Black people and White people self-report similar marijuana usage. However, Black people are arrested for marijuana usage much more frequently than White people. Suppose you are designing an algorithm to determine how much to punish a prisoner for smoking marijuana. If you ignore the prisoner’s race then you will inflict penalties several times harsher on Black people than on White people. Race blindness produces racist outcomes.
This is assuming the surveys are reliable. As far as I know, it’s been found that black people are more likely to lie about committing crime than white people? Scott Alexander discusses this problem briefly in this blog post.
This is assuming the surveys are reliable. As far as I know, it’s been found that black people are more likely to lie about committing crime than white people? Scott Alexander discusses this problem briefly in this blog post.