A Family Discussion on Race Relations

Back on Labor Day, we had small family gathering in which race relations came-up in conversation. If memory serves, the discussion began when one person made fun of Trump as the “orange-man” and another person, who was a strong Trump supporter, took objection…and let’s just say things got weird from there.

Long story short, the discussion turned to race and a couple of younger family members were sympathetic to the idea that this country is systematically racist and something needs to be done about it. Additionally, since peaceful protests of the past have not solved the problem, they found it understandable that a “less-peaceful” method should be tried today. They didn’t like it, but found it “understandable”; sort of like the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773 as part of the American Revolution.

Nothing was resolve on Labor Day, but a short time after, one teen-aged relative emailed me this website which is much about “educating” people who may not agree with groups like Black Lives Matter. She asked me to read it and keep an open mind. I replied that I would, but it was a lot to review, and although I did peruse the entire site, I picked one argument in particular that we actually discussed on Labor Day and looked at it in great detail.

My email reply is below. My thoughts are in blue italics and the actual argument from the website is in black. Since the word “problem” kept coming up during the live discussion, I looked at this as if someone at work emailed me about a problem or situation and wanted my thoughts. I get that a lot in my profession as a Technical Product Manager.

NOTE: I assumed all statistics (data) below are true…although we should not believe everything we read on the internet. See what you think…

Rebuttal of…“Black people commit more crimes than White people.”

The truth of this situation is that Black neighborhoods are over-policed. When you look at statistics without doing more research behind it, it first appears as though Black people commit more crimes than White people. This, however, cannot be true, as Black people only make up around 13% of the US population.

Why can’t it be true? Are we to believe that one group of people cannot be statically different than another group concerning certain behaviors?

More attention and pressure is put on Black communities, and so more of them are arrested for things that White people can just do without much of a second thought, such as selling lemonade on the side of the road “without a permit”, or speeding.

I can only think of two possible causes for “over-policing” a community.  Both police (and others) pick-on the community for no just reason, or certain behaviors in these communities warrant more attention.

Let’s start by analyzing a statistic that’s been circulating the internet lately: “Black men commit nearly half of all murders in the US.” While this is statistically correct, and Black offenders have indeed been convicted of 52% of homicides between 1980-2008,

Don’t always believe what you read on the internet, but I’ve seen stats like this form several sources, so I consider it reasonable.

Black men also make up 50% of those wrongfully convicted of murder.

This is a strange comment. If about 50% of all convictions are Black men, I would expect about 50% of wrong convictions to be the same. Imagine a bushel of apples and some of the apples are rotten. If I randomly take about 50% of the apples, it follows that I’ll also take about 50% of the rotten apples.

A Black person incarcerated for sexual assault is 3.5x more likely to be innocent than a White person convicted of a crime, 7x for murder, and 12x for drug convictions. In fact, nearly half of all people exonerated of a crime since 1989 are Black individuals, and Black people are more likely to be falsely convicted. But why? Though the answer to this question is very complicated, racial bias and institutional discrimination play a big role in this issue. Only 15% of murders committed by Black people involve White people, yet a staggering 31% of Black people are eventually cleared of murder convictions against White people. Misconduct like hiding evidence, tampering with witnesses, or perjury may also all play a part in this racial disparity. In 76% of cases where Black murder defendants are wrongfully convicted, misconduct is found. When looking at these exonerated murder charges, a huge difference is found regarding police misconduct across races. Cases for exonerated Black defendants were 22% more likely to include police misconduct than exonerated White defendants. Similar reports can be found in sexual assault convictions too.

Another factor is that White people are more likely to misidentify Black people for one another. This often leads to eyewitnesses misidentifying across races. In fact, eyewitness errors accounted for 79% of sexual assault cases involving wrongfully convicted Black defendants. Assaults on White women by Black men are a small minority but constitute half of the sexual assault cases with eyewitness misidentifications. Why? Because these cases often involve implicit biases, racially tainted official misconduct, and even explicit racism in some cases.

Assuming all the data above is true, I sense I kind backward problem solving here which goes like this…

Step 1: Form conclusion (implicit biases, racially tainted official misconduct, and even explicit racism)

Step 2: Get the data

When people do this the data that supports the conclusion is emphasize, and data that does not is ignored or de-emphasized…and this can be something subconscious.

If the root cause is “implicit biases, racially tainted official misconduct, and even explicit racism”, then I’d expect other minority communities like Asians, Hispanics, Asian Indians, etc., to have similar data; don’t think they do. These other minorities also cannot hide their skin color or race. Why would the majority pick on only one shade of brown?

Another root cause could be “criminal behavior”. Imagine a large class of 100 students and 13 of them cause 50% of the serious problems in the class. In time the teacher and the other 87 students may keep a close and suspicious eye on the 13, blame them for everything, treat them unfairly and try to get them in even more trouble so they can all go to detention. This  is wrong/sinful; now suppose the 13 were all red heads. Is the root cause of this problem the color of their hair or their behavior?

If the problem is bad behavior then the solution cannot be more bad behavior (trashing the classroom, attacking the teacher/students, etc.)

This brings the next “why” question. Why so much criminal behavior? Maybe the break-down of the Black family? Here’s a video about that.

The next “why” question…Why the family breakdown? Could it be because of the racism in the past? Possibly…

Solution? Continue peaceful efforts to end racism, but much more effort is needed to build-back and support Black families. And when I say “build-back” I mean more how black families were in the first half of the 20^th century with married, chaste black couples raising their children with basic Judaeo-Christian values.