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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   33429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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I don't know that any of what you said really changes based on race, though, at least from a practical perspective. Yeah, black guy approaching me in a grocery store parking lot is probably going to ask me for money. But I can't think of many situations where I white guy doing the same thing doesn't end the same way.

Even the canonical example of an urban looking black guy being treated suspiciously for walking around a white suburban neighborhood at night doesn't make sense when you think about it. Yeah, black people commit more crime in general. But most of that crime isn't committed in white suburbs. Disaffected urban youth who want to rob houses aren't likely to drive 45 minutes to an unfamiliar neighborhood where they'd be about as inconspicuous as a brontosaurus at a time when the home is all but guaranteed to be occupied. The modal burglary takes place in the middle of a weekday by a guy driving a panel van who doesn't linger too long. But no one ever reports those guys as suspicious because they're so inconspicuous.

Yeah, my priors are that a black guy approaching me in a parking lot wants money for a gas can and a white guy could be doing that, or could be trying to sell me amway, with a distant possibility he’s a jehova’s witness. Not a huge difference either way.

Or he's me, and he wasn't paying attention on the way in and has been wandering around for the last ten minutes trying to find the entrance to the shops, and since you have shopping he assumes you can point him in the right direction.

Yeah, black people commit more crime in general. But most of that crime isn't committed in white suburbs.

That's measuring things the wrong way around. The amount of crime black people commit in black neighborhoods is irrelevant to the white suburbanite in a white neighborhood trying to decide whether the black person is a criminal. The relevant probability is P(black person is a criminal | he's in my neighborhood), not P(black person is in my neighborhood | he's committing a crime)

Disaffected urban youth who want to rob houses aren't likely to drive 45 minutes to an unfamiliar neighborhood where they'd be about as inconspicuous as a brontosaurus at a time when the home is all but guaranteed to be occupied.

They do exactly this in my area, though less "disaffected urban youth" and more "organized bands of thieves". Granted, my area is not lily-white so they're less conspicuous than they would be in some places, but they hit towns with fewer black people too.

That is happening near me as well. My area isn’t white, but it is upper class with a mix of white and so called model minorities (eg successful South and East Asians)

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