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Just so we are clear, are you highly skeptical of the following claims:
(1) In the United States, black people commit crime at rates which are significantly disproportionate;
(2) In the United States, black people become parents out-of-wedlock at rates which are significantly disproportionate;
(3) In the United States, black people save money and accumulate wealth at rates which are significantly under-proportionate;
Here on this forum it is often stated outright or implied that those problems are strongly intractable, i.e. that there is no sociocultural intervention (cutting race-based leniency, welfare reforms, penitentiary reforms, less glorification of crime in pop media, etc.) that would, if not completely erase the gap between racial groups, at least make them decent enough neighbors. I do not find that immediately obvious or well supported.
You've tried for 60 years, isn't it obvious now?
First, it wasn't me or even my country trying it, and second, even if it was, it appears clear that the trying was mostly in one direction. If you go the wrong way in a straight line for 60 years, it doesn't mean the destination does not exist.
What do you think they should do instead?
What we should have always been doing from the start, judging people by their individual actions and the content of their character not the color of their skin.
The whole point of the Jesus' parable about "the Good Samaritan" is that it is not blood nor proximity that makes a man a your kin or your neighbor, but rather how they comport themselves.
Unless you’re going to email the credentials to your bank account to every American, and see which ones are actually thieves, you are going to end up pre-judging them in one manner or another.
“Sometimes kindness comes from unexpected places and people aren’t what you expect” does not mean “and therefore you must turn your brain off and clap your hands over your eyes until you have enough information to judge people on an individual level, and statistics are the work of Satan”.
Do I feel genuine sympathy for someone who has a harder time because they belong to a group with a bad reputation? Yes, certainly. The tend to be fine once they demonstrate a good character but they still find it a lame harder than many others. I *don’t * feel so bad that I’m willing to ignore really obvious group differences.
Are you saying that if a white man asked for your banking information you'd give it, but if a black man did you wouldn't?
What if the white man was filthy disheveled creature sitting on a street-corner, and the black man was a clean cut smartly dressed individual sitting behind a desk at said bank? Would that change your answer?
As the above example illustrates, the claim that we can't possibly have enough information to judge people individually in the moment is a blatant falsehood.
It was a reductio ad absurdam of course, but my point is that prejudice along many axes is an inherent part of any interaction.
For a more realistic example, if someone asks me for directions, I’m going to decide whether I’m comfortable pulling out my phone based on a number of factors, one of which is race.
Then you get to the social level. In London, a black man is 8x more likely to kill than a white man. Should we be focusing police attention based on this fact? If you’re a B policeman and find two parties are in a he-said she-said situation and one of them is black, or homeless, are you going to let that affect your judgement or are you going to wall off all knowledge about relative aggression knowing that it’s going to make your judgements less correct?
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