One of the thing that strikes me with the BLM and DEI movement is that the vast majority of people seems to be incapable of thinking in term of distributions, and rather think in term of stereotypes, which leads to what is in my opinion, the very definition of racism and sexism, ie attributing to an individual some attributes derived rightly or wrongly from some metrics (average or percentile) of a distribution purely on the basis of skin colour or gender. Instead of treating an individual as an individual which could be anywhere on those pretty wide distributions.
And I observe that even from friends that are reasonably well educated but have done little to no statistics.
This lack of basic stats skills does lead to bad public policies.
Sorry for my potential lack of understanding to what you are saying. But people don't think in terms in stereotypes because they don't look into distribution. You can still look at a distribution of people and form a stereotype because for most people and most cases you cannot form good enough sample to represent any significant statistics to draw any conclusions in everyday life interactions.
And in the case of BLM. I am not deeply involved with following what the development of the movement but I think at it core (at least when it was formed) is because statistically speaking, you are more likely to be killed by police id you are black. If you look at US prison distribution per capita and race, you can draw a similar conclusion. Stereotypes are a cause not an effect. You get some of that in part because some people are racist and have racial stereotypes.
And it is great that you are saying everyone should be treated as a unit itself. But we all know what this is not the case when you have a significant portion of the people think of people from their lens of stereotypes., Black peoole, muslims, Asians, Jews..etc and this have real consequences on the life of this people.
Good luck telling an TSA officer that you should treat me as individual and don't pick me "randomly" because I have have the wrong color to not be suspicious.
For the BLM, the stats actually support that you are slightly less likely to be killed by the police if you are black. But there are vastly more interactions of black people with the police, and those are aligned with crimes committed, including crimes which stats are unlikely to be affected by policing practice (eg murders). Now we can debate why the black population commits more crime, but it’s not a racist policing discussion.
But it’s even more mundane things. People are focusing on extreme percentiles of distributions, like % of engineers at google, or board members of major companies, ie looking at 0.001%-ish percentiles, where even minor differences in distributions may have a dramatic effect. And this leads to people reacting to this with “so you are saying that women engineers at google are less capable” (read many times on HN during the google memo controversy) which is absolutely not what those differences in distribution mean. They just mean you may see more of one group and less of another, but if the recruitment process is fair, all the people who passed the threshold are equally capable. And then you have to compare that to the distribution of people who actually apply, which has its own biases.
> Now we can debate why the black population commits more crime, but it’s not a racist policing discussion.
Criminal statistics are a record of who is arrested and prosecuted, not a record of who commits the most crime. If a black criminal is more likely to be arrested than a white criminal, then the statistics will reflect that.
Yes, it's more reliable to consider number of crimes reported and number of victims. I think you'll see why there are more police in black communities if you consider those statistics.
What confuses me is that this is now painted as racist and somehow Republican. I clearly remember that back in the 90s it was the Democrats, at the urging of black leaders, who supported harsher sentences and funding for more police (most prominently the Clinton crime bill [1] and three strikes laws in Washington and California [2]).
And we can see that black people still want the police to focus on their communities, as they elect leaders like Eric Adams (over the objections of white progressives), and a Gallup poll in 2020 found that 81% of black people want police to spend same amount of or more time in their area.[3]
That naturally leads to more interactions with police and more incidents when terrible things happen. Policing is always a trade off between the harms that police cause (through mistakes, misconduct, and misunderstandings) and the harms they prevent.
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1: "the largest crime bill in the history of the United States... provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons". "Then-Senator Joe Biden of Delaware drafted the Senate version of the legislation".
2: "The first true "three-strikes" law was passed in 1993, when Washington voters approved Initiative 593. California passed its own in 1994, when their voters passed Proposition 184[16] by an overwhelming majority, with 72% in favor and 28% against."
Which is why I tend to look at homicides as it will be less biased. Every homicide will be accounted for (materially). And if anything you would expect less efforts to be made by the police to identify the author in poorer black areas, which would lead to an under representation. But from memory I think close to 50% of the homicide in the US have black authors (and predominantly black victims too which is consistent with your point). Which is broadly in line with their representation in police shootings.
> For the BLM, the stats actually support that you are slightly less likely to be killed by the police if you are black
I think you meant more likely not "less". And even in thay case, this [1] is statistics up to before covid that shows that it is actually 3 times ratio between black and white risk of being killed by a police. This does not constitute "slightly".
> But there are vastly more interactions of black people with the police, and those are aligned with crimes committed, including crimes which stats are unlikely to be affected by policing practice (eg murders).
That would be true of any race or group of people. They have much more interactions with police other than those which will result in death.
> People are focusing on extreme percentiles of distributions, like % of engineers at google, or board members of major companies, ie looking at 0.001%-ish percentiles, where even minor differences in distributions may have a dramatic effect
Yes, and that's actually how personal stereotypes works. Your experience with people is very limited to form an opinion about race, nationality...etc. It is not even extreme percentile like top or bottom but it is a small percentage that people use to build their opinions.
> but if the recruitment process is fair, all the people who passed the threshold are equally capable
If the process involve human judgment or evaluation, then biases start to be a huge factor that prevents establishing a clear threshold. Unless you have something like a standard exam that will be taken without human interactions. You will always be working under the assumption that the process is not 100% fair. That is actually hard problem to solve especially at big companies. I don't know a solution that can give the best outcome and I don't envy people who have to do it.
But this is a good example of the problem with statistics and the public. Fryer’s analysis was highly touted, but not a single person I talked to could explain it to me or say why his results differed from other analysis.
I think the link you provided argues implicitly that looking at shootings as percentage of police interactions is wrong because policing practices may be biased (ie black population may be more policed than other segments of the population).
What I am saying is that you find a similar black over representation in crimes that are less likely to be overpoliced (homicides which stats should be fairly reliable, ie every incident accounted irrespective of the race of the author, and which if anything would be less policed in poor neighbourhoods where gang violence is more common and less effort is made to identify the author).
I don't think anyone is arguing black overrepresentation in crime. Rather is arrests to shooting ratio a good measure of racial bias. As Fryer himself notes, shootings are very different than almost anything else police do -- its a life changing event. In his own research he notes that excessive force does show racial bias, but it's not viewed as a life changing event for the cop.
In fairness to Fryer (and yourself), we may not have the tools to determine this definitively either way today. And really my more important point is that as a society we should approach with caution statistical claims where we don't have a good understanding of the methods and the pros/cons of the methods. After becoming familiar with Fryer's methods in this study I'm probably leaning toward his conclusions being wrong -- but I wouldn't wager large sums of money on my leaning.
They're both. Some are a cause, others like for example "black people can't swim" are an effect of racist laws. Changing how you treat a group creates its own set of stereotypes. Then you can also get a multilayered stereotype pile from things like cake walk.
And that's an axiomatic error, not statistical. They hold it as an axiom that they should think in terms of percentage instead of individual outcomes. Statistics can't fix it, because you can't question axioms with mathematics alone.
And I observe that even from friends that are reasonably well educated but have done little to no statistics.
This lack of basic stats skills does lead to bad public policies.