This list is more tailored to highlight systemic racism in criminal justice, but the economic side is just as important. There are much higher levels of poverty in black communities and that can be directly tied to the fact that in many ways black people were systematically prevented from building wealth for most of US history while white people were provided trillions of dollars in government subsidized economic opportunity that black people were excluded from. From the homesteading of thr 1800s to the fha backed loans that gave white people homes in the suburbs for lower mortgage rates than black people had to pay for rent to live in the redlined slums they were cordoned into by law.
[1] Police stop black drivers significantly more than white drivers when the sun is up and they are able to see that the driver is black, but not at night when they can't see the race of the driver. Meaning race is often the determining factor for why black drivers are pulled over.
[2] Unarmed black people are 3.49 times as likely to be killed as unarmed white people and local crime rates have zero effect on this statistic.
[3] Black and white officers use force at similar rates in white neightborhoods, but White police officers use force significantly more compared to black police officers when responding to calls in minority neighborhoods.
[4] Police in oakland find contraband at the same rate regardless of the race of the person, but search black drivers 4x more often.
[5] The more white a suspect appears to be the less likely police are to use force. The more black a suspect appears the more likely it is that police will use force.
[6] Black police officers are more likely to be shot by their fellow police than white police officers.
[7] Oaklad police disproportionately handcuff blacks at stunning levels regardless of which area of the city you look at.
[8] In San Francisco, “although Black people accounted for less than 15 percent of all stops in 2015, they accounted for over 42 percent of all non-consent searches following stops.” This proved unwarranted: “Of all people searched without consent, Black and Hispanic people had the lowest ‘hit rates’ (i.e., the lowest rate of contraband recovered).”
[9] The DOJ investigation into Ferguson PD, found “a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson PD that violates the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, and federal law.” The scathing report found that FPD was targeting black residents and treating them as revenue streams for the city by striving to continually increase the money brought in through fees and fines.
[10] In Chicago, a 2016 report found that “black and Hispanic drivers were searched approximately four times as often as white drivers, yet Chicago PDs own data show that contraband was found on white drivers twice as often as black and Hispanic drivers.”
[11]2014 ACLU analysis of Illinois DOT data found: “Black and Latino drivers are nearly twice as likely as white drivers to be asked during a routine traffic stop for ‘consent’ to have their car searched. Yet white motorists are 49% more likely than African American motorists to have contraband discovered during a consent search by law enforcement, and 56% more likely when compared to Latinos.”
[12] Black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted and more likelt to be framed for a crime they didn't commit.
[13] Black kids are more likely to be tried as an adult.
[14] Black people get 20% longer prison sentences for the same crimes even when you control for criminal history.
[15] Black students are more likely to be arrested at school. This appears to be a function of increased security at predominantly black schools and not because black students commit crimes at school at higher rates.
[16] Security levels in schools are determined by how many black kids go to the school and not crime levels.
[17] Predominantly black schools are chronically underfunded compared to predominantly white schools.
[18] An identical resume with a white sounding name like Stephen or Susan is twice as likely to recieve a call for a job interview compared to the same resume with an ethnically black sounding name like Jamal or Latisha.
[19] Minorities who alter their resumes to seem white get more job interviews.
[20] Banks targeted black homeowners for predatory homeloans and refinancing in the lead up to the 2008 crisis. Causing black families to be disproportionately harmed by the forclosure crisis.
[21] owner-occupied homes in black neighborhoods are undervalued by $48,000 per home on average, amounting to $156 billion in cumulative losses. This study controls for crime rates. Neighborhood amenities like schools, parks, walkability, and public transportation. The size and age of homes etc.
[22] In an experiment landlords responding to emails treated Blacks, Arab males, Muslims, and single parents unfavorably.
If you wanted to talk about about systemic racism you would talk about things like single family zoning and ability to get mortgages.
There was a strongtowns article that literally had nothing to do with race, merely about getting rid of single family zoning. It didn't take long for someone in the comment section to post how building affordable housing in those places will ruin everything and everyone is naive because they haven't had to live in a ghetto.
There was an economics explained video about real estate that even implied that race was one of the factors was how far the homeowners are away from other races.
Coming from Europe this was completely unexpected for me, turns out, segregation in the USA never went away it merely became more socially acceptable.
Number 2 for instance, is such a small chance it is not really worth mentioning. I believe white people get hit by lightning something like 6 times more likely than blacks and it happens way more than being unarmed and shot by police.
The population of white people is about 6 times bigger. That should mostly explain the lightning disparity.
The statistics on unarmed people being killed by police account for differences in population sizes. Also while that is a hot button issue it's really the tip of the iceberg for this subject. The body of work showing systemic racism is an ongoing problem in the US holds up just fine if you ignore police shootings altogether.
Is there a way I'm missing to save comments on HN besides also commenting on them so they can be revisited later? I'd like to save this. This is one of the best meta-summaries I've ever seen, on any topic.
You can get a link to a particular comment by clicking on the timestamp next to the posters name.
May I recommend an organized note taking system copying the literal text and link for reference. I like org-roam with a hotkey to capture title and if existent any highlighted text.
There are of course about a million ways to skin this particular cat and plenty of them are good.
The benefit of using your own system is that you can trivially reference information from many websites via one method instead of relying on the many and varied features of many sites. The benefit of copying the full relevant text is both that you can search that text and if a site or a comment goes missing tomorrow or 5 years from now you aren't out the information.
There are 3 ways to save a comment within HN: comment, upvote (your list of upvoted comments is visible to you only), favorite (your list of favorited comments is publicly visible). To favorite a comment you have to visit that comment specifically (click on its timestamp).
There are of course other ways to save comments, such as bookmarking with your browser or other bookmark applications.
None of those are systemic causes. Those are all cases of individual prejudice or racism adding up to make a statistical significance. Calling this systemic racism is a good way of how to never solve the actual problem.
Most of the examples were about police targeting black people disproportionately compared to other races concluding that is because of systemic racism. Is there a law that compels police officers to behave in such a way? The answer is none. Therefore it can't be systemic. The targeting comes from individual decisions by individual officers. Whether this is from prejudice or bad experience or plain racism is unknown. For that you would have to divide individuals officers into buckets by their race in see the statics for each bucket. For example do black officers also arrest disproportionate number of black people? You would need all the combinations from different buckets to get a sense of underlying reasons.
What if a certain group of laws (say drug laws) was created specifically so police could target certain minorities? There isn't any particular motivation in the law to arrest more black people for marijuana use, but despite similar usage by race (2-4% difference https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/08/11/char...) arrests for Blacks happen at 3-6 times Whites. There's lots to suggest the war on drugs is racially motivated, but it criminalizes drug use and possession, not race (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_war_on_drugs)
>What if a certain group of laws (say drug laws) was created specifically so police could target certain minorities?
Could you point to such a law or even better cite a paragraph from such a law where you feel it targets certain minorities? How do police officers from minority background do their job?
Could you provide a link to a law that requires harsher sentencing for black people (specific paragraph would be appreciated)? Do you also have statistics on how harsh judges from different races are towards black people when sentencing?
This reminds me of the debate between micro evolution and macro evolution. Nobody is confused that often these disparate outcomes are the cumulative effect of the decisions of many biased decisions by people inside the systems. It's still systemic racism because the outcome of all those peoples behavior is a system that discriminates. No racist intention needs to be spelled out in any rule or law for systemic racism to exist.
"Black people get 20% longer prison sentences for the same crimes even when you control for criminal history"
Why "Even" ? It does not say anything about racism if you do not control for other factors, like criminal history and society inclusion. It's phrased as if it would still hold without control variable, and the author is doing a favor to potential nitpicker. It may be true, but the "Even" does not make me confident of the scientific value of the publication and the absence of confirmation bias of the author.
Repeat offenders are often given longer sentences. Mandatory minimum sentencing plays a big part in this. I assume that's what they're trying to control for.
If you don't encounter the justice system then almost nothing on your list is relevant. Most black kids won't be directly affected yet they do much worse at school. What specific examples of systemic racism have been shown to cause that? I've read some of the research and it's inconclusive. Many possible causes are suggested, a big one being cultural factors of the mothers.
So a normal black kid can safely pursue life without worrying that he or she has been held back by systemic racism.
Can I just say this makes me really happy to see this getting around. The list I shared here is my own compilation. It's nice to see others have found it useful.
It’s interesting that it has gotten around even without your knowledge. If I may ask do you have a large following on some social media platform, from where it originated or spread out?
No I've just posted it around Facebook and reddit. Mostly Facebook. Once in a while someone will post it to /r/sports and credit me with it, but besides that I didn't know anyone was sharing it.
[1] Police stop black drivers significantly more than white drivers when the sun is up and they are able to see that the driver is black, but not at night when they can't see the race of the driver. Meaning race is often the determining factor for why black drivers are pulled over.
[2] Unarmed black people are 3.49 times as likely to be killed as unarmed white people and local crime rates have zero effect on this statistic.
[3] Black and white officers use force at similar rates in white neightborhoods, but White police officers use force significantly more compared to black police officers when responding to calls in minority neighborhoods.
[4] Police in oakland find contraband at the same rate regardless of the race of the person, but search black drivers 4x more often.
[5] The more white a suspect appears to be the less likely police are to use force. The more black a suspect appears the more likely it is that police will use force.
[6] Black police officers are more likely to be shot by their fellow police than white police officers.
[7] Oaklad police disproportionately handcuff blacks at stunning levels regardless of which area of the city you look at.
[8] In San Francisco, “although Black people accounted for less than 15 percent of all stops in 2015, they accounted for over 42 percent of all non-consent searches following stops.” This proved unwarranted: “Of all people searched without consent, Black and Hispanic people had the lowest ‘hit rates’ (i.e., the lowest rate of contraband recovered).”
[9] The DOJ investigation into Ferguson PD, found “a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson PD that violates the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, and federal law.” The scathing report found that FPD was targeting black residents and treating them as revenue streams for the city by striving to continually increase the money brought in through fees and fines.
[10] In Chicago, a 2016 report found that “black and Hispanic drivers were searched approximately four times as often as white drivers, yet Chicago PDs own data show that contraband was found on white drivers twice as often as black and Hispanic drivers.”
[11]2014 ACLU analysis of Illinois DOT data found: “Black and Latino drivers are nearly twice as likely as white drivers to be asked during a routine traffic stop for ‘consent’ to have their car searched. Yet white motorists are 49% more likely than African American motorists to have contraband discovered during a consent search by law enforcement, and 56% more likely when compared to Latinos.”
[12] Black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted and more likelt to be framed for a crime they didn't commit.
[13] Black kids are more likely to be tried as an adult.
[14] Black people get 20% longer prison sentences for the same crimes even when you control for criminal history.
[15] Black students are more likely to be arrested at school. This appears to be a function of increased security at predominantly black schools and not because black students commit crimes at school at higher rates.
[16] Security levels in schools are determined by how many black kids go to the school and not crime levels.
[17] Predominantly black schools are chronically underfunded compared to predominantly white schools.
[18] An identical resume with a white sounding name like Stephen or Susan is twice as likely to recieve a call for a job interview compared to the same resume with an ethnically black sounding name like Jamal or Latisha.
[19] Minorities who alter their resumes to seem white get more job interviews.
[20] Banks targeted black homeowners for predatory homeloans and refinancing in the lead up to the 2008 crisis. Causing black families to be disproportionately harmed by the forclosure crisis.
[21] owner-occupied homes in black neighborhoods are undervalued by $48,000 per home on average, amounting to $156 billion in cumulative losses. This study controls for crime rates. Neighborhood amenities like schools, parks, walkability, and public transportation. The size and age of homes etc.
[22] In an experiment landlords responding to emails treated Blacks, Arab males, Muslims, and single parents unfavorably.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0858-1
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
[3] https://www.nber.org/papers/w26774?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_me...
[4] https://stanford.app.box.com/v/Data-for-Change
[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/194855061663350...
[6] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/wien...
[7] https://sparq.stanford.edu/opd-reports
[8] https://sfdistrictattorney.org/sites/default/files/Document/...
[9] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releas...
[10] https://chicagopatf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PATF_Fina...
[11] https://www.aclu-il.org/en/press-releases/traffic-stop-data-...
[12] https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race...
[13] https://www.wnyc.org/story/black-kids-more-likely-be-tried-a...
[14]https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...
[15] https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/01/25/black-students...
[16] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160608180824.h...
[17] https://psmag.com/education/nonwhite-school-districts-get-23...
[18] https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
[19] https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes...
[20] https://www.aclu.org/files/field_document/discrimlend_final....
[21] https://www.brookings.edu/research/devaluation-of-assets-in-...
[22] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01660...