[vhawk01]

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I'm sorry, I interpreted your quote in roughly the following way, "I don't really care about the particulars of genetic classification--racial divisions based on skin color are useful because people with those skin colors behave in certain ways." If this isn't a fair paraphrase, please explain the subtleties I missed.

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You're not too far off. I'm more than content to use all the information at hand even if it fails the PC racist test. Do you have any doubt about the correlation of American blacks and violent crime? Causation is not the issue, personal safety is. Do you doubt white flight? Can all those whites be making the same wrong assumption, that avoiding urban American blacks makes for a safer life? It's statistically sound, PC poison. I'll stick with the obvious, you are welcome to the social constructs.

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Correlation does not equal causation. There are parts of Russia that are many times more dangerous statistically than urban American centers. Are the residents of these areas black? (Hint: no.)

Let me also ask you, would you feel more likely to be mugged by a black man who makes $100,000 a year, or a low-income white?

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I really don't know if I like this argument. I mean, its obviously valid, but in a meaningless way. Yes, the low-income white is going to be far more likely to commit a crime. But HA is supposing that the only readily-available metric is their race (or skin color if you prefer, which I do). So, sure, it would be better to do something like "Complete Profiling," but that is not feasible, whereas racial profiling (barely) is. So you really have to argue RP on its own merits, not simply compare it to a better, ideal and unfeasible alternative.

To continue my analogy, wouldn't complete excisional biopsy detect breast cancer far better than mammography? Of course, but we aren't going to just start cutting everyone open, we have to decide if mammograms are worth the cost(downside).