Friday, July 10, 2020

The Affirmative Action Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

John R. Lott, Jr, "How Selective Reporting Hides The Truth About Race And Crime"
Watching the news, you would never guess that the research found black officers were just as likely as white officers to shoot an unarmed black suspect.

On Saturday, a man drove his car onto a Seattle freeway that had been closed by a Black Lives Matter crowd. The driver killed one person and seriously injured another after going the wrong way up a ramp and then around a barricade. Reports noted that police “don’t believe impairment was a factor.” Over the weekend, news outlets replayed the brutal hit, but there’s one thing you won’t learn from their coverage: The driver was black and his victims were white.

NPR linked this attack to other car-ramming incidents by “right-wing extremists targeting Black Lives Matter protesters.” They quote a researcher about how these right-wingers were “trying to intimidate the most recent wave of BLM protesters, to stop their movement.”

The driver was a Seattle local named Dawit Kelete. But you’ll find scant mention of the driver’s ethnicity in mainstream media coverage. You might have more easily learned that Kelete was black by going to the Australia Broadcasting Corporation. The American national media also doesn’t note that Kelete’s two victims were white. You can find that out over at the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Among the few U.S. outlets to mention the race of the driver is Heavy.com. The rest of the news media seemingly would rather have people assume that a white driver attacked two black protesters. Acknowledging the driver’s and victims’ ethnicity wouldn’t advance their narrative of oppression, so it apparently isn’t newsworthy.

One case doesn’t prove a pattern. It could just be that while the American media knows almost everything about this killer, including his name, age, and where he lives, they couldn’t find information on his race. Possibly the foreign news outlets were just lucky to discover that information.

Of course, the media outlets might honestly not view race as essential to the story. But their selective reporting of it shows that they think race is important when it involves certain situations. The problem is that this gives readers a biased perspective, inflaming prejudice, and creating stereotypes.

Research conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center, of which I am president, on all police shootings from 2013 to 2015 found that while local news coverage will often mention the race of the officer and the suspect, the national coverage is much more selective. While the evidence indicates that black officers are no less likely to shoot suspects than white officers, local news coverage of black officers shooting black suspects gets picked up by the national news in just 9 percent of cases. By contrast, 38 percent of the cases in which local news reported on a white officer shooting a black suspect get national coverage.

The selective coverage creates the belief that white officers are the problem — they are the ones shooting blacks, presumably because white officers treat black suspects differently than white ones. Watching the news, you would never guess that the research found that black officers were just as likely as white officers to shoot an unarmed black suspect.

The media’s selective coverage has done real harm. It has heightened racial divides and sown distrust of the police in the communities that need them most. Now, with police sidelined and facing “defunding,” gun violence is rising fast in major cities around the country.

The media similarly seems intent on claiming that mass public shooters are disproportionately white and right-wing when nothing could be further from the truth. While 58 percent of the mass public shooters from 1998 to 2019 were white (excluding people of Middle Eastern descent), about 75 percent of the total U.S. population was white. Middle Eastern Arabs made up just 1 percent of the population but accounted for 8 percent of shooters. Of all the mass killers, 72 percent have no known political affiliation or views — only 3 percent are known to be conservative or Republican.

Race and politics increasingly divide Americans, and selective media reporting is largely to blame. The media, not Trump, is fanning the flames of violence. The destruction and the long-term harm that is being done to heavily minority parts of our cities is their responsibility.

49 comments:

  1. Quote: Lorie Fridell... a criminologist as well as a bias trainer [says] People can have biases against their own demographic groups. Women can have biases about women. Blacks can have biases about blacks. ... The real question here is not whether race is a factor in police shootings, but when? Is it beforehand in all the things that might lead up to a shooting, such as drug laws or racial profiling [institutional racism]? Or does it come down to the skin color of the individual cop holding the gun? [end quote]

    "Institutional racism (also known as systemic racism) is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organisation. It can lead to such issues as discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power and education, among other issues".

    Black police officers face peer pressure to conform to the institutional racism embedded as normal practice within the organisation.

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  2. There are no laws and there is no institutional racism except for affirmative action policies that are based upon race..

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  3. MLK: "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro".

    If you don't believe systemic racism is real, explain these statistics. (excerpt) ...the evidence of systemic racism... "isn't just convincing — it's overwhelming". ... If you question the accuracy of that statement, please explain why... police disproportionately stop African American drivers and disproportionately search African American drivers after stopping them... African American men were about 2 1/2 times more likely than white men to be killed by police. ...African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for petty crimes. [end excerpt]

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  4. "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro" 56 Years of Social Safety Nets and Affirmative Action weren't "something"? Who knew?

    As for your statistics, the answer is simple. Group average intelligence differences equivalent to 1 Standard Deviation. Apply the same the same statistical comparisons to whites of 100 IQ average, and whites with an 85 IQ average. The "results" will match nicely with the derived from your so called "evidence of institutional racism." You can use Charles Murray's "The Bell Curve" and compare charts.

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  5. SPLC: Charles Murray [uses] racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor. [end]

    Racism isn't over by a long shot. So the "something" must continue. That racists such as yourself cite Charles Murray's pseudoscience is PROOF that racism is still very much a problem.

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  6. Racism blah. blah. THAT is the pseudoscience.

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  7. If there were no blacks in America, the 85 IQ whites would be performing identically... only you wouldn't sympathize with them because you wouldn't have an easily distinguishable characteristic to group them under other than "poor working class".

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  8. Obviously your identity is very dependent on believing you are better than most people. It's called narcissistic personality disorder. Dotard has the same problem. Why you identify with him and admire him. So you hate people with a lower intelligence (or people you perceive to have a lower intelligence) no matter their skin color? Murray's Bell Curve is STILL RACIST. You believe it because you're a racist.

    btw, psychology tries to explain why people like you are racist -- and psychology IS a science. According to Stanford psychologist Steven O. Roberts, "People often define racism as disliking or mistreating others on the basis of race. That definition is wrong... Racism is a system of advantage based on race. It is a hierarchy. It is a pandemic. Racism is so deeply embedded within U.S. minds and U.S. society that it is virtually impossible to escape".

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  9. lol!

    Unfortunately for you, I identify as working class. They are my brothers, not the intellectual elite over-edumacated a-holes you idolize.

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  10. If someone with a yearly salary in excess of 150k says they are "working class", I say they are incredibly out of touch -- or lying. Or maybe you were lying when you said (previously) you weren't getting stimulus money because your salary was too high.

    Quote: Working class used to be about the kind of job you had. Today it's more a description of economic uncertainty. People in the working class work and know that they have to keep working in a way that the middle class never will. [end quote]

    You'd think people facing economic uncertainty could really have used that stimulus money.

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  11. Have you ever seen a marine engineer at work? Ever clean a main condenser? Ever repair a boiler? Pull a piston from a Sulzer Marine diesel? Have you ever set up a butterworth and cleaned a cargo tank that had been filled with tallow? Relit a boiler burner? Overhauled a fuel oil pump for Bunker C.

    Please.

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  12. Quote: Working class used to be about the kind of job you had. Today it's more a description of economic uncertainty. People in the working class work and know that they have to keep working in a way that the middle class never will. [end quote]

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  13. Are your hands dirty/greasy even after you wash them? If not, you're not "working class".

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  14. Quote: Working class used to be about the kind of job you had. Today it's more a description of economic uncertainty. People in the working class work and know that they have to keep working in a way that the middle class never will. [end quote]

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  15. You make a large salary but haven't saved anything for retirement?

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  16. Then you should be able to retire. And your comment makes no sense.

    I wrote, "People in the working class work and know that they have to keep working in a way that the middle class never will".

    And you replied, "Then I should have retired decades ago".

    Implying you have to keep working because you can't meet your expenses otherwise. People who retire can meet their expense without the income from a job.

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  17. I'm perfectly "able" to retire, but my wife's $160K annual prescription costs would soon deplete all my investments. I don't want to dump her to preserve my wealth, either.

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  18. Everyone, short of surplus salary CEO's, is at risk for economic ruin. Don't tell me I'm not working class.

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  20. Why don't you dump her? I thought you hated the weak. Single payer would solve your problem, btw. Another reason you should be a Bernie Sanders supporter.

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  21. Wouldn't an "alpha male" (as you say Dotard is) get himself a younger, hotter, HEALTHIER wife? I have zero sympathy for someone who complains about being "at risk for economic ruin" due to medical expenses, but then votes to continue the system that demands that be the case. Clearly you LIKE spending 160k on prescriptions yearly, so you can stuff your whines.

    Remember that Dotard promised to lower prescription costs by negotiating with drug companies? Another lie. Yet you continue to believe he is the greatest president ever.

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  22. I have health insurance that covers all but a few hundred dollars of her drug costs. The existing system is working "just fine" for me. Going to single payer would almost certainly eliminate the future development of life saving genetically based treatments in the future. I thank G_d every day for Genentech and the private "for profit" capital that financed it.

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  23. ps - If it weren't for private capital, we'd STILL be waiting for the first complete human DNA sequence to get sequenced.

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  24. "Going to single payer would almost certainly eliminate the future development of life saving genetically based treatments in the future".

    It wouldn't. Single payer would drastically reduce administrative costs. And allow the government to negotiate for lower prices. There will still be PLENTY of profit to be made. GOUGING isn't the only way for such companies to remain profitable. Single payer doesn't make for profit medical research illegal.

    btw, if you are "at risk for economic ruin" because you'd lose your insurance if you retired... single payer would solve that problem.

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  25. By the way, that the current system is working "just fine" -- for you -- is obviously all you care about. It isn't working "just fine" for many others. But clearly you don't give a shit about those people. Obviously they're losers who deserve to die, be sick, etc.

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  26. Who would develop an expensive new drug only to be forced to sell it for far less than it cost to develop it? Chavez/Maduro tried that with the Venezuelan economy. How'd it work out for them?

    And why would I ruin my children's future by precluding millions of new wonder drugs to save myself a few years working? I'm not as greedy as you think.

    And 86% of the population has employer provided healthcare. At least, that was before Obama stepped in to ruin private insurance companies and force the nation towards a single payer disaster.

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  27. I'm unaware of any proposals that say developers of new drugs should be forced to sell them for far less than they cost to develop. I'm for laws preventing gouging. Not laws preventing recovery of research costs or even for laws prohibiting a reasonable profit. Prohibiting gouging would NOT "preclude millions of new wonder drugs".

    btw, "according to recent data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), about 156,199,800 Americans, or around 49 percent of the country's total population, receive employer-sponsored health insurance". LINK. I don't know where you get 86% from. As per my link -- if you look at coverage by state -- 60% (in Illinois) is as high as it gets. Nowhere near 86%.

    Single payer (which ObamaCare isn't) is the future. A majority of Americans support it. Why Democrats will continue to fight until we achieve this goal.

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  28. Define Gouging. Define Reasonable. I can make up LOTS of reasons to include or exclude from "reasonable" or "gouging".

    How many are covered by spousal policies? Government policies?

    Repeat your survey replacing the word "Medicare" with "Single Payer." Then get back to me. Most Americans also recognize the difference.

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  29. An example of gouging...

    Article excerpt: It was 2015 when Martin Shkreli, then CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and the notorious "pharma bro", jacked up the cost of the lifesaving drug Daraprim by 5,000 percent. Overnight, its price tag skyrocketed from $13.50 a pill to $750. [end article excerpt]

    You (if you needed this drug) would shrug it off as Martin Shkreli needing to recover his research costs? FYI, he did no research, he only bought the patent. The actual research was done a long time ago.

    The Kaiser Family Foundation stats above concerns how many people RECEIVE employer-sponsored health insurance. They aren't trying to deceive by leaving out spouses. If you get employer based insurance your spouse generally also gets it. They (as well as children) are included. The government is an employer. Government policies are included in that stat.

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  30. You (if you needed this drug) would shrug it off as Martin Shkreli needing to recover his research costs?

    So he can't finance research into other new drugs. THAT is what I've been telling you. You really do love banks and venture capitalists.

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  31. Or pay $2 million for a Wu-Tang Clan album. Thank God desperate people were forced to overpay for medication to save their lives so Shkreli could afford Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

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  32. Wu- Tang Clan gouged Shkreil for a $2 million record? There oughtta be a law against gougingusic lovers...

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  34. They didn't set the price. It was an auction. He paid 2 million for a Wu-Tang album because he's an idiot. Not because he had no choice because he needed it to save his life. If stupidity were outlawed you'd be in prison along with Shkreli.

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  35. An auction forces a seller to accept an unreasonably low price? Who knew? Maybe Shkreil should have manufactured a single bottle of Daraprim pills and auctioned THAT off...

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  36. 2 million is unreasonably low? You must also be a big Wu-Tang Clan fan. I've never heard any of their music. Or do you mean the price of Daraprim pills is unreasonably low? Despite the price going up 5k percent. Maybe you'd have set it higher. But only if your goal was the death of more people who needed it (I say MORE because undoubtedly people did die because they couldn't afford it after Shkreli jacked up the price).

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  37. I believe that the government shouldn't grant or enforce 'patents'. If a company develops a secret recipe, let them keep it secret and impervious to reverse engineering.

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  38. The same holds true for so-called 'intellectual property' ala Wu Tang.

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  39. ps - You can throw non-disclosure agreements into my non-enforceable category as well.

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