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Why does some black people hating white people and being dangerous mean that one should avoid all black people? Many black people are obviously not like that.
99%+ of AR-15 owners don't commit mass shootings; it doesn't stop the half of the country that doesn't understand gun culture from finding all AR-15 owners at best suspicious and at worst actively threatening.
To be honest, I don't find an argument "some idiots do idiotic thing X, therefore you should do similar thing Y" particularly compelling.
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What's your point?
Attempting to point out the hypocrisy of a social justice movement that simultaneously argues that a) it's horribly racist for white people to be frightened by black people on account of the actions of a very small subset of black people and b) it makes perfect sense for people to be frightened by guns on account of the actions of a very small subset of gun owners.
But I am not part of that social justice movement and did not say those things. So why are you responding to my comment with that?
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Area A has higher risk than area B. Which one would you like your family to live in?
Now help me understand why the fact that 'many black people are not violent and hateful' should influence your decision. Do the same for the school you will send your kid to.
I would certainly live in a richer, safer area. But I would not have a preference between safer area with a lot of black families and equally safe and attractive area with no black families. As an anecdata, I had a black family live almost next door to me (second door actually) and the only non-positive thing I can remember about them is that they put up "Black lives matter" placard on their window for a while. I certainly wouldn't have an objection to living close to a similar family (even with the placard, I had much much worse neighbors than that - who were lily white btw, which is easily explained of course by the fact that the majority of my neighbors were white. Interestingly enough they replaced another black family who moved out - and who were very good neighbors). Why would I Goodhart myself in such important matters? If I want to live in a safe neighborhood, I'd just look into its safety directly, not into an imperfect proxy like the race of its inhabitants. Once I know the direct data, the race part would not even be necessary. I mean, certainly, there would be a correlation, likely, but I don't need the correlation if I can have the necessary data directly!
If your preference for safety leads you to implicitly avoid living with black people, then this is fine.
If your preference for safety leads you to explicitly avoid living with black people, then this is... fine? Or no?
On top of all of that, race as a proxy functions on a much broader level than just crime. Which is why I mentioned schooling. When you have picked a safe area with a 'good' school you won't be living near black people. Those are just two things that you can virtually guarantee via the race proxy. It might not be as precise as looking directly at the safety of the area and the 'goodness' of the school, but there is undeniably a lot of information there. Not just information about the immediate circumstance, but also as a predictor. Is the area and school close to blacks? Are there signs of these areas getting 'darker' or 'lighter'? I'm not saying this information is 'better'. I'm simply recognizing that it is undeniably information relevant to the things cared about. Not to mention race based ingroup bias where many blacks otherize whites.
I guess I am not understanding where the need to even express this distinction comes from. People use and live by countless imperfect proxies their whole lives. In ways that directly and indirectly impact people close by them or far away from them. No one cares. But for some reason we won't allow ourselves to use this very obvious and highly informative proxy because, what? We can imagine a hypothetical situation that negates it? Or because we can recognize that information about groups doesn't reflect on all individuals of that group?
I could understand a person who ingroups blacks being mad at someone who is outgrouping blacks. But your post strikes me as being written by someone who is doing neither. Not a racist, not an anti-racist. 'People are just people and when they do good its good and when they do bad its bad.' Maybe I'm wrong on that impression, but regardless, I don't see why such a person would hold any reservations about taking away information from race as a proxy. It's just people. Some of them are a different color and commit a lot more crime. What's the big deal?
But it doesn't. It makes me avoid living in poor neighborhoods with bad policing and so on. Yes, many of such neighborhoods have a lot of black people, many of other such neighborhoods don't have any black people. I don't care. I won't live in either.
Again, if I look for good schools, I'd just look for good schools. Why would I again need a proxy if I can just find out which school is good?
That's the point - it is not. It's like you wanted to fly to Canada, and instead of going to the travel site and looking up flights to Canada and buying a ticket, you started tracking people who look Canadian to you, in case they'd want to go home and you then could follow them and figure out how to get to Canada. Sure, if you're lucky you could get to Canada this way too, but it's not the way any sane person would approach it!
You imply that it does. Race is a stronger predictor of crime than poverty in the majority of the literature that looks at this. By the standard you allow yourself to say you are avoiding living in poor neighborhoods you are by definition avoiding living in black neighborhoods. I would even hazard a guess that, proportionally, a poor neighborhood would be more likely to be safe and have a good school than a black one in the vast majority of cases.
I never said you did. The point of the 'implicit' example was precisely to say that it's not about it being a stated preference.
I didn't say you needed it. I said that it was valid. I said it wasn't necessarily as precise as directly looking at the metric as measured, but that there was undeniably information there. Considering that no metric, not matter how direct, is a crystal ball I don't see why a person who professes to no care about race would ignore it if it had valid and relevant information. You are making inferences about reality based on metrics and proxies.
The correlations between black and every single relevant metric are higher than practically anything else. To couch it as luck or insanity to deduce something from race as a proxy goes far beyond any realm of rationality. On top of that, I'm not proposing an either or. I find your analogy completely inapplicable to what I've been saying.
That very well may be - but I don't need a predictor if I can get the actual thing measured!
Possible, but why invent such proxy if there's no need in it?
Well, yes, but there are more direct metrics for the quality of schools, why anybody would be interested in metrics that are secondary or tertiary?
Ok, there's a correlation. But so what? There are a lot of correlations: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations Given that I have access to direct metrics, how this correlation is more useful to me than correlation between butter production in Bangladesh and marriage rate in Kentucky?
I never said you needed it, like I have said multiple times now. I was saying that it was valid. Furthermore, that's not what that line of argument was about. It was about whether or not you were implicitly avoiding black people via your stated preferences for safety and the added measures of 'good schools'. By the same token you self described as avoiding poor people you are avoiding blacks, that was the point.
To reiterate again, no one said race as a proxy was needed. I, however, maintained that there was no reason for a person who did not care about race to dismiss the metric since it still contains information.
It's not an either or. Having more is better than having less. For example, as Don Lemon said, even in the rich black neighborhoods he was living in there were problems there he did not see in white ones. You, as a person who says they don't care about race, should have no problem recognizing that fact. It might contradict your experience or it might not, but there is no basis here to act as if it has no value.
Because no measure or metric is perfect. Why not have an interest in a wide array of metrics? Even though they are not all equally as good at some specific thing there might be cases where one happens to matter more. If say, schools start implementing a policy of suspending their black students less despite their behavior, then race seems like a very pertinent metric. I mean, I wouldn't want my kid growing up in such an unfair and racist environment.
There are a lot of spurious correlations that can be made so therefor what? If you think the correlation between %black and violent crime is not informative in this context then I don't know what on earth you were talking about when you insinuated that you were implicitly avoiding poor neighborhoods earlier. Given that the correlation between %black and violent crime is higher than economic factors in the vast majority of cases.
Valid for what? There should be some goal in mind, collecting data just for the sake of collecting data is pointless. If you make a predictor, you should have a goal in mind - what you want to predict and why. And if there's much better way to predict the same, it's pointless to consider an inferior predictor.
I will be avoiding some blacks, yes. And some whites. And some Native Americans. And - gasp! - some Jews. Maybe among people I'm avoiding there would be more blacks than white Jews. I am just not seeing why it's so important to you to point out this fact and emphasize it. For me, it's a bit of pointless trivia - like pointing out that average middle toe length on the left foot in my neighborhood is exactly 2 inches. Maybe it is - but I gain nothing by knowing that, and it proves nothing. So why are you investing so much in pointing it out?
I surely have no problem recognizing the fact that Don Lemon said it. I am just not sure why there's any importance to me in it. I have no idea which neighborhoods he was talking about (and also I probably would never take advice from Don Lemon anyway, he doesn't look like somebody particularly fit for that - and I am not referring to his skin color by that, but rather to his body of "work") and I already have much better criteria for evaluating neighborhoods - so his evidence, while I do not deny its existence, changes nothing in my calculus.
That's not enough. Metric A being imperfect doesn't mean you go grab for any random metric B. You have first to show metric B is actually less imperfect than metric A. But this is clearly not the case here.
That would be a very bad, very stupid and very racist policy. And of course, nobody wants their kid to be educated by stupid racists. But I'd notice that schools prone to doing that also tend to have very poor evaluation metrics, so if you choose (provided, of course, you have that option) better school, you would be able to avoid it.
I'll explain. I was talking about the fact that if I want to choose a good neighborhood, I don't have to count how many black people are there and try to estimate the level of crime there - I can just directly look into the crime statistics and know the level of crime with better accuracy. Thus, this correlation is not useful for me for the purposes of choosing a low-crime neighborhood.
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Saying one should avoid black people is a much stronger statement than saying one should not live in neighbourhoods with a lot of black people.
Adams was giving a practical advice to white people: 'get the hell away from black people'.
I don't see the angle you are gunning for here. Unless you are arguing against racism in thought but not practice.
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Adam’s said you need to escape black people which is why Adam’s moved to a place with very few black people. One could read that as “don’t live in neighborhoods with a lot of black people”
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