Comment by dwater | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dwater | Hacker News Reader

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> In America, the media narratives about race are entirely sympathetic toward minorities. I would also appreciate a citation for the implication that poor white Americans are somehow more racist than other Americans (esp other poor Americans).

That may be starting to shift, but it is not true that American media is more sympathetic towards minorities.

"White Americans overestimate the proportion of crime committed by people of color, and associate people of color with criminality."

"Many media outlets reinforce the public’s racial misconceptions about crime by presenting African Americans and Latinos differently than whites – both quantitatively and qualitatively. Television news programs and newspapers over-represent racial minorities as crime suspects and whites as crime victims. Black and Latino suspects are also more likely than whites to be presented in a non-individualized and threatening way – unnamed and in police custody."

"Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies" https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11...

> That may be starting to shift, but it is not true that American media is more sympathetic towards minorities.

This is a puzzling claim, especially just a few weeks after the Covington incident.

You can cite anecdotes and the person you responded to cited a study. The puzzling thing is that you choose to focus on the former and not the latter. You have been presented evidence that your perception is not correct. Perhaps study the issue further to see if indeed your perception is incorrect.

As an aside, at what point do we stop an interesting discussion due to a limit of studies or data.

If something hasn't been measured, or hasn't been measured since 2016, can we really just give in.

If the question is about media being sympathetic, in recent years, toward the oppression that every black person in the u.s. experiences every day. Does data from the 90s really trump no data at all? Isn't the question about recent times for which nobody might have evidence for ordering either case.

And if there is no study, can a sound and valid argument still be made.

In general I agree with the sentiment of your comments. I’m not one to dismiss a person’s opinion posted on an internet discussion site due to lack of cited studies. No one can provide studies to back up their views in every instance.

In the context we are talking about media perceptions. One person presents a study that provides an opposite conclusion to another person’s view. That study is 4 years old. Things may have changed in the intervening 4 years and arguments that they have are welcome.

> the person you responded to cited a study

Which study? "Race and Punishment" appears to be a report/pamphlet by a research/advocacy org.

The quote "Many media outlets reinforce.." is found in the summary, without sources, not in the body of the document.

> You can cite anecdotes

The anecdote refers to a real event, and real media coverage.

> Which study? "Race and Punishment" appears to be a report/pamphlet by a research/advocacy org.

Thats severely mischaracterizing a summary report with many references.

> The anecdote refers to a real event, and real media coverage.

Even if there was a Covington like incident every month, it doesn't prove anything. Isolated incidents should not be used to make judgements or infer reality. Instead, use criminal justice data aggregated from around the country, like the report cites.

> Thats severely mischaracterizing a summary report with many references

Not at all. It's factually true. The burden of proof is to point to one of those references as convincing, otherwise you are just handing someone reference material and asking them to do the work.

weberc2 said that the cited paper/study/opinion piece was puzzling given one recent event. I suggested that weberc2 might want to further study the issue to see if his/her perception is wrong. I did not say that weberc2 is wrong. What I was hinting at is a larger issue facing American society as it pertains to media consumption.

In the present era it is easy for media to focus stories on a given segment of society. People increasingly are in “news” bubbles where their preconceived views are reinforced by the media they consume. I put news in quotes because mostly what we have now are entertainment companies whose business model is largely based on generating rage by framing stories a certain way.

I can see and understand why weberc2 thinks media portrayal is minority friendly. If I had to guess I’d wager that weberc2 leans right politically in the U.S. based on language he/she used. I think weberc2 is referring to politically correct speech and how we have gone a bit far in this regard when talking about race issues. It’s very hard to have an honest discussion about race in the U.S. because of this. I think weberc2’s view on the matter at hand is referring mostly to this or comes from this perspective. I could be wrong. This is all a guess on my part.

When I talked about media portrayal I’m talking about movies, tv shows, images that have been spun to give a certain perspective. Narratives that have been crafted over decades that change what images are evoked when certain phrases are said. For instance, it wasn’t until after white flight from the cities that “inner city” became a phrase.

My suggesting to weberc2 was to look into all this. In what ways have the sources of our information formed our views? Are those views correct? Does the evidence support them?

I do want to continue studying the issue, unfortunately there simply aren't many quality studies on the subject from the last two decades, and most are behind a paywall (never mind the replication crisis in the social sciences and the difficulty of accounting for the progressive bias). :( I could rattle off a list of anecdotes, but I doubt that would change minds and many would imply that I'm a racist for merely taking an interest and I don't care to deal with that this morning.

I'm politically center-left, and I live in one of the most racially diverse zip codes in the country. My "news bubble" is HuffPo, Vox, NYTimes, Guardian, Bloomberg, and WSJ (occassionally CNN). It's unfortunate that I have to defend myself against these implicit ad hominems.

I didn’t make any implicit ad hominems. From my perspective you read what I write and interpret it with an assumption that I’ve got a particular agenda. Here are some pertinent quotes from what I wrote:

I did not say that weberc2 is wrong.

I can see and understand why weberc2 thinks media portrayal is minority friendly.

If I had to guess I’d wager that weberc2 leans right politically in the U.S. based on language he/she used.....I could be wrong. This is all a guess on my part.

And here I switch from you to our. Since the issue does not pertain solely to you but to everyone including me.

In what ways have the sources of our information formed our views?

In what way have I engaged in ad hominem like reasoning. I have not characterized you as anything bad or negative. I did state that I thought you were right of center politically but in what way is this an attack?

It appears that we agree when it comes to talking about race issues. I wrote:

I think weberc2 is referring to politically correct speech and how we have gone a bit far in this regard when talking about race issues. It’s very hard to have an honest discussion about race in the U.S. because of this.

I don’t see how you can say you’ve been attacked or that you’ve had to defend yourself.

This was my mistake. I missed this bit from your post `and how we have gone a bit far in this regard when talking about race issues.` and thought you were saying something like "weberc2 leans right and that is what is wrong with race dialog in our country". My sincere apologies.

To clarify, I don't lean right (although there's nothing wrong with leaning right), and as previously discussed, I didn't make assumptions about your agenda--I only contextualized the statistics you cited.

The study posted cites this study on racial stereotypes.

http://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00255.x

And this is the survey data on white perception of crime:

“When you think about people who break into homes and businesses, approximately what percent would you say are Black?”

40.4% Mean Perceived

31.7% Actual

“When you think about people who rob other people at gunpoint, approximately what percent would you say are Black?”

43.4% Mean Perceived

42.0% Actual

“When you think about people who sell illegal drugs, approximately what percent would you say are Black?”

40.2% Mean Perceived

33.6% Actual

“When you think just about juveniles who commit crimes, approximately what percent would you say are Black?”

40.8% Mean Perceived

31.3% Actual

Given that blacks are about 12% of the US population, these numbers show both that blacks commit a disproportionately large percentage of crimes, and that whites slightly over perceive this. It might be more valuable for blacks to focus on ways to lower the actual crime rate than the perceived crime rate.

It might be more valuable for blacks to focus on ways to lower the actual crime rate than the perceived crime rate.

Oh definitely this is needed. Poor city black culture has some very negative aspects to it that this community needs to address. This fact coupled with the environment of political correctness makes it hard to have honest discussions about race.

It's interesting that they don't pose the same questions for other races.

I'd venture to say a bad thing like crime is always going to be overperceived in occurrence compared to what it actually is.

Unfortunately, for some crimes, like robbing people at gunpoint, the reality seems to come dangerously close to the overperception.

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