11-19-2019, 09:04 AM
@RiverNotch, with thanks for further opportunity to clarify... but there's clarity and "clarity..."
The “clarity” statistics at first appear to bring to black people being shot disproportionately (more often) vanishes when the underlying assumptions under which they’re interpreted fail. For example, black people interact with (are stopped by) police more often. Instead of bias, this may (often does) circle back from other circumstances that are not chance. For example, police may stop a black driver because he’s behaving in a suspicious manner - to include driving in a vehicle with expired tags, or one to which multiple previous violations attach. The driver may, in fact, be behaving suspiciously by any standard, but in ways that black drivers have more opportunities to behave: black people tend to be younger and, disproportionately, drive at night... which, with one or all lights out, is cause for a stop.
At that point, circumstances circle forward. The driver may bale out and run, terminating in his either being tackled (looks violent on screen) or turning to fight with a weapon (which is assault, and would justify anyone in shooting him, not just police). Why did he run? Contraband in the car, stolen car, not wanting to pay all those tickets, knowledge that he did something illegal last week even if that’s not why he’s being stopped. The guilty flee...
In other words, the assumption that more frequent stops result solely from bias is just that: an assumption. It has no statistical validity; black propensity to crime remains unexplained since it may cause rather than result from valid interactions.
This is why disparaging “blue lives matter” or treating it as an insult is so offensive. It states the proposition that police are entitled to defend their lives against lethal threats regardless of the race of the assailant. When someone disparages that, he’s condemning them to death. It also exposes (as it’s meant to) a bias in favor of criminals so long as they’re a preferred race. That’s why it hurts those who object to it.
Finally, being held to account for what one’s ancestors did is not part of present-day Western morality... except among special-pleaders of various stripes and excuses. Many (perhaps most) other cultures are fine with it. That doesn’t make those cultures wrong, just not-us. But someone who insists on individual responsibility and group innocence for his favored group while attributing group guilt to members of other groups is wrong because he’s inconsistent - a genuinely objective basis.
@rowens - I think we're reading from the same book, though not from the same page. We can dispute whether generic lives matter, at another time.
The “clarity” statistics at first appear to bring to black people being shot disproportionately (more often) vanishes when the underlying assumptions under which they’re interpreted fail. For example, black people interact with (are stopped by) police more often. Instead of bias, this may (often does) circle back from other circumstances that are not chance. For example, police may stop a black driver because he’s behaving in a suspicious manner - to include driving in a vehicle with expired tags, or one to which multiple previous violations attach. The driver may, in fact, be behaving suspiciously by any standard, but in ways that black drivers have more opportunities to behave: black people tend to be younger and, disproportionately, drive at night... which, with one or all lights out, is cause for a stop.
At that point, circumstances circle forward. The driver may bale out and run, terminating in his either being tackled (looks violent on screen) or turning to fight with a weapon (which is assault, and would justify anyone in shooting him, not just police). Why did he run? Contraband in the car, stolen car, not wanting to pay all those tickets, knowledge that he did something illegal last week even if that’s not why he’s being stopped. The guilty flee...
In other words, the assumption that more frequent stops result solely from bias is just that: an assumption. It has no statistical validity; black propensity to crime remains unexplained since it may cause rather than result from valid interactions.
This is why disparaging “blue lives matter” or treating it as an insult is so offensive. It states the proposition that police are entitled to defend their lives against lethal threats regardless of the race of the assailant. When someone disparages that, he’s condemning them to death. It also exposes (as it’s meant to) a bias in favor of criminals so long as they’re a preferred race. That’s why it hurts those who object to it.
Finally, being held to account for what one’s ancestors did is not part of present-day Western morality... except among special-pleaders of various stripes and excuses. Many (perhaps most) other cultures are fine with it. That doesn’t make those cultures wrong, just not-us. But someone who insists on individual responsibility and group innocence for his favored group while attributing group guilt to members of other groups is wrong because he’s inconsistent - a genuinely objective basis.
@rowens - I think we're reading from the same book, though not from the same page. We can dispute whether generic lives matter, at another time.
Non-practicing atheist