This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Here's a little bit of incomplete thinking about the classic "13/53" number, which is a ballpark figure (varying year to year) that represents the fact that black people are overrepresented by a factor of about 5x in crime. I see a lot of people tend to interpret this number as "black people are 5x more likely to commit crimes", but that might not actually be the case.
Concretely, there's two ways this stat could come about:
a. There are 5x as many black criminals per capita and each black criminal commits crimes at 1x the rate of white criminals.
b. There are 1x as many black criminals per capita and each black criminal commits crimes at 5x the rate of white criminals.
There is of course a continuum between them, but I think it's useful to focus on the two endpoints because the endpoints have totally different policy responses and also suggest totally different causes.
For example, the policy response to (a) is that we need more police to catch a lot more black criminals. The policy response to (b) is that we need longer prison sentences for the criminals we have in order to prevent the same guy from doing 4 more crimes.
They also suggest different causes. Scenario (a) suggests something (HBD, special kinds of poverty not reflected in census stats) causes blacks to have a higher criminal propensity, whereas (b) suggests police might just be extra lenient towards black criminals thereby giving them more time on the street in which they commit more crimes.
Interestingly, while the theory of police abandonment will get you cancelled today, it was very much the theory pushed by black community leaders in the 90's. It was one of the things leading to "3 strikes" laws (long prison sentences for the 3'rd crime in order to get rid of the very worst criminals).
I have recently discovered some weak evidence in favor of theory (b) while going down an internet rabbithole on a totally different topic. Specifically, look at the first graph in this analysis:
https://github.com/propublica/compas-analysis/blob/master/Compas%20Analysis.ipynb
The "decile score" of the x-axis is a reasonably predictive index of a convicted criminal committing new crimes. The dominant features in the model generating the index are things like "# of previous crimes", "was the current crime violent", etc. As can be seen from the graph, white criminals are overrepresented on the left tail (little repeat crime risk) of the graph, whereas black criminals are spread evenly. Of course, this evidence is very weak - it's only about criminals up for parole in a certain region of Florida.
Does anyone know of more data on this?
Option c: blacks are 5x as much "overpoliced" or white criminals are 1/5 as likely to be caught and convicted.
I took a college class that claimed that black drug users were much more likely to purchase and use drugs in public, where the cops eventually catch them. White drug users buy and use illegal drugs in private residences. White and black Americans have comparable drug use rates, but the black ones are caught more.
This obviously doesn't explain differing homicide rates. And take stuff a college class asserted with a big grain of salt. But to some degree maybe white people are better criminals and cops don't typically crack down on upstanding whites.
Studies based on the National Crime Victimization Survey show a close match between the racial demographics of criminals as reported by those claiming to have been victimized and the racial demographics of those arrested for those crimes. The 13/53 figure is specifically based on murder and is thus technically not covered since murder victims cannot be surveyed, but violent crimes in general are included and show a similar but somewhat lesser disparity. (Generally the racial disparity is larger the more violent and severe the crime is, so murder has a larger disparity than violent crime in general, which has a larger disparity than crime in general. So while the crime victimization survey also doesn't cover crimes without victims, those have a smaller disparity to begin with, and white criminals with victims answering the National Crime Victimization Survey don't seem to be getting away with it more.)
I'm kind of with @TIRM on this one but have a slightly different theory on the mechanism. I think a good chunk of the difference comes down to public housing, which due to reasons both historical and economic skews overwhelmingly black. When you look at the UCR breakdown by county and municipality it quickly becomes apparent that it's not "America" or "Blacks" that have a crime problem, it's specific cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and Saint Louis, and in some cases (where the data is sufficiently granular) specific neighborhoods like South Chicago and Central City New Orleans. This also conveniently explains a lot of the victimization statistics as Gang wars tend to happen in areas where the gangs hold sway and methed-out psychos generally have issues with bus fare.
What we have is a situation there are certain geographical pockets of violent crime that are so extreme that they are skewing the statistics for the entire population.
Edit to Add: this also ties in with @hanikrummihundursvin's comment below.
Rural South has a lot more shootings and murders than rural Washington, Vermont, or Idaho. There are indeed pockets of extreme crime, but it is by all means false that all “crime problem” is concentrated there.
Yes, the rural south may have more shootings per capita but I don't think that proves as much as you think it proves. Two murders in Smallville might be statistically equivalent to 500 in Metropolis but the latter is going to show up in the national statistics more than the former.
Sure, most of the crime is committed in cities, and these have most impact on national statistics, but what I point out is still a death blow to your argument as stated above:
The places you listed do most of work in bringing up the national crime rate, but it doesn't mean that there is no "crime problem" outside of these. Heavily black areas in the South have huge crime problem, with homicide rates often nearing those of big cities with lots of crime.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is a greatly underpowered answer. While the study shades at blaming racism, the fact is affluent black young men appear to commit a lot more crime than white peers in the same income and housing.
Black people have a much higher propensity to crime at every income level, but single motherhood alone makes up almost all that difference. The problem is much clearer than people often let on.
The father is usually alive. Parents don't live together probably because one, or maybe both parents are assholes. These traits are passed to children. Doesn't neccessarily mean that forcing parents to live together will eliminate the gap. Remember, pre Civil-rights era such horrible share of single parent household didn't exist and the crime gap was about the same.
Obviously the parent is still alive, the question is if they are contributing to child care in any meaningful way. Just splitting the time between households is probably not meaningfully different than having 1 parent. The benefit of nuclear family is probably mostly in having more child rearing labor at any time. You actually see the same effect in Japan, except with traditional multi generational families having better outcomes vs nuclear families.
This may have some effect, but given that even significantly heritable factors like height and intelligence aren't that inheritable (I think IQ is roughly 30%?), it really doesn't fit.
Pre ~1950 data isn't that good in the first place, (EDIT: actually even now I don't think the data is excellent) but there is a pretty huge uptick in crime that fits very well with the adolescence of the first generation of single parent children.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you're looking at different parts of the elephant. Suppose propensity to commit violence has a distribution that, like the normal distribution, has the property that a small shift of the mean results in a large change at the tails. If that's true, if black people overall have a slightly higher mean propensity to commit violence, the tail of black people with a VERY high propensity to commit violence will be much larger than the same tail of white people, and will account for most of the staggering numbers like 13/53.
That, plus a tendency for blacks to live in conditions(eg, single motherhood, poverty, drug use) where that propensity is more likely to be realized.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Firstly that's not what the study says, secondly in order to actually rebutt my hypothesis you'd have to first answer the question; where are these "affluent black young men" coming from?
Prince Georges County, Maryland is the wealthiest predominantly-black county in America, but its crime rate is pretty high.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, they appear largely to be too young to have made the money themselves...
There may be studies that show a zip code breakdown that says that within zip codes there is no difference. I am not aware of such a study. This Times article appears to make the claim that living in wealthy neighborhoods does not protect black men from the devil of racism, which would seem to rebut your theory to an extent.
I never said it was poverty asshole, It's culture. As much as wokesters and their fellow travelers like to make hay out of blacks making up 38 percent of those incarcerated despite being only 15 percent of the general population, the fact remains that "is the son of a single mother" remains a far stronger predictor of whether someone will spend time in prison than their skin color, and that's a big part of why establishment liberals would rather make it about race.
Thing is that woke left and alt right have both made rolling their eyes at and talking down "boomer social-cons" a major component of their identity, and the last thing any of them want to do is admit that the Republicans were right about anything.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link