What is your answer to "The Race Problem"?

[Desert Reign]

What is your answer to "The Race Problem"?


Run faster?

 

[kmoney]

Alate_One, there's something that you've said that I've been having my eye on, but I haven't really gotten around to answering yet.

You said this:



You also quoted this:



For the sake of argument, I'm willing to admit all of this. I could criticize the data that you've presented, but let's assume for dialectical purposes that the data is accurate.

1. Most convictions are for drug offenses.
2. Black people tend to commit drug crimes in a way which makes them particularly likely to get caught.

This actually works against your point. There's nothing racist or biased about this. It makes perfect sense that more black people should go to jail if these things are true. It also makes sense that there should be a sentencing disparity given the "same" facts.

If I'm confronted with a young man who sells drugs on the streets, on the one hand, and someone who sold a drug (ignoring, of course, the fact that "drugs" in a legal sense can range anything from prescription painkillers to meth) to an acquaintance in the privacy of his own home, I might be inclined to impose a harsher sentence on the former.

Regardless of race.

Furthermore, short of changing the law, what do you propose to make arrests and sentencing more "fair"?

If white people are selling drugs in the privacy of their own homes, the police would seriously have to start invading peoples' privacy a lot more than they do now just to catch these people (especially if these crimes aren't being reported).

Or do you propose that police just stop looking for black drug dealers?

I don't like either alternative.

Good post/questions

 

[Desert Reign]

What is the "race problem"? The disproportionate outcomes in the United States of people from different racial groups. Higher incarceration rates, higher rates of poverty, lower rates of educational attainment. Etc.

The answer to this problem is simple.

Firstly, really clamp down on all crime by white people. Dedicate a lot of police energy to it and instruct judges to give harsher sentences to offenders, especially custodial sentences. Then you will raise the number of white people in prison to the same level as the Latinos.

Then you can say 'Hey look, the Whites and the Latinos are about equal, so they are probably normal. But the Blacks are obviously worse offenders than the others.' And no one would be able to disagree with you or claim that whites were being given preferential treatment. Which is what people want to see, isn't it?

Then, you can just tell the blacks to offend less. Or else you can be a lot more lenient on them until they get down to the same level as the Latinos and Whites. And then everyone will be happy because you will be able to show a graph that shows everybody equal.

Oh, wait! That was the intention wasn't it, to prove that everybody is equal, to ensure that white, black and Latinos get the same amount of prison sentencing as each other?

Oh dear, I can see I am getting myself all confused here! Perhaps that wasn't the intention at all? Perhaps white people are for some reason just innately better at getting along with others in society than Latinos or Blacks?

And what about men and women? Shouldn't we be worried about whether the proportion of men and women in jail is the same? And what about tall people and short people, I mean it would certainly indicate a problem with your society if it turned out that tall people spent a lot less time in jail than short people. And then there's the Christians and the Muslims and the Hindus. Hadn't we also better get some statistics about them as well? And don't get me going on the homosexuals. I mean at all costs we don't want it to appear that any group of people in our society is different in any respect from any other group, do we?

 

[ok doser]

The answer to this problem is simple.

Firstly, really clamp down on all crime by white people. Dedicate a lot of police energy to it and instruct judges to give harsher sentences to offenders, especially custodial sentences. Then you will raise the number of white people in prison to the same level as the Latinos.

Then you can say 'Hey look, the Whites and the Latinos are about equal, so they are probably normal. But the Blacks are obviously worse offenders than the others.' And no one would be able to disagree with you.

Then, you can just tell the blacks to offend less. Or else you can be a lot more lenient on them until they get down to the same level as the Latinos and Whites. And then everyone will be happy because you will be able to show a graph that shows everybody equal.

Oh, wait! That was the intention wasn't it, to prove that everybody is equal, to ensure that white, black and Latinos get the same amount of prison sentencing as each other?

Oh dear, I can see I am getting myself all confused here! Perhaps that wasn't the intention at all? Perhaps white people are for some reason just innately better at getting along with others in society than Latinos or Blacks?

And what about men and women? Shouldn't we be worried about whether the proportion of men and women in jail is the same? And what about tall people and short people, I mean it would certainly indicate a problem with your society if it turned out that tall people spent a lot less time in jail than short people. And then there's the Christians and the Muslims and the Hindus. Hadn't we also better get some statistics about them as well? And don't get me going on the homosexuals. I mean at all costs we don't want it to appear than any group of people in our society is different in any respect from any other group, do we?

i think it's unfair that stupid people are incarcerated more than smart people

 

[Alate_One]

The better neighborhood has a better culture than the one they moved away from. It never was about income. That's why poor rural whites don't have high incarceration rates. Its not that they aren't being locked up; they aren't committing the crimes.

I'm betting there are a lot that are committing crimes, but simply aren't locked up. Because there are fewer police officers in rural areas than inner cities and they aren't told to focus on rural white drug crime. This is why we often don't hear about meth labs until they blow up. But in inner cities police are running around incarcerating everyone they can find that's involved in the drug trade.

People do what they can get away with and whites are allowed to get away with more and serve less prison time.

Violent crime is a different issue, but it doesn't contribute nearly as much to the sheer number of people in prison currently.

There isn't one white culture or black culture but all white cultures share more in common with each other than they do with other groups. Same with the black cultures.

I disagree here. Americans, no matter their skin color have far more similar culture to one another than people of the same skin tone from other places.

I didn't see a vast cultural gulf between me and my black neighbors growing up. But I do see one driving around in the rural parts of the country and with some of my white neighbors now.

 

[ok doser]

. they aren't told to focus on rural white drug crime..

that's retarded

 

[quip]

It seems we are all racing for something?:luigi:

or from something.

 

[glassjester]

Clearly, all this "help" isn't helping.

What they need are good K-12 schools, which they aren't getting. What they need are jobs that pay a dad enough to raise a family, which they aren't getting. What they need are opportunities for higher education, and entrepreneurship, which they aren't getting. What they need is to be treated like regular citizens, instead of criminals, by the police, which is not happening.

It seems like de-concentrating poverty would help with a lot of this.

I've got to comment on the "good" K-12 schools, though. What makes the schools "good"? What does it even mean to say that a school is "good," besides that the students are performing well?

If you took all the students from "bad" School A, and swapped them out with the students from "good" School B, do you think the School-A students would suddenly start doing better, or that (once the standardized test scores are reported) School B would end up being a "bad" school, and School A a "good" school?

 

[Alate_One]

For the sake of argument, I'm willing to admit all of this. I could criticize the data that you've presented, but let's assume for dialectical purposes that the data is accurate.

1. Most convictions are for drug offenses.
2. Black people tend to commit drug crimes in a way which makes them particularly likely to get caught.

This actually works against your point. There's nothing racist or biased about this. It makes perfect sense that more black people should go to jail if these things are true. It also makes sense that there should be a sentencing disparity given the "same" facts.

It's not racist in the sense of people are intentionally singling out black people to go to jail. That's never been my point. But when you have a disparity that follows race, those sentences for drug offenses will lead the offenders into worse crimes later - recitivism. And so the black community continues to suffer because of these, unintentionally racialized actions. Very little of the race problem today is caused by intentionally racist actions.

If I'm confronted with a young man who sells drugs on the streets, on the one hand, and someone who sold a drug (ignoring, of course, the fact that "drugs" in a legal sense can range anything from prescription painkillers to meth) to an acquaintance in the privacy of his own home, I might be inclined to impose a harsher sentence on the former.

But why *should* you impose a harsher sentence on the other? Is one action inherently "less bad" than the other? People are still getting drugs and their lives are being destroyed. Does it matter that one is on the streetcorner and the other isn't?

Furthermore, short of changing the law, what do you propose to make arrests and sentencing more "fair"?

I think the law should be changed. It's clearly damaging communities and specifically the black community disproportionately. Possession of any drug (up to a certain amount) shouldn't carry prison time.

If white people are selling drugs in the privacy of their own homes, the police would seriously have to start invading peoples' privacy a lot more than they do now just to catch these people (especially if these crimes aren't being reported).

Yep. It is a problem. Though there have certainly been home invasions by police over drugs.

Or do you propose that police just stop looking for black drug dealers?

I don't like either alternative.

I think we should limit the amount of time we spend looking for drug dealing and focus on other crimes. Also, drugs should be treated as a medical problem rather than a criminal justice one. Our prisons currently are not places for reform, they're places to make people worse criminals.

What I would suggest as a partial solution is this:

1. Reform prisons to reduce recitivism. Make them places where prisoners are educated in some way, taught a trade, go through anger management, substance abuse counseling etc.

2. Reform existing drug laws so that people are given treatment for addiction rather than simply thrown into prison with more violent offenders. I'd probably say legalize Marijuana nationwide, not because I think it is a good drug, but because it's probably less harmful than alcohol at least and tends to incite less violence than most other drugs. Heroin, Meth and Cocaine should remain illegal. Drugs and their punishment (primarily for higher level dealers) should be classed by actual harm caused. Police could then be refocused on actual violent crime.

3. Police actions and training should be carefully evaluated, there is quite a bit of evidence of implicit bias in most people, police officers included.

4. Break up areas of entrenched poverty by targeting poor black families with small children for movement into better neighborhoods. This should never be in large numbers but very scattered.

5. Reform the school system by making them as equal as possible but not pretending every student can or should go to college. Bring back vocational training.

 

[Alate_One]

It seems like de-concentrating poverty would help with a lot of this.

I've got to comment on the "good" K-12 schools, though. What makes the schools "good"? What does it even mean to say that a school is "good," besides that the students are performing well?

If you took all the students from "bad" School A, and swapped them out with the students from "good" School B, do you think the School-A students would suddenly start doing better, or that (once the standardized test scores are reported) School B would end up being a "bad" school, and School A a "good" school?

It's a combination of things I would guess. Better prepared teachers in good schools as well as better prepared students. Many underperforming schools are in impoverished areas where kids do not get much support from parents, often because they simply don't have time (they work too much).

So if you have a classroom with a lot of kids with behavior problems, it becomes hard for the teacher to manage. If you have a classroom with only one or two, they can be dealt with effectively. In high poverty schools there's simply too many students that need a lot of help. They overwhelm the system. Teachers don't want to teach in those school systems because of the problems so most of the best ones look for jobs elsewhere.

It's a self reinforcing death spiral.

 

[glassjester]

It's a combination of things I would guess. Better prepared teachers in good schools as well as better prepared students. Many underperforming schools are in impoverished areas where kids do not get much support from parents, often because they simply don't have time (they work too much).

I don't know if that's true. It seems like the teachers in the highest-need areas are more often the ones that are of the "ready for anything" variety.

I can imagine a teacher from a low-performing, inner city school easily transitioning into a well-performing, suburban school. I imagine (and have seen) the opposite taking place with much difficulty, and little success. So which schools really have the "better" teachers?

 

[gcthomas]

It's a combination of things I would guess. Better prepared teachers in good schools as well as better prepared students. Many underperforming schools are in impoverished areas where kids do not get much support from parents, often because they simply don't have time (they work too much).

So if you have a classroom with a lot of kids with behavior problems, it becomes hard for the teacher to manage. If you have a classroom with only one or two, they can be dealt with effectively. In high poverty schools there's simply too many students that need a lot of help. They overwhelm the system. Teachers don't want to teach in those school systems because of the problems so most of the best ones look for jobs elsewhere.

It's a self reinforcing death spiral.

Also, good teachers are mobile and can get jobs in schools full of nice kids. Nice families can get their kids into the nice schools, while the less skills parents and their children to the local under-resourced school, along with the teachers who can't or won't get a job in the nice school.

It is a self reinforcing process of social segregation. It could be helped by offering higher pay for the most difficult schools. Or employing teachers centrally and rotating the best teachers and managers through the schools that require the most skill to teach in.

But that would require the authorities to take some responsibility for the problem instead of just blaming the head teacher or the children.

 

[glassjester]

i think it's unfair that stupid people are incarcerated more than smart people

You're right. People with shifty eyes and sticky fingers are disproportionately represented in the prison system, too.

 

[gcthomas]

You're right. People with shifty eyes and sticky fingers are disproportionately represented in the prison system, too.

What proportion of the shifty rich white bankers with sticky fingers went to prison after the banking crisis?

 

[glassjester]

Not enough?

But is that preferential treatment according to race, or preferential treatment according to income?

 

[ClimateSanity]

What proportion of the shifty rich white bankers with sticky fingers went to prison after the banking crisis?

What proportion broke any laws? Who wrote the laws that made their legal thievery possible? How many non white bankers are there?

 

[bybee]

Also, good teachers are mobile and can get jobs in schools full of nice kids. Nice families can get their kids into the nice schools, while the less skills parents and their children to the local under-resourced school, along with the teachers who can't or won't get a job in the nice school.

It is a self reinforcing process of social segregation. It could be helped by offering higher pay for the most difficult schools. Or employing teachers centrally and rotating the best teachers and managers through the schools that require the most skill to teach in.

But that would require the authorities to take some responsibility for the problem instead of just blaming the head teacher or the children.

How about parents taking responsibility for the behavior of their own children? How about children being held accountable for their own behavior? That might be a good start?

 

[Angel4Truth]

How about parents taking responsibility for the behavior of their own children? How about children being held accountable for their own behavior? That might be a good start?

Liberal = no one is responsible for themselves, its everyone elses fault.

Its like tantrums on steroids.

 

[gcthomas]

What proportion broke any laws?

Even companies misrepresenting their tax liabilities can often come to an 'arrangement' with the Revenue folks, as it seems white collar crime isn't taken as seriously as crimes by poor people.

 

[Alate_One]

I don't know if that's true. It seems like the teachers in the highest-need areas are more often the ones that are of the "ready for anything" variety.

I can imagine a teacher from a low-performing, inner city school easily transitioning into a well-performing, suburban school. I imagine (and have seen) the opposite taking place with much difficulty, and little success. So which schools really have the "better" teachers?

It is known that high poverty schools have high teacher turnover. And less experience tends to reduce effectiveness.

What fuels high rates of teacher turnover in schools that serve large numbers of low-income students of color? Teachers who choose to leave such schools usually transfer to schools serving wealthier, whiter student populations, leading some researchers to conclude that teachers are dissatisfied working with poor, minority students. Here we present an alternative explanation— one grounded in organizational theory. We review evidence from six recent studies, which collectively suggest that teachers who leave high-poverty schools are not fleeing their students, but rather the poor working conditions that make it difficult for them to teach and their students to learn. Together, these studies find that the working conditions teachers prize most—and those that best predict their satisfaction and retention—are social in nature. They include school leadership, collegial relationships, and elements of school culture. We discuss what is known about these factors and how each supports teachers’ work. We conclude with recommendations for those who seek to stabilize the staffing in these schools.