WellIntentioned101
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- Apr 10, 2018
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- #21
Race stats matter, because when you bring in more of a certain group who are say more murderous, then the neighborhood will continue to become more murderous as you increase the concentrations of that race.
Explain how this doesn't matter?
Once again I think you are misunderstanding my point. My point isn't that statistics can't be used to analyze data based on certain factors to assess whether there is a correlation between various things. What I am trying to say is that the different race categories are not well defined categories and so they are poor categories to use when you look at data. Like I have already said, what defines a black person? What defines a white person? When you hear that blacks commit more crimes, specifically which individuals are you talking about? There is no objective measure that separates a black person from a white person or a latino person from a native american person. Take this description of race from wikipedia for example:
"A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as inherently distinct by society. First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century the term race began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits. Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, that is, a symbolic identity created to establish some cultural meaning. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.[1][2]"
The groupings are based sometimes on physical traits, sometimes on social qualities, and sometimes it is just a part of your identity. So once again we could go back to the question, what does it mean to say black people commit more crimes? Well if we are talking about differences in physical traits, then why don't we look at the correlation between specific physical features and likelihood to commit a crime? If we are talking about social/cultural qualities, then why don't we look at the correlation between people who celebrate Christmas and people who commit crimes? If we are talking about identities then to ask if blacks commit more crimes is to ask if people who identify as black commit more crimes. And as we are seeing with the transgender movement, anyone can say they identify with anything, so that is not a useful category either.
The last point I'd like to make is that I am not saying that people can't attempt to use race categories in statistics. Considering a question on the US census asks about race (which I think it shouldn't for all these same reasons), I think it's perfectly reasonable to use any and every category to assess data. The title of this post is that race statistics are overvalued. The media, the government, and other groups in the US have made race statistics the most important statistics, to the point where you can't have a discussion about anything without bringing up race and race statistics. I think that race statistics are not very useful for helping to solve problems in America and I think that it could be argued they do more harm than good, but I'll leave that argument for another time.