UKH

I thought this hour-long discussion about being black, cops, riots, the Floyd death, etc, was well worth a listen.

youtube.com/watch?v=2RMEiclpA7E&

Made a start, got immediately sidetracked by the Roman-Teigen spat and had to stop reading at the point where Roman started bringing white privilege into her apology. 

I've never got that "here's an important you tube link" thing. If I'm going give an hour to something , I'll read a review or a precis or something,

As a rule of thumb, if it's on ukc and someone hasn't made some effort to sell it to me, and it's more than a 5 minute film of a kitten on a skateboard... it's not going to be worth the effort.

Maybe I'll be missing out?

Though you could give it a ten-minute try, and if it's not interesting then ditch it. 

But, fair point:

The two people discussing the topics are Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, both American academics who study economics, politics and social affairs, and who are both black.   They are both centrist minded, and don't readily accept ideological claims, but are keen to examine them on the evidence and to consider alternative explanations and viewpoints.

The topics discussed include the Floyd death, the Ahmaud Arbery death, the central park dog/birder incident, whether the cops are racist, whether they are badly trained and over aggressive, whether blacks are being disproportionately killed, black crime rates, the reasons behind black crime, the riots and looting, the experience of living as a black person in the US today, whether racist incidents are typical or not, and a range of similar things. 

That is an interesting response and certainly not an uncommon one but your last sentence is key. Yes, you will be missing out. Long form conversations, usually podcasts, give much deeper analysis and allow better and more reasoned arguments to be presented (and possibly refuted). Sometimes they are placed on youtube but, tbh, most can just be listened to.

Entirely agreed, although I tend to give my time to music, rather than spoken word. It isn't that I don't listen to spoken word, but I like to know what I'm getting into - thus the need for more than " this is....brill/ terrible/ amazing/ full of it" which is often all the lead in you get to 3 hours of conspiraloonery ( I'm sure Coel wouldn't do that, but you get what I mean)

PS Being an hour long it's the sort of thing one listens to while cooking dinner or doing the dishes or something,  so that it's not itself a time sink.

How many dishes do you have?!?  Enquiring minds want to know.

I can’t abide videos for this sort of thing; even at 2x playback it’s a tooth pullingly slow way of assimilating stuff.

But the very link of crime and poverty is race related.

This is what the right ignores. It is institutional racism which resulted in poor areas being dominated by black people, that wasn't by chance. That was redlining and various other issues.

Watch this  vimeo.com/133506632

You said on another thread, well blacks get stopped more because they live in areas with more police officers or crime (or something to that effect), and that is the result of historic racism. 

BLM are a great movement and I like their clear Campaign Zero (https://www.vox.com/2015/8/21/9188729/police-black-lives-matter-campaign-ze...)

But I don't think it looks at the long term issues we need to address. We can't just keep saying 'well it happened so long ago its not our fault", when black people today are still feeling the negative impact of decisions made 50 years ago.

For perspective:

"While Chicago was roiled by another day of protests and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, 18 people were killed Sunday, May 31, ..."

Yes, eighteen. 

https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/8/21281998/chicago-violence-murde...

Isn't this just Coel speak for '2 people I agree with'?

Given that the two of them disagree with each other at times, no it can't be.

But I note your cynicism. 

What I find refreshing about the video is their willingness to consider opposing viewpoints, to deliberately try to see the good in an opposing viewpoint, even when it conflicts with their own.  That's pretty much the opposite of how many people do it.

McWhorter is a linguist, I've listened to his Lexicon Valley podcast for years - which is how I know he has terrible music taste (unless you're into best-forgotten 50s show tunes I guess)! He does comment on social and political issues but his academic research is very much on linguistics.

Beyond the terrible show tunes, it's a fascinating podcast, and his knowledge of different languages is unbelievable - one of those people who just seems to have an amazing knack to remember at least bits of dozens of languages! 

Did the programme change any of your views?

It gave me plenty of food for thought, but didn't produce any major change, partly because I've read stuff by these two academics before so was already aware of their take on things.

Interesting result from Zach Goldberg (PhD student who studies this stuff) saying that the media talk about an unarmed black man being killed by police about nine times as much as they talk about an unarmed white man being killed by police.

https://twitter.com/ZachG932/status/1270824175725350914

Isn’t that just whatabouterry?
 

well police only murdered A small fraction of Black people murdered..

I watched both videos. I don't think they contradict each other at all. Your video talks about the compounding effect of poverty on black people in America. Whilst progress has been made in terms of overtly racist laws, the effect of inherited wealth and (for example) the appreciation of property prices in nice areas vs poor arears perpetuates any poverty left over from historical racism and thus that racism still has an effect today.

This effects all of society to some extent, if you come from a poor household you're far more likely to stay poor than a child from a rich household is to fall into poverty. This is acutely felt by black people in America due to both starting at the very bottom in terms of slavery and then being held back well beyond emancipation by racist laws and a racist belief system held by many americans. 

I think what the two professors are talking about is how it's not necessarily the case that these police officers in each example have racist intent in their actions. The police in America kill a lot of black people and they kill a lot of white people, these are disproportionate in terms of deaths as a percentage of the population due to the issues of poverty and culture created by the legacy of historical racism but the idea that they had killed these people in a individual racist act hasn't been proven and often these cases are siezed upon before the facts are fully established. 

They see George Floyd as more of an issue of police violence than racism, because even with the involvement of a racist cop, without the violence George is still alive.

They talk about a lot of things and disagree in some areas but to try to summarise: they don't see 'black' as being their only identity and do not feel that their children should grow up feeling like they are a moment away from being victimised and held back from being the relatively privelleged and well educated Americans they are. They feel that the media and others overplays some of these individual racist incidents (such as between the dog walker and the birder in the park) which are very rare in their day to day experiences. They understand the temptation to exaggerate things (particularly emotional responses) due to the seriousness of the issue but feel this can be counterproductive. 

it was just a line early on the guy made linking black poverty and black crime.

But Also their day to day experiences aren’t the typical of say a black guy in Camden NJ (certainly the guy In the film who’s kids play in the bushes (I forget names). 

Anyway, I’m not sure we disagree. I think police brutality is a massive issue without race being put on it. The protests have ironically really lifted the lid on that. And the bigger issue for me is this historical institutional racism.

thats a major factor in The lifespan of poor black people, the high maternal mortality rates etc. The deaths from police brutality are bad but I think the bigger issue is correcting the past so we have the same opportunity at birth (as much as we  can). Too many kids are being born with so little chance and because of the historic racism too many are black. There’s this view all kids have the same opportunity at birth, it’s just not true. I’ve worked in one of the worst schools in the US and some of the best in their state, 10% of the students at my correct school go to an Ivy League School.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/health/pregnancy-deaths-.html

I don't think it is whataboutery. If you're trying to understand really complicated social issues and unpick why different races are experiencing different outcomes then surely history, culture, politics, economics, media bias and a thousand other factors are all worth consideration? If not then the only valid reason is "cos racism" and you're still left with the very complicated question of why people and institutions still harbour racist attitudes.

Goldberg's analysis is built on no credible hypothesis, he has never published anything that I can find, he has a declared political bias, and he is a PhD student in the USA's 72nd-best politics Department.  In short, he is not a particularly credible source.  More importantly, his analysis doesn't meet some basic research quality criteria (no hypothesis, no counterfactual or baseline, no analysis of how the data are distributed (not normal distributions) -  no theoretical framework to inform the search for causality, no consideration of alternative explanations etc etc).  I am not sure what you find so interesting about his work.  Could you please explain?

Beyond the Tweets of Goldburg, there are peer-reviewed studies that do a better job of explaining why (some) black men being killed by police now get more press attention than white men being killed by police (the one thing Goldburg did get right):

Zuckerman, E., Matias, J. N., Bhargava, R., Bermejo, F., & Ko, A. (2019). Whose Death Matters? A Quantitative Analysis of Media Attention to Deaths of Black Americans in Police Confrontations, 2013–2016. International Journal of Communication, 13, 27.

This finding is actually an outcome of success of social movements like #blacklivesmatter who have forced the issue onto the poltiical and therefore the news agenda. 

Why is it important that black killings get more attention that white killings?   Because, proportionately, there are many more of them, and because police killings are  just one of many indicators of structural racism (I posted on another thread links to over a dozen papers in economic history that provide other data that show what structural racism looks like across health, housing, environment, employment, voting rights, incarceration etc.) 

Nither Goldberg nor you have demonstrated your assertions that, proportionate to their relative population sizes, more white people are killed by police than black.  In fact its the opposite:   "We find that African American men and women, American Indian/Alaska Native men and women, and Latino men face higher lifetime risk of being killed by police than do their white peers" (see Fig 1 for the data). https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/34/16793.full.pdf - (PNAS is a prestigious journal with rigorous peer-review - more so than Goldburg's tweets).

Not only is the rate at which blacks are shot dead by police higher than for whites, but that there is variation in that black/white death ratio between different cities, which is correlated to the degree to which cities are racially segregated, which in turn influences how they are policed:

Siegel, M., Sherman, R., Li, C., & Knopov, A. (2019). The Relationship between Racial Residential Segregation and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the City Level, 2013–2017. Journal of the National Medical Association, 111(6), 580-587.

These are just three of the more recent ones that dig deeper and more rigorously into this issue.  And yet somehow, you believe Goldberg.  Again, could you explain why you find his analysis so much more compelling than Ethan Zuckerman's team from MIT and Cornell, or Siegel's team at Boston University's Community Health Department?  

From what I've read so far, this is clearly an issue you are prepared to spend a lot of time engaging in. But to what ends? You are not doing serious social analysis here, you are not truth-seeking, and you are not really seeking to challenge your own views, as they seem to be becoming more entrenched.  So what are you doing?

Oh, and if people want to watch videos, here's John Oliver (British TV show host in the US) with a sweary but fact-laden history of US policing and how we got here    youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4cea5oObY&.  If you want a sense of Black anger over this, watch the last 90 seconds, before you dismiss this all as liberal white 'wokeness'.

best wishes,

Eddie

Any comment or rebuttal on that actual tweet thread?

So after your intro about him, you now agree with what he was saying -- that if an unarmed black gets shot by police it gets way more press attention than if the same happens to a white?

Yes, indeed so.  But it does illustrate that the media are presenting a politicised and skewed picture. 

Neither I nor Goldberg (as far as I'm aware) have asserted that!  Where did I assert that?  Quote me.

No, the blacks are killed by police at a higher rate, relative to population.  But, once you factor in the higher crime rate among blacks, then the rates are in proportion to "interactions with police".   

The fact is that blacks are 13% of the population but commit 50% of the homicides.

After all, men are killed by a police at a vastly higher rate than women. That's because men are vastly more likely to commit the sort of behaviour leading to such events.

Nothing that you've said actually disagrees with Goldberg! 

“While Chicago was roiled by another day of protests and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, 18 people were killed Sunday, May 31, ..."

But this isn’t about history just murders,

but today we still see the impact of racial segregation in Chicago. We’re a long way from repairing the damage from redlining in the 1950s.

Im not sure what I feel about reparations and not really sure how it will work but I think the US has to pour billions into repairing the damage from red-lining. We have estates and towns which have generational poverty. Kids are born with no hope, dads in prison, family dead by middle age.

i worked in Camden NJ which was like that. Kids would miss school to help their mum shop once every few weeks because it was so far to get fresh food, kids would fight over their dads being in prison, absolutely no coping mechanisms for anger, no outlook or hope of college. A life of crime was a more common outcome than college. High school graduation rate was about 50%, and around 70% of those who didn’t graduate were in prison by 35.

They actually dismantled the police and reformed a non-confrontational community based police and crime has plummeted. It should be the model other areas follow.

"Berkeley History Professor's Open Letter Against BLM, Police Brutality and Cultural Orthodoxy"

https://threader.app/thread/1271219776606687233

"The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is."

And this is just ridiculous, and shows what the utter hysteria about BLM leads to  (added emphasis):

"A conservation charity has apologised and deleted a video message by Sir David Attenborough in which images of Asian and white people are used in calling for lower population growth.

"The video showed Asian people bathing in a river and then showed bigger crowds of white people. In his voiceover, Sir David says we should “stabilise the human population as low as we fairly can” to save the planet.

"Other versions of the same video with the same message are still available online but they show only white people when Sir David talks of population growth."

The video, so heinous one needs to apologise for it, can be seen here (paywall, sorry):

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/black-lives-matter-attenborough-vid...

I listed some its more obvious limitations in my original reply (the bit you didn't quote).  I've read the thread again, at your behest, and didn't see any useful interpretation or analysis there. Sorry.

He brought nothing new to the table  - the paper I linked to had already made the same point, with a longer dataset and with more convincing analysis of causality. He needs to review the literature first.

To repeat: campaigning by BLM has brought such shootings to people's attention as a window into the wider issue called structural racism and that has become news.  Just as labor exploitation doesn't make the news until it becomes 'modern slavery', structural racism doesn't become news until unarmed Black people are publically murdered by the people who are supposed to "protect and serve" them.  That's all that Goldburg shows, though he doesn't have any useful explanation to go with the figures that he 'discovered' (but which I showed were already published).

No, they are presenting a picture that has national and international significance - the underlying issue of structural racism.  So many people are shot by police in the US  (a thousand a year or so) that individual cases -whether black or white - only get local media attention.  The same  dataset used by Goldburg (Guardian/Washington Post collaboration) pointed out that in the first 24 days of 2015, US police fatally shot more people that the UK police had done in 24 years. What you label 'political bias'  is called 'news value'.  

You also confuse 'media attention' (news value) with 'one-sided media attention' (media bias).  The right wing media are reporting unarmed shootings of blacks (and thus contributing to the numbers Goldburg used in his analysis).  There will also be mentions in editorials and news articles about marches, racism etc.  There is no mention of a method to differentiate between articles about the killings and articles about the societal reactions and ramifications of the killings;  more evidene of weak methodology

Why are you so invested in this?  Is this like a Black Lives/All Lives Matter argument?

My apologies.  In one of the many racially charged threads on UKC at the moment, there were assertions that many more white people than black people were being killed by police and the person stating that hadn't accounted for the differences in population sizes.  I don't have time to check all the disucssions and find out who it was, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it was not you.  Again, apologies.  

You've fallen for Simpson's paradox.  I'll let a mathematician explain it to you https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/11/opinion/statistical-paradox-police-k...

 "Interactions with police" are themselves driven by racial profiling (e.g. 'stop and frisk' policies) among other things. They aren't necessarily commiting crimes when they are stopped, aggressively confronted and sometimes killed. That's the whole point of their anger.  And that's before we get into residential segregation and poverty which creates crime ghettos. Similar trends were seen when the ghettos were Irish, or Italian, or Puerto Rican, or white British in the East End of London.  Its the circumstances that allowed violent criminality to take hold, not the skin color.

See above, but also, please give your source - many sources are suspect, including ones that catch out the US president (not hard, I admit) : https://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/trump-retweets-bogus-crime-graphic/

Here is a government source:

https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artwork/Fact_Sheets...

The figures for that year say Blacks commited 36% of homicides (not 50%) in 2017 - a disproportionate number for sure -and for reasons that are explained in numerous publications. And they mostly kill each other, as do other races - a product of segretated societies.  Again, the explanations matter, as does the 'clustering' of the data. Any social scientist will tell you that homegenized data can't help you very much as they have little exlanatory power by themselves - disaggregation and hypothesis-building and testing are needed.   

For example you could probably say that white people and east asian people have violently killed more people (of any colour) than any other people in the last 500 years 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_d...

Would you then draw the conclusion that white people were culturally or genetically predisposed to be more murderous than other people and therefore needed to be more rigorously policed? Of course not! There are other possible explanations.

 Crime and casualty statistics are a political hot potato, so it is worth checking them carefully, how they are aggregated and reported, who reports them etc.  You wouldn't want to wind up being associated with people like these:

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/23/white-supremacists-favorite-...

I still don't get what you are trying to achieve here. Millions of black people and tens of millions of their allies around the world are marching in the street in protest at systemic racism, thousands of studies back up their interpretation of the situtation.  I believe them and support them.  I'll be marching again tomorrow. Are you saying that these millions of black people are wrong?  That they and their supporters have somehow been duped by 'wokeness'? 

Anyway, I've done all I can to convince you to to better justify your positions, more rigorously select your sources, or reveal your aims. I think your scientism is a barrier to increasing your understanding of the social world but I appreciate the engagement. 

Thanks for the debate. 

Eddie 

So what are you saying? That black Americans should stop complaining about police violence because crime within black communities is worse?

You are putting so much effort in to trying to show us all on UKC something... I'm not sure what that is though beyond black people haven't really got anything to complain about?

I'm saying:

First, that Americans overall should complain about police violence, since they are way too aggressive and trigger-happy.  It needs a major change in police culture.  (A major change in US gun-carrying culture would also be good, but fat chance.)

Second, the evidence that the police are pervasively racially biased is not there.  Stats simply don't support the claim. (There may indeed be some cops who are racially biased, and if I were on a jury I'd vote to convict Chauvin, but that is not the same thing.)

Third, if the rhetoric is "black lives matter" then the fact that 94% of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks is surely pertinent.  

Overall, 234 blacks were killed by a white person last year in the US.  But 514 whites were killed by a black person.  Again, surely that is pertinent to analysing "black lives matter"? 

Fourth, an analysis that deprives blacks of agency and of any responsibility for their predicament, blaming instead everything on whites and "systemic racism" is unhelpful.  It is unhelpful in that it won't solve the problem.  To solve the problem blacks need to take on a large dollop of responsibility for fixing it, and black crime and black cultural attitudes to education and fatherhood are pertinent to that. 

And fifth:

What I'm trying to show is that the media coverage and mainstream commentary is hugely ideological and one-sided.

It was a Twitter thread!  You're asking rather high standards of a Twitter thread!  

And even if it was not novel, it was still a pertinent and worthwhile thing to contribute into the discussion.    OK, so there may have been previous papers saying similar, but I'd bet that most people were not aware of them. 

Can you point us to all these studies that demonstrate "systemic racism"? 

Though, having asked that, we first need to decide that counts as "systemic racism".  As I see it, labels of "racism" are being used way too freely these days.  

If the situation is that people of low socio-economic status do worse, and that blacks are over-represented in those groups, then does not mean there is "systemic racism" now, if it is the case that a white person of low socio-economic status is just as disadvantaged as a black person of low socio-economic status.

The label "systemic racism" is only fair if a black individual is significantly handicapped and disadvanged compared to a white individual when all other things are equal. 

There may be some degree of that in some aspects of modern life, with some studies suggesting such (studies such as comparing success rates of CVs with black vs white names), but I doubt there are "thousands" of studies showing clear systemic racism, and we should adopt a critical, evidence-based analysis of such claims. 

So if we sum it up your position is:

America is too violent.

Racism from police isn't real beyond the possibility of some racist individual officers.

Until some black people stop committing crimes against other black people, all black people look silly complaining about police committing crimes against them.

BLM and civil rights movements stop black people realising that their bad choices are the cause of the situation they find themselves in.

And finally you think that all the evidence contrary to what you are saying is "hugely ideological and one-sided".

I summed it up myself reasonably concisely in my own words.  It doesn't need additional "paraphrasing".

So, to sum up, my position is as stated in the comment just up-thread at 11:02. Do you have anything to say about what I actually said?

"Tony Timpa was 32 years old when he died at the hands of the Dallas police in August 2016. He suffered from mental health difficulties and was unarmed. He wasn’t resisting arrest. He had called the cops from a parking lot while intoxicated because he thought he might be a danger to himself. By the time law enforcement arrived, he had already been handcuffed by the security guards of a store nearby. Even so, the police officers made him lie face down on the grass, and one of them pressed a knee into his back. He remained in this position for 13 minutes until he suffocated. During the harrowing recording of his final moments, he can be heard pleading for his life. A grand jury indictment of the officers involved was overturned. Not many people have seen this video, however, and that may have something to do with the fact that Timpa was white."

https://quillette.com/2020/06/11/racist-police-violence-reconsidered/

Did I paraphrase unfairly?

Considering all the links you've been sharing, which I presume are to try and convince a wider audience of your perspective, I think it's good to see them stated.

Yes.

OK, in what way then?

Are you serious? Do you really need it pointed out? 

Ok then, for example, the "paraphrase" you attribute to me included:

"Until some black people stop committing crimes against other black people, all black people look silly complaining about police committing crimes against them."

What I'd actually said was the opposite, that Americans (and "Americans" includes blacks) *should* complain about police crimes, and that it is not at all silly to do so:

I said: "Americans overall should complain about police violence, since they are way too aggressive and trigger-happy.  It needs a major change in police culture."

I also said: "if the rhetoric is "black lives matter" then the fact that 94% of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks is surely pertinent." -- but that is very different from your "paraphrase".

Then there was your "paraphrase" that: "BLM and civil rights movements stop black people realising that their bad choices are the cause of the situation they find themselves in."

You, with your simplistic lack of understanding, might think there are "the cause" single factors underlying complex sociology, but it is not true.  There are always multiple factors and multiple causes.  You are thus misrepresenting me to attribute to simplistic "the cause" analysis when that is not what I said. 

I could explain similarly why all the other things you attributed to me are also unfair.  But, overall, it seems to me you never engage in sensible, reasonable discussion, but have a habit of just wanting to misrepresent and dismiss what I say. 

I think that Dred Scott, Reconstruction, the black codes, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, red-lining, unequal application of the GI bill, the Southern Strategy, and the war on drugs and mass incarceration - off the top of my head - are all quite important factors in where the US is today. But you still hold that "the evidence that the police are pervasively racially biased is not there"? You seem to hold that view on evidence of the numbers of deaths at the hands of police. And I'm being simplistic?

Interesting use of the word "but".  What is to stop all of those things being true simultaneously?    (And, in answering that, note the word "are" not "were".)

Good article on the "moral panic" on this issue:

https://quillette.com/2020/06/09/for-journalists-the-new-york-times-social-...

You defend weak research and low standards when it suits you and you demand high evidentiary standards when it suits you.  You are as inconsistent and biased as those you accuse.

Oh come on!  The only valid criticism you've given of that bit of research was that it was not novel.  (Though you also agreed it was right!)  So some analysis reported on a Twitter thread came to the same result as previous research.   That's hardly much of a criticism! 

Yes I can.  Start here and tell me when you've read all the papers linked.  

https://twitter.com/econzach/status/1267926101973700610?s=11

see Also Robert Bullard's work on environmental justice

 I invite you to understand how to deal with multiple interacting variables - poverty and race intract, with feedback loops linking the two.  This is how racial descrimination persists inter-generationally.  The feed above, from an economic historian, links to empirical evidence that demonstrate that.  

You are setting out a contrarian position based on flimsy, cherry-picked sources and then inviting others to do all the work to disprove it.  YOU do the systematic research.  

As you see it.  

Well, how else do you explain the 'over-representation' in those groups?  If it is not racial discrimination, what is the causal mechanism?  It's because there is something wrong with black people? It's because white people (and asians, maybe) are superior? (there is a thread on that elsewhere on UKC). Or is it because of systemic racism?  Or do you have another explanation?  (your current one - that it's 'fake news' does not stand up to critical scrutiny.)

As for the "white people of low economic status are just as disadvantaged as black people" argument. No, you are wrong.  They are disadvantaged, but they don't have the additional disadvantage of being discriminated against or devalued because of the colour of their skin.  This has been explained so many times that surely an enquiring, open-minded fellow like you will have stumbled across it at least once:

https://medschool.duke.edu/sites/medschool.duke.edu/files/field/attachments...

https://theundefeated.com/features/why-do-so-many-white-people-deny-the-exi...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-privilege-racism-ibram-x-kendi-robin-dia...

See the economic historian's thread above that demonstrates the existense of those handicaps and disadvantages when all other things are equal.  The papers he links to control for other variables to the extent possible in observational studies.   You also have all the personal testimonies of thousands of black people who have experienced disadvantage.  You also have all the video evidence of white people behaving like racists. Lets be clear - you are saying you don't believe any of them.  

You doubt.  But you don't know.  I've looked and I've given you some entry-points to those bodies of evidence. You haven't gone any deeper. Why should I or anyone else give any more credence to your doubts?

So you think the many other criticisms I gave of it were not valid?  Noted. You focus in on, and misrepresent, one point of argument and ignore the rest.  Also noted.

I think I'm wasting my time.

Try to open your mind.  Here's one place to start:

https://youarenotsosmart.com

Why is racism so specifically impacting anti Black Carribbean?

There doesn't appear to be the same impact of disadvantage on any other ethnic group, certainly in the UK.

Is it feasible there may be contributory factors that aren't specifically racist, but might be more complex?

It just seems not straightforward that on the one hand we can have black business people, black elected representatives , whilst on the other hand we can have a horrendous record of black Vs black knife crime but the issue apparently is simply down to racism.

Given that he was only making one basic claim, and given that you yourself stated that he got that right (you only said that it was not novel), then no I don't. 

Also the particular socio economic situation will invariably have at least a part racist origin.  What do you say to that - it's all hunky dory now, suck it up?

There are two obvious possibilities:

1) Past racism.  Obviously the US (and most Western countries) were strongly racist in the past.  That can affect current representation in economic groups, even if there is no current racism.  

(Where I define "racism" as unequal treatment based on race, all other things being equal.)

2) Cultural attitudes.  These really can be systematically different between different ethnic groups. 

Sure, I've encountered the claim.  But the idea that there is current discrimination (or at least enough of it to be a major causal factor) is usually just asserted rather than shown. 

There are problems with the idea.  For example, why do lots of non-white ethnic groups in the US do better, overall, than whites?  Why, for example, do recent black-skinned immigrants from Nigeria tend to do better, on average, than whites?  (Not just better than multi-generational American blacks, but better than whites.)

Some, yes, though there have also been lots of videos which were claimed to show that, but didn't (for example the white woman who reported a badly-parked car to police, which was claimed as racism, but she hadn't seen the driver and had no idea what race they were).  I'm not that impressed by a small handful of videos in a nation of 300 million people. 

Nearly all of those are about the past.  Yes, there was a lot of racism in the past.   That's different from showing that there is racism now, and thus that society *now* is still pervaded by "systemic racism".

What "particular racism". Police brutality? How does that translate to pulling down statues?

No it's not "hunky dory" But I'd rather address the specific problem. If it's deep rooted socio-economic problems with a racist origin, then I'm not clear how pulling a statue down rectifies that socio-economic problem.

Are you arguing that reparations should be paid directly to everyone who as a result of previous racism is now in an unfavourable socio-economic position? That would address the economic factor, I suppose.

I totally appreciate that racism is "bad". Acting in a racist way is illegal, so that has to be a decent start.  

What are ' blacks' attitudes to fatherhood, crime and education? 

I've no idea what the answer to that question is, but there does appear to be disparities when the make up of families from different ethnic groups is examined.

Do we think that family circumstances might have an impact on later prospects and outcomes?

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnici...

Talking about US inner-city blacks, and obviously generalising -- so this of course doesn't apply to everyone, but is more prevalent than in other racial groups:

Fatherhood: that it's not the responsibility of a father to support or raise kids, that's the job of the mum and welfare cheques.  

Education: that trying hard at school and doing well amounts to "acting white".

Crime: that crime gangs are a way of life that young kids look up to, treat as high status, and aspire to.

It's not a coincidence that mainstream music within that young, black, male sub-culture looks like this: youtube.com/watch?v=AhY0i99Y28Q&

Is There Still Room for Debate?  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/andrew-sullivan-is-there-still-room...

They are about the persis

No, the studies are about the "remarkable persistence" of racism.  Could you please give the date when systemic racism stopped?

What it doesn't apply to all 'blacks' just ones that live in the cities? 

Is that what black folks think? Can you provide evidence? 

How common is that? 

Ever seen British football hooligan films, TV shows, articles, books, British gangland culture, Snatch, lock stock..., peaky tossers, endless list of Italian gang land shows, films, Irish ones, Russian ones... 

Why is it not a coincidence? Do you think British cities don't have gangs that are not black and always did have? 

It's been gradually declining over many decades. 

The first person in a long time to talk about a solution. A lot of Americans are calling for something closer to UK policing for a start. A regime of community reinvestment, improving infrastructure, schools and housing in the most deprived areas would help too.

The tricky nut to crack is going to be cultural, gang culture, the attitude towards studying and children that are intelligent in poorer schools. Education is one side but having a supportive family network who have expectations of other family members is surely part of the picture. I think some funding to incentivise local businesses giving kids leaving certain schools / higher education jobs can be really powerful too.  

You've got to put something good into people's lives that they're afraid to lose, some potential. I'm the furthest thing from an expert on these things though. 

Does there? So if there is as you say then why? 

Why so cagey? If you think that then write it. 

I've no idea why. I'm not sure it could just be blamed on racism

I think that, when reviewing a population, children from single parent families appear,  from what I've read, to have more disadvantaged outcomes. 

I'm not sure if that has been rigorously examined to ensure that the worse outcomes aren't due to other factors - poverty etc. But clearly there appears to be over representation of certain ethnic groups in certain family groups. 

It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest family upbringing might have an impact on behaviour. But I'm not an expert.

I'd agree that's a start but if historical racism means that people aren't getting an equal deck of cards, then I'd argue that just saying 'we're not racist now' isn't adequate.  That might mean reparations, it might mean affirmative action in some way.  We'd all like to 'level up' society, but that isn't going to be equal across ethnic groups as they aren't at the same starting point now.

To Coel: It's been gradually declining over many decades.  - but clearly still exists.  And will exist as long as articles such as what you link to actively try to stop it.  You can believe attitudes are genentic or sociocultural based - I'm not sure what you think  - but if sociocultural then you can do something about it if you want.

If your a white middle class academic 

What could it be then? 

Could that be because their parents started from that position in their early lives or from various socio-economic reasons? 

What else could it be other than poverty and racism? 

What behaviour? 

Yes, they may start from a poorer position owing to past racism.   But then all of us start from different starting points owing to the circumstances of our birth.

So one white kid is born into a dysfunctional family with a dad in jail and a drug-addict mum.  Another white kid is born into a prosperous family with a GP and school teacher for parents. 

And of course, there are plenty of black kids born into stable, middle-class families with parents in professional jobs. 

If the policy is to support disadvantaged kids then isn't it best to do that in a race-blind way?

Why is the latter black kid, born into stable, middle-class families, more deserving of support and "affirmative action" than the white kid born into a dysfunctional family, just because group means for blacks vs whites are different?

If we want to reduce inequality in society and support disadvantaged kids then yes, but let's do it in a race-blind way, based on the needs and situation of the kid, not treat them differently according to their race.

I don't think it's "clear" that it still exists.

The problem with just blaming racism (or even "poverty and racism") for negative outcomes in life is that it excludes a lot of other factors.

Lots of people grow up poor. They aren't disproportionately represented in single parent families for example.

Many people have come to the UK poor - but for some (non-white) communities the stats indicate that they now have better outcomes than white people.

Even within the black community there are wildly different possible outcomes when you grow up.

The difficulty I have with just blaming racism for a negative outcome is I can't see how it explains positive outcomes that happen in the same society.  Also I am conscious it removes any agency from black people - their outcome is something that will happen to them, not something they have any influence over.

I also am unclear about how UK racism appears to particularly be raised as an issue for black people, and more specifically appears to be focussed on afro-carribean rather than Asian, Chinese, black African, etc.

I'm not an expert and I am wholly aware that racism exists and all those groups may be subject to some degree of it - and it's wholly abhorrent. Society would be a much better place if it didn't exist, but why is it blamed for these seemingly persistent effects in only one ethnic minority group?

When we look at family make up I believe there are lots of stats to demonstrate more negative outcomes from single parent families. Why is that a persistent issue within that particular ethnic group statistically. Is it simply poverty? Poor socio-economic position? How much of that is due to racism? Should we be targetting racism or should we be focussing our efforts on the socio-economic issues black white or other ethnic minority.

One thing I don't think is helping anyone is a focus on pulling down statues. I think this is undermining whatever goal it is that the BLM movement has. Part of the problem appears to be that the BLM UK movement doesn't really appear to have a concrete goal or any proposed solutions. It's not even clear what the problem actually is. I suspect that is why statues have become such a focus. Pulling down a statue is something people can actually "do".

Oh wow. I was waiting to see where this was going, but now that i've seen it i wish i hadn't. At least the Earth is still round, or is it....?

I note your freaking out rather than saying anything of substance.  Why is it that those on "the left" are so utterly useless at defending their positions?

So, in what way is it "clear" that there is substantial "systemic racism" in society today?

Where, "racism" is treating people differently, and to their disadvantage, according to their race, all other things being equal, and "Systemic" racism means that it pervades society to a sufficient extent that it has a major effect on outcomes (as opposed to there being some instances of racism). 

Haha. back in your box. Here's irrefutable evidence horses can talk

youtube.com/watch?v=lLlE14faSms&

Ps. 'The Left'

So you admit it continues, though it is now at a lower level than being enslaved or not being able to vote (US, 1969, South Africa, 1994), or not being able to live where you like (Portland, ,  nor being able to marry a person from a different race.  Is it a linear or an exponential decay model, would you say? At what level does it cease to be systemic?  How much racism it too much, would you say, from your perspective as a white male? 

Incidentally, yesterday was Loving Day - if you don't know what that is and what it commemorates, look it up.  1969. Within your lifetime.

*Just the use of the word 'steady' indicates you have zero understanding of how social and political change happens - plus it ignores the Trump-related and Brexit-related upsurges - again, empirically documented. And no, I'm not going to look that up for you  - you do the research if you really want to disprove it.  If you find credible research that says incidences of racism and xenophobia have gone down, then post it here. 

In the meantime, you might want to tell Victor Pierce he's imagining it all.  You don't get called 'boy' when you go to work, or find a hangman's noose in your lecture hall when you stand up in front of your students do you?

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/racist-history-portlan...

The fact that it happened in a workplace (a 'structure') incidates structural racism is still a thing. 

And if you want to understand racism beyond policing  - to look at the underlying structures - you could look at Portland, Oregon and its history of racist land-use planning 

https://beta.portland.gov/bps/history-racist-planning-portland

So your thesis - that there is no such thing as structural racism in the 21st century and that Black people need to sort themselves out - is patronising, victim-blaming, agency-denying, unempathetic and downright offensive. 

So how do you think you are doing anything to help eliminate these last vistigal traces of racism?  We are so close, according to you, to eliminating racism altogether (at least structurally), and yet you are suggesting we NOT invest in the effort to do so, but carry on being racists while the 'blacks' sort themselves out.  

I think I get where you are coming from - and it's a place bleaker than Saddleworth Moors.

Indeed, but think of racism as a negative force additional to these others.  If it didn't exist, why should the people on the receiving end of it be so vociferous in denouncing it, and why would those who either don't experience it, and who may benefit from it, spend so much energy denying it?

Incarceration rates, restrictions on where you can live, who you can marry, the need to migrate for work - all of these play some part - also look up the terms 'subaltern masculinities" and hypermasculinity and marginalization - its all about feedbacks.  Sorry, I don't have the time to do all of the work for you on this - but just to say, your questions are good and the explanations are there, if you are concerned enough to look for them and open-minded enough to consider them, even when they might challenge you. 

I've dealt with this in another thread (why Indians are so successful in the tech business) - but basiically other other non-white populations tend to be the most qualified and enterprising. There are also degrees of racism in society towards different groups. There has been an upsurge of racist incidences since coronavirus and Trump's labelling of it as the 'chinese virus'.

Of course - as there are in every place. Think of it like this.  Say everyone  on UKC is climbing an E3 but all the people from Manchester have to carry a 20 kg pack while doing so. (and no, just as you can't shed your blackness, you can't shed your pack and haul it)  Some will make it anyway -the really strong climbers - but many won't.  Would you conclude that Mancunian climbers were all shite?  (maybe if you were from Sheffield...) 

Now take 1000 poor people, half of them black and imagine them applying for jobs or applying for a loan, where 600 of the people they encounter have some kind of implicit bias and 100 are openly racist.  It is likely that a lower proportion of the black people will get that loan or job, even though their qualifications and income status is the same. You are going to see disparities in outcomes - ease of getting out of poverty - that is explainable by race.  One way to reduce that disparity is to reduce the number of racists in society, which we are doing, but, black people are now forcefully telling us that we are not doing it fast enough.  There are lots of studies out there that demonstrate this, but you have to want to look, rather than settle for the easy explanations that gives us all a pass.  If you are white, you perhaps can't see racism but concluding it therefore doesn't exist is not a sound basis for public policy.  

Or, here is Black astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Teissen making the point that even the relatively gentle discouragement he recieved growing up may have prevented nine others like him from succeeding - one reason there are so few black astrophysicists

https://rewire.news/videos/2014/05/01/neil-degrasse-tyson-racism-sexism-sci...

Sure, we all get some pushback on starry ambitions to a degree. Race is just an additional variable.  

I appreciate your concern not to undermine black people's agency by saying that racism exists.  Don't worry, most of them know racism exists and are trying hard to tell us. You are not denying their agency by acknowledging it.  You are denying their agency by doing nothing about it.  They are excersising it as best they can (e.g. #blacklivesmatter), but often get shut down when then try.  Listen to them, support their agency.  If you know black people, talk to them - bearing in mind that every black person I know is thoroughly sick of explaining racism to white people.  Its called emotional labour and yes, it is bloody hard work.  Ask any woman how exhausting it is to have to explain sexism to a sceptical man and you'll get an idea.   

If they say they are being discriminated against, and all the research supports that, than why should you choose not to believe them or the research, out of misplaced concern for their agency?

You might look at the history and testimonies of the Windrush generation to understand a little on what they experienced and how that propagates across generations.

I think it it hard for those of not enslaved, those who don't find themselves caught up in structures not designed for them. We design our societies to suit ourselves - of course we do - but as our societies diversify and our values change, we need to change our structures to fit our changing society and values - nothing particularly radical in that idea, unless you don't want to accommodate change - which some clearly don't. 

Good questions - the answers and solutions are out there but contested.  Take a look and share what you've learnt. I'd be interested and perhaps others would too.

  There are also many positive outcomes from single parent families.  Community, positive role models etc can all help.  Isolating people or stigmatizing them - whether for race, parenthood status - doesn't help.

BLM  US has some clear goals, both short and long-term.  End structural racism (treat everyone the same in practice, not just in theory), reform policing, invest in education, health and communities.  The US system spends all its money on policing Black communities and very little on meeting their social needs and the needs of others living in poverty. It also tasks the police with dealing with mental health, drug issues, homelessness etc that are better dealt with by social services - hence the 'defund the police' movement.   Some white people are beginning to realize these policies for all people who face poverty and insecurity, and not just black people,  so you see more and more support.  I was at a BLM silent march in Seattle yesterday - 5,000 Black people, 55,000 others. Clear set of demands for Seattle's mayor to act on. Unpoliced, entirely peaceful, and therefore not coming to your TV news.

Thanks for asking good questions.  I don't have all the answers, but I do live with someone who works on and lives this stuff every day. Your questions struck a chord because my dad was born into extreme rural poverty and like many others, they and I have been gradually moving out of that, with setbacks along the way, but unencumbered by the extra burden of racial discrimination (though my non-English mum has experienced some good-old-fashioned British xenophobia of the 'go back to where you came from' type).  My work has also involved addressing issues of poverty and inequality (in coastal communities) for the last 30 years, so some of the ideas and thinking overlap.

Not clear to you perhaps.  But I think with each succeeding post you are proving your opinion to be worthless, anachronistic and devoid of any trace of emotional intelligence.

Therefore what you 'think' is of interest only because it is so destructively incorrect.

The statistical evidence that Western societies were structurally racist and are still so is strong and widely accepted by people with a lot more critical acumen than you've demonstrated. 

I note the insults in place of supplying evidence.

Ditto.

"Part of the problem appears to be that the BLM UK movement doesn't really appear to have a concrete goal or any proposed solutions. It's not even clear what the problem actually is."

Not true. They've tried to hide it but it's on their fund raising page "‘to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures."

Personally I can't think of much worse for either black or white people than dismantling capitalism and state structures and last time I checked the empire had been dismantled. But hey, if they want to live in poverty stricken anarcho-state so be it.

Well I didn't use the word "steady", did I?  (I can't find it on a ctrl-F anyhow.)  So you're sneering at me based on not getting your facts right.      

I note your "I don't have to provide evidence" attitude.

That's not what "structural racism" means.

Well I think that it is now at a pretty low level.  At least in the UK. I know less about the US.

I didn't say that. But yes, people do need to take responsibility for themselves and their lives.  All people do (including blacks).  To treat blacks as having no agency or capabilities or ability to affect things is rather racist. 

No, I did not suggest that. And I certainly did not suggest that anyone "carry on being racists".  But I note your resort to misrepresentation and insults instead of being able to argue your case.

Put aside your bluster for a while and answer a question:

If the major disparities are all about structural racism, why do you think that communities of relatively recent immigrants to the US from Nigeria and surrounding countries tend to have higher educational standards and higher salaries than the whites (and much higher, on average, than the multi-generational African Americans).    That's hard to explain by "structural racism".

For that matter, why do East-Asian Americans do better overall than whites in just about every indicator? (So much so, that Harvard has to discriminate against them in admissions to keep them from being what it would regard as too large a proportion.)   That's also hard to explain by structural racism.  

I'm sure Mr Lopez is not the first person to freak out when faced with the teflon-coated obdurate, narrow-minded, ill-informed, smug,  inflexibility of your rhetorical technique. 

Note carefully that I'm attacking your argumentative style, not you.  I'm also not spuriously generalizing about 'the right' in what I'm about to say, unlike you (Mr Lopez 'freaks out' so you assume i) he is of the left, and ii) his reaction represents all on the left.) So, generalizing beyond the data - weak science 101.  

This is about you and your behaviour. I'm about to push you a little.  If you feel bullied by what I'm about to say, please be honest and say so. I am not a bully and I never 'kick down'.  I do, however, make it my business to take on the powerful. Indeed, I make part of my living from doing so.  You clearly regard yourself as superior to everyone else, so I'm putting you in the category of the powerful (power and superiority are linked concepts).

Has it ever occured to you, in a moment of quiet reflection perhaps, that people 'freak out' because your approach to argument is utterly infuriating and ultimately unproductive?   Here are some of the techniques you employ:

- you avoid any difficult questions you don't like

- you ignore evidence that contradicts your views

- you nitpick and divert

- you ask people to supply evidence but you supply no credible evidence of your own

- when you do supply evidence it is mainly in the form of numbers of dubious or un-named provenance, videos circulated in white-supermacist and extreme libertarian circles, or you find contrarian views that fit your own, with no context and no attempt at examining alternative points of view.  If anyone posts similar evidence to counter yours, you criticise it.

- you criticise anecdotal evidence but supply further anecdotes of your own.  

- you claim an unbiased apolitical scientism and you criticise people for being political but you demonstrate clear political bias yourself

- you break down complex, nuanced 'wicked problems' into reductive elements that impede, rather than facilitate any further understanding of the issues you purport to have an interest in.

Lastly, you make it clear to everyone that you think yourself more intelligent than anyone else.

You are undoubtedly technically competent in your field, but in your postings (again, not attacking you, just the behaviour you display), you are not demonstrating much ability to think non-reductively, nor do you show empathy and other elements of emotional intelligence.  You favour a series of Oxbridge undergraduate debating-society techniques in lieu of using logic, evidence, good faith, magnanimity and respect for the views of others.  There is an alarming immaturity in your approach that shades into malignancy.

You do realize, don't you, that your posting behaviour has driven any diversity out of this forum? 

Is this what you want?  Or are you so lacking in self-awareness that you haven't noticed? 

I 've already taken this on elsewhere in a thread started by TheDrunkenBakers.I'm glad you mentioned Nigerians.  I went to school in Nigeria, and I was back there a few years ago helping a Nigerian community take Shell to court over oil spills. I have many Nigerian friends.  Perhaps you do to.  Ask them, and post a fairly rendered summary of their thinking here.  Or lets visit a few Nigerians and other Africans who have lived in the US and ask them, shall we - note the diversity, nuance and comlexity of their positionality - try, do try please, to see that.  I know it is not in your skillset, but give it a go.  The experience of racism is not just about crime statistics or average incomes:

https://www.pri.org/file/2020-06-08-24

https://africasacountry.com/2019/04/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-nigerians-a...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49394354

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/05/around-world-us-has-long-...

https://daily.jstor.org/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-i-became-black-in-america/

If you really are interested in knowing more - as opposed to being a time-wasting troll, then read Americanah, but Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  It is subtle and complex, so don't read it reductively in search of crime statistics.

Anecdotes, anecdones... Lets ask the editorial team at a Nigerian-dominated African newspaper:

https://allafrica.com/stories/202006100144.html

Or maybe lets look at how US structrual racism spills back into Africa via US foreign policy

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/12/america-disdain-black-lives-extends-af...

Or maybe you'd like to listen to the President of Nigeria speak on strutural racism:

https://www.un.org/WCAR/statements/nigeriaE.htm

Hey, but You're smarter than all of them, right Coel, even the successful Nigerians?  

I'm looking forward to you starting a new thread in which your opening post contains a strong condmenation of racism in all its forms and a commitment to doing whetever you can to prevent sctructural racism from ever returning (now that's its thankfully gone, as you have so persuasively demonstrated).  I can send you a toolkit to apply in your workplace if you like, to support all your non-white colleagues and particularly your Black students, of which I'm sure you have several, just to make sure it doen't creep back when you've relaxed your vigilance.

If you still think there is no evidence for structural racism than I'm afraid there is nothing more I can do for you.   Look elsewhere to feed your racial insecurities.

No it isn't. Structural racism involves treating different races differently - you make the classic reductive racist mistake of saying racism is the same for all. 

My partner is an Asian-American woman with a PhD in critical race feminism and a former university Provost.  She read a couple of your posts and said "why are you wasting your time with this asshole".   

Is she right about me wasting my time Coel, or has something penetrated and perturned your high-functioning but rather inflexible mind?

I'm not going to comment on the asshole part, but I do recommend you take this test and share your score:

Asshole Rating Self Exam (ARSE):

https://www.electricpulp.com/guykawasaki/arse/

How about you put aside your petty reductive nit-picking and answer some of the more substantive questions I've posed to you? 

Answer to the board, not me.  My interest in you and your weak and mendacious arguments are nearing their limits.  

You've been supplied with tons of evidence.  You've ignored it.  You have earned the insults.

You used the word gradual.  The argument applies.  You are nitpicking.

I note, once again, yours.  I don't have to provide evidence because mine is the more accepted view.  Yours is the contrarian one.  If you are trying to overturn acccepted theory, dogma, ideology or whatever you call it, it IS up to you to provide the evidence.  I don't think you have.

before I lost patience with you (and who hasn't?) I tried to answer some of your questions - the one where you set out your agenda to TobyA.  I'll post them for completeness, pick up a couple of followup and call it day forever.

I Agree

I Disagree - the racism of US policing has a lot of evidence from multiple sources that go right back to its origins.  Remember, also that a commission in the UK determined that the force was 'institutionally racist' - I think in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence murder.  That led to reform. Current events in the US need to also -and are doing so.  BLM has a clear set of demands in each location for what those reforms are  - an increasing number of people in other races are supporting those demands.

I agree on convicting Chauvin.

Yes it is.  Blacks would like to see a decrease in violent crime in their neighbourhoods too. Many black activists work to try to help their communities get out of the spiral of poor housing, bad education, low employment prospects, racist policing, racist incarceration policies, and wider structural racism in american society.  You are systematically underestimating the underlying causalities and reinforcing feedbacks.

It is pertinant,and it's part of the analysis.  But please give your sources and the explanations for the numbers.

No one is denying Black Agency.  Black Lives Matter IS black agency.  Black community activism is black agency.  Black looting and rioting is black agency.   You only seem to want to give voice to the black agents that meet your approval.  Not all black people think alike, so you will certainly find some to support your views, but you'll also find people who support all kinds of contrarian nonsense, as Mr Lopez light-heartedly pointed out to you.

But do you think you are providing a fair and unbiased portrayal of the black experience?   

Do you not see the irony in you, a white man, first championing black agency, then denying the existence of racism (or perhaps saying it is justified), and then lecturing blacks on what they should do (itself a denial of their agency)?  All in one short paragraph. That's quite an achievement in pretzel-thinking! 

The only piece of evidence you've so far presented for this is an obscure tweet.  You've ignored all explanations of why that analysis doesn't support your contention, instead choosing to focus on the number, which I have at no point disagreed with.  Of course black deaths are getting a lot of media coverage!  They ignited a social movement which was all about amplifying their impact. The big demonstrations and the wider issues are going to get talked about - by the Guardan AND Brietbat - and they are going to mention the catalysts every time.  The fact they are talking about it a lot is not the same thing as bias - they are talking about it because it is newsworthy.  You may not like it, but surely you understand the reasons for it?

Can i add, that he also has not provided any refutal to my evidence of horses being able to talk? #talkinghorsesmatter

Though I've read lots of his comments on various threads.

I should have said it's typical of the Woke left, not all the left.

Don't worry, I can stick up for myself!

Ah yes, the usual "punching up/punching down" distinction used to excuse one's own behaviour while deploring the same in others.

Whereas people who go on BLM and Antifa marches would never think that about themselves, would they?

I note the critical-theory analysis whereby everything is about power and who has it.

Why sure!  My approach is deliberately designed to annoy the hell out of people.  It's fun!  But is this comment of yours going to get to a point sometime ... ?

"White supremacist", these days, presumably means anyone who disagrees with Antifa?   I started the OP with a video of Glenn Loury and John McWorter -- presumably they are who you mean by "White supremacists"?  Also Wilfred Reilly (who I linked to in other threads)?

And I suspect that this list of bluster is merely a cover for your lack of straightforward evidence for your side?

Evidence for this claim? 

And note that there are a variety of threads here.  I only post on a small fraction.    

And, also, of threads on contentious issues, by far the dominant recently have been vehement anti-Brexit threads.  Do people worry about being unwelcoming to the half of the nation who support Brexit? Err, no they don't.    Of course diversity of opinion is not a concern for the Woke, for whom only race and gender matter.

And, I note, yet again, the tendency to want to shut down debate so prevalent and tedious these days. This time by the tactic: "If you disagree or even discuss the issue on their merits then you'll decrease diversity and/or kill kittens".

Poor little Woke people having their ideology challenged! Aw diddums. 

Well, I notice that amongst all the bluster you didn't answer the question. 

The words "gradually" and "steadily" are different, but anyhow:

I said that I thought that systemic racism had been gradually declining over many decades.

You replied that me even using that phrasing showed that I: "have zero understanding of how social and political change happens".

Hmm, no, I'm still struggling to see how my phrasing shows that.

The number of excuses the Woke can come up with to avoid having to provide evidence really is remarkable! 

(There are lots of "accepted views" in science or whatever, and scientists can quite readily provide evidence for them; indeed that's why they are accepted views.)

I don't know about 'the woke', but i gave you evidence above which i see you are ignoring because you don't have any arguments against it.

Here's a respected academic's view on the subject https://i.imgur.com/ZnjQUG7.jpg

What have you got to say to that?

As I've said several times, I'm not denying that there used to be lots of systemic racism in the US and UK. I'm asking about now. 

Yes it did. One can argue that, nowadays, sensitivity over this now disadvantages the black communities.

For example, when Theresa May was shown evidence that stop-and-search stopped black kids more often then their fraction of the population, she told them to stop. 

So what happens now? Significant numbers of young black males die from black-on-black knife crime.  Of course that is then also blamed on police for not stopping it, even though the police are not allowed to stop it.  

Any attempt by the police to stop black-on-black knife crime would necessarily be "about" blacks, and the police are not allowed to do that, that's racist.

i would agree that thing are vasly more complicated and multi-causal than can be summed up in a few comments here.  But that criticism can also be applied to those who attribute everything to "systemic racism" and "white supremacy".

Well my comments are certainly not intended to be a complete account of the black experience -- they can't possibly be -- they are more about putting forward alternative ideas to those of the dominant BLM narrative, as indeed were Loury and McWhorter in the OP video.

Well yes, but then why is a cop killing a black vastly more newsworthy (by a factor of nine) then a cop killing a white?

Why is a white killing a black vastly more newsworthy than a black killing a white?

That's an eloquent, incisive, and moving article.  Thanks for posting.

You chastise Coel for lack of self-awareness then state that your partner has "a PhD in critical race feminism", presumably because you think this an impressive thing.  I can't claim to have laughed out loud, but I did grin mightily.  A qualification like that is widely regarded as at best laughable.  

Between your guffaws and belittling the work of others, what qualifications do you have where you've spent time reading and thinking about social, political, cultural or economic issues? 

You presume and judge a lot - I mention it not to impress you but to point that it in all likelihood i) it gives me a much more frequent access to perspectives that the likes of you and Coel very clearly don't hear or respect.  She dealt with people like Coel through university disciplinary committees, so she has some basis for comparison that you probably dont.

 ii) by 'widely regarded as at best laughable' how widely have you looked?  Be careful in overgeneralizing from what you and your like-minded, similar-thinking friends think.  

If you want to descend into credentialism, fine. Pray tell me what dizzying heights of social policy analysis have you reached? What is your non-hilarious qualification?  Go on, I promise not to laugh.

Typical attitudes of the woke alt-Right shapeshifting lizard elites. Personnal attacks and attempts at ridicule instead of providing refutals or evidence.

Here's a letter from an anonymous professor on the most pressing subject https://i.imgur.com/maoCh8a.jpg

Hi Coel,  I'm afraid I'm going to leave you hanging.  I have some work deadlines that take precedence, as does my sanity. 

I've written some wider reflections on this exchange which I may or may not post in a new topic.  It is direct and critical, but I hope respectful too. It acknowledges our differences and some surprising similarities: like you, I've been a full professor in a natural sciences department too (at the University of Washingon in my case) - but -unlike you, I've also been a professor in an applied social sciences department in the UK.   

So I've lived both academic cultures, and I do work that cuts across disciplines and divides, which perhaps explains my instinctive dislike of more extreme or dogmatic views and narrow framings of issues.

As to my wider concerns about your posting behaviour and its impact on the UKC community.  We could put your question to the wider community, but for various reasons, we may not get a useful answer. Perhaps a third party vote? 

I respect your right to contrarian views and appreciate that you enjoy a good fight.  But in taking you on at your own game, I find as others have before me, that I'm simply descending to your level, so I'm going to stop.  I'm used to a higher level of debate than anything you appear willing to offer.

To me, an exchange of views is between people.  Your insistence on complete detachment of reason and human emotion is simply not how the world works, much as you may wish otherwise.  The 'left' bring people's politics, perception and emotion to bear on arguments. So does the right - all that symbolism of confederate flags and statues that is so important to those irrational white people!  You chastise me and others when we get angry with you, but frustration and anger are human - go to a protest march and see.  People make decisions on the basis of evidence AND perception and emotion.  That is why I think an analysis of all three is needed to inform policy. The serious policy analyst explores them all - and yes, power.  I jumped into this to question your support of a politics student's tweet.   What do you think political science studies, if not power?

I advise on policy for a living, all over the world, from New Zealand to Nigeria.  This is something that no one has yet been willing to pay you for, as far as I'm aware. I don't do much on US social policy and race, but I do have a paper in review on this, in my field (the maritime economy).

So, I question your credibility as a policy analyst ( I would not do this to anyone - only someone who sets themselves up as an expert but clearly isn't), I dislike your posting style and what it forces others to do, I dislike most of what you seem to stand for but acknowledge that you are true to your beliefs and identity, and you at least believe yourself not to be a racist. 

I hope your quest to tackle 'wokeness' fails utterly, but nevertheless I wish you well personally.  I hope you are able to get out and enjoy the rocks and mountains in these coming days.  

best wishes,

Eddie   

Oh yes I did - see links and text around them.  I should add separating quotes from their context and making false claims about them to your many sins of debate technique. 

I pass you on to Mr Lopez - I like his approach.  

One notes the threat here.  People should not be allowed to disagree with the Woke, that is a matter for disciplinary committees.  That, by the way, is literally how it works.  People do get fired from academia for having opinions that the Woke dislike and want to shut down.

Excuse for not presenting solid and clear evidence number six hundred and thirteen.

But I don't insist otherwise and don't wish it otherwise.  But, while the Woke are very good at emoting, they are not so good at reasoning and evidence.  We need all of these. 

Well I don't actually claim to be an expert on most of these things.  But, since you're raising credentials, I don't think that most of the critical-theory academics in this area have any expertise or actual understanding either -- what they have is an ideology.

Is that because I try to look for evidence that counters the dominant narrative?  That's how things should work.  We should all adopt the tactic of actively looking for evidence to challenge a belief.  

So, when someone glibly trots out "blacks are killed by police at twice the rate of whites", one should wonder whether that's a function of a higher crime rate (blacks, being 13% of the US population, commit 50% of the homicides), and not racism.

The OP video by Loury and McWhorter did just that, with those academics trying to get at the truth of the matter by asking such questions. That's why I respect them and why I linked to it. 

But the Woke tend to react to such questions with bluster, moral outrage and personal attacks, followed by wanting to shut down any dissent with bans or disciplinary committees, both of which you've hinted at.   

That's why I enjoy taunting the Woke -- bad of me, I know, but I'm not perfect. But you seem to me to be an intolerant ideological cult with strong totalitarian inclinations, akin to Mao's Red Guards. 

Well let's review. Here's the question, or at least one of them:

Your reply:

So, from this we can surmise that you do indeed think that the better outcomes of East-Asian Americans compared to whites are caused by "structural racism".  (Of course you would, under critical theory, absolutely everything is either about "structural racism", or the gender equivalent, the "patriarchy".)

But you only asserted that there was such an explanation. You didn't actually tells us what it is.  So perhaps you could actually tell us, summarised concisely in a couple of sentences (as opposed to paragraphs of bluster) how you think that "structural racism" explains why East-Asian Americans do better overall on just about every indicator compared to US whites? 

Stil waiting for any arguments to the evidence i provided. Typical Rightwokers with your white pointy hats intolerant Religious zealousy and not washing your hands after using the toilet. Talking about evidence but when it's provided you show yourselves to have-a-head-in-the-sand-hands-to-the-ears-lalalala-can't-hear-you-wonder-what's-for-dinner-look-i'm-an-ostrich attitude and squirming out instead of engaging

Here's a document you have to read in it's entirety conclusively proving you are wrong https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q1JODwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover

Even more undisputable evidence i'm right. It's sad that The Right are incapable of reaonable debate. Unsurprising for the Lizard Overlords really, couldn't expect more from those Rightwingers

https://i.imgur.com/DhaT71j.jpg

Have you provided some evidence of this before?

Evidence of what in particular?

And this just came up in my facebook https://i.imgur.com/OQX9YQ2.jpg

Honestly man, what's with The Right not washing their hands when using the toilet? That's just disgusting

The silence is deafening. Obviously no arguments and The Right has just defaulted to their standard position of stiffling debate and trying to censor and ignore those with indisputable evidence they don't feel comfortable with for it doesn't fit their critical parapsychological gobbledok truth ideology.

Here's more evidence of The Right not washing the hands after using the toilet. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53040301

And seriously, why do you piss in Police officer's memorials Coel? We saw you rightwokers call the Police 'traitors' and tell them 'they let the county down', but can't you see how disrespectful pissing in his memorial is? Granted, any shred of common decency or respect would make you 'The Left' and thus get your subscription to Spiked and Breitbart revoked. Still, you should be embarrased of yourself.

And don't try arguing he was carrying wet wipes, that;s has already been confirmed to be false https://i.imgur.com/LTtKMTq.png

I did quote the post but not the specific text. I meant the comments regarding Nigerian/East Asian people outperforming whites on average in the US.

After a quick Google:

"Asian Americans have the highest median income, followed by White Americans, Latino Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_wage_gap_in_the_United_States 

(Note that in the UK "Asian" often means Pakistani, since we have a large Pakistani community, in the US it's more  East Asian, usually Chinese, and they have few from Pakistan.  Chinese in the US have been treated badly over time and discriminated against, many started out in navvy gangs building railways, but are now among the most successful groups.)

So successful are they in educational terms that: "... an internal Harvard study from 2013 determined that, if admissions committees only considered academic qualifications, the proportion of Asians among Harvard students would rise from about 19 percent to about 43 percent." (Hence Harvard discriminates against Asians with informal quotas.)

"... the median Asian student admitted to an elite college has a composite SAT score 450 points higher than the median black student, and, at Harvard, an academic record that gives an Asian applicant only a 25 percent chance of getting in nearly guarantees admission to a black applicant."

https://quillette.com/2018/06/20/harvard-thinks-rich-people-are-better-than...

On Nigerians: "Nigerian immigrants have the highest levels of education in this city and the nation, surpassing whites and Asians, according to Census data bolstered by an analysis of 13 annual Houston-area surveys conducted by Rice University."

https://www.chron.com/news/article/Data-show-Nigerians-the-most-educated-in...

"Nigerians ... confidently emerging as one of the country’s most succesful immigrant communities, with a median household income of $62,351, compared to $57,617 nationally, as of 2015."

https://www.ozy.com/around-the-world/the-most-successful-ethnic-group-in-th...

"According to Census data, more than 43 percent of African immigrants hold a bachelor’s degree or higher -- slightly more than immigrants from East Asia. Nigerian immigrants are especially educated, with almost two-thirds holding college degrees -- a significantly higher percentage even than Chinese or South Korean immigrants. African immigrants are also very likely to hold advanced degrees, many of which are earned at U.S. universities. By many measures, African immigrants are as far ahead of American whites in the educational achievement as whites are ahead of African-Americans.

"That education translates into higher household income. Nigerian-Americans, for instance, have a median household income well above the American average, and above the average of many white and Asian groups, such as those of Dutch or Korean descent."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn-t-just-asian-i...

And just to add, I am actually rather interested in how the woke critical theorists, the sort of people who do PhDs in "critical race feminism", with their one-trick-pony analysis of everything being about "systemic racism" and power relations, would explain such findings.  It would be interesting to see what types of explanation they allow themselves. 

You have a curious definition of "interested". Seems closer to "reinforce my prejudices".

No, I really would be interested in how the "critical race theorists" would explain such things.  Because I think they'd struggle to maintain that "systemic racism" is the cause of those outcomes for Chinese and Nigerian Americans.   So that means they'd have to look at other sorts of explanation.  But, if they start allowing themselves those other explanations, then it may well be that those explanations apply more widely. 

I'm interested to see how you explain with your critical parapsychological gobbledok truth ideology the denial of talking horse emancipation within the frames of the thrid calendar of the blessed God he who can't be named and how the alt-right gospel pastors of The Woke justify the silencing for anything other than stiffling debate and preventing the horses from opening up about everything they heard during the fox hunts.

Here's more evidence horses can talk youtube.com/watch?v=7PHHfIYwk8g&

Because systemic racism has to be the same for all non-whites, rather than an ingrained problem from 400 years of racism against one demographic in particular?

Nobody is saying that systemic racism has to affect all non-white groups equally.   If different non-white groups had averages that were different but below that for whites, then you could indeed attribute that to systemic racism. 

What I'm interested in is, if everything is about "systemic racism" and "White supremacy", why do some non-white groups do better than whites on average?  What types of explanation are you going to allow yourself for that?

Unless the systemic racism isn't rather *for* whites but instead *against* blacks.

Economic migrants will be subject to self-selecting criteria straight from being wealthy and stable enough family unit to organise, uproot and move a family to America, with it being unlikely to have immediate family members in the prison system, be subject to drug or alcohol dependency, particularly debilitating health conditions and having a certain level of educational attainment and socialisation.

Black Americans descended or descended in part from slaves and later people subject to Jim Crow laws, lynching, Reagan flooding the ghetto with crack to fund the contras, community leaders murdered and all the dysfunction, crime, economic and health implications accrued over generations, didn't move to America to make their fortunes. They're as resident as any "native" white American with roots going back hundreds of years, except that a good proportion of that time has been directly discriminated against, before more indirect discrimination arising from no remedies to historic disadvantages or meaningful campaign to tackle to ingrained and deeply held anti-black racist views of a significant minority of Americans 

And don't forget the more subtle methods The Right has been using to mantain the subjugation once they were found out to be spraying mind controlling chemicals out of planes and had to stop it, like, for example, have you ever seen a hoof sized keyboard? No? Me neither. Beause they don't exist.

Just another piece of clear evidence of the inner workings of The Woke Right to stop horses from being able to have their voices heard online and be able to exercise their right of freedom of speech. Have you ever seen a horse attempting to write a post in a public forum or send a twitt? It's no pretty and it always ends in tears and broken keyboards.

I miss day drinking.

Probably not a good idea seeing how that worked out for the famous activist and defender of rights featured in this documentary youtube.com/watch?v=eDEZUNJzKjU&

Some say he was set up and assasinated by the black ops direct action branch of The Woke Right for being an outspoken leader and defender of the horses' freedom of speech. Coel could maybe confirm if that's true or not, but i believe they are sworn to protect the organisation's secrets when they swear their fealty and make the vow to fight the wicked Left by any means necessary to protect the White Male race, so maybe not. That is also the last time they are allowed to wash their hands after using the toilet.

That would be irrelevant to the difference of group averages between Asian Americans and whites, and would not explain the Nigerian Americans doing well. 

Paragraphs 2 and 3 of my post may assist.

Para 3 again is not relevant to Asian Americans and Nigerians compared to whites.

Para 2 may well be relevant to Nigerian immigrants, many of whom are relatively recent.  It is likely not relevant to the Asian Americans in general, most of whom were born there.

PS To add, re Para 2, if your explanation is correct, it shows that African immigrants can do well in America, despite whatever degree of racism there still is, which suggests that (contrary to the critical race theorists) racism is not the only signficant factor in group differences.

Perhaps it's something to do with the nature of communication which are online forums, but this post doesn't perhaps give the tone of you having a 'Neutrally interested and open approach' to whatever they might have to say?

Perhaps you are...

No, but it's relevant as to why slave-descended African Americans are a separate case from more recent African immigrants.

But, most coming from economic migrants rather than descending from chattel slaves or indentured servants, and more recent than the vast majority of longstanding white Americans, still maintaining strong cultural factors such as extended families meaning a slower drift towards the white "mean". It would be reasonable to expect that the higher proportion of a migrant population, the more integrated into the wider population and the more generations that they were resident, those numbers would tend towards the white "mean".

You do know the difference between the systemic factors African-Americans would have been subject to (poverty, schools, health, criminalisation, family breakdown, drugs and alcohol) compounded generation after generation, and interpersonal racism, and know that African immigrants may well have to deal with the latter (deeply unpleasant but illegal in terms of preventing personal attainment) but much less the former. This bears out with middle-class African-Americans who manage to "escape".

Well you are right, I am not neutral about "critical theory" and the role it has played in swathes of academia over recent decades, I regard it as a hugely damaging ideology.  So I am indeed not neutral about a "PhD in critical race feminism". 

To me it's a bit like having a PhD in theology awarded by the Church of Scientology, only more harmful because it is more prevalent.

But, while I am not "neutral" about such things, I am "open" about them in the sense of being willing to discuss them.

I don't really disagree, there's likely a lot of truth in what you say. 

But, it does suggest (if recent African immigrants can be much better), that it is not **current** systemic racism that is the main cause of the disparities in outcomes.  That really does matter, since correct diagnosis is necessary in order to fix a problem.

You said above you like to annoy people because it's fun. I guess we all get our kicks in different ways.

Yes, but only when they deserve it.

Yes, you are right, it is complex.  People get caught in spirals and there are multiple factors - and out of every sitation there are exceptions.  Out of every slum, someone gets out and becomes a millionaire.  The whole 'american dream' is founded on this idea that it could be you.  But it seldom is if you start out poor (look at the stats on economic mobility).  And it is even less likely if you start out poor and black.  I come from a working class rural background and class issues and expectations keep those communities down too.  Look back at the 19th century and the kinds of things some on here are saying about the poor - blaming them for their poverty - were being said back then too.  Same with the Irish in the early 20th century.

We've overcome some of those prejudices, but we haven't fully overcome racism, at least I don't think so - and neither to the millions of people around the world marching in that cause, telling their stories on facebook and twitter, giving their opinions in all the world's newspapers etc.   Are they all wrong?  It is possible, I suppose, but very unlikely. 

No threat implied - simply talking that I have access to expertise in how to deal with the boundaries between legitimate discourse and intellectual bullying.    

I would never take forum posts to any formal disciplinary process.  Like you, I am a very strong believer in academic freedom, and I apologise if it came across as a threat.  It is not.  

I will fight you hard and dirty but not that dirty.  I'm not completely unsympathetic to your cause and I bear you no personal animosity.  I don't want to drive you from this board either. I want you to keep posting.  I just want you to behave better in the interests of everyone.  People here have accommodated you, but they don't like what you are doing.  I have had messages to that effect.  

You are making this board an unfriendly and confrontational place and this is Round One in a fight to change that.  I want women, LGBT folk, social scientists, conservatives, atheists, muslims, and a whole variety of people to be able to engage in debate here without being subjected to the kind of emotionless, empathy-free evisceration that you seem to think is fun.

You're getting what I might call a dose of your own medicine.  

Sure there is.  The fact that we can all post different sources showing a variety of opinions demonstrates that. 

I'd say bad schools, massive over-representation in the penal system, poverty, drug and alcohol issues , poor mental health and family breakdown as a result of the issues preceding it are *current* issues either systemic or societal inheritance from previous more overt discrimination. This is why reparations are a live topic; you don't brutalise and discriminate in degrees over 400 years, change a couple of laws and then expect everyone to be starting on a level playing field.

I'm thinking that it's potentially a mixture of racism and psychology, and family structure/role models within both contexts (African American and immigrant Africans), and the schooling opportunities available to both groups, but my mind is too fried today to put why as adequately as I want. 

It's (obviously) not going to be simply 'one thing' and racism will play a part - either in directly obstructing progress or by being observed to exist which affects the state of mind of those who flounder (depending on their resilience). Though, both would affect the state of mind.

Coel, Coel....you have to learn to disaggrate these black, brown and yellow people.  I know people are just lumps of different coloured material to you, but many of them have voices,  I'll let a couple of asians tell you what you need to know.  They give you some figures too:

https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/stop-pointing-asian-americans-downp...

The figures and sources are in there. You do the work.  I'm not here to make up for your lack of research.

OK, so this is interesting.  Any specifics (backed by quotes) as to what I've done that you would regard as behaving badly?  

You mean they don't like people with opinions different from their own? Or something other than that, in which case specifically what?

Oh come on!   First, things said to me are usually much more "unfriendly and confrontational" than what I say in return.    (Some people really don't like their ideology being questioned, and react badly to it.)   Just for example, you've attacked me way more than I've attacked you.  (I'm taking that as a sign of inability to argue better.)

Second, I can promise you that stuff routinely posted by others on topics such as Brexit is vastly more vitriolic than anything I say. 

"Emotionless, empathy-free evisceration"?  That's the worst of my sins is it?  This reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where they threaten people with the soft cushion and the comfy chair.    Are you serious?

OK, so I do try to get at the truth of the matter, and try to use evidence and data and argument to that end.  So that's bad is it? We should instead all just go by gut feeling and empathy? 

And the only thing I eviscerate is bad ideas.  

Sure, they are current *issues* yes.    Whether there is currently systemic racism is a different issue.

But should we expect to everyone to start on a level playing field?  And, if we do, should we care more about individuals, or about group averages? 

If we want to level playing fields, shouldn't we try to level it for everyone in a race-blind way?

So, for example, plenty of kids of middle-class, professional black families are in a better starting position than a white kid from a dysfunctional family with a dad in jail and a drug-addict mother. 

So which of those is the priority? Isn't it best to address individual needs rather than say: "Well obviously we should help the black kid from the middle-class, professional family because, while they personally are ok, blacks on average are less well off, and the most important thing is the group average, and ensuring that group averages are the same".  That, to me, seems nuts and a bad priority.

<list of various stats>

Coel, in order to explain and understand these figures in any way useful to guide shifting narratives, budgetery allocations, law-making, implementation strategy, educational initatives, police reforms or any of the other tools of policy, you have to get beyond throwing numbers around with no underlying analysis.   Here are some suggestions on how you might proceed:

1) Determine which disciplines, bodies of theory and methodologies are pertinent to the study of social problems like race, policing, public health, education etc.  Bring those to bear on your analysis.  Hint: astrophysics isn't one of them, though science-training is helpful, if it is broad and flexible enough.  (I have a natural science PhD, so I know where you start from). 

2) Set up alternative hypotheses.  You might find, with complex problems that a 'theory of change' approach (essentially multiple, linked hypotheses) is needed to set out a means to provide testable causal explanations for the figures you've produced.

3) Look for both the dependent and the independent variables.  I can't remember whether I gave you a list earlier.  Take a look.  If not, take a stab at it yourself and if you get stuck, get in touch and I'll try and help.  At the moment, you are too focused on outcome variables (crime rates etc).  Also remember time-lags.  these can be long - remember that British slave owners were still getting compensation for the loss of their slaves until a few years ago - that acknowledges how long economic disadvantage persists.  Slaves and their descendents have of course not received any reparations.  

4) Disaggregate, disaggregate, disaggregate.  The story lies behind the figures, the learning and undrestanding of causality lies in being able to disambiguate the influences of class, ethnicity, immigration history, national origal, policing policy etc, not between big census-categories.  No one does serious policy analysis based on the kinds of sweeping generalities and cherry-picked examples you are coming up with so far.  You are taking what is sometimes called the 'view from space'.  I know that's how you are used to looking, but it doesn't work here.  

Or you could read the work of the people who have already done all of the above and accept - or challenge - its validity. 

I only dropped in here because I injured my hand and can't climb or ski at the moment, and was curious to see what was going on in the UK.  I found you dominating some of the forum discussion, I thought a lot of the ideas I was seeing were either unpleasant or ill-informed, and were symptomatic of a lack of diversity in the forum.  I hypothesize that our presences is a partially causal.  My mission is to restore some diversity of thought and, eventually, some civility. For now, I am happy to continue being rude and patronizing.  Until you realize how counter-productive such an approach is and stop doing it yourself.

Lets try and move this a little more into the fun zone shall we?  We can still discuss serious issues, but in a different way.     

I think I'm done with Round One and this debate.  Round Two coming up.

Err, hello??  I was the one who raised differences between different ethnic groups!   It's all there up thread.

Nope, you don't "know" that, you only "think" it.  

Well duh. Did you spot that my OP for this thread was a video by ....  two black scholars? 

If this is your attempt to play attack dog, then you're not very good at it are you? 

Ah yes, the usual "I don't have to argue my case" stance of the woke. 

Ah yes, how big, how brave it must be "restore some diversity of thought" by taking exactly the same line that is all over the mainstream media and utterly dominant in universities.

By the way, your account of how to buttress a position and properly analyse it is not bad -- perhaps you could pass it on to Antifa and BLM and the rest of the woke?

Now that really is funny, given your attempts at being an attack dog (though doing it so ineffectually it's almost quaint).

We had noticed.

What you're way too lacking in self-awarness to have realised is that you've already done way more of that than I have.  (And I usually only do it in retaliation.) I think the problem with the woke is they're too smugly certain of their moral superiority to notice how much of an arse they act.

Anyhow, you're not very good at the attack dog stuff, are you, so maybe you could instead try to make a good argument for your case?

You mean like the person last week on the Black lives matter - resources thread, who by the use of "us" in his or her post seemed to be identifying as BAME. You immediately responded questioning the truth of what they said - not what they meant, and followed that up by saying their argument, which you didn't ask for any clarification on was "irrelevant". I see that was their first post and they haven't posted again since. Perhaps you see that as a win of some kind.

I am persuaded there is, you are not.  I'm happy to leave it there.

Both are needed/can help in targeting social policies.  That is why the kind of social policy research you are a bit dismissive of is done - and they are the ones designing the systems to collect the statistics you are usuing to advance your arguments

Or you could look at in the different ways in which the playing field is tilted for different people?  You can work on drug-addiction for all AND on reducing racism in institutions and socities.  I don't think you need it to be either, or - it is a matter of optimal allocation, including in national budgets. That's where social policy research can help, but it needs a political mandate, hence the campaigns, lobbying, public enquiries and commissions etc. 

 I think you are looking an either/or but all that everyone is marching for these weeks is for a considation that racism should be part of these discussions - it isn't the only issue and it isn't always the biggest issue, but it is a big and important one to the people who experience it.    So less brutal policing AND doing away with racial profiling, for example. Is that so bad, or hard to accept? 

The reason more white people are marching with black people is that they realize some of what they are asking for helps them too.  We'd all benefit from lower crime, better drug policies, better schools, a lower burden on the thealth system and so on.  We differ on how we get there, and what kind of thinking is needed to get us there.

Indeed - and this is one of the explanations for your high-performing immigrants, elsewhere in your examples - Asians, Nigerians etc.  Many come from middle-class professional families.

You can't target social policy completely at the level of the individual,  but you can mix high-level initiatives with individual targeting if your social data is good enough.  

I've worked on social safety nets for the poor when I worked with the UK Department for International Development.  In places where poverty is very prevalent, we don't target because it is too expensive to find and exclude those few people who don't need it.  In places where poverty applies to only a few and you'd waste a lot of money if you gave cash transfers (e.g. post-drought or flood)to everyone,  targeting is essential.  The concept of index-linked insurance works the same way.  So it's a case by case process. 

Oh wow, we are both beginning to have a sensible discussion.  

Seems like you've been triggered. 

Who are you to decide who deserves to be annoyed?

This isn't a dig, it's a question.

Oh yeah, you've mentioned ANTIFA a few times now. It's funny how even 5 years ago if you weren't interested in mainly the more wiggy bits of German football fan culture or perhaps the fringes of the US punk rock scene (although I think even that is getting a bit over played in contemporary accounts) no one had heard of ANTIFA. But now it's at the top of Conservative talking points. This is quite amusing about what happens when you get ready for the counter-revolution, but the revolutionaries never turn up (in fact they don't exist!). https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments

Just to clarify, nothing happened between me and the horse that night. We got drunk, i went home, he to the stable, and that was that. If he says otherwise he's a lying ass.

Our resident Don Quixote sees himself as a modern day crusader but it's just another brick in the wall, but without the wall https://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/2020/06/13/todays-right-wing-talking-...

Poor old Rocinante has all the brains but in the hands of the Woke Right he lives life as a slave and is forced to stay silent ever since he pointed out the windmills. He may have also made some sly jabs about them not washing the hands.

Clear evidence of the horses' superior intellect when balanced against that of The Right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhamed_(horse)

Unsurprisingly, when the rightwing masters found out about this fella they felt so threatened and triggered in how it brought to the fore their insecurities that they instucted their minions to wage war against Muhamed, but guess what, the numbnuts got the wrong person and just spent the last 2 decades fuelling Islamophobia for no reason. True story

A sensible discussion?

You’ve come to the wrong place mate, this is UKC!

As long as you're having a good time. 

But not on UKC it seems.  Just restoring some balance. 

See what I mean about you being rude, arrogant and patronizing?   

By the way - you and Donald Trump seem in close lockstep.   Two 'very stable geniuses' I guess...

'He just doesn't get it': has Trump been left behind by America's awakening on racism? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/12/he-just-doesnt-get-it-has-t...

You both seem like scared old white men, out of step with the times, yesterday's men, on the wrong side of history, like all those British scientists who supported eugenics and Nazis in the 1930.  So rational, but so wrong.

I know, I was trying to be like you, but it doesn't come naturally.  Well spotted. I'm more usually the peace keeper.   

I started politely and with evidence.  When I got the expected response, I started to retaliate.  I was aware I was being an arse.  Were you?   I don't claim moral superiority to you, I just know a little more about this field than you do.  Also, look up the phrase 'by any means necessary'.  

I did make multiple arguments.  You didn't like them.  You don't trust the peer-reviewed literature, except in your own field.  There is not much I can do.  Its not just 'mainstream media' making these arguments, it's researchers with at least as much intellect as you and a lot more life experience and legitimacy on social policy.  You can't seem to acknowledge that.  Hence the multiple charges of arrogance, smugness etc.  You have earned them, I'm afraid

All of this...I was trying to hold up a mirror to you, deliberately.  This is what it feels like to have someone like you arrive in a debate, or to have you attack someone who dares to disagree with you.  I wanted you to get a sense of what that looks like.  Not a very perfect mirror, I grant you.  I can't be you. 

I slipped a couple of times and conceded you were right - you see that as weakness!.  Most people use those opportunities and accept and seek some common ground - perhaps conceding a point in return.  No, not you. You power on obliviously.  And that is your weakness.  You are ultimately unpersuasive, even in victory.

I'm not sure it was an effective tactic to hold up a mirror to you, I had hoped you might say, hey, being browbeaten and disrespected doesn't feel great, maybe I shouldn't do this to other people. But no.  It feeds you.  You are, in the end, just a troll.  I hope it brings you fulfilment

You are right, you are much better at attacking people and belittling them than I will ever be.  That is a victory I am more than happy to concede to you.

I'll take up some of the broader issues re: getting to a forum where we don't behave like this, if you are interested, but I've got work to do now.   

I've left you some morsels to chew on in my absence.  I have cities to burn and Black Lives Matter slogans to yell at the alt-right.  My antifa balaclava should be out of the wash by now. I'm off to the Chaz for a beer and some weed:

Trump claims 'radical left' have 'taken over' Seattle during policing protests  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/jun/14/

You are, I believe, a metal fan Coel?  It's not a coincidence that mainsteam music within a dissafected white male sub-culture looks like this:

https://theconversation.com/death-metal-is-often-violent-and-misogynist-yet...

This writer's insightful and generous interpretation could apply to black music too, of course.  The generosity and analytical insight is of course coming from someone from the 'soft' sciences so pay no attention to it. Anyone who likes metal is obviously a violent sociopath who should be locked up or shot multiple times while running away for just listening to this shit.

Actually, that's only a sub-genre of metal.  It's not about the major metal bands and not the main genres of metal.   And also, metal fans are not "disaffected" -- they don't have higher crime rates and lower educational standards and they don't go around regarding themselves as oppressed victims. 

When they act likes arses towards me! 

Do you really think that? Seriously?  Well, let's review. Your very first post to me on the thread contained:

"You are not doing serious social analysis here, you are not truth-seeking, ..."

It also attributed to me something I hadn't said:

"Nither Goldberg nor you have demonstrated your assertions that, proportionate to their relative population sizes, more white people are killed by police than black."

That was not an assertion made by either me or Goldberg.

And you also said: "And yet somehow, you believe Goldberg.", a tone suggesting I was being unreasonable, when the only thing I was citing Goldberg over was the that cop killings of blacks get more press attention than cop killing of whites -- on which you agreed that Goldberg "got it right"!

After all that, my first reply to you was moderate and civil (though defending myself). The problem with the Woke is that they regard merely disagreeing with woke ideology as beyond the pale. 

No, I'm pretty confident that yours would be the more dominant opinion on UKC.   Not that I have any objection to you and others promoting your views, but you seem to think there is something wrong with me doing that.

So let's see.  You present me with a long account of how to properly buttress a position, I reply that the advice could also be given to those on your side, and you think I'm being "rude, arrogant and patronizing"?   So what was your comment then?  Let me guess, "appropriate and helpful"?

Getting now to substantive stuff:

Among my policy prescriptions for the US (most of which would help blacks) would be (of course I'd need a magic wand to implement them).

-- ending the war on drugs (I'd have state-licensed suppliers legally supplying drugs to any adult, thus instantly under-cutting crime gangs and all the criminality around drugs, including the crime addicts commit to buy drugs).

-- banning all guns (except perhaps single-shot hunting rifles).

-- huge reform of police culture to make them way less aggressive. 

-- health care for all, centrally funded.

-- better funded public schools, and funding them centrally  (currently they're funded by local property taxes, so predominantly white areas with high property values have well-funded schools and predominantly black poorer areas have badly funded schools).

... and a few others, though the above would be enough of a task for starters. 

But one thing I would stick to is race-blind policies, with the emphasis on individuals and the individual's situation.  I consider the critical-theory and identity-politics approach, where everything is about race, where what matters is not the individual, but which race they are, is utterly divisive and poisonous and unhelpful. 

Things went wrong when the aim stopped being about equality and equality of opportunity and the individual and a race-blind society, and instead started being about group identity and equity of group outcomes. 

I would say things went wrong in the US when they created a country accepting the idea that some human being could be the property of other human beings, and that the first set of people would not be treated as people, legally or politically.

As a frighteningly high proportion of the white majority in the US (and of their political representatives) have never wanted a "race-blind" society, blaming the civil rights movement for failing to end racism seems more than a tad unfair.

If you're suggesting that I was "blaming the civil rights movement for failing to end racism" then note that I wasn't.

I became aware of them when Andy Ngo started documenting and publicising their street-thuggery tactics.

Yes Ngo gets discussed in some detail in the OTM piece I linked yesterday. Here's the link again as my link last night might have been to all the segments on last's weeks OTM https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/town-prepared-go-war-anti... 

For anyone who hasn't come across Ngo before his wikipedia page is surprisingly extensive for a young-ish activist/journalist:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Ngo

whilst Rolling Stone is a bit stronger in their criticism of him:  https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-ngo-right-wing-t...

Ngo's renowned for circulation of misleadingly edited video with either misleading or outright untrue commentary (eg. he got hit with a milkshake and claimed it was wet concrete). He's an out and out far-right activist somehow given a veneer of respectability as a journalist.

Any actual evidence for that?

Yep. Plenty.

Err, ok, perhaps you might give us two or three examples of evidence showing that he is "far right"?

Which elements of critical race feminism do you find questionable?

No, it's fine. You've decided he's a reliable news source after no doubt doing thorough due diligence on him and his fine credible work on antifa. Far be it from me to convince you.

I'm starting to get more concerned about the conspiracy against horse speech, if I'm totally honest.

So you consider it fine to accuse him of being "far right", state that there is "plenty" of evidence to show this ... and then decline to produce any substantiation?

There is video footage online of him (Ngo) hanging around with a group of far right activists who call themselves Patriot Prayer while the group is planning an attack on a bar, which later resulted in 'felony charges' as they call them in America being brought against some of those involved. 

I think that a person who associates with a group such as them while they're planning an attack and fails to report on it, could reasonably be described as being liable to be less than objective when reporting on such groups as ANTIFA.

I have my life to pull together - were it otherwise I would take the time to find and link the video and provide other sources for you.  

By "hanging around with" you mean "standing apart from, monitoring".  That's what he did, he watched the interactions between Antifa and Patriot Prayer groups in Portland, and videoed and reported on them.

On the "fails to report" aspect, the Antifa and Patriot Prayer groups were engaged in a long series of confrontations, and often the police were reluctant to get involved (there are claims they had been instructed to "strand down").  Ngo saw his role as being a reporter. If he'd reported everything illegal to the police he'd have been making dozens of calls a week.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48849035

https://www.newsweek.com/why-portland-police-stand-passively-when-leftists-...

So this is the extent of the evidence that Ngo is "far right" is it?

When people are filmed laughing along with Patriot Prayer as they plan a violent attack, who travels in with and relies on the protection of far-right groups to protest clashes, whose MO is to edit videos to show retaliation or self-defense against far-right groups as unprovoked attacks, and routinely flat out makes up lies about counter-protesters to far-right groups to discredit them and show far-right groups as the innocent put-upon party, then I'm comfortable with expressing that opinion, yes.

Did you not read the Rolling Stone article posted above? There's so much out there on this muppet that it should be easy enough to come to a conclusion. Maybe he's not far-right. Maybe he just hates the left so much that he's willing to be friends with and run PR for the far-right and produce a never ending stream of hatchet jobs on anti-far right protesters. I'm not that generous as the effect is the same either way.

Have you done due diligence on his reporting, and are happy to use him as your source for anti-fascist "street thuggery"?

No no, laughing along with them as they plan violent attacks. There was an undercover journalist in the group who filmed it.

Just this one is clear enough that farther questioning is unnecessary https://i.imgur.com/afepO9O.jpg

You're actually starting to put a pretty strong case together. Any websites you'd recommend for further reading?

I'm just online for checking facebook, but that isn't the video I had in mind, the one I had in mind, is where he with with a group of Patriot Prayer who are planning what they are going to do, in terms of violent discord. It is 20 minutes long, and I have no interest in getting drawn into this. He is 'literally' walking around with Patriot Prayer while they are planning on carrying out a violent attack after which felony charges were brought for some of them.

I'm done, you can go 'Aha this isn't proof, so I've won on UKC', or you can go and google for it and find out for yourself. Either is fine with me.

Edit: I noticed that you didn't ask which video I had mind first, and simply assumed that I'm wrong. That's a rather aggressive or antagonistic approach, to be fair, and not conducive to a fruitful discussion, but either way, if you genuinely want to find out in an open and objective way, you'll go and google for it. 

Evidence that he does that?

Evidence that he does that?

Evidence that he does that?

You mean he is standing a bit away from them, walking to and fro and fiddling with his phone most of the time. 

I'm pretty sure we are talking about the same video.     It is this one, discussed in this account of the "affair".

"The problem, of course, is that the video—which mostly depicts a small group of people standing around, discussing which side of the street they should walk on when and if they approach antifa, and conversing with the undercover Ben—proves no such thing. I have watched it from start to finish at least five times, and it does not even establish that the group of right-wing agitators planned an attack—let alone that Ngo was aware of such a plot. Indeed, the Portland Mercury article that received such rave reviews from The Daily Beast, Vice, Media Matters, and others makes little effort to explain what was so damning about the video, ..."

https://reason.com/2019/09/03/andy-ngo-video-antifa-patriot-prayer-attack-m...

"Far from being engaged in conservation with Gibson's associates and intently involved in what they are saying, Ngo appears in the video only occasionally, and is mostly in the periphery, pacing and incessantly checking his phone. Ngo told Reason that he was scanning the internet for reports from other journalists pertaining to the earlier violence of the day, during which Ngo was punched in the stomach. He was much more interested in his social media feed than the conversations around him.

""The people are milling around for like probably an hour," he said. "I was just like, nothing was happening. I wasn't paying attention to what was being said because there's just a whole bunch of different random conversations. I didn't see any evidence of a violent conspiracy to launch an attack.""

So, if this is the extent of the evidence that Ngo is "far right" then I'm not impressed. 

You do realise, by the way, that since Ngo has openly criticised Antifa and documented them assaulting people, various website will go out of their way to discredit him? You're not just uncritically taking their word for it, are you?

So what you seem to be saying is that being black and poor is to have the odds stacked against you. I don't think there is much argument with that.

Then it appears that your feeling is that the cause of being poor is, directly or indirectly, racism, potentially stemming from slavery. Again I can follow that.

The you appear to be suggesting that the crucial hurdle that prevents someone black and poor from elevating themselves out of poverty is racism. Not sure I agree here. Undoubtedly racism might be a factor, but, certainly in the UK, is it really racism that is the crucial thing that makes the difference?

I've suggested that family make-up and poverty might be more impactive. You could add to that gang culture and associated negative influences. 

I wholly accept that many people can list a litany of experiences that they perceive are racist and which they feel have directly or indirectly hampered them, in their opinion down to race. 

But in terms of positive action - it is unclear what is sought. Whilst "being less racist" is definitely a "good thing", I would have thought addressing poverty, tackling gun/violent crime, trying to break the gang culture, perhaps focussing on education and improving outcomes for children from single parent families might be considerable more useful for pulling black people into a more equal position.  This will give improved outcomes for white/other youth in the same position as well, so unfortunately won't answer calls directed solely at "racism", though if the suggestion is that black kids are over represented in this group it will hopefully disproportionately improve things for them.

Google it.

You want to keep uncritically using Andy f*ckin Ngo as a credible source after he's shown exactly who he is and three separate people have told you specifically is your call. Or you could just do a bit of research. 

Are you eyeing up a job at Spiked?

I note your non-reply.

Nope, I'm not "uncritically" using what he says.

You mean that three different people have uncritically swallowed what the woke media have told them.

I'm willing to bet that I've looked into Andy Ngo and these events more than you have.

And I note how badly woke people flounder when asked to defend their positions.

Yes, you're the least gullible, best researched and most logically and analytically sound person on this site. Such a shame we all offer such poor sport.

Andy Ngo. Brilliant!

Somebody is freaking out. These could probably be of help https://www.equineconnectioncounseling.com/why-horses.html

I'm not sure if Coel is going to fess up to any youthful dalliances with the Revolutionary Communist Party (UK) which seems to be a prerequisite for actual staff jobs at Spiked!

But being part of a revolutionary communist party and a contributor to it's genocide-denying magazine doesn't seem to slow them down in the wild and wacky world of contemporary British politics - as the head of the No. 10 policy unit shows.

The amount of former RCP(UK) members worming their way deep into the establishment is quite a thing. Amazing that one's rejection of identity politics and political correctness as "bourgeois" can land you a job at the top of the Tory party, but then not that amazing at the same time.

Well, you hadn't managed to come up with much other than a video of two guys who represent a small spectrum of views,  and an unpublished tweet, and you were refusing to look any further into the evidence yourself, and you kept asking me to, and you kept making the same mistakes, so I guess, in exasperation, I thought I'd give you next steps, methodologically, as you didn't seem to be getting there yourself.  I haven't yet seen any evidence that you are aware of or show any respect for any form of scholarship other than your own, so I think it was a rational response.  But its OK, I've accepted where we got to.

By the way, could you post a list of academic disciplines that you think could contribute insights to a socio-cultural problem.  I'm struggling to see physics as one of them, but perhaps I'm missing something obvious?  I work with physicists from time to time - mostly oceanographers and climate modelers. Not sure I've met one like you - you're wonderfully unique!

 But I also work with and respect a whole range of other disciplines.  I haven't yet found one that you do, so I'm curious. What passes the rigorous Coel-test of acceptability?

You know, Black Lives Matter are marching for all of the above.  Take a look at their demands - and beyond the slogan 'defund the police' .  You are, to a great extent, asking for many of the same things they are.  they are, also more or less aligned with the policies of the progressive wing of the Democrat party which, in the US context, makes you a lefty.  Welcome Comrade!  

But I continue to disagree with your last two points.   I wonder if you've talked to many Black people from across the political and social spectrum about this?  Or, failing that, looked at large surveys of the lived experiences of black people.   Black people would love white people to be race-blind. Unfortunately, many are not, as the continued existence of he KKK and the rise of white-power groups suggest.  I struggle to understand how blaming the minority group for identity politics has led to the rise of conflict.  The white supremacy came first and it hasn't quite gone away yet - hence the anti-racist work.  

I share your concern for 'everything being about race' - it isn't - if there are multiple sources of disadvantage that are situational, and then race is an additional variable.   Say that 90 % of your life-chances are down to the kind of individual factors you speak about and  10% relate to others' prejudice or stereotyping. The extra disadvantage can tip you into a 'stable' state of perpetual destitution.  Your social status in the US isn't determined along a continuous distribution, as you know. there are 'tipping points' - being imprisoned, failing to make your rent, not being able to pay the excess on a medical bill, etc.  With few social safety nets, life is precarious. 

I also think that the 'race' and the 'individual' are only two levels of society, and that we are organized into families, peer-groups neighborhoods, communities, schools workplaces etc - and how that is done and was done historically makes a difference to the chances of an individual emerging from that neighbourhood and that context - that is true for all stuck in cycles of poverty, but more so when a layer of prejudice is added.    When there are legacies of radicalized planning (I gave a few), that superimpose race and community, you get disadvantaged communities, the same way you got 'ghettos'.

I agree things are not as bad as in 1860 or 1960, but the gradual improvement isn't fast enough for black communities - hence the protests. And again I objected to the word gradual (or, mistakenly, 'steady') because change in the past has only happened with upheaval - revolutions, revolts, riots...

Anyway, I think we got to a sensible place after some interesting diversions.  I admire the strength of your convictions, even if I strongly disagree with some of them.

"The Blacks"

Really?

Not true. There had been a couple of threads prior to this one on which I posted various other stuff.  It's not reasonable to presume that the only things I'm aware of are things posted on this thread.

No I was not.   Are you suggesting that unless I instantly jump to a reading list prescribed by you, under your tutelage, that I'm refusing to look into things further?   

Of course, as I see it, you are guilty of the very sins you are accusing me of.  It's funny how perceptions differ in this sort of way!

Well, you know, the fact that my OP links to video of two academics might be at least a tiny morsel of evidence, ... no?

That would be quite a long list, including economics, sociology, criminology, anthropology, et cetera.  [Though of course, none of the ones founded in blank-slateism and critical theory ]

Well I think you're right there!  Though we're allowed to have interests outside our day job, aren't we?

Absolutely.  I do agree on a lot of that.  (Though there are a wide range of people and opinions under the BLM banner, so one can't easily say what "their" demands are.)

Well yes, in US terms I'd be left of centre (I'm pretty much centre in UK terms).  If a Genie offered me three wishes, one of them would be the instant replacement of Trump with Obama, giving Obama another two terms.

Indeed, one of the problems with US politics is that the leftist activists are not interested in building a broad coalition from the far left to the center ground.  They'd rather call out anyone even slightly more moderate than  Bernie and AOC.

Well I'm not suggesting that people *are* fully colour-blind, I'm suggesting that that's what people should aim for, and that's what policy should aim for.  

As for the "white-power groups", well, they had a big show of strength didn't they, a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville.  And they attracted a grand total of ... about 250 people.  (That's one in a million Americans.) 

I am glad to hear it!  I've worked with all of these, apart from criminologists.

Indeed -and  being a public intellectual has a noble tradition.

This thread started with a video, so I thought I'd bow out of it with another couple in case they are of interest. 

Tomi Lahren, a conservative young woman, talking to Trevor Noah, a mixed-race South African, about the emergence of BLM (about 15 mins I think).  She goes on his show, with his fans, which was quite brave.

youtube.com/watch?v=F2xv4fba65U&

And here is Noah talking to a black man and a black woman about the above video.  Among the key observations, he explains the difference between ‘black victimhood’ and ‘black people standing up for the right to a level playing field’.   In this conversation, he gives a perspective on nearly all the issues we have covered in this debate (probably easier face-to-face than separated by 8 time zones).

youtube.com/watch?v=zM5Ljm87V3U&

I think it varies place-to-place, but here in Seattle, this is what BLM are asking for:

The first or overall point is somewhat symbolic  but the rest of the demands are fairly concrete and reasonable as far as  I can tell - and cover some of the points you identify above.

https://blacklivesseattle.org/our-demands/

None of those demands appear applicable to the UK.

Defund the police in a UK context being literally laughable 

If this is true, it'll be interesting to see the consequences:

"BREAKING NEWS: Georgia police sources tell me only two police precincts are staffed in the entire city of Atlanta. Entire zones of officers are walking off the job. Zones 1,3,5 and 6 have left their posts. Zones walking off the job"

Did you get that from https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/status/127342036043265638 ?

And some things might have got worse! I was listening to something the other day, a professor being interviewed on penal reform I think, where it was mentioned in passing that African-American wealth now, in 2020, is a considerably smaller percentage of total national wealth than when Abolition happened. It was pretty gobsmacking.

edit: I think it was this one https://slate.com/podcasts/the-gist/2020/06/removing-columbus although haven't had chance to re-listen.