Philosophical Vegan Forum

Stumbled upon this great interview with Sowell where he accurately predicts what is happening right now with SJWs and BLM, and explains the root causes of the increasing racial polarization, as well as many other things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2hPQ86lGV0

I find it amazing that these 30-40 year old clips of Thomas Sowell debunking social justice and multiculturalism are still entirely relevant today. The facts have been on the table for so long, but we've still managed to ignore them and instead started to regress

This guy is extremely right wing. He's even against the right for homosexuals to marry.
"Debunking social justice and multiculturalism", what does that even mean? It's one thing to say affirmative action is counterproductive in raising levels of well-being among underprivileged groups in america, it's quite another to plead for a completely laissez-faire economy devoid of any protection for the underprivileged. One cannot expect an ex-oppressed racial group to get on the same socio-economic and educational level as the ex-oppressing racial group within 2 generations. I think it is realistic to see the effects of segregation, institutional racism and slavery continue to trickle down the generations. Clearly the amount of books in a household, as an example of a marker token, is an indicator of likely educational success. This type of thing takes many generations to even out between racial groups, if one of them has been systematically oppressed.

To quote Immortal Technique: "Affirmative action ain't reverse discrimination, that shit is a pathetic excuse for reparations".

This doesn't mean that government based egalization is necessarily the right answer, but you can't just deny a huge part of history and say it will all sort out itself.

And what's the problem with Black lives matter? Surely combating racism among police forces is a noble endeavor. It's not right to deny statistics of the disproportionate violence against, incarceration of, and disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities in the USA.

I honestly despise the new right movement, where racism, misogyny, fat-shaming, trans-phobia and general dickery and rudeness is all justified with an air of nouveau rebellion. You (not you, the typical new right youtuber like red pill philosophy) are not being rebellious, you're just being an inconsiderate dick. /rant

BLM may have started with good intentions, but it went off the rails pretty quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddY-VYEf9Mc

We definitely need body cams on police. We definitely need to address police violence -- but it's not a racial issue, it's a human issue, and it mainly stems from police fear driven by the high rates of gun possession in the US (take away the guns, and police stop shooting people because they assume people have guns out of fear).

The thing is that there's not evidence of police racism, we're dealing with correlation not causation: the disproportionate rates are probably all due to socioeconomic differences and population concentration. They map to disproportionate rates of violent crime, and disproportionate rates of highly concentrated urban poverty.

I begin explaining this to EquALLity in this post in this thread:

http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=979&p=19336#p19336

Fixing this is no simple matter. You can't simply give poor people money, because the primary reason poor people are poor is due to mismanagement of money; this is an issue of education and habit. When a person with a wealth magnifying mindset acquires money, he or she invests that money into useful personal infrastructure (maybe it's as simple as saving up a little for eventualities rather than having to take a high interest emergency loan later, making needed repairs to prevent further damage to personal property, or buying something in bulk for a discount), when a person with a wealth squandering mindset (live for today) acquires money, her or she buys hedonistic goods that will be immediately expended, or flashy items like rims, a sound system, a new TV, etc. -- things that in no way help that person rise out of poverty.

Poverty, at least in the U.S. is first and foremost a mindset in terms of one's attitude toward money. This comes from a lot of places, most from children learning about how to use money from their parents, since schools don't teach these things well, if at all. It also stems from social attitudes and behavior, which children learn from peers and parents as well. Nothing in the U.S. education system is equipped to deal with the problem, and throwing money at it will not fix it.

The sad thing is that it would be amazingly cheap to solve the problem if people weren't so stubborn about their behavior and dead-set on blaming others, or blaming the system for "keeping them down". This is ultimately the worst thing about some of the mindsets associated with BLM: it's telling people that the police and the government and the whole system are against them, and setting them up for a lifetime of distrust and failure because it distracts from the real issue (and solutions to those issues).

Body cameras? Gun control? Better standards for police behavior to everybody? Yes. Totally needed. When you're talking about police accountability, that's a good argument. But it's not racism.
With all of the other things BLM and associated social justice movements are advocating, they're bad for black people, and other people they're presuming to stand for.

I agree with all of what Brimstone said above. (I haven't seen the video yet, though, due to the bad internet in my hotel)

Sam Harris put out a great podcast talking about racial issues recently. I think it's very informative and nuanced.

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/racism-and-violence-in-america

From a distance, I think BLM is likely a case of mediocre leadership. The civil rights movement had the potential to go badly off the rails too, when protestors at MLK's home were getting out of control after his house was bombed. I think MLK, who then urged the crowd to not to anything panicky and to love their white brothers (however annoying the religious undertone is), was a key part of why the movement was relatively non-violent and highly successful. The anti-apartheid movement under Mandela was similar; a large part of the ANP was not egalitarian but anti-white, but Mandela pushed for equality. A strong, charismatic leader with a core message of non-violence and non-discrimination seems to be lacking in BLM.

miniboes wrote:I agree with all of what Brimstone said above. (I haven't seen the video yet, though, due to the bad internet in my hotel)

Sam Harris put out a great podcast talking about racial issues recently. I think it's very informative and nuanced.

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/racism-and-violence-in-america

From a distance, I think BLM is likely a case of mediocre leadership. The civil rights movement had the potential to go badly off the rails too, when protestors at MLK's home were getting out of control after his house was bombed. I think MLK, who then urged the crowd to not to anything panicky and to love their white brothers (however annoying the religious undertone is), was a key part of why the movement was relatively non-violent and highly successful. The anti-apartheid movement under Mandela was similar; a large part of the ANP was not egalitarian but anti-white, but Mandela pushed for equality. A strong, charismatic leader with a core message of non-violence and non-discrimination seems to be lacking in BLM.

Based on my knowledge BLM has no centralized leadership whatsoever. The only leaders in it are the few that are in charge of small groups that make up the movement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter

I suppose if we were to name a leader, it would be one of the people that started the hashtag.

brimstoneSalad wrote: The thing is that there's not evidence of police racism, we're dealing with correlation not causation: the disproportionate rates are probably all due to socioeconomic differences and population concentration. They map to disproportionate rates of violent crime, and disproportionate rates of highly concentrated urban poverty.

Firstly, it's abundantly clear that there are individual police officers who are racist, so it's probable that some incidents wouldn't have occurred if it were not for the fact that the victim was black.

Secondly, it's not clear that disproportionate rates of black deaths at the hands of police officers are due to disproportionate rates of violent crime. The below study, as well as other analyses, have found that violent crime rates make no difference to how likely it is that blacks or whites will get shot by police.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141854#sec005

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.4c18ca4d8c8e

There's also a strong racial bias when it comes to capital punishment, and a moderate racial bias when it comes to sentencing length.

http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/NSPI201213.pdf/$file/NSPI201213.pdf

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/WashRaceStudy2014.pdf

There's also evidence that police use more non-lethal force with blacks than with whites - again, black people who are scared of police officers have every right to be scared, in my view.

That said, it's not enough to blame the system for keeping you down, as you say. Unfortunately, we're seeing the same phenomenon on 'the right' too, which is why many white working-class people are supporting an economically illiterate, unqualified, bigoted buffoon who will 'take on the establishment'.

knot wrote:Stumbled upon this great interview with Sowell where he accurately predicts what is happening right now with SJWs and BLM, and explains the root causes of the increasing racial polarization, as well as many other things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2hPQ86lGV0

I find it amazing that these 30-40 year old clips of Thomas Sowell debunking social justice and multiculturalism are still entirely relevant today. The facts have been on the table for so long, but we've still managed to ignore them and instead started to regress

Social justice is perfectly fine. When you get excessive political correctness and unthinking identity politics, that's a problem. I agree on multiculturalism.

As Kenan Malik puts it:

The experience of living in a society transformed by mass immigration, a society that is less insular, more vibrant and more cosmopolitan, is positive... [Multiculturalism] describes a set of policies, the aim of which is to manage diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy.

He's also written:

Why should I, as an atheist, be expected to show respect for Christian, Islamic or Jewish cultures whose views and arguments I often find reactionary and often despicable? Why should public arrangements be adapted to fit in with the backward, misogynistic, homophobic claims that religions make? What is wrong with me wishing such cultures to 'wither away'? And how, given that I do view these and many other cultures with contempt, am I supposed to provide them with respect, without disrespecting my own views?... Diversity is important, not in and of itself, but because it allows us to expand our horizons, to compare and contrast different values, beliefs and lifestyles, and make judgements upon them. In other words, because it allows us to engage in political dialogue and debate that can help create more universal values and beliefs, and a collective language of citizenship. But it is precisely such dialogue and debate, and the making of such judgements, that contemporary multiculturalism attempts to suppress in the name of 'tolerance' and 'respect'.

I'd add that conservative cultures in general (whether in the Trump-supporting Deep South or the Brexit-supporting Middle England) should wither away and die. It's a bit ironic that you see many Trump supporters or Brexit supporters incessantly complaining that the "libuhruls" aren't respecting their cultures, and are being condescending towards them. (Is this the new political correctness - we can't criticize people who vote for idiots or idiotic things?)

I'd also say that the attitude I've just expressed myself, as well as the attitude of people who go around calling people "SJWs" or "the regressive left", is counter-productive in the long-run, because it's not going to lead to any agreement or solve any of the problems that we have. It's better not to be condescending, and not to hurl insults at each other.

In the long-run, cultures (basically all of them, at the moment) which don't equally consider the comparable interests of non-human animals and which fail to reject speciesism should wither away and die too.

An ideal policy would be to celebrate expanding our horizons, being exposed to new values, beliefs and lifestyles, and so on, while treating everyone as citizens.

viddy9 wrote: Firstly, it's abundantly clear that there are individual police officers who are racist, so it's probable that some incidents wouldn't have occurred if it were not for the fact that the victim was black.

There may be some officers racist against blacks, but the same can be said for any prejudice.
The fact that the victim was black, or white, or Indian, or Asian, or whatever "race" the officer is racist against, or homosexual, or Atheist, or Catholic, or Jewish. People have biases and can be assholes.

When we're talking about institutional racism, that's something there's no evidence for.

viddy9 wrote: Secondly, it's not clear that disproportionate rates of black deaths at the hands of police officers are due to disproportionate rates of violent crime.

Due exclusively? I didn't claim that.

Anyway, no single alternative theory has to be clear. The null hypothesis is that there's not widespread institutional racism affecting the justice system. The fact of disproportional violent crime rates is a confounding variable, among many. More important variables are probably highly concentrated urban poor. We also have to look at the type of violent crime (e.g. domestic or not).
The burden of proof is on those who claim systemic racism, not those who reject the claim for lack of evidence.

viddy9 wrote: The below study, as well as other analyses, have found that violent crime rates make no difference to how likely it is that blacks or whites will get shot by police.

Which really just supports my claims about urban poor; they found a strong correlation to concentrated poverty with racial wealth disparity and concentration.
That study could not find that violent crime rates make no difference since as far as I can tell they did not control for all of the confounding variables; all they found is that those rates alone were not strongly correlated to 'racial bias'. That's not surprising if you don't control for population density (which I don't think they did in that analysis). They probably also used irrelevant violent crime stats. If you DID control for population density of poverty, I would be surprised at a lack of correlation to non-domestic violent crime, since concentrated poverty and low incomes are probably correlated to street violence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.4c18ca4d8c8e

But as data scientists and policing experts often note, comparing how many or how often white people are killed by police to how many or how often black people are killed by the police is statistically dubious unless you first adjust for population.

Adjusting by population doesn't help; it just makes it more deceptive, and created the illusion of credibility. You have to then adjust it by poverty and concentrated urban poverty, And then the disparity seems to vanish. Actually, when I made this adjustment in another thread (with respect to marijuana arrests), it turned out that fewer blacks were arrested than we would expect.

(A note about that discussion: I don't support Trump, I just really don't support Sanders)
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=979&p=19339#p19336

brimstoneSalad wrote:

EquALLity wrote:Black people, despite using marijuana at the essentially same rate as white people, are four times more likely to be arrested for it.
Black people make up 27.4% of impoverished people in America, and white people make up 9.9%. So, black people are about 2.7 times more likely to be in poverty.

2.7 < 4. I think poverty plays a role, but I find it undeniable that there's a racial element.

You completely ignored population density. Why? I very explicitly outlined it, and it's relevance.
You can not ignore confounding variables and then claim causation. And it's not like you didn't know about it: I just told you about it.
Like I said, poor white people are usually hill billies, low population density means less police enforcement and fewer arrests.

Even within a city, poor whites are less concentrated:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... e-poverty/

In St. Louis, 29.5 percent of poor African Americans live in concentrated poverty. Among poor whites, just 1.6 percent do.

If the arrest rate of blacks were 50 times higher or more in St. Lois, then you could allege racism, because you would have finally controlled for poverty and population density together.

Check out their graphic:
http://s18.postimg.org/aw80e4izt/concentrated_poverty_png_w_1484.png

New York is your best case (Seattle might be better, but it's hard to read because the bars are smaller). About 17.5% of poor whites compared with about 26% of poor blacks in concentrated poverty
26/17.5 = 1.49

Multiply that in to your calculation:

27.4 / 9.9 = 2.77
2.77 * 1.49 = 4.13

If blacks are only being arrested at four times the rate, that's actually low based on that number, and it means police may be slightly racist against whites.
But I'm not going to say that, obviously, because there may be other variables.

Anyway, 4 times higher is about what you would expect from a non-racist system based on concentration of poverty in urban areas.

viddy9 wrote: There's also a strong racial bias when it comes to capital punishment, and a moderate racial bias when it comes to sentencing length.

With, again, many other confounding variables. Sentencing is guided by past crimes, and jury recommendation, along with simply the behavior of the convicted in court. Good behavior goes a long way, and racially motivated contempt of court does too. When a person has been told the system is against him or her because he or she is black, and the man will throw the book at him or her no matter what. does that help? No. It's probably more of a self fulfilling prophecy; it's wasn't likely due to skin color, but behavior.

It's conceivable that juries are racist, but that would be something that has to be demonstrated, AND there's nothing we can really do about it aside from waiting for racism to die off. The more attention this stuff is given, the more it perpetuates racial attitudes which are probably the cause of these harmful behaviors.

viddy9 wrote: There's also evidence that police use more non-lethal force with blacks than with whites

Again, not controlling for confounding variables.

viddy9 wrote: - again, black people who are scared of police officers have every right to be scared, in my view.

Which feeds into the adversarial attitude which increases use of force. It's a self perpetuating cycle. You have the "right" to be scared of dogs if you want, but in most cases the only thing that makes them scary is your fear of them; anxiety which they'll pick up on and respond to with aggression. If you're acting shifty around police because you're scared of them, you'll see a very different response. Run from a dog, or a cop, and you'll be chased.

brimstoneSalad wrote: Which really just supports my claims about urban poor; they found a strong correlation to concentrated poverty with racial wealth disparity and concentration.
That study could not find that violent crime rates make no difference since as far as I can tell they did not control for all of the confounding variables; all they found is that those rates alone were not strongly correlated to 'racial bias'.

It studied shootings on the county-level, however: this would presumably help to control for population densities. But, as you say, if even in cities whites are less concentrated, that could be part of the explanation, or indeed all of it.

brimstoneSalad wrote: With, again, many other confounding variables. Sentencing is guided by past crimes, and jury recommendation, along with simply the behavior of the convicted in court. Good behavior goes a long way, and racially motivated contempt of court does too. When a person has been told the system is against him or her because he or she is black, and the man will throw the book at him or her no matter what. does that help? No. It's probably more of a self fulfilling prophecy; it's wasn't likely due to skin color, but behavior.

It's conceivable that juries are racist, but that would be something that has to be demonstrated, AND there's nothing we can really do about it aside from waiting for racism to die off. The more attention this stuff is given, the more it perpetuates racial attitudes which are probably the cause of these harmful behaviors.

It's quite obvious that juries will sometimes be racist. Given that survey after survey finds a substantial level of anti-black prejudice in the general population, it would be far more surprising if no juries were ever racist. The fact that juries will sometimes be racist will mean that jury recommendation is skewed against black people.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/10/27/poll-black-prejudice-america/1662067/

Criminal history, meanwhile, is already controlled for in studies finding a disparity. I did think of behaviour, but the notion that all of the disparity is due to behaviour seems highly implausible, in my view. I agree that racism isn't "built into the system", except insofar as the system relies on individuals, some of whom will hold racist attitudes.

As you say, there's nothing we can really do about that, and I agree that the prospect of a backlash is very real, and indeed probably is occurring right now. That said, the claim that racist and prejudiced attitudes are still widespread is simply bolstered by this backlash. For utilitarian purposes, it may help to give less attention to this stuff, but we have to be careful not to use our tactical recommendations to engage in victim-blaming. Who is really to blame? People complaining about the very real racism that still exists in the West, or the (numerous) idiots who use these complaints as an excuse to hold the very beliefs and take the very actions that they claim "don't exist anymore".

This forum is probably quite insulated from these kinds of people, and I don't usually talk about this stuff anyway, but I will follow my utilitarian recommendation and give less attention to this stuff, starting from now!

viddy9 wrote: It studied shootings on the county-level, however: this would presumably help to control for population densities.

I doubt that. Counties aren't that big, and they vary drastically by density of their population centers.

viddy9 wrote: It's quite obvious that juries will sometimes be racist.

Sure. Sometimes against blacks, sometimes even against whites, most of the time they'll hate atheists. Prejudice of juries is unavoidable, and not part of institutional prejudice: it's just an unfortunate reality of the jury system.
The problem is that fixating on this perpetuates racial attitudes. Unless we have an alternative to jury trials in mind.

viddy9 wrote:I did think of behaviour, but the notion that all of the disparity is due to behaviour seems highly implausible, in my view.

Given that the U.S. just had a black president?
I don't find it implausible at all. Behavior disparity can be pretty drastic, AND expression and interpretation of behavior can also be cultural due to upbringing, not just intentional aggression.

There's also this:
https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/uploads/Remorsenov5.pdf

In many cases, the defendant’s in-court demeanor is the major determinant of whether he or she
is adjudged appropriately remorseful. In capital cases, in which the defendant rarely testifies, the
evaluation of remorse may be based entirely on the defendant’s facial expression and body
language as he sits silently in the courtroom. Unfortunately, people are far less adept at
evaluating demeanor than the legal system assumes them to be. There is evidence that the
evaluation of remorse is particularly difficult across cultural, ethnic or racial lines, or where
juvenile or mentally impaired defendants are being judged.

You can find some dramatic examples of poor interpretation of emotion and intent across cultural lines in international business too (although also more awareness of this).
Somebody like Obama, who was raised by a white family, is well spoken and has the intonations, expressions, and cultural habits that aid him in communication with the majority, to generate trust and empathy. It's not just intentionally aggressive behavior that's a problem; black people may have to stop "acting black" and just act like Americans -- genetics are not the problem, ingrained cultural differences are -- the sacredness of the unique patterns of speech, vocabulary, expression, and other non-verbal communication needs to be reevaluated. If you're not mainstream, you can't relate to mainstream juries, and that's always going to be a problem as long as the human component and subjective evaluation is important in criminal justice.

viddy9 wrote:For utilitarian purposes, it may help to give less attention to this stuff, but we have to be careful not to use our tactical recommendations to engage in victim-blaming.

The whole idea that "victim-blaming" is a problem IS the problem. It's an attitude that's hostile to criticism and addressing the real issues, dismissing valid points as "victim blaming". It's as useful as Ben Affleck calling Sam Harris "gross" and "racist" instead of addressing the real points.

What is blame? What is fault? Does anybody really have free will? These are important questions you need to answer soundly before you can even construct a coherent concept of "victim blaming" to criticize. The idea that "victim blaming" is a bad thing (or a thing at all) is incoherent and poisonous to rational ethics; it's dogmatic and based on vague deontological notions of "justice" rather than rational consequentialism.

ANYTHING in the chain of causality that led to the harm is subject to criticism relative to the ease with which it can be remediated -- what matters is making changes that reduce harm -- whether the actions of the "victim" or the perpetrator.

viddy9 wrote:Who is really to blame? People complaining about the very real racism that still exists in the West, or the (numerous) idiots who use these complaints as an excuse to hold the very beliefs and take the very actions that they claim "don't exist anymore".

It's much more important to fix the problem than to assign "blame". People need to stop interpreting criticism as blame. Maybe we should just remove that incoherent word ("blame") from our vocabularies, since it makes people so sensitive, and that goes doubly so when we blame people for blaming people.

What is higher up the chain of causality? It's much easier to remedy the root of an issue than to attempt symptomatic relief. Obviously they don't intend this (at least, most don't), but the behavior is causing it, and the complaining is feeding into the behavior and preventing it from being resolved (particularly complaints about victim blaming; "I shouldn't have to change, you change, I'm the victim, and victims are sacred").

viddy9 wrote:but I will follow my utilitarian recommendation and give less attention to this stuff, starting from now!

Great. I hope you also won't use the phrase "victim blaming" in a serious and non-critical context, with understanding how anti-critical thinking and deontological it is.

You should consider reading this thread, and watching the associated video: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1943
There's also a similar thread here on suicide, mental illness, fault and bullying: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1446
And more recently here on fat acceptance: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2238

brimstoneSalad wrote: Prejudice of juries is unavoidable, and not part of institutional prejudice: it's just an unfortunate reality of the jury system.

Exactly.

brimstoneSalad wrote: it's dogmatic and based on vague deontological notions of "justice" rather than rational consequentialism.

Well, no. As Henry Sidgwick pointed out, a utilitarian should assess whether a person or an act is blameworthy when it is expedient to do so (without believing that there's anything that is intrinsically blameworthy). As I said, I'm already in agreement that these issues shouldn't really be discussed, but if the utilitarian wants them to stop being discussed, they're going to have to recognise that the status quo - one side calling the other "gross" and "racist", and the other saying "stop complaining stupid SJWs" - is going to get us nowhere.

Unfortunately, in politics, emotions run high, and there's scarcely room for nuanced debate. You say that we should get at the root of the problem: surely the root of the problem is that people are predisposed to become prejudiced and defensive (both in general, and when others are complaining about their situation).

I don't think that this can really be fixed, but we can stop exacerbating it, which is why I agree with you. At the same time, without acknowledging that what racists are doing is wrong, I doubt we're going to get people to stop complaining.

I'm not saying any of this about what you've said, by the way. You've already clearly signalled that the complaining has to stop for instrumental reasons - to try to reduce the prevalence of racism and discrimination. I just said "we" as in people making this argument "have to be careful" that we clearly do signal this, and don't fall into the trap of merely saying "stop complaining". In other words, for instrumental reasons, we do have to signal that we're assigning some blame to racists, not just the victims (by any conceivable definition of the word, people at the receiving end of racism are victims.)