that husband’s wife, something that is apt to happen regardless of the race of groper and gropee.
Every day there are incidents where a black mob attacks a random white screaming racist epithets, indicating that the attack is motivated simply by whiteness. If the equivalent thing had ever happened to a black, that black would be the poster boy, not Till. Till was killed by a husband for making a pass at that husband’s wife, not by a white for being black, while every day whites are beaten and often killed purely for being white.
P(H|e)=P(H)P(e|H)/P(e), P(e|H)/P(e) ~ 1
ETA: what this means is that assuming I wouldn’t arrange for my daughter to wait for me on MLK blvd., that doesn’t mean MLK blvd. is worse than other places unless I would arrange for my daughter to wait for me at those places. So I am criticizing the form of the argument.
Above, Konkvistador at least phrases it properly. My problem with sam0345′s post is that he seems to sacrifice clarity for offensiveness.
This is unlike normal arguments over political correctness, in which all sides agree some tradeoff between positive values of communicating clearly, being correct, not making people feel offended, etc. is appropriate.
My problem with the above post is that it sacrifices accuracy for offensiveness, as if that were a positive value, rather than, say, a worthless thing, which might be the typical extreme anti-PC position.