Criminals are being shot at rates approximately reflected by their criminality.
You should follow the link in the OP, and then follow the link in that article to its predecessor which explains why the sort of simple-minded ratio-comparing that produces that conclusion is too simple-minded. And yes, it also means “a larger fraction of black people are killed by cops than of white people, therefore the police are racist” is too simple-minded.
I’ll save you a couple of clicks. The problem is that police bias, to whatever extent it exists, can be one of the causes of the difference in observed criminality between black and white people. That’s true even if there is (as I think “everyone” agrees there is) a real difference in actual criminality.
The obvious explanation for the figures seems to me to be that (again, this is in the US; other countries may or may not be similar) police, collectively, have some bias against black people; that black people, collectively, are somewhat more frequently criminal than white people; that naive estimates of police bias are too high because of the difference in criminality; that naive estimates of the difference in criminality are too high because of the police bias.
What we really want here is some way of decoupling the two. And, guess what?, that’s exactly the topic of the OP here, so there’s a certain irony in your using this is a place to complain that everyone always just assumes that the problem is 100% police bias.
A testable hypothesis, so why don’t we test it?
That is literally what the OP is about ways of doing. (And, having found a way of doing it, it does in fact find some evidence that there is in fact bias in law enforcement.)
If there’s something about being a cop that turns everyone [...] into a racist
No one is claiming that, nor do the things people actually are claiming imply it. Some relevant propositions that, unlike that one, might well be true (and seem to me to be good fits for what evidence I know of): lots of people in the US are racist; racism in the US is more often anti-black than anti-white; there is a correlation between anti-black racism and wanting to be a cop.
The fundamental assertion is that blue on black fatalities are a product of racism
I don’t know what “The fundamental assertion is …” means. Whose fundamental assertion? It is definitely not a fundamental assertion made by the OP. It is not a fundamental assertion I am making here—though I would be surprised if racism weren’t at least one element, because it seems like a lot of people in the US are really racist.
when will it ever be the right time for a conversation that takes the popular and wholly socially acceptable dogma about race, police and violence and throws it away?
Literally throws it away? When the people involved in the conversation don’t believe the dogma at all. Until then, if you believe the dogma is wrong and want to have conversations that don’t buy into it, step one is persuading your interlocutors that the dogma is wrong. Effective persuasion does not usually look like “ha ha ha, black people are criminals because there are so many black single mothers”.
I literally have a compulsion to wade into situations that I view as unjust
Interesting. Has this compulsion ever made you wade into situations where black people are being treated unjustly by white people? How about (it’s not directly relevant here, I’m just curious) situations where women are being treated unjustly by men? Or is it only one sort of injustice that you feel this way about?
So … when you see people not blaming black people enough for crime, this produces a “literal compulsion” to intervene, so strong that rather than doing “the smart thing” you have to intervene in the name of justice “no matter what that costs me”.
(Even in a case like this one, where so far as I can see no one is being treated unjustly at all, and the sort of concerns you raise are explicitly acknowledged by the OP.)
But if it’s a matter of black people being treated unjustly by white people, you don’t intervene “without good cause”, and you can comfortably ignore them because it’s “not my problem”.
You might want to think some more about whether your compulsion to intervene in the first sort of case is actually about injustice.
For example, you suggest that blaming black people is something that is being done too much, as if black people cannot and should not be held responsible for the crimes they voluntarily commit. You also suggest White Man’s Burden as if the black identity grouping is more important than individual circumstances.
So far as I can see, I have suggested neither of those things, still less suggested them “as if”. I have said that you apparently think black people aren’t blamed[1] enough for crime; I haven’t mentioned my own opinions on that point at all. Regardless of whether they should be blamed more or less, or treated as more or less responsible, I certainly do not think that black people can’t or shouldn’t be held responsible for the crimes they commit. (Though of course there are circumstances in which a person’s responsibility for a thing they do is greater or less—e.g., if I kidnap your children and threaten to torture them unless you put some graffiti on a wall, then you should be held less responsible if you do in fact go and graffiti the wall—and some such circumstances may vary systematically with race somehow.)
I don’t know what you mean by “You also suggest White Man’s Burden”. The original “white man’s burden”, in Kipling’s poem with that title, was the obligation to take over and rule places full of not-white people, For Their Own Good. I’m certainly not suggesting that and I can’t see why you’d think I am, so you must mean something else, but I don’t know what. Regardless of what you mean by that and whether I’m suggesting it, I don’t know what it would even mean for it to be true that “the black identity grouping is more important than individual circumstances”. Sometimes individual circumstances are what matter. Sometimes things affecting a whole group are what matter. Sometimes both.
I completely agree that neither you nor anyone should be punished or advantaged for what your ancestors did in their bedrooms, nor for who those ancestors were. I have the impression that you think I think otherwise, but I don’t know why.
I don’t know what you think I think about crime in black communities. (I remark that your use of the phrase “the black community” seems to me to have the same sort of problems you are complaining about elsewhere. Are Thomas Sowell and Cornel West part of “the black community”? Are they murdering their neighbours?) It seems as if you are picking a stereotype and assuming I fit it, and I wish you wouldn’t do that. As for “demand genuflection to you and your neighbourhood”, that seems to me much more paranoia than reality.
[1] I take your point that blame and responsibility are not the same thing, and perhaps it would have been more accurate if I’d said “When you see people not putting enough of the responsibility for crime on black people …” instead of “When you see people not blaming black people enough for crime …”.
You should follow the link in the OP, and then follow the link in that article to its predecessor which explains why the sort of simple-minded ratio-comparing that produces that conclusion is too simple-minded. And yes, it also means “a larger fraction of black people are killed by cops than of white people, therefore the police are racist” is too simple-minded.
I’ll save you a couple of clicks. The problem is that police bias, to whatever extent it exists, can be one of the causes of the difference in observed criminality between black and white people. That’s true even if there is (as I think “everyone” agrees there is) a real difference in actual criminality.
The obvious explanation for the figures seems to me to be that (again, this is in the US; other countries may or may not be similar) police, collectively, have some bias against black people; that black people, collectively, are somewhat more frequently criminal than white people; that naive estimates of police bias are too high because of the difference in criminality; that naive estimates of the difference in criminality are too high because of the police bias.
What we really want here is some way of decoupling the two. And, guess what?, that’s exactly the topic of the OP here, so there’s a certain irony in your using this is a place to complain that everyone always just assumes that the problem is 100% police bias.
That is literally what the OP is about ways of doing. (And, having found a way of doing it, it does in fact find some evidence that there is in fact bias in law enforcement.)
No one is claiming that, nor do the things people actually are claiming imply it. Some relevant propositions that, unlike that one, might well be true (and seem to me to be good fits for what evidence I know of): lots of people in the US are racist; racism in the US is more often anti-black than anti-white; there is a correlation between anti-black racism and wanting to be a cop.
I don’t know what “The fundamental assertion is …” means. Whose fundamental assertion? It is definitely not a fundamental assertion made by the OP. It is not a fundamental assertion I am making here—though I would be surprised if racism weren’t at least one element, because it seems like a lot of people in the US are really racist.
Literally throws it away? When the people involved in the conversation don’t believe the dogma at all. Until then, if you believe the dogma is wrong and want to have conversations that don’t buy into it, step one is persuading your interlocutors that the dogma is wrong. Effective persuasion does not usually look like “ha ha ha, black people are criminals because there are so many black single mothers”.
Interesting. Has this compulsion ever made you wade into situations where black people are being treated unjustly by white people? How about (it’s not directly relevant here, I’m just curious) situations where women are being treated unjustly by men? Or is it only one sort of injustice that you feel this way about?
-
So … when you see people not blaming black people enough for crime, this produces a “literal compulsion” to intervene, so strong that rather than doing “the smart thing” you have to intervene in the name of justice “no matter what that costs me”.
(Even in a case like this one, where so far as I can see no one is being treated unjustly at all, and the sort of concerns you raise are explicitly acknowledged by the OP.)
But if it’s a matter of black people being treated unjustly by white people, you don’t intervene “without good cause”, and you can comfortably ignore them because it’s “not my problem”.
You might want to think some more about whether your compulsion to intervene in the first sort of case is actually about injustice.
-
You say
So far as I can see, I have suggested neither of those things, still less suggested them “as if”. I have said that you apparently think black people aren’t blamed[1] enough for crime; I haven’t mentioned my own opinions on that point at all. Regardless of whether they should be blamed more or less, or treated as more or less responsible, I certainly do not think that black people can’t or shouldn’t be held responsible for the crimes they commit. (Though of course there are circumstances in which a person’s responsibility for a thing they do is greater or less—e.g., if I kidnap your children and threaten to torture them unless you put some graffiti on a wall, then you should be held less responsible if you do in fact go and graffiti the wall—and some such circumstances may vary systematically with race somehow.)
I don’t know what you mean by “You also suggest White Man’s Burden”. The original “white man’s burden”, in Kipling’s poem with that title, was the obligation to take over and rule places full of not-white people, For Their Own Good. I’m certainly not suggesting that and I can’t see why you’d think I am, so you must mean something else, but I don’t know what. Regardless of what you mean by that and whether I’m suggesting it, I don’t know what it would even mean for it to be true that “the black identity grouping is more important than individual circumstances”. Sometimes individual circumstances are what matter. Sometimes things affecting a whole group are what matter. Sometimes both.
I completely agree that neither you nor anyone should be punished or advantaged for what your ancestors did in their bedrooms, nor for who those ancestors were. I have the impression that you think I think otherwise, but I don’t know why.
I don’t know what you think I think about crime in black communities. (I remark that your use of the phrase “the black community” seems to me to have the same sort of problems you are complaining about elsewhere. Are Thomas Sowell and Cornel West part of “the black community”? Are they murdering their neighbours?) It seems as if you are picking a stereotype and assuming I fit it, and I wish you wouldn’t do that. As for “demand genuflection to you and your neighbourhood”, that seems to me much more paranoia than reality.
[1] I take your point that blame and responsibility are not the same thing, and perhaps it would have been more accurate if I’d said “When you see people not putting enough of the responsibility for crime on black people …” instead of “When you see people not blaming black people enough for crime …”.