My contention, however, is that racial prejudice is a factor in real-world police shootings/violence.
I’m not disagreeing with you but I just want to add to the conversation that I think the SSC comment is closest to the issue when he/she said:
Still, the incentive is there. And it’s based on math – racial prejudice not required.
Because I believe people tend to follow incentives, my current best guess is that police do over-profile (target the higher risk groups more than the actual risk differences would suggest), and they are going to, and the only question is to what extent this can be mitigated.
Let’s say you and another guard are manning a castle gate, and there is a serial killer outside in the village of 100 people. A peasant knocks and says “let me in”. You reply “I am sorry I value my life more than yours I can not let you in, even if you are probably not the killer”. The other guard says “I despise all peasants, I would never let you in” This repeats again and again. Both you and the other guard have caused a disproportionate amount of impact on innocent peasants, and your actions are indistinguishable, yet you are not prejudiced. If you change the mind of the other guard to not hate peasants, the predicament of the poor peasants do not change – you both still refuse entry. That doesn’t mean reducing prejudice can’t help. Imagine a third guard that is also a peasant hating misanthrope but he takes his hate to another level, so that when a peasant knocks, the third guard says to the others “Hey this guy is a peasant, let’s just kill him”. You and the second guard relieve the third guard of duty and that really did help the situation of the peasants, you saved them from violent prejudice, but the problem of innocent villagers stuck outside the wall remain. Getting rid of the third guard does help, but doesn’t solve everything.
Good point well made. I have nothing to add but agreement. Also I may steal this analogy and use it in future, just so you know.
Especially because you’ve noted that getting rid of the third guard does help. The argument that I see often but don’t understand is that trying to ditch the third guard is not worth doing because it doesn’t solve the wider peasant-injustice issue.
I don’t mean just with the police brutality/American race-relations thing either—it seems almost any time people want to put work into fixing Specific Issue X, there are other people standing back and saying it’s a waste of effort because it won’t solve Larger Issue Y. Winds me right up.
I’m not disagreeing with you but I just want to add to the conversation that I think the SSC comment is closest to the issue when he/she said:
Let’s say you and another guard are manning a castle gate, and there is a serial killer outside in the village of 100 people. A peasant knocks and says “let me in”. You reply “I am sorry I value my life more than yours I can not let you in, even if you are probably not the killer”. The other guard says “I despise all peasants, I would never let you in” This repeats again and again. Both you and the other guard have caused a disproportionate amount of impact on innocent peasants, and your actions are indistinguishable, yet you are not prejudiced. If you change the mind of the other guard to not hate peasants, the predicament of the poor peasants do not change – you both still refuse entry. That doesn’t mean reducing prejudice can’t help. Imagine a third guard that is also a peasant hating misanthrope but he takes his hate to another level, so that when a peasant knocks, the third guard says to the others “Hey this guy is a peasant, let’s just kill him”. You and the second guard relieve the third guard of duty and that really did help the situation of the peasants, you saved them from violent prejudice, but the problem of innocent villagers stuck outside the wall remain. Getting rid of the third guard does help, but doesn’t solve everything.
Good point well made. I have nothing to add but agreement. Also I may steal this analogy and use it in future, just so you know.
Especially because you’ve noted that getting rid of the third guard does help. The argument that I see often but don’t understand is that trying to ditch the third guard is not worth doing because it doesn’t solve the wider peasant-injustice issue.
I don’t mean just with the police brutality/American race-relations thing either—it seems almost any time people want to put work into fixing Specific Issue X, there are other people standing back and saying it’s a waste of effort because it won’t solve Larger Issue Y. Winds me right up.