Critical Race Theory

[djm]

As I stated in the previous post, when you split off the largest UK demographic, white British working-class males, which has not been done in the cited list and is the one I raised, they fare worse on many metrics notably education. I will dig out some proper information on this later. There is a lot of info on this stat, and it is one that I am naturally interested in as it this the demographic I was born into, though these days I have a pretty middle-class lifestyle.

The way exponents of critical race theory work is that they find a specific stat that shows a group lower than a white group, ignore specific stats showing the opposite and then cite that you can't rule out racism (you can't). You also can't demonstrate that is racism. If you do then conclude that it must be assumed to be racism then surely the same must be case of all disparities. The same is true of feminism. It the age old argument about religion too (you can't prove God does no exist, so religion should have a prominence it does not deserve).

Now if this approach was actually improving things on the ground it may have merit (ends justifying means and all that), but it really isn't leastways not in the UK. It has come at a time when race relations, equality for women, acceptance of homosexuality and religious difference have never been better. I am firmly of the opinion that it making things worse that were progressing very nicely in a direction of tolerance.

Lets look again at the assertion that stop and search is racist in the UK, and I maintain that it is not. Some ethnic communities in the UK (and I use the word communities through gritted teeth as I prefer to see us as a nation of individuals) have a large and disproportionate issue with knife crime. If you belong to this group you are far more likely to be stabbed, and if you are unfortunate enough to be stabbed then it will most likely be by someone from your own demographic. The police are tasked with protecting kids from that community from being murdered, and they could waste their time stopping and searching white people in villages like the one I live in, or they could concentrate on stopping and searching people that meet the profile most likely to be carrying a knife and remove it from them. When Boris Johnson was mayor of London he had a policy like the latter, and knife crime in London dropped. Activists claimed racism, and the policy was eased under the current incumbent and knife crime in London has gone back up.

Of course 'anti racist' pressure groups consistently and bogusly claim racism. They ignore the please of mothers from the community whose children were murdered by criminals from their own community that want knives off the streets. Naturally, the 'ant racist' pressure groups get more air time than either the police who are on the back foot, frightened they will be accused of racism and becoming increasingly woke and ineffective, or the advocates of stop and search in the community (primarily crime victims).

I again state that the main beneficiaries of targeting crime in certain communities are those communities, and the main beneficiaries of not doing are criminals. That the police are not targeting people for being black, they are targeting crime.

Now if you are not a criminal and get stopped and searched it is annoying, but if not being annoyed means kids get stabbed is it reasonable not to be annoyed? I get searched at airports a lot. I think I probably look shifty due to my autism. It's no great hardship.

I might start a different thread on the shit show that is BLM in the UK, a related but different import from our American cousins.

[avolkiteshvara]

This was actually done by the Office for National Statistics in the UK.

I had a glance. I was looking for some type of adjustment that accounts for all external variables along with ethnicity all at once. I do believe we have to get there before we can talk about the implications of the data.

I might start a different thread on the shit show that is BLM in the UK, a related but different import from our American cousins.

Yeah seeing Brits embrace BLM is bizarre.

[Utisz]

As I stated in the previous post, when you split off the largest UK demographic, white British working-class males, which has not been done in the cited list and is the one I raised, they fare worse on many metrics notably education. I will dig out some proper information on this later. There is a lot of info on this stat, and it is one that I am naturally interested in as it this the demographic I was born into, though these days I have a pretty middle-class lifestyle.

The way exponents of critical race theory work is that they find a specific stat that shows a group lower than a white group, ignore specific stats showing the opposite and then cite that you can't rule out racism (you can't). You also can't demonstrate that is racism. If you do then conclude that it must be assumed to be racism then surely the same must be case of all disparities. The same is true of feminism. It the age old argument about religion too (you can't prove God does no exist, so religion should have a prominence it does not deserve).

While it is true that statistics on such complex issues will rarely suffice to "prove" something, I think it's important to avoid falling into what I would call "statistical defeatism". It is a bit like how the author of "How to lie with statistics" (which made some important points) later turned around and became an influential lobbyist for the tobacco industry, basically using spurious correlations of unrelated things (the size of Dutch families and the number of storks nesting on rooftops) to (unfortunately, successfully) undermine the implications of correlations between smoking and cancer in peoples minds. Correlations might not be enough to prove causality, and randomised experiments are unethical in such situations, but when people who inhale smoke into their lungs are more likely to get lung cancer, then Okkam's razor has to apply. Accepting that people who inhale smoke into their lungs have a higher risk of getting lung cancer does not require that we accept that storks bring Dutch people more children. Rejecting the idea that storks do not bring Dutch people more children does not require us rejecting that smoking causes cancer. This is because the mechanism of cause and effect in one leads to a simpler theory than in the other.

Statistics provide evidence in a broader setting. They do not provide logical implication. The broader setting here is a society with a long history of structural racism.

Lets look again at the assertion that stop and search is racist in the UK, and I maintain that it is not. Some ethnic communities in the UK (and I use the word communities through gritted teeth as I prefer to see us as a nation of individuals) have a large and disproportionate issue with knife crime. If you belong to this group you are far more likely to be stabbed, and if you are unfortunate enough to be stabbed then it will most likely be by someone from your own demographic. The police are tasked with protecting kids from that community from being murdered, and they could waste their time stopping and searching white people in villages like the one I live in, or they could concentrate on stopping and searching people that meet the profile most likely to be carrying a knife and remove it from them. When Boris Johnson was mayor of London he had a policy like the latter, and knife crime in London dropped. Activists claimed racism, and the policy was eased under the current incumbent and knife crime in London has gone back up.

But you have no justification for that. You just went on a long tangent about knife crimes in minority communities as justifying higher rates of stop and search for certain ethnicities based on what exactly? What led you down that road? What made you think of that?

The statistics published by the Home Office state that 63% of stop and searches are for drugs, while only 16% are for offensive weapons. Indirectly there appears to be little difference for why different ethnicities are stopped, i.e., stops relating to offensive weapons for all ethnicities appears to be around 16% (they are not all from a minority). So even assuming what you are saying is true, it simply cannot account for black people being 8.9 times more likely to be stopped. The statistics lead heavily towards drug stops. It doesn't give more detail, but there's a lot of talk about cannabis warnings, community resolution, etc., and only 13% of stop and searches actually lead to arrest, so my best guess is that the vast majority of these stops relate to minor possession.

[djm]

Link from the most left-wing broadsheet in the UK.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/c ... 96761.html

Link to an article about the actual victims of knife crime in the community calling for more stop and search.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/j ... 58136.html

Link from London Evening Standard showing how successful stop and search is.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/p ... 73986.html

I am not a big fan of the UK police force, they are pretty useless at preventing crime. Indeed I have a friend who has been a victim of domestic abuse (very bad case which I may write about elsewhere) which nothing has done about, and is having to navigate the complaints system. I am more than happy to criticise them for bad behaviour, but the whole stop and search argument has been raging for years here and is getting hackneyed. Every time it gets eased off, crime goes up.

The one thing that police are not in this country is racist. Indeed the fear of being accused of racism is hampering their effectiveness. One only has to look at the scandalous policing in Rotherham and other Northern and midland towns where paedophile gangs were allowed to run amock for decades to see this.

[djm]

As previously mentioned here is some detail on the low rate of white working-class men that go to university in the UK. It is an important stat as higher education significantly increases lifetime earnings, social mobility and health outcomes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-47227157

https://fullfact.org/education/are-whit ... niversity/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-54278727

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the ... eft-behind

[avolkiteshvara]

We're seeing similar trends in Portland, OR with Police.

How it was supposed to go.
Portland City Council Approves Budget Cutting Additional $15M From Police


How it's going after 6 months.
'It has reached crisis proportions': Man shot and killed in Portland's 20th homicide of the year

[starla]

So if I understand djm's position correctly, it is ok to stop and search minorities based on their race because as members of that race they are more likely to be criminals and so assuming they are is not racist. However, it is not ok to assume a white male is racist or sexist, or even privileged because that is racist. Do I have this right?

[Ferrus]

I am not a big fan of the UK police force, they are pretty useless at preventing crime. Indeed I have a friend who has been a victim of domestic abuse (very bad case which I may write about elsewhere) which nothing has done about, and is having to navigate the complaints system. I am more than happy to criticise them for bad behaviour, but the whole stop and search argument has been raging for years here and is getting hackneyed. Every time it gets eased off, crime goes up.

A distinction should be made between the Met and other counties' police too. The Met have by far the worse reputation justly earned over decades for corruption.

[djm]

So if I understand djm's position correctly, it is ok to stop and search minorities based on their race because as members of that race they are more likely to be criminals and so assuming they are is not racist. However, it is not ok to assume a white male is racist or sexist, or even privileged because that is racist. Do I have this right?

No

What I am saying is that police should focus resource on tackling crime, and that that policy has been very successful in reducing violent crime in London. Outside of large cities in the UK violent crime is rare, so the policy is focussed on areas where the problem is high. Many of these are in areas that are mostly not white. Were it the case that a mostly white area would benefit from a similar policy I would also support it.

The UK police force has its faults, but is not racist. Indeed the police are so fearful of being painted racist that they do not always do their job properly. We have a very controversial enquiry underway here where for decades young women from poor areas where targetted by paedophile grooming gangs and nothing was done due in part to racial sensitivity.

Regards privilege I am saying that poor people are underprivileged regardless of colour, and that if you are well off and middle class you are not underprivileged regardless of colour.

In the UK there are many poor white people, they have all the same issues as poor non-white people. Critical race theory as used here, asserts that all white people are inherently privileged and all non-white people are inherently underprivileged and is patently absurd. The vast majority of homeless people in the UK are white men. We have an Asian millionaire that is Chancellor of the Exchequer. it is so obvious that this theory is wrong it beggars belief that it has any advocates here. It is a result of a bunch of clueless middle-class academics pontificating about the real world, and is doing nothing to solve issues in my society.

Britain is not America, we do not have the same issues here.

[djm]

I am not a big fan of the UK police force, they are pretty useless at preventing crime. Indeed I have a friend who has been a victim of domestic abuse (very bad case which I may write about elsewhere) which nothing has done about, and is having to navigate the complaints system. I am more than happy to criticise them for bad behaviour, but the whole stop and search argument has been raging for years here and is getting hackneyed. Every time it gets eased off, crime goes up.

A distinction should be made between the Met and other counties' police too. The Met have by far the worse reputation justly earned over decades for corruption.

They certainly do not set a high bar. Yet another mess-up yesterday policing a protest.