African Americans Have the Highest Rate of Fire Deaths and Injuries (2021) | Hacker News Reader

African Americans Have the Highest Rate of Fire Deaths and Injuries (2021)

cpsc.gov

26 pointsfrasermarlow23 comments

African Americans are more likely to be lower income, lower income folks are more likely to live in housing that is not up to code (missing sprinklers, detectors, fire escapes, and run by slumlords who simply don't care in ways that would likely be shocking to most decent people who haven't lived near the poverty line), where many, many people live in a single unit to make it affordable -- or because e.g. an uncle just got out of prison or someone you know is having some kind of emergency. When you're poor, you have a lot of emergencies and you know a lot of people having emergencies. Someone in your network is always having an emergency.

And yes, when you're making $9 an hour and your rent is 2/3 of your income, buying batteries for your chirping smoke detector is not top of mind.

This is all a byproduct of centuries of brutal economic warfare.

> "These risk factors appear to be related to socioeconomic status of the victim to a greater extent than one’s race," Onwuachi-Saunders wrote. (from the article linked below)

But it turns out that in the US socioeconomic status and race are closely linked, at least in the aggregate.

https://www.northjersey.com/in-depth/news/2022/02/03/fire-in...

> But it turns out that in the US socioeconomic status and race are closely linked, at least in the aggregate

In every country socioeconomic status is linked to subgroup culture and across the world different cultures have very different outcomes. That is not surprising. Neither the world nor people are uniform.

“It’s always been like this” has never been a good reason for things to stay the same.

I have offered no justification or even an insinuation that it should continue. However it is a common thought today that the US is particularly bad at race. It's not

Is there some country I'm unaware of where the poor don't underperform on every metric relative to the wealthy?

Money buys education, security/safety, health, access to social networks, and everything else, so why wouldn't the poor underperform?

I would think that the world is pretty uniform in that wealth solves a great deal of problems and poverty solves few.

Less uniform in decile wealth distribution, less uniform in quartile mobility.

Some countries have a softer landing for the poor, a more equitable spread of wealth, and greater opportunity for mobility from one group to another.

Other countries have more of a walled garden about elites, less bracket mobility, and worse circumstances for the poor.

> This is all a byproduct of centuries of brutal economic warfare.

Have you got a source for that?

Slavery and Jim Crow.

See also sundown towns, racial based exclusionary zoning, racial covenants, redlining, and Home Owners Associations.

I'm asking about the causation, not just the facts of history. This is something that can only be found by scientific research. Do you know of any?

See e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4] (in particular see [4.a])

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_during_the_slave_per...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...

[4.a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...

1-3 seem to be historical. In 4.a, I don't see any causation of the problems you identified. Is it that blacks mostly live among other blacks (segregation) and its those other blacks who are always having emergencies and getting out of prison, etc? That doesn't explain why whites who are also segregated don't also suffer from those problems. Is it because blacks' housing is more expensive, leaving them not enough money for smoke alarm batteries and they choose not to move to the better (historically white) areas for some reason?

I like how there's a persistent effort to make excuses on behalf of african americans. They're not being held back by history, they're being held back by chronically low expectations.

Pluck an average, random nobody from the 3rd world and drop them off in the USA. After a decade they'll be driving a Mercedes to inspect one of their several rental properties.

That doesn't seem to be the point? The point is (and I, not an American, have seen a few studies of this kind) that race predicts many outcomes, but not after controlling for income.

In other words, poor people in America are screwed, Black Americans tend to be poor (and mostly due to terrible socioeconomic processes in history).

It's not that it is OK if people are screwed "merely" due to income not race, but surely understanding the dynamic is key, no?

I'm talking from an ivory tower of statistics and papers, I barely spent a week in the USA in my whole lifetime.

Is it because they don't change the batteries on smoke alarms? I also saw that as the cause for African Americans having poor sleep in a recent study: https://sahanjournal.com/health/sleep-science-black-insomnia...

It's because in less fortunate communities code enforcement isn't as strict so smoke detectors do not have to be hardwired.

edit: removed abrasive language

edit: Love the immediate downvoting. Please present your evidence that hardwired smoke detectors has nothing to do with this.

I live in the whitest part of the whitest city in America (Portland). I am not white if that matters. Anyway, no one has once checked for hardwired alarms and we even had our whole home rewired (chose not to get hardwired alarms because they're a menace).

I'll submit and admit my experience is probably different than other regions in my country. However, from my professional experience in my region, the richest communities inspect for hardwired smoke detectors and the poorer communities don't care so much.

> chose not to get hardwired alarms because they're a menace

Checks out

I mean fair enough but they do randomly go off and when hardwired the whole house goes off. Not to mention it now requires an electrician to maintain

The randomly going off thing can be made better by more expensive detectors. Sure, you need an electrician.

This looks like lamenting the inconveniences of smoke detectors. My point is that hardwired smoke detectors function more consistently than battery powered ones.

Seems to hold for vehicular accidents as well. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/dispari...

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