[spenuke]

> Usually, the "liberal" response I get from my more left-leaning friends is somewhere along the lines of "POC have been mistreated, they can't be racist...

You should have asked your friends why a black person can't be racist, because to most white people it's an absurd proposition. So allow me to explain a bit here.

Racism, unlike what we mostly think, is not a state of mind or an emotion. Racism is a sociological system that transcends the intentions of any one individual. In case US history is not forefront in anyone's mind: 150 years ago, a black person had the same legal status as a pig; 100 years ago, it was illegal for a white person to marry a black person; 60 years ago, it was illegal for a black person to drink at a water fountain.

Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white. If you have a black sounding name, you're less likely to have a company respond to your job application.

These things are institutional. When we say a black person can't be racist -- we don't mean they can't be prejudiced. They can, just like all people. But the privileges and paved roads that a white person enjoys simply aren't there by default for a POC, so they can't benefit from institutional racism.

TL;DR - false equivalency. "Black X Thing" is in the context of a historically disenfranchised people overcoming an entire country hellbent on keeping them disenfranchised. "White X Thing" is ridiculous because it's redundant: "Thing" is already White by default.

[wang_li]

> Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white.

This is not true. Not only is there no astronomically higher probability, there is no higher probability.[1] Other studies found that officers hesitate longer before shooting an armed black suspect than they do white or Hispanic suspects.[2]

1. http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399 2. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12187/a...

[pj_mukh]

Read into the perspective of Roland G. Fryer (an african american), the author of the study you cite [1]. His conclusion is a little bit more nuanced then the one you are driving to.

https://www.ft.com/content/89b97964-b88a-11e5-b151-8e15c9a02...

[wang_li]

You link is gated.

Also I'm not driving to anything. I'm pointing out that research, as opposed to narrative, shows that blacks are not shot by police at astronomically higher rates.

[tpeo]

This "racism is a system" always sounded to me a bit a rhetorical voodoo, because it allows people to claim that there's still "racism" even if they have no evidence beyond what's in their heads besides the difference in socioeconomic outcomes between different races.

This, however, is absurd. In economics, there's a crucial distinction between historical processes (e.g. accumulation of wealth or economic development) and general economic processes (e.g. the pricing of a good) in that historical processes are not mean-reverting. They're subject to certain rules (e.g. preferential attachment, positive feedbacks, increasing returns) which make them generally path dependent[0]. As a result, initial differences will perpetuate themselves for an indefinately long time.

For example, a familial lineages might remain poor or rich for an arbitrarily long time purely through inheritance. New York might remain more populous than Dallas for an undefined amount of time since the economic benefit of moving into any of those two cities is a function of their population (through economies of agglomeration[1]). And Peru might remain much poorer than the United States for an eternity, because how much capital and labor countries draw to themselves if proportional to how much innovation going on there, which is itself a function of those variables.

History, even as completely blind process, will still produce self-sustaining inequalities. But none of this has anything to do with "racism", but with the fact that the past matters and we live in a world of crucial events. In a mean-reverting world, in all likelihood, there wouldn't even be such a thing as an European colonization of America. In a sense, you might be right in thinking that non one wants all this. But calling these process a result of "racism" is beyond stretching the meaning of the word.

There's no way to maintain a reasonable expectation that different entities (nevermind races) should attain equal outcomes unless the "Just World Hypothesis" is assumed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration

[SamUK96]

> Racism is a sociological system that transcends the intentions of any one individual

I think that's a rather ambitious definition of racism. Racism is the discrimination of some person/group due to their race. You are either denying that being white is a race (Caucasian more specifically), or you are denying the global definition of the word. Both are wrong.

Anyway, onto your pseudo-fact opinions, since these are always sad to see purported as facts on HN:

> Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white.

...Because black crime is 4x greater, not from any mass cop bias. False correlation. Also, "astronomical" is a totally inappropriate exaggeration. Please, look at statistics before hurling words at screens.

> so they can't benefit from institutional racism.

But, that is not even "racism". That is an expansion of the term that is not the term itself. It's irrelevant. Also, have you seen US University GPA requirements? I think you'll find that it favors POC more than anybody, and makes it hardest for Asians, then whites. So. That's not universally correct right off the bat.

> "Thing" is already White by default.

Another exaggeration.

Regardless, I definitely do disagree with your general opinion that negative past events towards POC should mean they are treated specially now. Like in another comment, don't you think that trying to "revenge" on historical racism by being racist again with opposite races, is a little, well, stupid? You can already see that it doesn't work by how dissatisfied white people are with this mindset.

[pj_mukh]

"...Because black crime is 4x greater"

Why is that? Why is it that every voice like yours stops the analysis there. "Black crime commit more crimes, end of story". Ask the 5 why's! You don't think there are institutional and socio-cultural (history driven) issues that lead to this?

[SamUK96]

Ironically, could it be black culture that causes it?

You have all sorts of terrorist groups like BLM that are telling, instructing, pleading all black people to commit crimes. That's definitely not anecdotal.

[SolaceQuantum]

BLM is a terrorist group? I didn't realize they were put on a list by the southern poverty law center or the American department of homeland security. Can I have a link? Extremely interested.

[SamUK96]

Oh, it's not a classified a terrorist group by the government because of the mindset/culture that promotes black-favourability.

[SolaceQuantum]

So how do we know if it's a terrorist group if there isn't an organization that recognizes them as a terrorist group? Not even organizations that specialize in discerning terrorist behavior can discern their actions as terrorism, so what metric do we use? Is there evidence that certain social movements are given more leeway to terrorism than others, and if there isn't due to inability to study this subject for black-favorability culture, how does one objectively determine whether or not a black favorability culture exists to the point where terrorism occurs?

[pj_mukh]

And where do you think culture comes from? 5-whys. Keep going.

[SamUK96]

Natural human behavior to seek revenge/justice for past events, regardless if it makes your "side" net worse off.

[pj_mukh]

My eyes were opened to this when I was able to have an honest and open conversation with an African-American friend (I'm not American and never understood the history), and he described the level of victimisation that is passed on from generation to generation after traumatic events that span multiple generations. There is a deep wound in American history that is unique to the African-American experience.

Museums like this try to capture some of it. But really, America should be looking to Truth and Reconciliation commission type of platforms that has worked in other places. Finish what was started in the Reconstruction-era, or continue to suffer from this wound.

[pj_mukh]

Well, you don't get to define what's "worse-off" for another culture. And should that give us pause about current policies that may cause the same behaviour later on?

[jbmorgado]

> "Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white."

That's actually false and it's an impression being carried out by the media. When interacting with the police, you are more like to to be shot if you are white than if you are black.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evid...

[aomurphy]

If you look at the linked study they're careful to point out that they're only looking at what happens when you're already stopped by police. Blacks in America are much more likely to be stopped overall, so it's not definitive.

They're looking at P(shot|stopped by police and white) and P(shot|stopped by police and black) not P(shot by police|black) and P(shot by police|white).

[jbmorgado]

Well, it makes sense that blacks are more stoped by the police in the USA than whites, since they are the ones committing - by a great margin - most of the violent crimes. The black community in the USA (representing 12% of the population) commits more homicides and attempted homicides than all the white community (which is 5x times larger). Thereby, of course they have more interaction with the police.

[woofyman]

Slight correction. Interracial marriage was illegal as recently as 1967 in Virginia.