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How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

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Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#311

Post by chishaku »

randyrand wrote: post #279

Police brutality is a real issue. It's less clear that racial bias in policing is a statistically significant issue, however, when accounting for obvious things. If someone has numbers that tell a different story I am all ears. Here are mine when I attempted to find it for myself: black arrests (all crimes) a year: 2.2 million white arrests (all crimes) a year: 5.6 million https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/cr…

For all the budding data scientists out there, can you describe your general methodology in more detail?

Here’s my summary:

1. Pick a complex issue.

“racial bias” in policing

2. Pick a (single) year. / Ignore history.

2017

3. Pick a metric, any metric.

“deaths by police”

4. Write conclusion to match your preconceived notions.

5. Congrats, you’re now “data-driven”.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#312

Post by elmomle »

awinder wrote: post #303
randyrand wrote: post #279

Police brutality is a real issue. It's less clear that racial bias in policing is a statistically significant issue, however, when accounting for obvious things. If someone has numbers that tell a different story I am all ears. Here are mine when I attempted to find it for myself: black arrests (all crimes) a year: 2.2 million white arrests (all crimes) a year: 5.6 million https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/cr…

Wait, what’s your math here? Black deaths by police are 4.5/100k and white is 1.5, that’s a 3x or 300% difference.

I think it's "30%" (it's not). If p (pct population) is scaled to units of "people", and m as crimes/year and k as (deaths in custody) / (100k people), we want to compare the magnitudes of p * (k / m) for the two groups. Plugging the numbers in as cited, and putting the African American cohort over the White cohort, we get 1.3, i.e. "30%" increase in probability of dying during a police interaction if black.

But as has already been pointed out, it's way more than 30%. The numbers given in the original comment hide the real impact of the bias, since "arrest" was implicitly being treated as a fair event (which it isn't; as just one example, blacks in particular are many times more likely to be subject to a traffic stop than whites, while they tend to have contraband on their possession less often [1][2][3][4]).

Moreover, this isn't just about deaths in police custody. This is about inhumane and repressive policing practices that perpetuate a longstanding effort to deprive blacks of meaningful political power [5]. It is both foolish and cruel to see an entire population struggling and assume it's because they are bad people.

[1] https://sfdistrictattorney.org/sites/default/files/Document/... [2] https://chicagopatf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PATF_Fina... [3] https://www.aclu-il.org/en/press-releases/traffic-stop-data-... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traff... [5] See Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#313

Post by kasey_junk »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #299
harryh wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the libertarian suggestions are certainly part of the solution but I don't think they're sufficient on their own. History shows us that racism is remarkably resistant to market forces.

It's not necessary to eliminate racism. Imagine if the citizens of a community had the power to pull some of their money away from ineffective police departments to hold them accountable. There could be competing police forces, all run by the government, and the citizens could fund the ones they prefer, not unlike charter schools allow parents to fund the schools they prefer, and food stamps allow the poor to buy the…

We had this with fire departments for thousands of years. It didn’t go well.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#314

Post by AnimalMuppet »

testbot123 wrote: post #277
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Racist violence is political violence. It is agents of the state enforcing a racial order which is inextricable from (and perpetuated by) the politics of the state. Boloney. It is individuals, even if in positions of authority (and even if far too many of them), carrying out their own warped agenda, not that of the state. > Okay, but then people are more likely to be killed by a police officer than by arson. So why…

> Boloney. It is individuals, even if in positions of authority (and even if far too many of them), carrying out their own warped agenda, not that of the state. We'll have to agree to disagree. I believe that the justice system in the US is inextricably tied to systematic, institutionalized racism, and that the justice system and its roots cannot be divorced from those who are enforcing its laws. Minorities in this c…

> I believe that the justice system in the US is inextricably tied to systematic, institutionalized racism...

Yeah, I disagree. And yet...

> Minorities in this country are arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced differently from their white counterparts because of that institutionalized racism.

I'm not sure I can disagree with that. I wish I could...

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#315

Post by majormajor »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #198
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Revolution certainly included a good share of looting. Wealthy local townspeople who were viewed as sympathetic to Britain were brutally driven out of their homes, and whatever possessions they could not take with them as they fled to Canada or the Caribbean were plundered by the revolutionaries. While the ideologues of the American Revolution were arguing for lofty Enlightenment-era ideals, on the groun…

No doubt, but I don't see what this has to do with anything. The fact that opportunistic looting took place doesn't refute the fact that the American Revolution was overwhelmingly about independence and representative government.

"Protests of non-responsive oppressive governments and their agents that get accompanied by opportunistic looting" sounds like this last week to me.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#316

Post by fzeroracer »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #267
testbot123 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racist violence is political violence. It is agents of the state enforcing a racial order which is inextricable from (and perpetuated by) the politics of the state. > And, "it hasn't kill anyone yet" is a pretty weak counter to the claim that arson can be violence. In fact, people do die from arson. The fact that nobody has - yet - in these protests does not change that whatsoever. Okay, but then people are more like…

> Racist violence is political violence. It is agents of the state enforcing a racial order which is inextricable from (and perpetuated by) the politics of the state. Boloney. It is individuals, even if in positions of authority (and even if far too many of them), carrying out their own warped agenda, not that of the state. > Okay, but then people are more likely to be killed by a police officer than by arson. So why…

Even if you oppose both for the same reason, you should be able to recognize that they are not, in fact, the same. You're ignoring the power dynamics at play here which makes violence and excessive force by police officers far worse than arson by the rioters.

If you equate all violence as being the same, then you're saying that the violence committed by the oppressed is the same as the violence committed by the oppressors. Once we recognize that they are not the same, then we can understand that yes, rioting is bad, but the police response is far worse.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#317

Post by mooseburger »

evmar wrote: post #189
kajumix wrote: post #35

"I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness... But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices —…

MLK gave a speech at Silicon Valley's own Stanford and touched on this subject (the same one with the "riot is the language of the unheard" quote you might have seen circulating). https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm See the bit starting with: "Now there's another notion that gets out, it's around everywhere. It's in the South, it's in the North, it's In California, and all over our nation. It's the notion that le…

Can't change the heart with rioting either, and are you sure you know whose hearts need to change, and what change needs to occur? I think you could erase all racism from the hearts of humanity and end up with basically the same world, there's no reconciling the self-celebrating narcissism of moderns with universal love.

Can't take the mote out of your brother's eye until you remove the beam in your own. This applies to everyone, even anti-racists.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#318

Post by chiefalchemist »

frogpelt wrote: post #44

I agree with almost everything Mr. Obama wrote. But... I feel the complete opposite of “hopeful” when I see these riots, when I see people so angry they will destroy their own cities. Because it accomplishes the exact opposite of they hope it will accomplish: 1. Those who side with heavy-handed police tactics feel vindicated for their prejudices. 2. The communities of those who feel unheard and left out are torn down…

Obama, the POTUS who ordered plenty of military actions that led to hundreds of innocent civilian deaths. Civilians who did not have white skin. The irony should not be too quickly dismissed.

"President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war"

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-obama-at-war/

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#319

Post by afiori »

mmastrac wrote: post #22
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #15

> So let’s not excuse violence, or rationalize it, or participate in it. Taboos around violence for political are one of the crucial building blocks for a functioning democracy. If those taboos are broken, even for a good cause, you set a precedence that violence works. And the next cause won’t be as good. One only has to look at the lessons of the Roman Revolution that started with the murder of Grachus, and ended w…

I cannot condone violence nor encourage it, but you have to admit that the first few protests and property damage drastically influenced the quick arrest of an officer that may not have been arrested or even fired if it didn't happen. The non-violent protests of Colin Kaepernick were mocked and used to rally the other side and just weren't effective. The problem here is not the violence, but a policing system that is…

> I cannot condone violence nor encourage it, but you have to admit that the first few protests and property damage drastically influenced the quick arrest of an officer that may not have been arrested or even fired if it didn't happen.

I am deeply critical of this line of thought. There are so many negative consequences of properties destruction and looting that counterweight the benefits.

As far as I am concerned this is an argument that only someone that did not have a riot outside of their own house can espouse.

I apologize for the hyperbole of that argument, but it is something that I would personally say to everyone condoning the destruction, the looting, and the violence; even knowing that in some instances I will be wrong.

I a couple of months there will be one less evil cop around and also quite few stores destroyed, livelihood evaporated, family savings lost, destroyed buildings in historically minority and poor neighborhoods.

Once the dust settles hundreds of people will be in far worse conditions that they would have been otherwise AND those will not be the protesters, those will be the people, families, kids, that had the protest happen around them.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#320

Post by afiori »

vkou wrote: post #237
lliamander wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling someone names is not an ad-hominem . Making accusations about a person's character can be a valid inference based on their behavior. What makes an ad-hominem is thinking that a person's character (or other attributes) has any bearing on the correctness of their argument. For example: "X is a bad person, therefore their argument is invalid" is an ad-hominem . Bad people can still make valid arguments. "X's arg…

> Calling someone names is not an ad-hominem It's not, but it also has no place on HN.

The insult was not directed at the commenter, rather to a group of people that popularized the quote.

It is the difference between "If you believe X then your school must have had brain-dead teachers" and "If you believe X you are brain-dead"

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