It boggles my mind that there’s any debate about whether there are systemic issues with police when we literally have laws on the books that explicitly allow cops to steal from civilians.
In my experience, people who are willing to be honest, precise, and consistent in their terminology tend to have more reasonable and productive debates. They can often agree on many things with the people who are supposed to be their enemies and the disagreements are more understandable. Notably, most Americans probably agree that this law is heinously unjust.
EDIT: People are fixating on the example and assuming that crime rate disparities are manufactured or a result of law-enforcement bias, but that doesn't hold up to the criminology literature, which controls for LEO bias in a number of ways, including by comparing data sources against victim surveys. So while it's fair to argue that criminologists are failing to account for something, we're not talking about ignorant people making stupid extrapolations. If we're going to go off-topic, then let's at least make it a productive, enlightening digression.
Being honest, precise, and consistent in your terminology isn't too helpful if you choose to ignore american history.
'Systemic' racism is the appropriate term because it must be understood as a whole for the parts to make sense. Your misunderstanding kinda illustrates this. Cause really the remedy for police killings and for high "crime rates" among "blacks" are in fact the same, and relate to the manner and amount of policing.
This is why homicide rates are useful. For most cases, it is pretty obvious a crime of some sort occurred.
This is a complicated issue with many interwoven contributing factors. There's no one magic figure you can point to that explains or disproves everything.
No, it doesn't.
> This is why homicide rates are useful. For most cases, it is pretty obvious a crime of some sort occurred.
Tldr; homicide conviction rates are subject to other artifacts and can't support either side very well without additional data.
Law enforcement is discretionary not just in deciding what counts as a crime but in who they decide to investigate and other tactics employed. Not that this hugely affects any relative statistics, but the murder false imprisonment rate is estimated at 4-11%, and false imprisonment (as far as we can tell from subsequent DNA exhoneration and whatnot -- this might not be representative of all murders) disproportionately affects black people. Not that this necessarily says anything about broad crime racial statistics, but it could throw any direct comparisons off.
More importantly though, 30-40% of murders go unsolved, and it's probably not reasonable to assume that distribution to reflect the distribution of successfully convicted murders (if for no other reason than the race<->income correlation). That's such a huge monkey wrench in any comparative statistics that murder conviction rates without any additional information don't strongly support either side of things.
> this violent crime rate disparity exists even when controlling for SES
That's exactly the kind of additional data I was asking for. I just didn't think murder conviction rates by themselves were sufficient evidence to support the claims they were being thrown against.
> Criminologists consider homicides to be reliable because it's difficult for police to ignore homicides.
That side-steps my point a bit doesn't it (in hindsight I should have been more clear)? Being difficult to ignore makes homicides generally reliable for some kinds of comparisons (e.g. comparing violent crime between countries), but that reliability doesn't transfer well. E.g., when a plausible suspect is thrown in jail the spotlight is removed from everyone involved. I gave specific examples where despite a high reliability in overall murder rates, piggybacking on that reliability to lend credibility to the racial distribution of conviction rates isn't justified (without additional information). The rest of your comment notwithstanding (I did appreciate it and do generally agree with you), rebutting by reaffirming points I already agree with and pulling in criminologists as experts in the vaguest way possible isn't satisfactory.
> Note again that virtually no one is arguing that blacks are inherently criminal, but that these disparities are a vestige of centuries of severe institutional racism--it would be shocking if no disparities remained only 60 years after the formal end of Jim Crow.
No argument here. I tend to agree with the claim, but the evidence (based on murder conviction rates) was suspect.
First of all, it was only an example for how "systemic" can be used as a weasel word. That said, the higher crime rate for black Americans is well-documented--it shows up not only in law enforcement reporting but also in victim reports (note that the majority of victims who report a black offender are themselves black), media reports, and homicide statistics (these are regarded as highly reliable because it's frequently easy to tell that a crime has occurred).
> Criminalizing blackness and then calling 'blacks' criminals was literally and explicitly part of the plan.
As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, we can (and criminologists go to great lengths to) control for this by taking into account non-law-enforcement sources, especially sources who are least likely to be racially biased.
> Being honest, precise, and consistent in your terminology isn't too helpful if you choose to ignore american history.
History isn't ignored in the claim, "Racial disparities in police killings largely reflect disparate crime rates which are likely the effect of centuries of slavery and institutional racism". This is the moderate position. But again, this was all an example to illustrate how "systemic" is used as a weasel word; I'm not trying to veer off-topic into a race debate (although I'm perfectly happy to talk about it when it's on-topic).
> 'Systemic' racism is the appropriate term because it must be understood as a whole for the parts to make sense.
It's may be an appropriate term, but it's ambiguous and weasels regularly take advantage of that ambiguity. This undermines its utility.
> Your misunderstanding kinda illustrates this. Cause really the remedy for police killings and for high "crime rates" among "blacks" are in fact the same, and relate to the manner and amount of policing.
Big [citation needed] that current police practices principally drive crime rate disparities and not the prior centuries of institutional racism and slavery. No doubt that current practices play a role, but that they are a primary driver beggars belief. Note that 80% of blacks don't want less policing (only better policing): https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r....
> Forgive my paranoia in these troubled times but could you be a paid shill come to waste our energy?
Alas, I'm not a critical theorist.
It's then easy for (ignorant) people to point at those numbers and say look, 80% of the time when police search someone for drugs and find them, it's a black person, so obviously black people are more likely to have drugs on them so we should search them more.
It's like a higher-level version of being arrested for resisting arrest (by asking "what are you arresting me for?")
> For years, police records have shown that black drivers tend to be less likely than white drivers to turn up with guns or drugs when searched at traffic stops. At the same time, black drivers are three times more likely than white drivers to be subjected to these searches, according to a 2013 federal survey.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traff...
> Here in North Carolina’s third-largest city, officers pulled over African-American drivers for traffic violations at a rate far out of proportion with their share of the local driving population. They used their discretion to search black drivers or their cars more than twice as often as white motorists — even though they found drugs and weapons significantly more often when the driver was white.
> Officers were more likely to stop black drivers for no discernible reason. And they were more likely to use force if the driver was black, even when they did not encounter physical resistance.
The point is that you're measuring after a selection effect, and measurements after a selection effect are worthless. Imagine comparing income between racial groups, but only surveying people buying sports cars - it's just not useful.
White people are more likely to have drugs when searched for drugs because police are less likely to search white people for drugs for reasons other than having real reason to think that they have drugs.
They may also be more likely to have drugs because they are less likely to be searched out of the blue, but the difference simply due to blacks being subject to more harassment searches is probably the bigger factor.
The way you have worded your comment implies that those who use the term are doing so to weasle out of honest debate, and I think this is a very uncharitable characterization. Furthermore, the dialogue you've used to exemplify the debate does not seem to honestly reflect what any reasonable expert would actually say. At best, it's what a person might say if they were poorly informed and had an incomplete understanding of systemic racism.
Really, this makes me question whether you are being honest with yourself about your own understanding of systemic racism, and the body of work upon which we draw when discussing the topic. I feel that if you had a more accurate understanding, your response to the parent comment would be quite different in its priorities, so I would highly recommend you reflect on this, and perhaps read a bit more deeply on the subject.
* "Everyone who uses this term is arguing in bad faith"
* "Many people who use this term are using it in bad faith"
My claim was the former. No doubt many people use it in a precise sense, take care to define it well, and don't move semantic goalposts. But many do, and this is (in my opinion) a big reason why the debate around the term is so low-quality.
> Really, this makes me question whether you are being honest with yourself about your own understanding of systemic racism, and the body of work upon which we draw when discussing the topic.
How can I be "dishonest with myself about my understanding of 'systemic racism'" when I don't know what the claimant means by 'systemic racism'? What about asking someone to define their terms connotes disearnesty?
But why focus on these low quality discussions in the first place? Don't they exist for nearly any topic? Are they really the highest priority when trying to have a constructive discussion?
This was the main point of my comment, to point out that your reply focused on the existence of low quality discussions, and in turn does more to perpetuate the idea that "systemic racism" is not well defined nor well founded in general, than it does to contribute to better understanding. Rapind's reply also points this out, that very low quality arguments are similar to strawman arguments, and even if it wasn't your intention, solely focusing on them can actually hinder the discussion.
If you acknowledge that better definitions of "systemic racism" exist, but you omit them and focus on poor definitions instead, you are contributing to the low quality of the debate yourself.
In regards to being honest with oneself, I mean being aware of your own understanding and it's limitations. How would you describe the depth of your understanding on this topic? Do you have resources you can share with others so they can better understand what you mean when you discuss systemic racism? Perhaps you can recommend a favorite book or specific author that you think covers the topic comprehensively and in good faith? Do you feel like you know what an expert means when they're using the term, as well as the common misconceptions faced by non-experts? Are you asking yourself these questions before you ask them of others?
I think you meant 'the latter'. Former is the first, latter is the last.
It's like a strawman that's been brought to life for opposition to a belief it had previously been used in. The term may then lose meaning once everyone on twitter starts debating it under it's new flawed definition. Basically a way to dismiss something uncomfortable by subverting it's meaning. A good example would be "Social Just Warrior" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior.
What GP is doing is feeding the strawman (I doubt intentionally) which may have the effect of reducing real evidence and support into subjective nonsense in the mainstream context. The worst part is that it sort of feeds itself. GP might very well be correct in that the term is being misused blatantly in some contexts.
4d chess.
As you said, I doubt it was intentional, but GP's comment stuck out to me because it was in response to a rather innocuous statement of disbelief. I would liken it to witnessing the following exchange:
> A newly released climate change report from ExxonMobil has sparked controversy ...
>> It boggles my mind that there’s any debate about whether there's climate change when we literally have studies from fossil fuel companies detailing the evidence and predicting its future impact.
>>> In fairness, "change" is not well defined, and is routinely misused. For example, if we're talking about the recent storms in the midwest, and I invoke "climate change" to imply that these storms were directly linked to rising global temperatures and will lead to the collapse of the North American food supply, you could point out that the storms are still consistent with local weather phenomena observed in the area's recent history, at which point I would retreat to ...
>>> In my experience, people who are willing to be honest, precise, and consistent in their terminology tend to have more reasonable and productive debates about weather events. They can often agree on many things with the people who are supposed to be their enemies and the disagreements are more understandable. Notably, most Americans probably agree that these storms were damaging to farmers in the midwest.
>>> EDIT: People are fixating on the example and assuming that the reported rate of destruction to the corn crop in Iowa underrepresents the rates in neighboring areas, and ... , but when taking into account reduced demand from China and ... , there's clearly no threat of a food supply collapse. So while it's fair to argue that agricultural scientists are failing to account for something, we're not talking about ignorant people making stupid extrapolations. If we're going to go off-topic, then let's at least make it a productive, enlightening digression.
How do you point this out effectively, so that people can realize that they're fixated on arguing against a strawman of their own creation, and so they don't just double down?
This whole thing fits the Benjamin Franklin quote to a tee: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety".
A recent famous case was seizing and selling a persons house over an eight dollar tax payment.[0]
Through forfeiture and excessive fines government routines takes millions, tens of millions per year, from Americans each year. From losing your property over tax issues, forfeiture from police stops, excessive fines for property violations[1], to just simply losing money for trying to fly with it [2]
Why doesn't this get more attention here? Simple, this site seems to have a poisonous view of Libertarian issues and links to sites which cover these transgressions daily but are on Libertarian sites get flagged or down voted into oblivion.
[0]https://reason.com/2020/07/24/county-wants-answers-from-trea...
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2019/07/19/f...
[2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-dea-s...