No, it’s about far more than simply declaring “more crime = more policing”, that is the kind of naive simplistic view that wants to deliberately ignore 1) why are more crimes being committed, and 2) what is the perception of black people by white people, and by police? We have laws against stereotyping for a reason, because it’s stupid to use group-membership as a guiding factor to determine who is going to commit a crime or not. Stereotype people of a certain appearance and you’re letting plenty of criminals through the cracks that don’t look exactly like your preconceived notion says. And I’m guessing you never took a statistics class, because you don’t understand that simply because a large sample identifies a trend doesn’t mean you can know anything before the fact about individual instances within that larger group; if you take 1000 people and say they have a statistically significant higher rate of liking swimming than the average person, to use an example, that doesn’t translate into an ability to point to an individual within that group and say that they like swimming. It’s a subtle point that I know goes over your head.
Policing involves identifying high crime areas, not identifying skin color. The fact that poor urban areas have more black people is simply another obvious fact of institutional racism in America, as I’ve pointed out through many links to statistics ranging from far-lower overall wealth owned by black people compared to whites to the fact that a black person is far more likely to be sent to prison for the same crime than is a white person. Do you ever ask why race is a statistical predictor of outcomes? No, because that would force you to start asking tough questions.
I’ll break it down for you: being a member of a group “black person” or “poor” or “uneducated” or “lives in X urban area” are all predictors of more negative outcomes. The group itself represents a cluster of additional factors and reasons why membership in said group can be a statistical predictor like that; so we have two points that must be addressed: 1) why is being black one of those groups in America 2016? And 2) regardless of an individual person being a member of any such group, including racial groups, it is wrong to judge them first by that group status and only second or not at all by who they are as an individual.
These two points are never going to be acknowledged by a single “conservative”, because of the increased sophistication of the thinking and valuing required to comprehend them. Stereotyping people as a primary method of policing isn’t only morally wrong but also inefficient, leading to skewed perspectives and incorrectly biased judgments of “he/she must be doing x, y z because they are of such and such a group”, when in reality one needs to identify specific situational and individual markers that actually relate to that x, y, z.
Not only is it an irrational violation of a person’s human right to dignity, freedom and presumption of innocence but it’s also not even accurate.
lamberthconsulting.com/racia … esnt-work/
ohrc.on.ca/en/paying-price-h … oesnt-work
civilliberty.about.com/od/lawenf … filing.htm
Go ahead and try to educate yourself. There are proven strategies police can use to identify criminal behavior and racial profiling isn’t one of them. This has been proven beyond doubt due since it had been held up in court lawsuits against use of profiling, which doesn’t result in more effective policing.
But it’s a common fallacy of thinking that “people in group A commit more crimes” equals “police should naturally arrest/search people from group A more frequently as general policy”. When they try that it doesn’t work. The crime stats correlate to location and socioeconomic status and, as I pointed out, disproportionate numbers of minorities are living in high crime, low SES areas (urban or rural). Now would you even want to touch that issue? Nope, your kind won’t go anywhere near it without revealing the absurd banalities and stupidity of thinking that characterizes your view. Because the reason for racial inequalities is that the entire system is implicitly working against certain races and not against others, from policing to hiring to courts to doctors offices to insurance policies to memes in the media. This has been demonstrated many times and isn’t even a question anymore.
kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/wp-conte … t-bias.pdf
nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE … rentIssue&
thinkprogress.org/health/2015/08 … icit-bias/
americanbar.org/content/dam/ … eckdam.pdf
Not to mention that in America, not that long ago, black people were mass enslaved in chains to white masters. As late as 1865 there was chattel slavery, which means that there are black people alive today whose grandfathers were alive while black people were kept as property to whites. Just stop and think about that: there are black people alive right now whose grandparents has been alive when slavery was still around. It really hasn’t been that long since then.
And you expect equal outcomes from people in such s situation so little a time ago? The fact that black people have done as well as they have is truly remarkable considering the factors against them. The system deserves credit where it has worked and fought for equality and reparation of past ills, but also deserves blame where it has in the past and still does prescribe unequal outcomes for people based solely on group membership. It is irrational for a supposedly free, sane, moral and advanced society to function wherein being born black vs white statistically can predict outcomes over large numbers of people, and yet in America it does. This is the problem that needs to be fixed; but again you and your kind have no interest in seeing reality, you merely want to scapegoat people for the sake of your own ignorance and ego.