Month: September 2020

Parts I – VI^[i] of this series described mostly well-intended policies that harmed Blacks and produced valid grievances. Let’s now sort out perhaps the single most debilitating and confounding consequence of the serial failures of multiple attempts to address problems unique to Blacks in America. Before the War on Poverty, Blacks were making great strides legally, politically, socially, and economically (closing the income gap with Whites^[ii]). A primary reason for that progress was that Blacks had vastly higher hopes then than now.^[iii] Let’s sort out how the combination of serial broken policy promises and accompanying messaging has made addressing Black problems so hard to alleviate.

Humans are “loss averse.”^[iv] Loss aversion causes the sadness from a broken promise to be more impactful than the happiness and hopes the promise induced. Hope is essential to setting and achieving goals, e.g., escaping generational poverty. Dashed hopes also increase pessimism. Pessimism saps motivation to pursue goals, and it takes “a toll on [people’s] mental health, their physical health may take a beating, too. While it may be useful in isolation or moderation, pessimism is associated with anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, hostility, high blood pressure, and heart disease”^[v] — thereby physically reducing one’s ability to pursue goals.

The serial dashing of Black hopes and happiness created tragic results in inner-city communities. Without hope that progress is possible, many Blacks to believe that education is for suckers.^[vi] (Fortunately, there are extraordinary exceptions, but the norm is clear.) Sadly, that hopelessness is not baseless.^[vii] Far too many inner-city kids do not desire to learn, and the schools available to them are not conducive to learning.

Black leaders know how debilitating those beliefs are.^[viii] Sadly, most Black leaders try to address problems by doubling down on the policies that cause debilitating thoughts. Perhaps the most momentous dashed hope suffered by Blacks was President Obama’s failure to deliver on his promises to Blacks.^[ix] So, the cycle continues and convincing inner-city Black students to work hard at school becomes progressively harder.

Part of “What’s Going On” is that Americans are reaping the whirlwind of decades of dashed dreams produced by flawed analyses, terrible messaging, and repeated doubling down on policies that dashed dreams.^[x] Describing what is awful about the messaging reveals why doubling down will make matters worse.

“Racism Stacks the Deck Against Blacks”

Continually reminding Blacks that the deck is stacked against them is demotivating. Directing attention to racism rather than what stacked the deck keeps Blacks ill-informed and supporting policies that hurt them. That messaging also creates a worse problem.

Consider the following messages:

1. Nice people, who wished nothing but the best for Blacks, built structures that unintentionally disadvantaged Blacks. Those people now want to fix those structures; or
2. Anti-Black racists built structures that intentionally disadvantage Blacks. As long as those racists are around, a democratic process will not fix the problems.

Despite Message A being closer to the truth,^[xi] Blacks hear messages similar to the false and hope-killing Message B.

Let’s expand on how Message B. hurts Blacks:

• Students hearing Message A. will likely believe the people who built the structures will fix them. Students hearing Message B. are more likely to think that the structures will remain — absent major change.  Many believe that justice requires burning down the structures. (Sound familiar?^[xii])
• Message B. causes many Blacks to feel education is for suckers. Peer pressure not to “act white” is high and often violent.^[xiii] Kids who do not want to learn won’t. No amount of money poured into schools can make kids willing to be a bullying victim.^[xiv]
• Thankfully, there are paths out of generational poverty for highly talented Blacks without a good education and a typical black person. About half of Black American households are in the middle to upper classes.^[xv] The other half, however, need an education to succeed anywhere in the modern world.
• Jobs that do not require an education, e.g., robbery, theft, drug trafficking, pimping, prostitution, are dangerous, unhealthy, and high-stress paths to dead-ends, prison, or death. Maintaining a wholesome family life or gaining the dignity^[xvi] of providing income and security for one’s family with a dead-end job is unlikely. As if that were not bad enough, being unhealthy causes Blacks to be more susceptible to diseases, e.g., COVID-19.
• Convincing Blacks that racism is causing their problems ignites outrage based on falsehoods^[xvii] (e.g., a Black cop killing a Black man = racism). Baseless anger and falsely blaming others helps no one and prevents focus on what would help.

Everyone has troubles and blessings. No matter one’s grievances/blessings ratio, one can choose to count blessings or woes. Counting one’s blessings is essential to living a good life.^[xviii] It’s no wonder that counting one’s blessings is emphasized in at least five of the six primary religions. Consequently, urging Blacks to focus on the things stacked against them typically dooms them to unhappiness, perpetual grievances, and misbehavior. Misbehavior spawns even more troubles.^[xix]

“Systemic Racism Is Holding Blacks Back”

The messaging that “systemic racism” holds Blacks back has the same flaws as “Racism Stacks the Deck Against Blacks,” and more:

Disproportion Does Not Equal Racism.  Some non-racist^[xx] government “structures” heavily subsidize things Whites care more about, e.g., ballet, symphony, and opera, and lightly subsidize art forms of other cultures. Unlike the unconstitutional laws of seventy years ago, anti-Black preferential structures are virtually non-existent today.^[xxi] (Those remaining should go.) Conversely, many more pro-Black “structures” exist today.^[xxii]

Evidence that structural racism is insignificant is that the ACLU and others have been suing and eliminating racist laws and practices for over seventy years. Courts have struck down consistently struck down structural racism. If BLM or anyone else could list anti-Black structures, the list would be used for political purposes. Those lists do not exist.

Nevertheless, in terms of wealth, income, and other metrics under existing structures, Whites and Asians fare far better than Blacks.^[xxiii] While lingering effects of past racist systems remain, contrary to what many leftists would have us believe, those disproportional effects are hardly evidence of racism now. [Sorting out all the problems created by conflating the effects of past racism with imagined racism today is critical but beyond the scope of this post.]

As an example, consider infrastructure. Roads are structures essential to the economy. Whites might disproportionately use or generate income from roads. But everyone is free to use them as much as they like — despite Whites paying disproportionately more of the taxes that fund their construction and maintenance.

Everything would be more expensive without maintained roads — which would disproportionately hurt poor people (and Whites are not disproportionately poor). Ambulances use roads to rush people of all colors to hospitals, and roads are required to stock stores patronized by everyone. Infrastructure cannot be legitimately be characterized as a “racist structure.” Yet Blacks hear otherwise and are understandably inflamed.

Illusory Enemy. Political strategists in countries that despise racism know that characterizing a project as a fight against racism helps the cause. In those countries, however, finding significant racism is nearly impossible.^[xxiv]

So, strategists attempt to redefine^[xxv] “racism” so that actual racism is optional. Disproportion will do.^[xxvi] For a growing number of people, the resulting definition is functionally equivalent to “anything that non-Whites believe doesn’t help them.” Things Blacks believe don’t help them are not just bad; they are evil. This strategy instills unjustified and counterproductive outrage among Blacks. Worse, it stretches “racism” to include things mildly bad or even benign.^[xxvii] “Racist” becomes so ambiguous that it is nearly meaningless.^[xxviii] To be socially useful, being called a racist must sting when it hits the mark. Being called a racist when the target merely believes that a BLM proposal will hurt Blacks has no sting. If the target’s analysis is correct, being a “racist” could be a badge of bravery and honor. Taking the sting out of being called a “racist” harms Blacks.

To encourage Blacks to add imaginary troubles to their counts of woes is perhaps the saddest of the left’s messaging.

If the BLM’s goals were to alleviate legitimate Black grievances, it would live up to its name. Let’s sort out what BLM is up to in the next post in this series.

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[i] What’s Going On? – Part I The Mess, What’s Going On? – Part II Black Lives Do Matter, Problems Aplenty, What’s Going On? – Part III Black Lives Do Matter, The “Do-Gooders’” Slate, What’s Going On? – Part IV Black Lives Do Matter, Do-Gooders’ War On Poverty, What’s Going On? – Part V Black Lives Do Matter, Unfair Discriminatory Structures, and What’s Going On? – Part VI Black Lives Do Matter, The Stereotyping Problem

[ii] What’s Going On? – Part IV Black Lives Do Matter, Do-Gooders’ War On Poverty

[iii] Condoleezza Rice: Director of the Hoover Institution | Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson @37:14

[iv] Loss aversion

[v] Pessimism

[vi] If Beale Street Could Talk; Would There Be Any Black Men Around To Listen My Friend?

[vii] Miss Virginia

[viii] OBAMA:NOTION OF ‘ACTING WHITE’ HAS TO GO

[ix] After the Obama disappointment, black voters want more than empty symbolism

[x][x]  Wealth, Poverty, and Politics @ 23:07 “Those who have promoted the prevailling social vision, in which lags, gaps or disparities to the deteriment of black people are the fault of white people are trapped in the corrollary that these lags, gaps or disparities should disapear, once those other people are constrtined by civil rights laws and policies. But nothing of the sort has happened.”

[xi] What’s Holding Blacks Back? “[False claim:] Most black people are poor (and middle-class blacks are statistical noise). Almost half of the blacks surveyed in a Gallup poll supposed that three out of four black people live in inner cities. Yet in 2001 most black people are neither poor nor even close to it: by any estimation, middle-class blacks outnumber poor ones. And at last count, only one in five blacks lived in the inner city.

[xii] BLM leader: If change doesn’t happen, then ‘we will burn down this system’ and UNHINGED: CNN’s Don Lemon: “We’re Going To Have To Blow Up The Entire System”

[xiii] Miss Virginia

[xiv]  AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF ‘ACTING WHITE’  “Gaining a better understanding of peer e§ects which contribute to black underachievement is of paramount importance in forming public policy and the subject of this paper… Individuals exposed to these social interactions have disincentives to invest in particular behaviors (i.e. education, ballet, proper speech) due to the fact that they may be rejected by their social peer group.”

In America; A Nation of Nitwits “Some African-American students, unable to extricate themselves from the quicksand of self-defeat, have adopted the incredibly stupid tactic of harassing fellow blacks who have the temerity to take their studies seriously. According to the poisonous logic of the harassers, any attempt at acquiring knowledge is a form of “acting white,” and that, of course, is to be shunned at all costs.”

[xv] African-American middle class

[xvi] The Benefits of Work to the Worker—A Timeless Issue

[xvii] What’s Going On? – Part VI Black Lives Do Matter, The Stereotyping Problem, What’s Going On? – Part V Black Lives Do Matter, Unfair Discriminatory Structures, and 7 Statistics That Show That ‘Systemic Racism’ Doesn’t Exist In Policing:

[xviii] Gratitude and the Good Life and 7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude

[xix]  African Americans cited for resisting arrest at high rate in S.F. “African Americans in San Francisco are cited for resisting arrest at a rate eight times greater than whites even when serious crimes are not involved, according to statistics drawn from court records.”

[xx] What’s Going On? – Part V Black Lives Do Matter, Unfair Discriminatory Structures

[xxi] Taking Racism Seriously—And Literally and BLACKOUT: HOW BLACK AMERICA CAN FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S LONG HISTORY OF RACISM @17:35

[xxii] See endnote i.

[xxiii] One Does Not Know Where an Insight Will Come From” | People I (Mostly) Admire: Kerwin Charles

[xxiv] From the Left: Bret and Heather 47th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Butler Did It @56:30 and from the Right:  Ben Shapiro DEBUNKS Viral ‘Systemic Racism Explained’ Video

[xxv] ‘Racism has been redefined’ Bret Weinstein on woke science & how humans succeed – BQ #31, The problem with the left’s attempts to redefine racism, and Stop redefining racism: “Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not.”

[xxvi] The Myth of Systemic Racism

[xxvii] Wanting to secure the border is labeled “racist.” Most unauthorized crossings are by low-skilled workers who flood that labor market, which drives down the job opportunities and pay the labor market in which low-skilled Blacks compete. See endnote xx and DEAR LIBERALS: NO, THERE’S NOTHING RACIST ABOUT SECURING BORDERS…

[xxviii] Thomas Sowell: Claims of ‘Systemic Racism’ Have ‘No Meaning,’ Resemble Nazi Propaganda

Netflix’s /The Social Dilemma, an exposé on social media, is informative and important. [It does not, however, absolve Netflix of its public disservice entitled “Cuties” (which I have not watched).] It describes the magnitude of a serious dilemma: Social media bestows unfathomable benefits on humanity/society, but humans are gravely harmed by it, and societies cannot survive social media its current incarnation.

About a year ago, I wrote a six-part blog series on “Free Speech and Big Tech.” The third installment discussed “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Conundrum.” The gist was that we couldn’t live with or without social media. /The Social Dilemma’s riff on the subject adds observations, explanations, and insights by mostly former executives and key developers of the big social media platforms, many of whom were very impressive.

The flick convincingly explained just how addictive and effective social media has become at manipulating users. With fascinating details, they also explain how and why social platforms (1) became so dominant and influential, (2) are addictive, and (3) are harmful, especially for kids under 16.

While quite a bit of time was devoted to pointing out that users are not Big Tech’s customers, the information users give to Big Tech is the product. (The adage, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” comes to mind.) While true, dwelling on this relatively insignificant point added little to the thesis. Perhaps it was necessary to stir emotions.

The cast absolved the social media company founders of intentions to build a human-consuming monster, i.e., none believed that Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, etc. intended or expected the problems their platforms have created. (I do not doubt that.)

However well-intended the founders were, they built a human-consuming, tyrannical monster that is growing more powerful by the nanosecond. If anyone doubts that action is required to mitigate the harm and retain the benefits of social media, that there is no doubt should be evident to everyone, except possibly those who have not learned history’s lessons about tyranny.

The movie’s riff on Big Tech’s “fact-checking” being a farse (Big Tech cannot know or find out what is and is true) is a public service. However, it would have been better had they beefed this segment up a bit. For example, they could have added that the expertise of social media companies’ experts concerns social media platform development and operation. Those people cannot also be the top experts in art, science, law, medicine, philosophy, history, current events… So, they cannot have the expertise to determine the validity of a fact they want “fact-checked.” Facts needing a check typically concern matters about which there is controversy. That the platform needs to outsource the fact-checking means the platform lacks the expertise to declare a winner in debates between qualified scientists, economists, political philosophers, etc.

But the situation is worse than that. Everyone is biased, especially people involved in “fact-checking.” The impact of bias starts with the decision to check a fact. To check or not to check depends on whether the reviewing employee suspects a claim to be sufficiently false and harmful to warrant an intervention. Unavoidably, the decision to “fact-check” depends on the employee’s values, political persuasions, the interests of the company, and the employee’s self-interest. A highly biased or politically motivated employee is less likely to suspect a false claim that confirms her biases and more likely to doubt a valid claim contrary to her prejudices. Bias also affects which biased “fact-checker” will “fact-check.” That process has no chance of consistently finding the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. See also, “The Truth Is Hard For The New York Times.”

Back to the review: Social media’s power to manipulate the user’s actions and beliefs is tremendous, and As noted above, A.I. is increasing that power every nanosecond. A social media platform’s profit is a function of how much it can cause users to believe and do what the platform’s customers (advertisers and tyrants) want them to believe or do. The more time a user spends on a social media platform, the more power the platform has to manipulate the user. So, Big Tech developers make their platforms as addictive as possible. With the help of A.I., they have gotten very good at it (as their trillions in revenue attest). The data presented about the manipulative power of platforms and the resulting negative consequences on humans, especially those under 16, are shocking.

I take exception to a few of the pictures’ points, but only one was egregious enough to discuss. Sadly, the egregious point was its conclusion.

The conclusion argued that the solution to the dilemma (heaving the bathwater without the baby might be impossible) is to cede the power to regulate social media to the government. All that preceded the conclusion lays bare the danger of the proposed solution.

Before the conclusion, the flick advanced the sound proposition that social media is too powerful. Although not in the movie, a good case can be made that the handful of executives at the top of the top social media companies have greater power to influence politicians and bureaucrats than the country’s many million voters.

In general, those with power have the means to arrogate more power. The Constitution mitigated those means with a system of limited powers and “checks and balances.” While the Constitution was more respected and defended than it has been for the last 120 years, it was reasonably able to impede the aggregation of power by checking the power of the powerful.  Sadly, politicians who whittle on the Constitution’s checks and balances have been repeatedly elected and reelected. The resulting undermining of the Constitution is a large contributor to the mess we are in today.

The current arrangement between politicians/the Deep State and Big Tech (You don’t tread on me, and I’ll not tread on you) enables each side to check the other to some degree. Unfortunately, they are checking each other to advance their interests at the expense of the public. While the corrupt and destructive arrangement is deplorable, having some checks it better than having no checks. Therein lies the flaw of the film’s conclusory policy prescription.

If the power to regulate Big Tech were ceded to politicians, politicians could dictate to Big Tech what it must be banned and what the public will to see. As is being demonstrated in China, a government with that much power will use its political and technological monopolies for its benefit, with little regard for human rights or the public interest. To its credit, Google shut down its cites in China to protest China’s tyrannical censorship of its people,^[i] but that was after it had greatly expanded China’s ability to manipulate, control, and oppress its citizens. It has used that power to harass and influence its neighbors as well. Not all Big Tech companies similarly put ethics ahead of profits. For example, “Microsoft-owned properties such as Xbox, Bing, Outlook, and LinkedIn have generally been allowed to operate in China…”^[ii]

For more on how bad ceding that much power to the government would be, see “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Problem,” “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Most Negative Consequence,” “Free Speech and Big Tech – How To Make Things Worse,” and “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Legislative Betrayal.”

Allowing the government to regulate Big Tech would (1) remove checks on U.S. politicians, and (2) grant politicians far more power than was imaginable by the founders.  Checks on government power need to be re-established and fortified. Some checks on Big Tech are needed as well. Combining the powers of both in the hands of politicians would be a disaster. Regulation is not the only way to check power. For example, the content of news outlets is barely regulated. However, it is mightily checked by court-enforced violations of other people’s rights. Such is not the case with Big Tech.

As discussed in more detail in Free Speech and Big Tech – What To Do, 47 U.S. Code § 230 granted to “interactive computer services,” e.g., social media platforms, an exemption from being sued liable, slander, and other torts for which newspapers, magazines, and other publishers are liable.^[iii]  The exemption was predicated on the following finding:

(3) The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.

The rationale for exemption was that the forums (“platforms”) should not be treated as publishers because the platforms would be places where users posted “truly diverse” political discourse.

Now that interactive computer services are curating content and stifling true diversity and selectively “fact-checking.” They are selectively taking down any opinions adverse to platform’s preferred memes. Consequently, the justification for the exemption has no longer exists.

I described what should be done about Big Tech’s abuse of power in Free Speech and Big Tech – What To Do. In light of the cases made by /The Social Dilemma, I am now more open to the possibility that imposing some limited and carefully crafted limitations on what interactive computer services can do with personal data collected from users could do more good than harm.

The Social Dilemma

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[i] Google Shuts China Site in Dispute Over Censorship

[ii] A short history of Microsoft in China

[iii] Nick Sandmann’s lawyer targets 5 media giants in new round of lawsuits, Nicholas Sandmann announces settlement with Washington Post in defamation lawsuit, and CNN settlement with Covington student Nick Sandmann a win for the ‘little guy,’ expert says

In Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V of this series, we sorted out many of the grievances Blacks can legitimately lodge against US governments and Democrats for having created many of the injustices underlying their grievances. A cruel and confounding injustice experienced by the vast majority of Blacks that is not attributable to governments or Democrat policies is negative “stereotyping” (a.k.a., “racial profiling”). How it can be cruel and unjust is obvious. Why the problem is so confounding is less obvious. Alleviating a problem requires a correct understanding of the problem. A misunderstanding of negative stereotyping is why so many attempts to address it have failed. Let’s sort the confounding nature of negative stereotyping.

First and foremost, any stereotyping to advance or implement the notion that “race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” [Merriam-Webster’s definition of “Racism”] is contemptible. The way to address it is to stamp it out. While there are a few, mostly powerless miscreants who stereotype for racist reasons, virtually all laws of that sort have repealed or declared unconstitutional long ago. The focus of this post is on stereotyping that creates negative results despite the good intentions of the stereotyper.

According to Dictionary.com, a stereotype is “a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.” In and of itself, accurate stereotypes are benign and possibly useful. For example, believing mountain climbers are more likely to be killed from their sport than runners could be fair and useful to life insurance companies — despite the possibility of exceptions. Some people claim that Blacks are better at music than any other race.^[i] Whether or not that stereotype is valid, unless the claimant is suggesting that because of their musical superiority, Blacks are, in general, superior humans or that they deserve rights or privileges not afforded to other races, the claim is not racist.

Not all negative stereotypes about Blacks are racist either. As discussed in Part IV, affirmative action creates the negative presumption (stereotype) that Black college graduates were likely not to have been held to as high a standard as non-Blacks. At a minimum, because holding Blacks to lower standards (which in my opinion is bigotry^[ii]) is a feature of affirmative action, the presumption is rational. The idea is not racist because it concerns how Blacks have been treated, not their character, or the rights that should be denied to Blacks.  

BLM’s response to George Floyd’s invidious death has brought an intense focus on a particular and particularly troubling Black stereotype. It is as heartbreaking as it is valid. That stereotype is that Blacks are more likely to be violent than non-Blacks. [Arguments are also advanced that Blacks are justified in being more violent.^[iii] I am not disputing that claim here.] I am pointing out that the stereotype is based on reality, and attempting to sort out the consequences and cures for that reality.

Jesse Jackson once said, “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Jackson’s reaction to that situation is common among people of all skin hues. Claiming that Jackson, a Black, is racist because he is relieved when he turns and sees a White would be absurd. The same would be true concernin an Asian or a person of any other race had the same reaction.

So, why the reaction? Human nature and crime statistics shed light on why Jackson stereotypes Blacks and Whites concerning dangerousness.

Humans must continuously distinguish between potentially harmful and harmless things. Stereotyping is an evolved aspect of humans’ innate survival mechanisms that enables them to make rapid decisions in the presence of potential danger and with little information. Humans who erred too much on the side of dangerousness did not make the evolutionary cut. Curing people of their irrational fears is often possible. “Curing” people of their rational fears is nearly impossible and is an oxymoron. Consequently, policies based on the idea that humans can or will turn off rational stereotyping are doomed to fail and typically make things worse.

Sadly, Jesse Jackson’s stereotype is rational. When he saw the White, he rationally determined that he was in less danger than he had feared.

Blacks ages 10 – 43 die of homicides at 13 times the rates of whites, and Blacks commit almost all of those homicides.^[iv] In the 75 largest counties, Blacks commit roughly 60% of all murder and robberies, but Blacks comprise only 15% of that population.^[v] The FBI reports that in 2016 Blacks, who are 13% of the US population, constituted 37.5%^[vi] of arrests for US violent crimes and 31.4% of “other assaults,” while Whites (which includes most Hispanics), who are 73.3% of the population, constituted 59%^[vii] of arrests for violent crimes and 66.2% of other assaults. Using violent crime arrests as a proxy for crimes,^[1] these numbers reveal that, although Jackson may have been relieved, he was at some risk of becoming the victim of a violent crime when he turned around and saw a White. However, had he turned around and seen a Black person, the risk would have been over 3.5 times greater.

3.5 times a minimal risk is a small risk. However, as we have seen with the tiny risk of harm that COVID-19 presented to most people, when the stakes are high (e.g., death or severe injury), tiny increases in minimal risks can make huge differences — for good reasons.^[viii]

These realities have severely adversely and unfairly^[ix] affected Blacks. In 2016, Blacks were arrested for violent crimes 153,341 times, and some of them were arrested more than once, i.e., the number of violent Black criminals is fewer than their number of arrests. That means that less than 0.38% of the country’s Blacks population were arrested for violent crimes, i.e., all but a tiny fraction of Blacks are not violent criminals. Yet, the “more violent” stereotype unavoidably applies to the average Black because, on average, Blacks are more violent. Why is it unavoidable? For the same reason that even though fruits are safe on average, some fruits will kill you.^[x] Humans who are wise enough not to gobble a whole fruit on their first encounter with an unfamiliar fruit tree are the ones who survived the evolutionary cut.

Note that 153,341 violent crimes are somewhat comparable to the country’s COVID-19 deaths in 2020. This is another example of how the fallout, including massive fear from small risks, can be monumental. Huge responses to personally catastrophic risks is a part of human nature that is here to stay.

Consequently, after the (1) warranted wailing and gnashing of teeth, (2) needed reforms to police forces, and (3) the current civil unrest based on to false or irrelevant narratives have fizzled out (or the revolution is accomplished), the rational stereotypes described above and their attendant problems will persist until the prevalence of Black violent crimes is roughly comparable to that of non-Blacks.

Ridding police forces of racists cops would only make a dent in the problem. Ridding police forces of cops with human nature is impossible.

The harms these stereotypes inflict on Blacks are many. Perhaps the most pernicious and tragic consequence of the stereotyping is the most topical. It is that when stopped by police, many Blacks presume that they would not have been stopped had they not been Black. Indeed, cops pull over Blacks disproportionately more than Whites. While Blacks’ disproportionate propensity to violate traffics laws accounts for some of the disparity,^[xi] much of it is due to the stereotype that Blacks are more likely to be engaged in serious criminal conduct (stereotyping). ^[xii] As if that wasn’t problematic enough, because such stereotyping is so unfair to the vast majority of Blacks (exacerbated by the despicable practice of declaring the cause of the disparity to be racism — which is very rarely applicable), the stereotyping plus the false belief that racism is the cause for the police encounter induces indignation in detained Blacks. All too often, that indignation turns into anger, then disobedience of police orders, chaos, and then tragedy.

Many will claim that the above line of thinking is racist. It is not. Jessie Jackson’s rational stereotypes are not racist. His relief at seeing White people when he turns around was not because he believed that Blacks are inferior to others or that Blacks deserved fewer rights. Quite the contrary, over his long life in the public eye, Jackson has argued Blacks are capable of success, and they deserve more rights than those to which others are entitled.^[xiii] The fact that those stereotypes are harmful to Blacks is horrible, but the stereotyping is a result of racism.

While Jackson’s stereotypes are natural, rational, and not racist, the existence of those stereotypes is terribly and heartbreakingly unfair and harmful to Blacks, especially the 99+% of Blacks who are law-abiding. That 99+% of Blacks have to live with the negative consequences of a tiny fraction of Blacks being disproportionately dangerous is astoundingly sad and in great need of redress.

To address this astoundingly sad problem, the public must not continue to be confounded by the multiple misdiagnoses of the nature of the problem. Hopefully, this post will help us turn away from the false characterization of the problem — there enabling us to eschew policies that have no chance of working to ones that might have a chance.

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[1] Take this analysis based on arrests with several grains of salt. Because no racial demographics are available concerning the likelihood that an arrest will result from a crime, a ratio based on arrests could be far from the mark. Moreover, because no universally accepted metric exists to determine the multiple with any precision, a precise multiple is unknowable and would vary significantly from place to place. The following analysis is offered to show that the multiple is much higher than 1.0, and the stereotype is rational. The fact that the stereotype exists among all races also lends credence to its validity.

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[i] Coleman Hughes Reacts To African-American Stereotypes Portrayed In Hollywood | Your Take

[ii] See “Biden’s Bigotry”

[iii] They’ve been saying it [advocating or condoning violence] all along…

[iv] Id. @9:00

[v] Id. @9:45 and Police Go Where the Crime Is

[vi] FBI 2016 Crime in the United States

[vii] Uniform Crime Report – Crime in the United States, 2016

[viii] The Logic of Risk Taking

[ix] Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) on Race Relations – FULL SPEECH (C-SPAN) [While I disagree with Sen. Scott’s assertion that the problem is the justice system (because even the law cannot overturn human nature), he eloquently describes the unfairness of reality human nature creates and why the wounds will not heal until the nature of the problem is understood.]

[x] The most dangerous fruits in the world

[xi] 7 Statistics That Show That ‘Systemic Racism’ Doesn’t Exist In Policing: “black drivers studied in 2001 sped at twice the rate of white drivers (with speeding defined as traveling at 15 mph or more above the posted limit) and traveled at the most reckless levels of speed even more disproportionately.”

[xii] e.g., stealing vehicles, firing guns from cars, and fleeing in cars from crime scenes.

[xiii] Jesse Jackson visits The City defending affirmative action