Reddit reviews Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race

Oh boy, I like that you just found out the word for dismissing evidence that disagrees with you but don't actually have even the pretence of knowing what it means. 'Cherry picking' is cropping a portion of a fuller dataset to support a view unsubstantiated or contradicted by the actual statistic. There has never been a single year in which PoC were less likely to be the victim of police violence than their white counterparts in the entirety of American history. I chose modern ones because modern is more reflective of modern society... Drug charges are useful because you can get an accurate reporting on uncharged possession rates. More critically, drug charges are the cause of the majority of incarceration for PoC. Apparently citing units of analysis which are the most pertinent to the discussion is cherry picking now...

You want fuller data on the subject, here ya go:

[After controlling for numerous state-level factors and for the underlying rate of fatal shootings of black victims in each state, the state racism index was a significant predictor of the Black-White disparity in police shooting rates of victims not known to be armed (incidence rate ratio: 1.24; 95% confidence interval, 1.02-1.50). For every 10-point increase in the state racism index, the Black-White disparity ratio of police shooting rates of people not known to be armed increased by 24%.](After controlling for numerous state-level factors and for the underlying rate of fatal shootings of black victims in each state, the state racism index was a significant predictor of the Black-White disparity in police shooting rates of victims not known to be armed](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0027968417303206)

Frank R. Baumgartner, Derek A. Epp and Kelsey Shoub reviewed 20 million traffic stops. Blacks are almost twice as likely to be pulled over as whites — even though whites drive more on average...

>Why is it an extreme view to see "racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country"?

The "foundation" suggests that the people creating those systems were actively designing them for the express purpose of keeping whites ahead and blacks behind. "All" of the systems, all of them. Really? I think the idea behind policing is to enforce the law, and any racism that has occurred along the way is a secondary effect. I think the idea behind voting is to elect politicians, and any racist voter suppression along the way has been a secondary effect. I think the idea behind capitalism and the free market is for businesses and individuals to be able to produce for the economy and earn money to support their needs, and any racism that has occurred along the way has been a secondary effect. It sounds like the staffer believes that the founding fathers were sitting around saying "Yeah, police, capitalism, these things will keep our race ahead of everyone else!"

>What facts do you have that suggest that racism is not a major factor in how people live in our country? Where are the statistics that prove our nation is equitable?

I like the PublicFreakouts subreddit for some reason, and on there I've seen more than enough videos of white people calling black people the N word to know that there are still racists out there in the world, but to convert that into an actual worldview or a perspective about how people live in our country, we need data. A lot of discrepancies can be explained by single motherhood rates. According to this source black single mothers have a 47.7% poverty rate while white single mothers have a 33% poverty rate. Black married mothers have a 12.2% poverty rate, while white married mothers have a 5.2% poverty rate. There's still a discrepancy there between the races, which we'd need to dig deeper into the variables to decide how much of that is racism, but as you can see the vast majority of poverty is explainable by single motherhood regardless of race. And single motherhood bleeds into pretty much everything else in society, such as crime rates, drugs, continued poverty, etc. More than half of black children live with single mothers. When you find a disparate outcome in the world, look for disparate inputs before assuming that the inputs must be equal, and therefore racism.

>Why is the onus on black people to prove it anew or to justify their frustration every time we hear about something that looks like racial injustice?

Because just because something looks like a racial injustice at face value doesn't mean it is. Both legally and scientifically speaking we operate on the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. You know something I'd be very interested in seeing is what percentage of instances of a white cop arresting a black person does the black person accuse the white cop of arresting them because they are black. If that percentage is very high, then it would confirm that a lot of people feel like they are experiencing racism even when they probably aren't. And if the solution you're suggesting to historical problems is things like reparations paid for by modern whites who never owned slaves, is the onus on the whites to prove that they shouldn't have to pay reparations?

>The idea that we need to fact check every allegation of racism before we'll acknowledge it shows a fundamental mistrust of black people, and I think it's one of the things that holds us back from actually making progress.

I would hold the same standard to anyone who claims to be a victim of any sort. If you accuse someone of raping you, I can feel bad for you, but before we put the accused in prison we need proof. If a white person were to accuse a black cop of racist policing, I think we would need evidence or data to support a change in policy based on that accusation as well.

>We have the statistics to prove that race plays a major role in criminal justice involvement. Here are a bunch of examples for you:
>
>https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/18/theres-overwhelming-evidence-that-the-criminal-justice-system-is-racist-heres-the-proof/%3foutputType=amp

I don't have time to go through the whole list right now, but I am confident that if you want to create a statistical argument that racism is taking place, just ignore important variables as I've been mentioning. For example, starting from the top:

• In their book “Suspect Citizens,” Frank R. Baumgartner, Derek A. Epp and Kelsey Shoub reviewed 20 million traffic stops. In an interview with The Post, they shared what they found: “Blacks are almost twice as likely to be pulled over as whites — even though whites drive more on average,” “blacks are more likely to be searched following a stop,” and “just by getting in a car, a black driver has about twice the odds of being pulled over, and about four times the odds of being searched.” They found that blacks were more likely to be searched despite the fact they’re less likely to be found with contraband as a result of those searches.
  
  In this summary they only mention the rates at which blacks are being pulled over compared to whites in absolute terms. I don't see any mention of them attempting to control for the possibility that blacks and whites may actually drive differently, which would impact the rates at which they are pulled over. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier when I said "When you find a disparate outcome in the world, look for disparate inputs before assuming that the inputs must be equal, and therefore racism."
  
  
• A 2013 Justice Department study found that black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched once they have been pulled over. About 2 percent of white motorists were searched, vs. 6 percent of black drivers and 7 percent of Latinos.
  
  The last study said that blacks were four times more likely to be searched than whites, but now we see that in the case of both whites and blacks we're talking about rather small numbers. 2 percent of whites being searched and 6 percent of blacks being searched leaves 98% of whites being pulled over and not searched while 94% of blacks being pulled over and not searched. See it sounds really bad when you say "three times more" or "four times more", but in real terms the discrepancy isn't all that big. It's still possible that some of this is racism, but if 4 percent more blacks are searched than whites is your big argument for "racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country", let's just say I'm not convinced.