Consider two societies, society A and society B. Society A is 100 percent black and has a very high crime rate. People in the society are suspicious of strangers and generally keep to themselves. No one in the society is offended by this, because everyone understands that people's fear of others is justified, and no one expects to be treated better than they treat others. Now consider society B. Society B is 100 percent Asian, and unlike society A, has almost no crime. Trust among strangers is high, and people are generally willing to help each other out, knowing that others would do the same for them.
I think most would agree that the level of trust in each of these societies is more or less appropriate to the circumstances. People in society A have a right to treat each other differently than the people in society B, because the level of trust one has in others isn't determined arbitrarily, as though there were a "baseline" level of trust appropriate to all situations, but, if one is rational, is based on statistical assumptions backed up by evidence.
Now imagine that both of these societies combine into one society, so that blacks and Asians now live together side by side. The black crime rate remains high, or at least higher than the Asian crime rate, and for the first time Asians experience uneasiness around strangers - black strangers, that is.
My question for liberals is: are the Asians wrong to treat the blacks differently than they treat each other? If so, was it also wrong for members of the all-black society to treat each other in the way they are treated by Asians (and themselves) in the racially mixed society? If not, why was it acceptable then but not acceptable once the races mixed?
