Oh and one more thing. They assume that racism against Africans in Australia doesn't exist, just because most are relatively recent immigrants.
This study refutes that position.
[https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/0CC4A0A507AC63C4188AF9979731017C/S1834490900000477a.pdf/black\_african\_immigrants\_to\_australia\_prejudice\_and\_the\_function\_of\_attitudes.pdf](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/0CC4A0A507AC63C4188AF9979731017C/S1834490900000477a.pdf/black_african_immigrants_to_australia_prejudice_and_the_function_of_attitudes.pdf)
dear god, they have not seen the massive and widespread media campaign to demonise sudanese immigrants in australia. An "african gangs" narrative was the basis of an entire state election campaign (which thankfuly failed).
I considered commenting as well, but after reading the comments it became pretty clear that their unspoken assumptions are that:
1) Nobody is protesting anything worth protesting and all the protesters are idiots, and what they want should be ignored
2) Most protesters are rioters
3) These rioters are doing an incredible amount of damage (burning cities to the ground) and that's the real issue
4) Policing in America is just hunky dory
5) Democratic politicians are radical extremists
6) Unlike Republicans who are sober centrists, and would never have right wing fringe elements drive policy
7) Defund the police means abolish the police
All of that ranges from completely wrong where the absolute opposite is true (5 and 6) to being distortions of reality (eg. 3 Where the reality is that a comparatively small group of rioters are doing some damage, but the damage is being overblown, and in most cases the damage is not condoned or encouraged by protesters. In many cases we also don't know whether or not the rioters were purposeful agitators or people who are protesting the police).
With 7 I admit that "Defund the Police" is a terribly named movement. It does not, however, stand for getting rid of the police completely. Just limiting their jobs and refocusing them on actually fighting crime and keeping the peace.
There were just so many misconceptions that it would take hours to argue them all on there.
I really hate to be a “Well, ackshually...” person, and I’m sorry to undermine your otherwise-brilliant dunking, but I feel obliged to point out that a not-insignificant number of people, myself included, [really do mean literally abolish the police](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html). Obviously not all at once, and not without having other services already in place to take over many of their functions (all very much in line with what you describe), but with the added explicit end goal of ending policing as we know it.
"Obviously not all at once, and not without having other services already in place to take over many of their functions "
IE: *Not* abolishing the police but rather reorganizing it?
Iirc the riots are doing less damage than the lawsuit payouts for the nypd per year for unlawful arrests.
(And then there is the theft by cops because they claim you are a criminal but cant prove you are not so it is legal theft, thing).
E: eurgh this was meant as a reply to the 7 points post to give some additional info on the riot stuff being overblown. (Calling the 95% of the time peacefull protests riots (or worse race riots) is also a weird tell).
I can anecdotally verify that in robbery offences, victims describe
their attackers as “of African appearance” about 30-35% of the time.
That’s actually more often than victims describe their attackers as
caucasian, when you factor in “I don’t know” and other racial
groups.
I am so glad that the rationalist crowd has such a strong commitment
to rigorous statistical methods.
As an actual Australian person I would like to point out that the
media is obsessed with Sudanese youth crime, so much so that you would
think that no other type of crime occurs in central Melbourne.
So I’m not very surprised that “anecdotally” they think that 30-35%
of crime with witnesses has “African looking” perpetrators.
The comment your title refers to contains an interesting bad
argument, namely that black people commit crimes at a higher rate,
therefore the police are justified in arresting them at a higher rate.
This is statistically idiotic, even if we grant the premises. However, I
think the reason it holds water for them is that they think being
arrested and harrassed by the police is a fitting collective punishment
for black people who are, by their definition (or by some appeal to “low
IQ”) inherently bad.
Yes exactly. That the notion of black on black crime is significant - despite the fact that most people are victimized by people who who they know.
And all this despite the studies that show that drug usage is similar between races. Whites use cannabis as much as blacks. And this is where the disproportions come in when you look at who’s in jail.
But all of this doesn’t make their stats.
It takes more than quoting 1 or 2 studies to understand the truth. Then again, when you read their garbage does anyone really believe they are exploring the entire space and trying to discover the truth?
Yes when I was living in London I committed a crime approximately once a month in the form of the odd bit of weed, and I knew a few bankers and wankers who were doing coke constantly. Of course police don't patrol these neighbourhoods, so they'll never get caught. And even if they do they'll never do time.
Right. The underlying statistical mistake is to assume that arrests happen independently (in the probability sense) of any sort of racial prejudice, i.e. the ex ante assumption is that the police are not racist. We don't actually observe "crime rate" independently of "arrest rate."
There are victimization studies that ask victims of crimes who wronged them. So I think it's not true that you can't observe crime rate independently of arrest rate.
Mostly bad but has some upsides. The fat booty trend is one of those I'm thankful for. Though that is arguably a *black* American trend rather than a generic American one.
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I am so glad that the rationalist crowd has such a strong commitment to rigorous statistical methods.
As an actual Australian person I would like to point out that the media is obsessed with Sudanese youth crime, so much so that you would think that no other type of crime occurs in central Melbourne.
So I’m not very surprised that “anecdotally” they think that 30-35% of crime with witnesses has “African looking” perpetrators.
The comment your title refers to contains an interesting bad argument, namely that black people commit crimes at a higher rate, therefore the police are justified in arresting them at a higher rate. This is statistically idiotic, even if we grant the premises. However, I think the reason it holds water for them is that they think being arrested and harrassed by the police is a fitting collective punishment for black people who are, by their definition (or by some appeal to “low IQ”) inherently bad.
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