[rmxt]

> For homicides where the offender is known, more than half are committed by a demographic group that is pretty much nonexistent in Scandinavia.

> Further, within the US, people tend to behave more similarly to where they come from (even if it was many generations back)

Is your implication really that black/brown people everywhere are (or would be) inherently more murderous? Perhaps I am incorrectly reading between your lines.

[yummyfajitas]

I don't know what you mean by "inherently". I do believe many traits are strongly demographically linked and that demographics tend to drown out other factors. I don't know the particular cause beyond that - I've seen very little convincing evidence one way or the other.

[rmxt]

If by "linked" you mean correlation, then sure, I agree there are links between demographics and crime/poverty in the USA. However, your implication seems to be that if Scandinavian countries had substantial black/brown populations, then they too would have murder rates comparable to America. That was what I was attempting to get at by "inherently". How does your conclusion follow?

[yummyfajitas]

My specific claim: some crime causing factors live within subpopulations. If country A has a high crime subpopulation and country B does not, it's a little silly to point to a policy in country B and blame the high crime in country A on the lack of that policy.

I'm simply rejecting the idea that differences in crime rates between the US and Scandinavia are due solely to policy. Demographics matter too. A little googling suggests there are wild disparities in crime rates based on demographics even in Scandinavia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime

[IkmoIkmo]

What do you mean by demographics? If you mean age, sure, 10 year olds or 60 year olds show lower crimerates than 25 year olds. But you linked specifically to an article that discusses various ethnic migrants. So again, you seem to be saying that ethnicity matters in crime.

And to this point, we all agree, there is a correlation. But what most of us don't agree with, but it almost seems as if you're implying it, is that there's something inherent about the ethnicity that makes one prone to crime. As if there's a genetic predisposition to theft, violence, rape, murder.

So you've left at least me curious as to what you're really saying.

[yummyfajitas]

By your definition of "inherent", that is what I'm saying. The data suggests there is some trait which is correlated with ethnicity and also with crime. Because this trait seems to be a strong driver of crime, it is unreasonable to suggest that a simple policy change will reduce crime to Scandinavian levels. For all we know, it might reduce crime to "Somalian in Scandinavia" levels rather than "Scandinavian in Scandinavia" levels - these are both crime levels which exist under Scandinavian policy.

There are many traits which are correlated with ethnicity, and hereditary, but not genetic - religion and accent for example. I'm not opposed to a genetic explanation, I just don't think the evidence strongly favors it.

It's also irrelevant to the policy question unless the policy directly addresses those traits. For example, if the trait is genetic as you hypothesize, then adopting a socialized genetic engineering policy might help. Or if the trait is, e.g. Islam, then a policy focused on converting Muslims into Buddhists might help.

[IkmoIkmo]

> if the trait is genetic as you hypothesize

Oh, no, to the contrary. I was merely saying it felt as if YOU implied this. If you want to know my position, no, I completely reject the notion that e.g. Somalians carry genes that make them more prone to violence, murder, theft, rape etc. There are barely any studies that support it, the few that do are from notorious researchers that pretty much everyone regard as blatant racists (e.g. look up Rushton). While there is evidence to suggest the contrary. (e.g. when comparing an adopted child from a minority background into a majority family shows the impact of socioeconomic status rather than DNA.)

> The data suggests there is some trait which is correlated with ethnicity and also with crime

Anyway, back to my point... You still don't seem to be at all open to the notion that there may be no 'traits' or that their influence aren't very great.

That is, where traits describe (usually genetic) characteristics of a person, which could explain a person's behavior in his environment, have you considered the opposite? That the environment's characteristics affect the behavior of the individual? That's overwhelmingly what sociologists have concluded (studied sociology in undergrad, my gf in grad). Fact is, a lot of immigrants in Europe came for menial labor in the 60s and 70s, were put in housing next to the factories they worked in, besides having barely been educated (overwhelmingly illiterate) as children, receive no form of education after their arrival in Europe (e.g. language or cultural education). Hundreds of thousands grew up isolated from any natives, worked daily in the factories, and at some point after 10-20 years moved to the cities when the industry shifted away from menial labor in Europe and the jobs dried up. So now you have people with absolutely no skills fit for the modern economy, no ability to read or write, no affiliation with local culture etc. That creates unemployment, poverty, it creates tensions, it creates conflicts. These people had zero political representation in government, zero representation in the media, no voice, and absolutely no competitive position in the marketplace. People with a gigantic social, financial and human capital disadvantages, and anyone from this minority who tries to escape from situation is met with stigma, with the stereotype views, which often leads to discrimination in the workplace even for highly educated individuals with that ethnic background. Indeed to the extent that there are lots of people walking around with an unsubstantiated notion that immigrants are genetically less able, less intelligent, less moral, the very definition of the nazi untermensch doctrine, which feeds into the discrimination, isolation and ostracizing of members of this minority, in school, work, politics, media. And this is what perpetuates the problems. The next generation of kids are born to illiterate unemployed parents with very limited financial means for education, self-exploration, extra-curricular activities, creative materials (toys, computers), no books or newspapers in the house, a language deficit etc etc. These kids don't have a fair shot and by age 6 they already are behind in school, and if you know one thing about education is that when you are behind on this week's homework, then understanding next week's becomes more difficult, and the deficit becomes greater and greater, to the point a kid isn't learning anymore, doesn't feel comfortable in school, loses confidence. That's when you see the dropout rate spike. Now you have kids 14 years old who barely go to school, aren't able to land a job a few years later.

THAT is what causes so many issues. Bad policies for people of the lowest socioeconomic class that starts a cascading effect and perpetuates throughout multiple generations. This isn't controversial among the sociologists that research it. What is extremely controversial is the notion of the untermensch, that some ethnicities are genetically lesser than others, and some ethnicities are superior. It's inherently racist, and time and time again we see these things come out of the mouths of extreme right-wing political leaders of various parties in Europe.

Now given the above, it's clear that of COURSE there's an explanation for the obvious correlation between the average immigrant and crime. And the data shows it's rooted in things like financial, social and human capital. Not genes. And guess what, policies are THE instrument to improving that. e.g. providing language and networking opportunities for illiterate immigrants helps. Providing extra language classes and reading sessions for kids with illiterate parents, helps. Removing the financial barriers to education for financially disadvantaged kids, helps. All of these things are pretty elementary, right? So yes, countries with better policies to crime get less crime than they otherwise would, and that has nothing to do with that country having less people from an ethnicity that has a genetic disposition to violence, rape, theft, murder. Why is this even a debate?

[ebfe]

The average IQ among black Americans is 85, and the average testosterone level among black males is 20% higher than it is among whites. Both of these traits are strong predictors of violent behavior.

[dragonwriter]

Even assuming those numbers are correct, measured IQ, at least, has pretty strong demonstrated influences from environmental factors (and many of the demonstrated negative influences from environmental factors are from factors that are products of poverty). Not sure about testosterone levels, but at least the IQ number is not really contrary to the idea that the underlying problem is linked to poverty and social disadvantage, not inherent to the population at issue.

[kamau]

>The average IQ among black Americans is 85, and the average testosterone level among black males is 20% higher than it is among whites. Both of these traits are strong predictors of violent behavior.<

The racists have come out to play.

[peterfirefly]

Hopefully you agree that it is an empirical question?

If it isn't possible to go out and look at the world to see if the average IQ is 85 then it isn't possible to see that it isn't 85.

Now, I wonder if somebody has done that and what the results were...

[kamau]

Spare me. Statements such as those are almost always concerned with promoting and upholding white supremacy/racism. Would the statement been given any legitimacy if it was stated that '...the average white IQ is 85...'? I doubt it. The fact that a statements like these are made with no or dubious evidence is bad enough. Asserting that there is an empirical question here, when said dubious statement is refuted, is the icing on the cake.

P.S. I do understand that this is an empirical statement/question. But so is the assertion that there is a teapot on the moon.

[ebfe]

What exactly are you trying to say? The fact that the average black IQ in America is 85 is an empirically proven fact. [1]

You can certainly argue that IQ is a flawed measurement of intelligence, or that the IQ gap stems solely from environmental factors, but just flat out plugging your ears and denying that studies have found the mean black IQ to be 85 is an absurd display of intellectual dishonesty.

[1]http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

[kamau]

You cant say that it is an empirically proven fact, anc then concede that it is a possibly flawed measurement. I'm all too familiar with racists, and you sir/mam look familiar.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/jason-richwine-race-iq...

[IkmoIkmo]

Sorry but, are you at all familiar with Rushton? He's been blatantly called a racist by just about everyone and his work has been academically criticized left and right for a lack of unbiased scientific rigor. In your own words, to use his work as evidence is to me, an absurd display of intellectual dishonesty.

[vidarh]

Without bothering to question your numbers, this is entirely meaningless as an explanation for anything without correcting for education levels, poverty etc., both in terms of crime itself and in terms of effects on IQ and testosterone levels.

E.g. physical activity has an effect on testosterone, thus you might expect to see increased average levels of testosterone in a population that is more likely to have manual jobs, as you would expect in a population that on average is poorer. This effect may very well be drowned out by other things, but it is but one in a huge list of potential confounding factors.

[ebfe]

You could restate my viewpoint as the claim that poverty and education levels are entirely meaningless as an explanation for anything without correcting for hereditary intelligence, testosterone levels, etc., both in terms of crime itself and in terms of effects on poverty and education levels.

[vidarh]

No, they are not entirely meaningless, as you can demonstrate clearly the substantial effect they have by correcting for poverty, education etc. in the crime number and comparing the uncorrected / corrected results to see the effect they have.

When you then further break that data down by race, the purported intelligence differences and testosterone differences you claim either have no effect, are non-existing, or they have fallen away as a side effect of removing the other confounding factors, as eradicating socio-economic factors mostly erases racial differences in crime rate.

If they are real, have an effect, but fall away when correcting for other factors, then that suggests that these effects themselves are caused by the same confounding factors, and are not down to ethnicity after all.

E.g. it'd not be surprising at all if IQ test results in a poor, uneducated subset of a population where parents have less resources to invest in their childrens wellbeing, and where the chance of malnutrition is higher, are worse than in wealthier parts of a population. But the obvious place to look for causes are in the many known causes of low performance of IQ tests, several of which co-occur fairly frequently with poverty.

Any study that tries to pin such a difference on ethnicity is outright trash if it has not controlled very carefully for a rather extensive set of other potential factors. Including directly controlling for factors such as nutritional differences.

Another part of the reason for the outrage at claims like this, is that trying to pin down "black Americans" as an ethnic group is hopelessly flawed from the outset, given that "black Americans" genetically range from mostly European descent to entirely African descent, but with the vast majority being substantially mixed, and that discourse on that in the US is largely dictated by a combination of racism and cultural factors that one one hand makes it impossible for most mixed people to "pass as white" even if they have far more European than African ancestry, and on the other hand makes it culturally hard for a mixed person to identify as white without being considered a sell-out by the black community.

E.g. Obama is no more black than he is white, yet he is automatically considered black in the US by pretty much everyone, and would face flack from both "sides" if he were to try to describe himself as white.

Because racial designation is mostly a social construct that is largely down to peoples immediate knowledge of their ancestry, skin colour and social considerations rather than genetics (I'm reminded of the difference with the Portuguese, who during their colonial era and a higher willingness to openly intermix with the local populations had an intricate system of something like 12 different distinctions of levels between white and black that affected your social standing, which anyone who knows people with mixed children knows would be largely "luck of the draw"), it is highly geared towards being easy to manipulate (don't get the numbers you like? redefine "black" to find a definition that moves the delineation between groups in your study, and odds are you can find some dividing line that fits your agenda) which in itself makes any numbers suspect.

But even with a researcher without an agenda, without extensive genetic testing, result would at best tell you that people who self report as black fall in one group, and everyone else fall in another. Of course then you don't know if - assuming you had in fact isolated a trait that actually has a genetic component - the trait you are reporting on is actually a result of a genetic trait tied to "being black", or if it stems from the European intermixing into the "black" population that just isn't significant enough to affect the overall white population the same way.

I've yet to see anyone come up with research that claims such differences that does not fall flat on its face either by failing to address sufficient confounding factors, or by failing to at the very least discuss the considerations of how it ethnically delineated the population and why.