Walking While Black • Hacker News Board

Re: Walking While Black

#121

Post by verylittlemeat » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #5

When I was growing up I remember the pride our educational system tried to instill in us and it seems so fake in retrospect. It's impossible to be proud of a nation that is only a land of opportunity for those who are white and middle class. Its not that I'm not proud to be an American so much as I don't consider myself one I'm just a person who happens to reside here because I don't have better options.

I don't mean to be condescending but have you traveled much to other countries? I spent 3 years traveling across South America and most people there just take it as obvious that darker skinned people are lesser humans. I made friends with dark skin people who casually dropped in conversation that they wish they weren't so inferior, that's how internalized the racism is.

Racism is a deeply held in/out-group identifier in humans. Western education tries to confront that and fails in many ways but really you should appreciate your education in a broader context. This isn't just an appeal to whataboutism because the US is actively trying to promote multiculturalism in a way that just doesn't happen in many other countries.

Re: Walking While Black

#122

Post by RobertRoberts » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #120

RobertRoberts wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the raw data about these types of crime say though? I lived near a university and had multiple bikes stolen. If the data points to a demographic in that area, for example where 0% of bikes are stolen by women, why would people in that area react if a woman is working with her bike? Raw data may disagree with you, but it's impartial and unbiased. (unless you want to argue the collection and recording of data…

And I'm sure that the passersby had data about bicycle thief demographics that they looked at before they chose how to react.

Statistically speaking, if 100% of bike thieves are male (in a certain location) then the inherent, and justifiable, bias from the population would be towards males. No data lookup needed.

Re: Walking While Black

#123

Post by RobertRoberts » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #115

RobertRoberts wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the raw data about these types of crime say though? I lived near a university and had multiple bikes stolen. If the data points to a demographic in that area, for example where 0% of bikes are stolen by women, why would people in that area react if a woman is working with her bike? Raw data may disagree with you, but it's impartial and unbiased. (unless you want to argue the collection and recording of data…

Being tall is correlated with playing basketball, but you'd have to be pretty dumb to watch a short guy shooting hoops right in front of you and conclude he wasn't playing basketball.

I can't quite figure out the argument you are making. I've had to work on my bike lock because it was "stuck", and it could look like "stealing", but I wasn't. Did I understand you correctly?

Re: Walking While Black

#124

Post by yosito » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

neor wrote: post #83

superkuh wrote: post #31

This was a wonderfully written piece and a lot of it rings true to me even as a white as you can be person in a smallish state university town in the midwest. But maybe being 6'2" with a big unkempt hobo beard is almost as scary as being black. I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assum…

Sometimes it really is a thin line. In my country (The Netherlands) police sometimes check all cars passing a temporary checkpoint. They check if you have open fines, paid your taxes etc. When really expensive cars pass those checkpoints they verify that the owner actually has a job to afford cars like these and if the owner doesn't they can impound the car on suspicion of being paid with criminal money. Statistics h…

> It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were fine with it.

Don't use statistics as an excuse for racism. Eliminate racism everywhere you find it. There is no excuse.

> So where should police draw the line?

There should be a line drawn at racial profiling; it is never an acceptable way to predict who might be a criminal.

Re: Walking While Black

#125

Post by runako » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #118

diddid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The partners are always the first SUSPECT and the police do their due diligence to RULE THEM OUT. Even on the 1/10 where the weren't the murderer, the police still intrude on them to try to find the truth. Being a SUSPECT != SENT TO JAIL. The rapper in the story was a SUSPECT, they weren't SENT TO JAIL which makes your analogy not an analogy at all, because well, they aren't anologous. If anything I feel your argueme…

Ah, you are correct that there is a missing element to the analogy, and this is it: The woman lies dead in the murder case. When the rapper was pulled over, there was no case of a Ferrari stolen by a dark-skinned man. The police were not acting on a tip that the rapper was smuggling narcotics in his car. They stopped him for driving while black. If we want to add the missing link, we then say that the police, knowing…

> The very notion of all men being permanent suspects of a crime would rightly be considered abhorrent. And so it is here with people of colour.

Thank you for these extremely well-reasoned comments.

Re: Walking While Black

#126

Post by yosito » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

tailrecursion wrote: post #37

superkuh wrote: post #31

This was a wonderfully written piece and a lot of it rings true to me even as a white as you can be person in a smallish state university town in the midwest. But maybe being 6'2" with a big unkempt hobo beard is almost as scary as being black. I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assum…

Thank you for adding perspective to this issue with police and drawing it out of exclusively-race territory. I would suggest that perhaps, part of what's happening is that the police are optimizing for a particular metric. We can hope that it's crime reduction, or some number or numbers very close to that. When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall. The police, like most anyone, make errors based on superfi…

> When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.

This is very true. People often assume that things like machine learning or AI won't have racial biases, but then we find out time and time again that our algorithms are in fact biased. It's not that the bias is intentional (even human bias is rarely intentional), it's that by focusing on metrics, the metric of racial equality often suffers. I'm not sure why you were down voted for pointing this out. This is a key concept to understand if we care about creating a more equal society in an age of big data and machine learning. Google did some research in this area: https://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking-discriminat... The TL;DR version is that in order to eliminate bias, you have to be aware of biases as metrics and optimize to eliminate them.

Re: Walking While Black

#127

Post by grkvlt » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #80

Jaruzel wrote: post #47

North America's attitude towards people of colour, absolutely disgusts me. I simply do not understand why that a country that was founded on on the principles of freedom continues to act this way. The fourth amendment clearly states that all citizens should be treated equally if suspected of a crime, yet this simply does not happen. Yeah, the UK (my homeland) has it's problems, but in the main, racial in-equality is…

we actually do have this problem in the UK - for example, with the police targeting black teenagers/young adults for stop-and-searches in London. It seems a lot less pervasive/severe than in the US though.

I remember watching the Metropolitan Police (bringing you Institutional Racism since the 1950s) checkpoints at the 'ring of steel' in the City of London during my smoke breaks - I can't recall any time they stopped anyone white, it was always blacks. The stated purpose of the checkpoints was to prevent IRA terrorism, and young black men have never really been known to be active Irish Republicans and Catholics...

Re: Walking While Black

#128

Post by jetrink » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

sureaboutthis wrote: post #102

fyi1183 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you make a lot of good points, except for one: Walking as a white man through a black neighborhood, the police won't stop you. And even if they did, their attitude would be very different than if it was the other way around.

I have read numerous stories and heard accounts of white people in black neighborhoods who were stopped because it is assumed they are only there to buy drugs. Why would a white person be in such a neighborhood? Sure, there are valid reasons, but it is generally still out of the ordinary.

This is something that I have experienced. I'm white and I worked summers doing construction-related work. I was often questioned by police if they saw me sitting in my personal vehicle before work started in a black neighborhood.

Re: Walking While Black

#129

Post by ergothus » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

sureaboutthis wrote: post #102

fyi1183 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you make a lot of good points, except for one: Walking as a white man through a black neighborhood, the police won't stop you. And even if they did, their attitude would be very different than if it was the other way around.

I have read numerous stories and heard accounts of white people in black neighborhoods who were stopped because it is assumed they are only there to buy drugs. Why would a white person be in such a neighborhood? Sure, there are valid reasons, but it is generally still out of the ordinary.

So your claim of equality is that a black man in a white neighborhood is assumed to be stealing from good (white) people, while a white man in a black neighborhood is assumed to be visiting drug dealers?

This still seems like a problem to me. I agree with your above statement about cops reacting to what isn't "normal", but the problem is that normal and perception of normal are not the same.

Re: Walking While Black

#130

Post by sureaboutthis » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

ergothus wrote: post #129

sureaboutthis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read numerous stories and heard accounts of white people in black neighborhoods who were stopped because it is assumed they are only there to buy drugs. Why would a white person be in such a neighborhood? Sure, there are valid reasons, but it is generally still out of the ordinary.

So your claim of equality is that a black man in a white neighborhood is assumed to be stealing from good (white) people, while a white man in a black neighborhood is assumed to be visiting drug dealers? This still seems like a problem to me. I agree with your above statement about cops reacting to what isn't "normal", but the problem is that normal and perception of normal are not the same.

I said no such thing as you claim in your first sentence.