I can't believe I'm starting a race thread...

[HeavilyArmed]

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But if thats the case, why call it race?

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Tradition.

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And that is very nearly the sole reason. Almost no other usefulness.

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I promise you damn near every American knows exactly what 'race' means. It's on every government form.

Obfuscate if you must but clarity and universal understanding has value.

[Rduke55]

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But if thats the case, why call it race?

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Tradition.

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And that is very nearly the sole reason. Almost no other usefulness.

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I promise you damn near every American knows exactly what 'race' means. It's on every government form.

Obfuscate if you must but clarity and universal understanding has value.

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I thought we were trying to talk about genetics here, not people's gut feelings.

[Taraz]

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But what does the child's identification say about their genome?

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This was exactly what I was thinking. I don't think anybody is saying that there is no such thing as race. There obviously is. The point is that we created it to describe how people look. It isn't any quality that has any predictive power in and of itself.

Just because something is socially constructed doesn't mean that it isn't real or that it doesn't have a profound effect on society. Some might say God is a socially constructed entity, but look how powerful that "idea" has been.

[hmkpoker]

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But what does the child's identification say about their genome?

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That it contains unique, identifiable phenotypic characteristics.

Dismissing these obvious characteristics as "social constructs" denies that they exist.

[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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The bolded part is obvious to the point of being absurd. White flight in no way supports your argument.

The problem I see with racial profiling is analogous to issues with medical screening tests. If the risk for a woman having breast cancer is 5%, and we have a diagnostic test that is 80% effective, a positive result means she is STILL unlikely to have cancer. So, the question is: Does your screening test (black or not, for example) have a higher sensitivity for crime than 80% or does your population (all black people) have a higher incidence of criminality than 5%? I think both of those are obvious no's. So, while it may be entirely valid that a positive result for 'being black' modifies the risk of criminality, it is still overwhelmingly unlikely they are a criminal.

For this reason, most medical societies would never recommend screening tests like the above (most of the screening tests we use either have better sensitivity or the prior risk is higher) or at the very least using them cautiously. The reason I would be opposed to racial profiling is not because of its statistical inaccuracy, necessarily (after all, it has some outcome as long as its done correctly) but the ACTIONS that are then taken from that. We just don't modify the risk enough to really justify ANY sort of action that could have negative consequences (like alienating an entire group of people, trampling on liberty, etc.)

Maybe I am in the minority here, but if this test conferred something like a 98% sensitivity, I would be in favor of it. The amount of discomfort would clearly be justified IMO by the amazing efficacy of the test. We could dramatically cut crime. But this is nowhere near the case.

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I didn't ignore this, I missed it.

While your points are reasonable I might quibble about the marginal increase in criminality WRT individual black male youth, it's shockingly high.

You're missing the big picture. If you reside in a situation where half the residents are black and on average commit 6 times the violent crime as the other (white) half, you are facing greater peril than in an all white neighborhood. Yes, there are bad white neighborhoods but it's not even close, all considered. Outside of the academic crowd these things don't even need to be discussed. It's common sense.

Is that racist? Yeah, prolly but it's entirely pragmatic and it's the reason for white flight (I'll ignore the schools issue unless you're looking for a 2nd worm can).

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Right, but that isn't racial profiling, at least not how I understand it. Certainly you can say things about groups of people, especially when they group themselves based on some specific characteristic, in this case 'race.' My only qualm is when you try to go to the individual. What you are talking about are really just descriptive statistics of groups, not predictive statistics of individuals, and THAT is what I always assumed the point of racial profiling to be.

You may have a point wrt young, black males. Obviously this isn't specifically racial profiling, as it is also gender profiling and age profiling (young white males are also at higher risk of criminality, although not as high as young black males). And you have my support (as if you'd care) if you can show me that being young, male and black increases your chances of being a criminal to the point of actionability. I don't know what the true statistics are. I doubt you do, but you might, and its possible they would surprise me and change my opinion. But allow me an ENTIRELY made up example to try to illustrate my point here:

Lets say that a random American has a 0.01% chance of being a criminal (criminal defined as committing a serious, violent crime, such as assault, rape, murder, armed robbery, etc). This is probably high, but maybe not. Now lets say we add in the diagnostic tests of sex, 'race' and age. He comes out at male, black and 20. What is his risk now? Are you suggesting its over, say, 1%? Obviously this is a startling increase, from .01% to 1%, but that, IMO, is focusing on the wrong detail. The point is, his risk of being a violent criminal is STILL very, very small, so what type of action does this justify us in taking? I can't see how it justifies ANY action. Targeting young, black males will result in a HUGE amount of wasted money and time.

This just is NOT the same issue as saying we should increase police forces in neighborhoods with predominantly young, black male populations. Its just pointing out that the variation among groups is still so high (the vast majority are not criminals) that profiling individuals based on only these three superficial variables is a waste of time.

Note how dramatically this changes if the numbers that I made up are slightly different. For example, if the modified risk goes to 10%, this now becomes FAR less wasteful. I just have no reason to think that profiling is anywhere near this accurate.

[vhawk01]

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But if thats the case, why call it race?

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Tradition.

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And that is very nearly the sole reason. Almost no other usefulness.

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I promise you damn near every American knows exactly what 'race' means. It's on every government form.

Obfuscate if you must but clarity and universal understanding has value.

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Then define it for me. It should be amazingly simple. Give me a definition that doesn't include as many exceptions and complications as it does clear definitions.

[vhawk01]

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But what does the child's identification say about their genome?

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That it contains unique, identifiable phenotypic characteristics.

Dismissing these obvious characteristics as "social constructs" denies that they exist.

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Like what phenotypes though? I think Rduke's point is that your list is going to be very, very short. Skin color and a few others, but thats it. The group of people that most human beings would agree to call black really do NOT share a laundry list of unique, identifiable phenotypes. And there are other classification systems that share far more.

[bunny]

This is a post from a while back, I'd be interested in your opinion vhawk...

"I'm interested in how the people who claim there is no biological justification for race came to that conclusion. It seems to me "obvious" that Nancy Reagan is a good example of a white woman and Mohammed Ali is a good example of a black man. It doesnt matter to me that there are some people hard to classify by race (or even by gender) - it is still a meaningful and objective classification.

In a similar way - in Australia April is a warmer month than July - there are exceptionally warm july days and cold april days, it doesnt mean that the distinction is meaningless, though.

I have seen race defined as (something like) "A biologically distinct subdivision of a species possessing certain gene frequencies" in evolutionary biology textbooks. Under this definition it is incorrect to consider a race as a bunch of creatures all approximating some sort of "platonic ideal". It is also incorrect to state that all members of a particular racial group have certain characteristics. The definition is more probabilistic.

Would this sort of definition be useful in generating an objective measure?"

[vhawk01]

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This is a post from a while back, I'd be interested in your opinion vhawk...

"I'm interested in how the people who claim there is no biological justification for race came to that conclusion. It seems to me "obvious" that Nancy Reagan is a good example of a white woman and Mohammed Ali is a good example of a black man. It doesnt matter to me that there are some people hard to classify by race (or even by gender) - it is still a meaningful and objective classification.

In a similar way - in Australia April is a warmer month than July - there are exceptionally warm july days and cold april days, it doesnt mean that the distinction is meaningless, though.

I have seen race defined as (something like) "A biologically distinct subdivision of a species possessing certain gene frequencies" in evolutionary biology textbooks. Under this definition it is incorrect to consider a race as a bunch of creatures all approximating some sort of "platonic ideal". It is also incorrect to state that all members of a particular racial group have certain characteristics. The definition is more probabilistic.

Would this sort of definition be useful in generating an objective measure?"

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Sure, although I might take issue with the word 'distinct.' It is anything but. My main point in this has never been that race does not imply some phenotypic commonality. Of course it does. I would agree that most people are going to be able to pick out the 'black' or 'Asian' person, most of the time. My point was simply to point out how EXTREMELY limited this phenotypic similarity is. It really is basically JUST skin color. And for that reason, I don't understand why it gets such special attention. To go back to your weather analogy- there are definitely outliers, but yes, if I wanted to plan my vacation I would do so in April. But that is IT. That is all that knowing what month it is would tell me. Ignoring reality, it would be like saying that we do not have any idea, based on knowing its April and not June, how many new movies are in theaters, how many babies were born today, how many banks are going to be robbed today, or a whole host of other facts. We can only change our expectation of things directly or indirectly related to the weather. We can expect more flowers to be in bloom, or less snow on the ground, but thats it. Obviously, there are better classifications for each of the other things I mentioned, things that are perhaps, in their own right, no more rigid or accurate than the 'month or time of year' grouping. For instance, perhaps more banks are robbed on Saturdays, but plenty are still robbed on other days. So, if we wanted to know when to deposit our money, rather than when to plan our vacation, knowing it was April would be totally useless, while knowing it was Saturday would be crucial.

To bring this back to race, if we want to know what the person will look like, or what their skin color will be, or some other very small set of phenotypes, then race is probably just fine as a classification. Its just useless when trying to predict 'the equivalent of bank robberies or movie openings.' And that is what some people try to use it for.

I've been told I am terrible at analogies, and this one seemed fairly convoluted to me even as I was typing it, so I apologize.

[HeavilyArmed]

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Note how dramatically this changes if the numbers that I made up are slightly different. For example, if the modified risk goes to 10%, this now becomes FAR less wasteful. I just have no reason to think that profiling is anywhere near this accurate.


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Here's a stat I heard in multiple places (doesn't make it true but...), one third of young black males were either in prison, on parole or awaiting trial.

Profiling is folly if you have very few encounters. But if you're a corner store owner in a crappy semi-black neighborhood I guarantee you higher profits (and maybe a longer life) if you profile.