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by mikeash 2624 days ago
Only if those 11 people were randomly selected. Was that the case?

I’ll go ahead and answer that one for you: no, it was not the case. The odds of selecting 11 black Americans at random and ending up with all 11 living in Harlem are infinitesimally small.
1 comments
daenz 2624 days ago
I think you're forgetting what we're talking about here. We're not talking about the distribution of people with valid IDs, we're talking about the distribution of opinions that making a racist assertion is offensive to the people it is targeting. Common sense will tell you that there is very likely an even geographic distribution in the US. But I think you're being deliberately petty and contrarian because you don't like the content of the video.
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mikeash 2624 days ago
The fact that voter ID laws are often made to disenfranchise certain groups isn't racist, it’s just a fact. You’re talking about whether the targets think it succeeds in doing so, which is a different question, and a pretty irrelevant one. What matters is the intent, and whether it succeeds in that intent.

Common sense tells me that a political video consisting of eleven interviews with people picked off the street in Harlem is very unlikely to be representative of the nation except by accident. I haven’t watched the video and I don’t plan to. I’ve never seen a video link in an online argument that was worth watching and I see no indication that this one is any different.

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daenz 2624 days ago
>You’re talking about whether the targets think it succeeds in doing so

No, I'm 100% not. You haven't been paying attention to any of my responses. And you just made it clear that you wish to stay ignorant about the point I'm actually making, so I don't see the point in continuing with someone who will not communicate in good faith.

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mikeash 2624 days ago
Your replies have all been about what these interviewees think about this stuff. It’s quite explicit. You repeatedly refer to “what people think” and such.
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jakeogh 2624 days ago
Why do you assume others are going to have trouble getting ID? Do you have trouble getting ID?
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mikeash 2624 days ago
Voter ID laws are often accompanied by measures that make it more difficult for certain people to get ID. For example, it’s common to curtail hours or close DMV offices in urban areas.

In any case, that’s not strictly relevant. The intent to suppress voters is there even if it doesn’t work.

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