First post on Believing Untrue Things is here. I suppose I am just being a follower myself, focusing on the bad information that is widely believed about race because it is in the news. But the problem is general, affecting many issues of the day: environmental concerns; trade, tariffs, and taxation; education results; medical safety and public health. However, I am not even discussing race in general. I started with the example of police practices and the supposed targeting of blacks, and I will continue with that. It is broad enough all by itself, I don't need to drag in other things. As before, you are free to use other examples of people not understanding or relying on math, being reluctant to give up what might be a foundational bit of ideology, or any of the further motives I will discuss here. Don't feel constrained by my constraint.
Granite Dad - we had dinner together last night - tells me he had a comment that got eaten, and I have encouraged him to repost it. (Update: He has.) He raised two important points which I will quickly summarise. The lack of perspective induced by nationwide news contributes to the lack of statistical understanding. When a new event of the police shooting an unarmed black person hits the news, people's first reaction is something like "What? Again? This crap is happening all the time, and it's got to stop!" But we are a nation of 330,000,000 people - I intentionally kept the zeroes instead of abbreviating. In 2020 there were 34 killed*, about one every 11 days. That would be a lot if they were all in New Hampshire, or even in all of New England, which is less than 5% of the country, 2% of the black population. We might perhaps rightfully feel something were deeply amiss if it were concentrated on us like that. But it's not. It just feels like it, because in contrast to my childhood, we know about crime in Colorado or South Carolina and think it's part of us. Nobody knew or cared what the hell happened in Montana in the 60s, and they sure didn't care about New Hampshire, either.
Secondly, there were bad policing practices in Ferguson, especially relying on fines to fund the department. While that is not a racial policy and is used in many locales, it does contribute to unrest and distrust of the police. Libertarians focus on this, and it is not unfair. It may have been relevant to the rioting per se. Yet I regard it as largely irrelevant to this discussion, because no one mentions it anymore. It's all about feeding the race narrative now.
Other Motives:
People whose jobs and incomes directly depend on strained racial relations have an obvious motive for keeping the controversy alive. Aromatherapists believe much can be solved by more aromatherapy, harmonica players think your band needs a harmonica to improve. When what you have is a hammer...
In the general case, this is not necessarily an evil motive. People work for environmental causes or train as physical therapists because they believe those are good things to do, not just because they can make money at them. Over time, idealism and sometimes even good motive wanes while self-interest increases, but we needn't think that everyone in a profession is even half-corrupt. However, humans is humans, and self-interest has some effect on all of us.
There is an indirect self-interest as well, in which keeping your job depends on professing the correct views. Professors, denominational pastors, government employees, and
increasingly, employees of large woke corporations are subjected to
this. My views on transsexuals would have eventually gotten me fired as a social worker. Late in my career, I didn't much care, but had that been the case in my 40s I don't know what accommodations I would have swallowed. I do know from observation that people slowly adopt the ideas of their peer group. This ties in to the last part of this post.
Except for those of us who enter the room determined to give voice to what is unnoticed or unsaid, because we consider the momentum of ideas potentially dangerous. But there are many quiet compromises even among us...
A stray motive is just wanting to stir up trouble. Those sparks are very dangerous, but only when surrounded by tinder. I am not sure they can be removed from effect on any issue. I believe there are few wholly taken by this motive, but I think it is present at some level in all of us. It is likely useful for societies that there's always some of that about, even if it can be catastrophic when the intellectuals and artists decide the culture needs to be purified of Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies. There are always some hanging about who just want to bust some heads for any excuse.
Commonly Noticed Motives
Commonly noticed among my tribe, anyway.
I do think the temptations are worse in political, religious, or cultural issues where the focus naturally goes to fixing other people, or at least getting them to act differently. The attractions of thinking well of oneself, or even thinking oneself rather special are obvious. It also flows naturally into the belief that those other people are wrong, and then quickly that there is something wrong with them. Well, they are obvious in the abstract, and we see them pretty clearly in other people. Everyone knows this temptation is real, but few even engage in even pro forma self-examination. Suspecting even one's good motives is one of the great themes of CS Lewis's writing, dominating his fiction especially. It's one of the reasons I say that reading more CS Lewis is the answer to everything.
I see this motive in what I read everywhere, I see it live and in person, powerful enough to affect me physically and make me cringe. That is likely because I have a peculiar sensitivity to this sin and have developed warning systems for my own language and actions that just go off on a hair-trigger when I see it in others. It is like living in a world where you can't turn the volume down. This is the motive I began the first essay in order to hit hard and having been aiming toward throughout. Sorry to drag you through hundreds of words looking for alternatives and escapes. There will be one more dark motive after this one, related and perhaps more important. But this motive, the secret joy of self-righteousness and the more-secret joy of hating persons has been a fifteen-year theme of this blog. Unsurprising, perhaps, for a Lewis fan.
I am convinced that the conflict has little to do with black people. It is about the Goodwhites against the Badwhites. The Goodwhites define the boundaries, some stark, some gradual, some shifting. They then try to fix the other bad people in various ways. Some see themselves as winsome and kind, attempting to persuade, inspire, and teach. Others concentrate on politically neutralising the Badwhites, some by fair means, others not so scrupulous. Others see it as a battle, with dragons to be slain, not negotiated with, and enemies to be crushed. Though few in number, they naturally get themselves out to the front with high drama. These can seldom be reasoned with or appealed to, as Reason or Niceness are merely instruments to them. They can use these disguises with enormous skill, as the Un-Man did in Perelandra. Wolves hide in sheep's clothing, not in wolf's, for obvious reasons, which is why I consider Minnesota Nice to be one of the great dangers to the church. That group is pretty well infiltrated by hatred at this point, but cannot see themselves as motivated by anything other than desire for good.
(In the Three Dog Night version, they seem to get the message exactly backwards. Plus, Cheryl Barnes has magnificent pipes.)
The Unforgivable Sin is against the Holy Spirit, which I take to mean that which we have long known to be evil but have convinced ourselves is good. It was the self-righteousness of the Pharisees more than any individual act that Jesus told them put them in especial danger. What we can no longer see as sin we cannot confess and repent of, and hence, cannot be forgiven.
The last motive will be Power, which I have suggested in this last section but not discussed. Others have said far wiser things than I about it, as it does not interest me. The damnation of the individuals under self-righteousness is a deeper concern, and power important only in its contribution to that destruction. Yet I will have a go at it anyway, hopefully soon.
*I will note again that those numbers were not worse during the Trump years, but about half what they were in the Obama years.
Great posts, AVI.
ReplyDeleteThis topic drives me to despair, as many people I know seem unconcerned about the empirical validity of fashionable and media-driven narratives that stampede, and are used to stampede, major policy decisions.
Widespread innumeracy, and perverse incentives created by mass networked communications, make everything worse.
I am convinced that the conflict has little to do with black people. It is about the Goodwhites against the Badwhites. The Goodwhites define the boundaries, some stark, some gradual, some shifting.
ReplyDeleteYup. I have called it the Chevy Chase approach to racism: "You're racist, and I'm not." Though, what he actually said was, "I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not." From primary and secondary school, I saw it as the educated versus the less-educated. Or was that the Folk Song Army versus....?
Yes, it is a long-standing divide.
Good reminder. It goes back at least to early 19th C Britain and those who were of noble descent vs those who were (sniff) "in trade."
ReplyDeleteThough the twist is that until a fairly recent time those who were setting the fashion and direction in politics, business, and the arts were at least a bit xenophobic if they weren't often outright racist to go with it. Now they seem to trend from mild to virulent oikophobia.
ReplyDeleteIf you've got an hour, Alec Ryrie of Gresham College has an interesting take on when and how that happened. This is the final lecture of a series but it's a good summation leading to an interesting conclusion.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/jesus-hitler-abolition-of-god
If you prefer to read it, https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/content.gresham.ac.uk/data/binary/3049/2019-05-09_AlecRyrie_JesusHitlerGod-T.pdf
Assistant Village Idiot: Secondly, there were bad policing practices in Ferguson, especially relying on fines to fund the department. While that is not a racial policy and is used in many locales, it does contribute to unrest and distrust of the police.
ReplyDeleteIt can represent systemic racism. Blacks are more likely to interact with police and more likely to be fined. A $100 fine to a middle class person is an inconvenience (they mail it in), but to a poor person it can be a significant punishment. Blacks tend to be poorer, especially in terms of capital. A fine can lead to a cascade of events, loss of a driver's license, more fines for driving without a license while trying to get to work, arrest, loss of job, and damage to confidence in the future. Entire neighborhoods can be significantly impacted by such policies.
Assistant Village Idiot: In 2020 there were 34 killed*, about one every 11 days.
In 1920, 53 Blacks were lynched. Is that a significant number?
@ Christopher B - thank you for that. Watching long videos is tedious for me, so I will either read the transcript or download it to listen to while doing something else, like walking. Ryrie is interviewed on a number of podcasts on what look like similar topics.
ReplyDeleteZachriel Said, "In 1920, 53 Blacks were lynched. Is that a significant number?" Yes.
ReplyDeleteNow, how many have been in 2020?
Sam L: Now, how many have been in 2020?
ReplyDeletePerhaps you missed it: 34 unarmed Blacks were killed by police in 2020. The suggestion was this was not a significant number. As james pointed out on "Post 7800", significance is dependent on circumstance.
Zach said: "It can represent systematic racism>"
ReplyDeleteDo you have any proof besides disparate outcomes that systematic racism exists?
If so, how about a 100 word conceptual thumbnail argument for its existence.
If not, do you understand how problematic the argument of disparate outcomes is because of confounding?
If the existence of disparate outcomes is that significant, how can you then dismiss disparate behavior, such as the fact that black males, 7% of the population, commit 56% of the homicides as evidence of the inferiority of black culture?
If systematic racism is both real and occurs extensively enough to be a serious issue, in what world does the rhetoric and the policy preferences of progressives do anything to actually help solve the problem? Doesn't the current behavior of progressives and their policy prescriptions simply raise the level of racial conflict? Won't it make racism and discrimination more common?
james: Do you have any proof besides disparate outcomes that systematic racism exists?
ReplyDeleteWe provided a historical example which still has currency today.
james: how can you then dismiss disparate behavior
We did no such thing. However, as noted above, life tends to push down on those who are already down.
Zach: "[I] provided a historical example which still has currency today."
ReplyDeleteNot evidence or an argument. Your "example" is flawed on multiple levels. "Unarmed is irrelevant. If they are resisting in any way and in close proximity to the police, the police appropitely respond with force up to deadly force when there's a chance their own weapons could be turned against them.
Further your "examples" are question begging: they are all premised on systematic racism existing and being the cause rather than other explanations. And they are all premised on disparate outcomes being proof of systemic. Which is the very premise you have yet to prove.
Now, make an actual argument and answer all of my questions.
How is the left's rhetoric and policy preferences going to improve, rather than worsen race relations.
james: Not evidence or an argument.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying no business uses referrals from their personal networks to make recommendations? Or that this process can't possibly result in entrenched racial disparities?
james: Unarmed is irrelevant. If they are resisting in any way and in close proximity to the police
And in other cases, such as Philando Castile, they can be armed, peaceful, and killed anyway.
@Zachriel,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate a chance to meditate on what you write and think.
With that in mind, I have a thought related to this.
It can represent systemic racism. Blacks are more likely to interact with police and more likely to be fined. A $100 fine to a middle class person is an inconvenience (they mail it in), but to a poor person it can be a significant punishment. Blacks tend to be poorer, especially in terms of capital.
From what I can make out, about 25% of the poor in America are black, and about 75% are some flavor of non-black. This is much higher ratio than the ratio of black people in the regular population.
Are you saying that poor people are more likely to interact with Police? Or are you saying that black people are more likely to interact with Police, and that the combination of black-and-poor makes things worse?
From what I can see, poor people who are not black face similar economic trouble when a $100 fine hits them in court, in a scenario in which skipping work to attend a court hearing might risk their job. Maybe black people have it worse in some way; I can't tell. But I also notice that in your discussion you skip right from the problems of the poor to the problems of the poor-and-black.
While there are many problems that are unique to the black community, they have a common cause with poor-and-non-black people. Both may be afraid of a fine, or a court date that requires taking time off work, or a police office who may suddenly write down false information like 'suspect appears intoxicated' and cart them off to a night in jail.
Here is a thig I noticed about disparate impact: for every woman killed by Law Enforcement in the United States, 19 men are killed. Does that mean that Police are anti-male? Or does that mean that men outnumber women by a large ratio among the set of people who are at risk of violence when interacting with Police?
We can apply similar logic to deaths that the hands of Police: For every black person who dies at the hands of Police, about 3 non-black people die. Do we know the racial mix of people who are most likely to interact with Police in violent ways? If that ratio is about 25% black, then there isn't any disparate impact (in either shootings of those armed, or shootings of those unarmed). If the ratio is something other than about-25%-black, then there might be disparate impact.
But the logic of disparate impact doesn't apply unless we know the racial mix of the group of people most likely to get into a violent confrontation with Police. So far, no one has brought that into this discussion here.
On a related different subject, about context and numbers.
In 1920, per your sources, there were about 53 racial lynchings in the United States. At the time, the United States had a population of about 105,000,000, of which about 10,000,000 were black.
In 2020, about 34 black people died at the hands of Police, while unarmed. In the same year, between 120 and 130 non-black people died at the hands of Police, while unarmed. If I use the data from the 2010 census, that is against a total population of about 308,000,000, with about 39,000,000 of that population being black.
I don't think killed-by-Police is comparable to lynching. Most of the killed-by-Police cases were in scenarios where Police had some small reason to be present, even if there wasn't any reason for the level of violence brought by Police. In contrast, lynchings arose from entirely different social dynamics.
Still, at a per-capita level, death-while-unarmed at the hands of a Police officer is a much smaller worry for black people in 2020 than lynching was for black people in 1920.
The best example of systemic racism I can think of is affirmative action and the motives behind it.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the thoughtful reply.
ReplyDeleteSJ: In 1920, per your sources, there were about 53 racial lynchings in the United States. At the time, the United States had a population of about 105,000,000, of which about 10,000,000 were black.
You can adjust for population, but the point remains that it represents a very small percentage. Nonetheless, the number had a great impact on society.
SJ: the combination of black-and-poor makes things worse?
Yes. It's hard to be poor. It's harder to be black and poor.
SJ: But I also notice that in your discussion you skip right from the problems of the poor to the problems of the poor-and-black.
Z: life tends to push down on those who are already down.
Michael K: The best example of systemic racism I can think of is affirmative action and the motives behind it.
ReplyDeleteWe provided an example above of systemic racism. If a business in a historically segregated society uses the old-boy network for hiring, it will tend to perpetuate racial disparities in opportunity. Why isn't affirmative action appropriate to break down barriers?