There are other problems with the inference. When it becomes night some violations are hidden by darkness (e.g. carpool violations, drinking while driving) and other violations become more obvious (e.g. tail light out, headlamp out). There may be some racial correlation with the change in which violations are obvious and which become less obvious. So, day/night may not be the best way to check if officers are using race as a factor in their decisions. That the inference was made in the study.
Yeah exactly.
This study is great and controls for an abnormally large amount of variables, but it doesn't and really can't control for all of them. It's just nigh impossible to prove systemic racism from such a study.
The data from Stanford is quite extensive. Some of the datasets include the race of the officer. I had hoped that black officers showed different racial biases on the IAT and other tests, but apparently they show the same biases as white officers do. I had thought about a way to check for racial biases in policing that would be a better method than the day/night approach, and I think using the individual officer hash ID's might be the best way provided that other factors could be controlled for (e.g. location, time of day, day of week, type of offense). I would imagine that a racist cop's decisions would stand out in patterns. This would be a lot of data analysis work though.
The day/night approach in that 2020 100 million sample size paper is the closest anything has come to proving systemic racism, and it still falls short. The people who analyzed the data set and wrote the discussions in the paper don't seem to understand that it's possible to have different outcomes for races that DON'T involve 'systemic racism' or racial bias (this is just researchers being dumb).
The issue with cataloguing individual police, even if they provably have racial bias, is that this isn't systemic racism -- this is racial bias. Systemic racism is argued to be a result of institutions inherent racial bias against races -- that is not individual bias. If you want to argue that individual police are racially biased against certain races, that's a plausible argument that can be debated, but that won't prove systemic racism exists.
Something that's rather difficult about systemic racism is the lack of a working definition for it. I would generally view the "war on drugs" to probably be the best example of it. While your OP focused on the behaviors of blacks that made them more likely to get caught, this is not where you should be looking if you wish to find systemic racism. You should be looking at the policy decisions of those in power and their impacts. Importantly those decisions may not be racially motivated at all a politician's decision is often to do or say whatever he thinks is best for his political career. I encourage you to review this article:
Also, the history of federal crack cocaine sentencing is a good example of how the system can be biased. These articles are a good resource on the subject:
The working definition I use is 'outcomes that are a result of racial bias built into systems'. This is a definition I've gotten from semi-famous left-wingers like Destiny, Vaush and Hassan, so I'm intentionally attempting to give these left-wingers their ideal definition. I can understand people having difficulty in forming a definition because "racism" is a nonsense term:
Racism is a nonsense, malicious term v2.0 (debateart.com) .
I find it non-connecting to argue that laws can be racially biased when there's no hint at them being so, and that the only 'evidence' you have is the different outcomes for racial groups. I've addressed and explained variables that account for these different racial outcomes, so that was a correct place to look for racial bias built into a system. Anyone of any race can get arrested for dong illicit drugs, so there doesn't appear to be 'systemic racism' there either. You seem to be missing any evidence that systemic racial bias exists, yet because it affects Blacks more, that's how you conclude systemic racism exists -- you're missing the essential part to conclude systemic racism exists.
It wasn't until 2010 that the disparities in possession thresholds for cocaine sentencing were somewhat addressed under the fair sentencing act. That Congress was on notice of the problem in 1994 and allowed it to continue for 16 years represents a deliberate failure to act - And why? I surmise that it had to do with political expediency, or perhaps the issue was a legislative bargaining chip that was held up in negotiations.
You could argue that this is problem with the law itself, that it isn't fair. But again, even if we agree this law wasn't fair, everyone is subject to this law, not just Black people. This argument doesn't demonstrate any racial bias that is generated by a system.
The entire approach to the drug problem is destructive. Gangs fight over territory, murdering each other. Drug users overdose, now killing 70,000+ Americans every year. Drug users and dealers receive substantial prison sentences, removing them from the workforce and causing them to be a drain on society. The high black market price of these substances is financially devastating to addicts who end up homeless and then turn to property crime as a way to pay for their habits. The cash flow leaves the USA and empowers drug lords, destabilizing other countries. If the production and distribution of these substances were socialized and regulated, one wonders how much of this damage could have been avoided.
I'm imagining the whole thing with the disparities may feed in to itself. Black men sent to prison obviously aren't able to provide for children very well while they're in there and being a convicted felon isn't good for your career prospects. When they get out, they take prison culture with them and contaminate the community with it. In prison one way you protect yourself is by having a reputation for a readiness to resort to violence (i.e. "don't fuck with that guy"; AKA "cred" when they get out) That these things from prison are part of black culture today should be obvious.
Look I'm just going to stop giving you the benefit of the doubt and say that no society in their right mind would legalize these drugs.
I think it would be better if people received fines for personal drug use (so as to avoid clogging expensive jail cells with people who would otherwise be useful to society, kinda what you said about Black dads), but drug dealers/growers need the bullet. There's nothing productive about monetizing addiction, and it takes away from people being productive (e.g. why go to work and keep the country running when you could feel better getting high all day on your cheap supply of weed?). Getting large groups of people addicted to these things always causes massive social problems that aren't worth the 'money flying around the economy' or whatever.
Of course, this is a large topic and really needs its own thread (and I don't think it has anything to do with systemic racism because drugs laws apply to everyone), but I 100% do not agree with you that legalizing ANY of these illicit drugs is a good idea in the slightest.
And really, these are simply the impacts. Was the war on drugs a racist decision, or any of this legislation inherently racist in the first place? I don't think so. As I said before, politicians are too often indifferent cogs in a racist machine. As crudely explained by a Republican strategist:
legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
This is about politicians getting "racists" (whatever that means) to vote for them. Just because "racists" think this will hurt Black people, that doesn't mean the law itself is systemically racist. That's a rather nuanced difference, but hopefully it's clear.
As you've pointed out, it's just so much easier to catch black people using or dealing drugs than white people because they're doing it out in public on street corners or whatever. Drug crimes are one of the easiest crimes to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. It's so simple. "We found crack in his pocket. Here is the bodycam video. This is the test result. Case closed." OK then - You're running the DA's office and the police department. What are the investigative and prosecutorial priorities? Well in our republic those are going to be set by elected officials, and it's time for us to be "tough on crime" which seems to be a good dog whistle these days. The priority is drugs! More drug arrests. More convictions. Drug abuse violations have consistently been a high priority for policing. (e.g.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-29 - measuring by # of arrests it is usually the biggest category other than "all other arrests"); (also -
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/persons-arrested - see marijuana arrests as about a third)
You're a big fan of studies. I'm sure you're aware of the benign nature of marijuana. It's not killing thousands of people like fentanyl or alcohol do. And yet, it's a huge priority for law enforcement. And why is that? Why does the harm from the drug bear so little relation to the decision to arrest? It's not like the policy makers don't know about it by now. Who is making those policy decisions and why are they doing it? Well, go look at the disparate racial impact and perhaps you have your answer. Democracy appears to be working just as it was designed to. Racial hatred in, systemic racism out; An expression of the will of the people.
I don't agree at all that marijuana is benign for a society. I can somewhat agree that it's a relatively benign drug for people to take (although the IQ lowering and schizophrenia risk are certainly worrying), but a society full of potheads isn't a productive one at all -- that is EXTREMELY dangerous. Jobs need to get done to maintain society. Yes, a lot of them suck to do. But if your choice is between smoking highly addictive stuff all day, and going to work a nasty job that is necessary for society, guess what will happen to society when few people decide to turn up for work? Anyway, as I said before: needs it own thread.
The latter part of your paragraph is just question begging. Just because there are different racial outcomes, that isn't in itself systemic racism. For example, just because Usain Bolt finishes first in a sprints against White people, that doesn't mean sprints are 'systemically racist' against White people -- bad, question begging logic.
I'm about to hit the char lim so I'll respond to the rest in a 2nd post.
