Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Broken_Hippo 3278 days ago
Not really, I'm just aware that a lot of these sorts of grouping stereotypes are wrong - and much of the past studies have been flawed by discriminatory views.

For example, take the "poor people commit more crimes". Now, I don't know that this is true, though I know folks believe it and some studies have seemed to back it up. But I also know that a lot of poor folks lack ways to hide their crime (no private place to smoke pot in, for example) and live in areas more likely to be policed heavily. The only thing I can really come up with is that poor people get caught for crimes more often, and so are easily over-represented in the prison system. The conclusion that "poor people commit more crime" is one of bias.

This sort of thing is enough to cast doubt on a lot of these sorts of statements and check for such biases. It is a bit different from the data actually being true with the cause of the trend being discrimination. For example, "Felons often return to crime after release in the US" is likely true. Part of the reason for that is because of discrimination and biases against the ex-felon (especially in certain subsets of felons). I'd not ignore the data, but address the discrimination when trying to fix it.