The offending rate for violent crime is higher among black people than other ethnicities. There is no doubt about this, hasn't been for decades and it's true across all Western societies. In itself it is arguably no great big deal because few people - even black people - are violent criminals. So the BIG story here is that a culture that is terrified of acknowedging a manifest truth is a culture that does not value truth over comforting myth.
Even if we go with your methodology which results in a 9.2:1 ratio, does this take into account that Hispanics and Arabs (now MENA) have historically been counted as "White"? Steve Sailer worked up these numbers and came up with 12:1 B on W vs W on B, by breaking out the estimated portion of whites who should be classified as Hispanic or MENA.
And I'm still having a hard time believing that Asians commit violent crime against whites 1.8:1. I've never even seen an Asian person litter, let alone commit any violent crime, and I live in a major US city with a high crime rate.
This assumption is doing a lot of work here. In particular, it's likely that in at least a subset of cases people are targeting, or biased towards, particular racial groups, and to the extent that interracial attacks are racially targeted (e.g. "hate crimes") we should correct for the perpetrator race but not the victim race (since if someone intends to find a victim of a given race, the likelihood of success is not linearly proportionate to the victim population size, whereas more potential perps will lead to more attacks).
This is relevant for two reasons. First, we just don't actually know what percent of attacks are racially targeted which means the truth is likely somewhere between your non-targeted value (9.2x) and the original version implicitly assuming 100% racial targeting (42x). So it's useful to have both figures to bound the actual ratio (between 9.2 - 42x), and not really fair to say that the per capita figures are "wrong". Another issue is that many progressives tend to assume that interracial crimes are targeted due to racism (esp white on black), so it's useful to show that on the assumption of 100% targeting, the perpetrator rates are much higher for black-on-white than white-on-black.
That said, I suspect most attacks are not strongly targeted by race, so probably your 9.2x figure is closer to reality, but it seems pretty hard to assess.
As someone who works with data on a daily basis, the most Important fundamental factor has to be the GIGO principle (garbage in, garbage out). All crime data and statistics are heavily biased if they’re even collected and variance in quality and focus is wildly different between counties and cities (here in the UK) let alone between countries. Anyone drawing conclusions on such soiled data is questionable and that would have to include the author.
I'm saying it's not possible to accurately interpret inaccurate data. Crime, health, education, employment; data about all areas of public life are manifestly inaccurate at the point of harvest because they are collected (or omitted) for political purposes. Everyone has an agenda, everyone has their influences, everyone has a perspective. Immediately race (culture, religion, ethnicity) is considered in data collection, yet another layer of obfuscation is introduced; check out the UK census for an idea about how people self-identify these days before an analyst with an agenda has even got started fulfilling their brief.
Based on health outcomes by ethnicity, both C19 and the NHS were deemed to be racist. Official narratives all made possible with deliberately inaccurate data.
"I'm saying it's not possible to accurately interpret inaccurate data."
Then you go on to say.
"Crime, health, education, employment; data about all areas of public life are manifestly inaccurate at the point of harvest because they are collected (or omitted) for political purposes."
This, in essence, means That it is not possible to interpret interracial crime data accurately.
"...it is not possible to interpret interracial crime data accurately" is a simplistic statement that's open to misinterpretation.
It's an obvious statement that inaccurate data cannot be accurately interpreted hence why I embellished it with suggestions about how harvesting and interpreting it can be shown to be inaccurate.
Further, even it were agreed to have been collected accurately (this article discusses opinions about what should and shouldn't be considered balanced), any interpretation is going to be political by definition i.e. you must consider race to be a factor or not by involving or it in the analysis.
This kind of data nihilism is pretty silly. By that logic, nothing could be said about anything. Fortunately, we do have data that is good enough to allow us to make comparisons and say things about societies.
In the case of violent interracial crime, if you want to focus on particularly highly accurate data, you can just look at homicide to see how the vast majority of homicides involving whites and blacks have a black perpetrator and a white victim. Homicide, of course, being the crime that leaves a dead body and is not dependent on the victim reporting it.
It is also not irrelevant that these data pass the common sense test. Everyone knows that blacks commit far more crime than whites, that whites are far more likely to be victimized by blacks than vice versa, that black neighborhoods are very dangerous, and that whites intentionally avoid such neighborhoods.
I literally spelt it out. Ethnicity, religion, culture and most factors synonymous and/or conflated with race are self-declared and, therefore, entirely subject to inaccuracy. To point out an observable fact is neither "data nihilism" nor is it "silly". Neither, also, does it follow that "nothing could be said about anything" as this article, the original article it responds to and your comments all prove.
I'm simply pointing out that assertions based on such data are questionable (that's exactly what I said in my original comment) and why I think that. It's fine to disagree, although I'm not convinced we really do disagree.
I don't believe there is "highly accurate data" on homicide for the reasons I've articulated. However, I agree with your final statement about what you refer to as the "common sense test" (which has nothing nothing to do with the data we've been "disagreeing" about). No matter where we live, we can observe reality with our own ears and eyes, we speak to friends and work colleagues, neighbours and family. We know that our neighbourhoods, communities and countries are made ever less safe by the influx of outsiders who don't share or care for our values. Despite our governments and media playing it down and blatantly covering it up, we know about the disproportionate levels of violent crime in certain minorities. We know about it, not just because of the data, but because we live with it and we see it and hear about it.
The people who don't see it and call us racists for pointing it out have plenty of data to prove that they're right.
You state that Asians commit crime at a lower rate than whites, well certainly Northeast Asians commit crime at a lower rate than whites. Bur what about all those whose ancestors are from the continent of Asia, are they not included in these crime statistics? Ethnicities such as Syrian and Pakistani are Asian. Do the crime statistics separate out different kinds of Asians, or combine them? Pacific Islanders might even be included in the label "Asian".
Syrians and Arabs are counted as White in the US census. In the US, Asians are overwhelmingly East Asians, Vietnamese, Indians and Filipinos. Indians and Filipinos in the US basically perform like East Asians, due to selection. I think Pakistanis are counted as Asians in the US, but again, remember that these are highly positively selected immigrants, not like Pakistanis in the UK. I remember reading something about the Hmong having higher crime rates, but I don't know if that's still true and they are a very small minority of US Asians now.
Should a variable for class/SES of victim be included in the data? If blacks (and whites) disproportionately target wealthier individuals, and whites are wealthier than blacks, then that would skew things a bit.
it feels like Kareem Carr has been a PhD student on Twitter forever lol
I just checked his LinkedIn and yup he is in his 8th year of his PhD
certified lemon
thanks for doing all this...
i am so sick of everyone's OUGHT and desperate for as much IS as i can get...
cheers!
Very good. Thanks for eliminating the confusion. One should always examine the procedure used to process data.
The offending rate for violent crime is higher among black people than other ethnicities. There is no doubt about this, hasn't been for decades and it's true across all Western societies. In itself it is arguably no great big deal because few people - even black people - are violent criminals. So the BIG story here is that a culture that is terrified of acknowedging a manifest truth is a culture that does not value truth over comforting myth.
Even if we go with your methodology which results in a 9.2:1 ratio, does this take into account that Hispanics and Arabs (now MENA) have historically been counted as "White"? Steve Sailer worked up these numbers and came up with 12:1 B on W vs W on B, by breaking out the estimated portion of whites who should be classified as Hispanic or MENA.
And I'm still having a hard time believing that Asians commit violent crime against whites 1.8:1. I've never even seen an Asian person litter, let alone commit any violent crime, and I live in a major US city with a high crime rate.
"Suppose they... do not target each other"
This assumption is doing a lot of work here. In particular, it's likely that in at least a subset of cases people are targeting, or biased towards, particular racial groups, and to the extent that interracial attacks are racially targeted (e.g. "hate crimes") we should correct for the perpetrator race but not the victim race (since if someone intends to find a victim of a given race, the likelihood of success is not linearly proportionate to the victim population size, whereas more potential perps will lead to more attacks).
This is relevant for two reasons. First, we just don't actually know what percent of attacks are racially targeted which means the truth is likely somewhere between your non-targeted value (9.2x) and the original version implicitly assuming 100% racial targeting (42x). So it's useful to have both figures to bound the actual ratio (between 9.2 - 42x), and not really fair to say that the per capita figures are "wrong". Another issue is that many progressives tend to assume that interracial crimes are targeted due to racism (esp white on black), so it's useful to show that on the assumption of 100% targeting, the perpetrator rates are much higher for black-on-white than white-on-black.
That said, I suspect most attacks are not strongly targeted by race, so probably your 9.2x figure is closer to reality, but it seems pretty hard to assess.
As someone who works with data on a daily basis, the most Important fundamental factor has to be the GIGO principle (garbage in, garbage out). All crime data and statistics are heavily biased if they’re even collected and variance in quality and focus is wildly different between counties and cities (here in the UK) let alone between countries. Anyone drawing conclusions on such soiled data is questionable and that would have to include the author.
So, what you are saying is that it is not possible to interpret interracial crime data accurately.
I'm saying it's not possible to accurately interpret inaccurate data. Crime, health, education, employment; data about all areas of public life are manifestly inaccurate at the point of harvest because they are collected (or omitted) for political purposes. Everyone has an agenda, everyone has their influences, everyone has a perspective. Immediately race (culture, religion, ethnicity) is considered in data collection, yet another layer of obfuscation is introduced; check out the UK census for an idea about how people self-identify these days before an analyst with an agenda has even got started fulfilling their brief.
Based on health outcomes by ethnicity, both C19 and the NHS were deemed to be racist. Official narratives all made possible with deliberately inaccurate data.
"I'm saying it's not possible to accurately interpret inaccurate data."
Then you go on to say.
"Crime, health, education, employment; data about all areas of public life are manifestly inaccurate at the point of harvest because they are collected (or omitted) for political purposes."
This, in essence, means That it is not possible to interpret interracial crime data accurately.
"...it is not possible to interpret interracial crime data accurately" is a simplistic statement that's open to misinterpretation.
It's an obvious statement that inaccurate data cannot be accurately interpreted hence why I embellished it with suggestions about how harvesting and interpreting it can be shown to be inaccurate.
Further, even it were agreed to have been collected accurately (this article discusses opinions about what should and shouldn't be considered balanced), any interpretation is going to be political by definition i.e. you must consider race to be a factor or not by involving or it in the analysis.
This kind of data nihilism is pretty silly. By that logic, nothing could be said about anything. Fortunately, we do have data that is good enough to allow us to make comparisons and say things about societies.
In the case of violent interracial crime, if you want to focus on particularly highly accurate data, you can just look at homicide to see how the vast majority of homicides involving whites and blacks have a black perpetrator and a white victim. Homicide, of course, being the crime that leaves a dead body and is not dependent on the victim reporting it.
It is also not irrelevant that these data pass the common sense test. Everyone knows that blacks commit far more crime than whites, that whites are far more likely to be victimized by blacks than vice versa, that black neighborhoods are very dangerous, and that whites intentionally avoid such neighborhoods.
I literally spelt it out. Ethnicity, religion, culture and most factors synonymous and/or conflated with race are self-declared and, therefore, entirely subject to inaccuracy. To point out an observable fact is neither "data nihilism" nor is it "silly". Neither, also, does it follow that "nothing could be said about anything" as this article, the original article it responds to and your comments all prove.
I'm simply pointing out that assertions based on such data are questionable (that's exactly what I said in my original comment) and why I think that. It's fine to disagree, although I'm not convinced we really do disagree.
I don't believe there is "highly accurate data" on homicide for the reasons I've articulated. However, I agree with your final statement about what you refer to as the "common sense test" (which has nothing nothing to do with the data we've been "disagreeing" about). No matter where we live, we can observe reality with our own ears and eyes, we speak to friends and work colleagues, neighbours and family. We know that our neighbourhoods, communities and countries are made ever less safe by the influx of outsiders who don't share or care for our values. Despite our governments and media playing it down and blatantly covering it up, we know about the disproportionate levels of violent crime in certain minorities. We know about it, not just because of the data, but because we live with it and we see it and hear about it.
The people who don't see it and call us racists for pointing it out have plenty of data to prove that they're right.
My reply was a logical conclusion based on your two premises.
Why does this feel like a Jordan Peterson/Cathy Burke "so what you're saying is" moment?
Thanks for clarifying all that. I’ve been wondering about how to calculate these numbers correctly for years.
A beautifully clear explanation.
You state that Asians commit crime at a lower rate than whites, well certainly Northeast Asians commit crime at a lower rate than whites. Bur what about all those whose ancestors are from the continent of Asia, are they not included in these crime statistics? Ethnicities such as Syrian and Pakistani are Asian. Do the crime statistics separate out different kinds of Asians, or combine them? Pacific Islanders might even be included in the label "Asian".
Syrians and Arabs are counted as White in the US census. In the US, Asians are overwhelmingly East Asians, Vietnamese, Indians and Filipinos. Indians and Filipinos in the US basically perform like East Asians, due to selection. I think Pakistanis are counted as Asians in the US, but again, remember that these are highly positively selected immigrants, not like Pakistanis in the UK. I remember reading something about the Hmong having higher crime rates, but I don't know if that's still true and they are a very small minority of US Asians now.
Strange that people struggle with this. Should be intuitive for anyone with the slightest grasp of math or statistics.
Excellent article.
Should a variable for class/SES of victim be included in the data? If blacks (and whites) disproportionately target wealthier individuals, and whites are wealthier than blacks, then that would skew things a bit.
Would be interesting to also control for different age distributions.