AKA: Racism is not dead – in two charts:
Black Americans use marijuana a bit more than Whites:
Yet are way more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession:
Also notice that the rise in arrest rates for Blacks bears no relationship to their rate of use.
Source: Washington Post
See also:
- racial profiling
- The mass incarceration of black men
- I am shocked, simply shocked – differences by race in the unemployment rate among those with a university education
- Some facts about racism
- More on black crime statistics
- black pathology
I wonder what the relative conviction rate or incarceration rate is.
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Unfortunately I think the difference may from those caught selling it
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It’s not just rates of arrest. The legal system has built in protection for the more affluent called the Plea Bargain. If you can afford legal counsel that will not roll over then in many cases your potential felony case gets commuted to a misdemeanor.
So the statistics are skewed on multiple levels due to systemic advantages. Prior to arrest, post arrest and jurisprudence itself is disproportionally meted out.
Money is the great equalizer. Prosecutors could not gain convictions against OJ Simpson, Robert Blake, Michael Jackson, Ted Kennedy and more. Money simply levels the playing field. If you got without money you are going to get hammered into prison with alacrity.
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[…] AKA: Racism is not dead – in two charts: Black Americans use marijuana a bit more than Whites: Yet are way more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession: Also notice that the rise in arrest r… […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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How was it determined who uses it at all?
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If you could find dealing statistics I’d be really interested to see that. Pretty obvious that black men get pulled up and jailed more but it’d be more useful to use that data rather than the one you’ve posted
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@ niachive
There are many more White dealers than Black, I’ll warrant.
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Thank You
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@ niarchive
I talk about drug dealing here:
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These crime statistics are definitely biased! I go to high school, well about to graduate soon and I know more Whites who use marijuana and drugs than anyone else! That statistic is skrewed in favor of making Whites look better than they are. However I do believe that Blacks are arrested more for marijuana and weed BECAUSE we are targeted by the police heavily for drugs, weapons etc. Plus IF we are jailed or arrested for Crack or weed, we get heavier prison sentences than our White counterparts.
Does that seem fair? I think not!
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Three reasons why these crime statistics are biased:
1) White racists use these silly statistics to prove why Blacks are more prone to criminal behavior
2) Many if not most of these statistics are old or skrewed to suit the biases of the White population in America
3) Plus none of these crime statistics even seem to suit reality. Most drug users I know are Whites
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Be on the lookout for Da Jokah and possibly Riverside_Rob to tell us why it’s wrong.
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Whites smoke and use just as much marijuana and probably just as many are drug dealers.
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If you were a visiting alien from a far off galaxy and you were just passing by Earth and saw these two charts (and you were fair minded) you’d immediately think, “hmm, I’ll bet this ‘white’ group of Earthlings run most of the institutions in this society, because that is some disproportionate shit right there.” But, you know, it would be said in some other language.
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Abagond:
Your premise ignores any number of obvious, confounding variables. This is rather sloppy work.
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The DEA’s 2.3 billion dollar budget spent on the “war on drugs” nets these results. The DEA targets working class area’s which also have greater numbers of POC resulting in disproportionate arrest rates. Then you have the politically connected prison unions who never saw an incarceration it didn’t like.
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There are more arrests of blacks and harsher sentences.
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I’m skeptical of surveys that depend on self-reported criminality because studies have shown blacks are more likely to lie about their criminality. Having said that, I do think whites use marijuana almost as often as blacks. Blacks are, however, 5X more likely to deal drugs. That no doubt contributes to a higher arrest rate. But I think the primary reason for the higher arrest rate is simply greater interaction with the police. The more you interact with the police the greater chance you have of being arrested or anything. So if blacks commit other crimes at a higher rate then it’s not surprising if more blacks are caught with weed as well. Think about it, if someone gets pulled over for an outstanding warrant and has marijuana in the car then they’re going to get charged with drug possession, too. Or do you expect a cop not to charge someone with possession just because that’s not what they pulled them over for?
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(continued)
If blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate and blacks are 3 to 5 times more likely to commit other crimes then you’d expect blacks to get charged with possession at 3 to 5 times the rate as well. So the numbers are exactly what one would expect given general crime rates.
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@Da jokah
I would ask for said study(showing blacks more likely to lie), but there is a likely chance you will deflect according to my study of your past interaction 8n these situations.
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I don’t get how that statement is related to the 2 charts above as,
* The person who made that statement does believe that “I do think whites use marijuana almost as often as blacks” which is what the survey result says (the survey that does rely somewhat on the truthfulness of the respondents).
* the 2nd chart is based on actual arrest statistics.
Where is there an argument in either chart that blacks have lied about their criminality?
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that would be a really reliable survey, “we think you lie a lot, is this true?”
he’s edging into some kind of alternate reality here, i think. for entertainment purposes only!
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@Da Jokah:
I wondered when you would chirp up! This is right up your alley.
There are many wore White dealers than Black, I’ll warrant.
No, there isn’t. Most of the distributors of these drugs are white. The black dealers you allude to usually work for organized crime moving the product around the neighbourhoods. In order to sell these drugs, you have to have a distributor,there may be a few black distributors, but they few and far between. They are working for the higher up organized crime folk.
But I think the primary reason for the higher arrest rate is simply greater interaction with the police.
You are partially right, but that is due to racial profiling. Almost all the males in my family have had ‘interactions’ with police for simply walking down the road or traffic stops. One was my brother in law who was stopped at the airport parking lot for driving the wrong way. The other time he was questioned for filling up an unmarked police car with gas at the station. He is a high ranking police officer. Most of these men are university students, professionals or tradesmen. There are just too many events out there for that to be purely anecdotal. In fact, recent studies have shown this:
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/03/09/known_to_police_toronto_police_stop_and_document_black_and_brown_people_far_more_than_whites.html
I happen to know one of the sociologist who studies racial profiling personally. For every black person they stop and possibly charge, there are scores of white criminals getting away with their crimes. Take shoplifting, for example, it is mostly white people who indulge in this, yet they follow black people in the store. I suspect this is the same in the States. There are probably scores of studies on this in the States. No, I am not going to scour the internet for links.
Having said that, I do think whites use marijuana almost as often as blacks. Blacks are, however, 5X more likely to deal drugs.
Who are these whites purchasing the marijuana from? Since most interact with other whites almost exclusively, they are going to buy from white drug dealers as they are within their safety zone. They are not going to go out of that safety zone and risk arrest. Maybe heroin addicts or crack addicts may, as they are desperate and don’t care where they procure their drugs from but that is probably a miniscule amount. Why aren’t these white drug dealers not getting arrested? For a myriad of reasons, but the main reason is that they are white and not profiled when going about their nefarious activities. They are not on the polices’ radar.
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Blacks are, however, 5X more likely to deal drugs. That no doubt contributes to a higher arrest rate.”
Hahaha! Source please!!
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sharina
That blacks are more likely to lie about their criminality comes from another study of self-admitted criminals. I have to thank the Willy Conqueror for bringing the study to my attention. He was trying to prove that whites were more likely to be child molesters but, like you, he fails to read the fine print. Right after the studies racial statistics, they included a discussion of how blacks were more likely to lie about it. So all he really proved is that blacks are more likely to lie about their criminality.
Click to access study.pdf
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Da Jokah,
We are very interested in where you get your sources from. Its rare to see a source along with your arguments, a least a source that wasn’t racially biased.
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Jokah,
First, is that excerpt in your comment from the PDF you posted, cause I don’t see it.
Second, I’m no expert but from the the looks of the PDF, you, in your usual fashion is trying to twist the findings to fit your agenda and are deliberately leaving out key points to suit your racism.
Third, what has child molestation have to do with what this topic is about which is about marijuana use and possession?
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king “Hahaha! Source please!!”
http://www.jrsa.org/ibrrc/using-data/data_quality/data_elements/drug/drug_examples.shtml
Scroll to: Example 2. Demographics of Offenders in Drug Offenses
Scroll to: Dealers vs Users
Scroll to: Race
There is a clear relationship between race and the type of drug offense committed, which was not seen with the other variables. Black and Asian minorities are more likely to be reported in dealer-related offenses than whites. This holds especially true for Blacks, with 74% reported in conjunction with dealer-related offenses.
The percentages are listed in the table just below it. You’ll see their are approximately 5X as many white users as black users but approximately the same number of dealers. Since there are 5X as many whites this means blacks and whites use at about the same rate but blacks are 5X more likely to deal.
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brothawolf
“First, is that excerpt in your comment from the PDF you posted, cause I don’t see it.”
The excerpt is from page 4. The discussion of blacks lying is on page 7.
“Second, I’m no expert but from the the looks of the PDF, you, in your usual fashion is trying to twist the findings to fit your agenda and are deliberately leaving out key points to suit your racism.”
Meh.
“Third, what has child molestation have to do with what this topic is about which is about marijuana use and possession?”
It establishes that blacks are more likely to lie about criminality.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
“Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.”
Considering getting busted for weed is likely to make you friends in jail, and considering getting your jacket pulled (having your charges revealed in jail) for ‘pedastery’ or kiddie porn or molestation or something is likely to get you KILLED in jail … everyone has kids in there…
That is a definitely skewed and ‘uneaqually yoked’ comparison!!!
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god i effin hate statistics, and its proponents in general annoy the crap out of me
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abagond “You are using the Wikipedia to say that it was not a massacre, yet the Wikipedia itself says it was a massacre:”
I’ve explained this before but you may have missed it. I base my arguments on Wikipedia’s sources and not Wikipedia itself. I merely use Wikipedia because it’s sources are so well-cited. Furthermore, it’s a fallacy to say that if one accepts one Wikipedia source they have to accept every Wikipedia source.
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jefe
By DJ’s own account, the Moro were obviously outnumbered, outgunned, overpowered, implying that the Americans were the power in control of the force that resulted in the massacre.
If the military goes to criminal insurgents’ headquarters and opened fire without giving them an opportunity to surrender then it’s a massacre. But if the soldiers give them every opportunity to surrender and they not only refuse nut attack then it’s not. When criminal insurgents charge charge them with crude weapons should the soldiers stand there and do nothing because the gang is “outnumbered, outgunned and overpowered”? I don’t think that’s reasonable.
“If, say, a group of people tried to resist a force dropping aerial bombs on them with spears, and they all got killed by the bombs, it is not reasonable to state that a massacre did not occur because there was some resistance.”
If the bombs were being dropped on a civilian target with no military value then I’d probably agree. If the bombs were being dropped on a guerrilla base then I probably wouldn’t. Particularly if the base refused to surrender. However, this took place in 1906 and there were no airplanes involved. There were soldiers on the ground being charged by enemy guerrilla fighters. Even if the guerrillas were outnumbered and outgunned they still provided a credible threat. They should have surrendered.
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Commented on the wrong post.
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v8driver
It was a confidential survey. None of the people went to jail based on their answers.
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It establishes that blacks are more likely to lie about criminality.
Anything to satisfy your black criminality obsession, eh?
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Oh okay. I see it now, Jokah. My mistake.
Still, you may want to go on with black people lying about their criminality, and maybe that’s all you WANT to know seeing as how you could care less about the why’s and how’s. But that doesn’t negate the fact that many whites lie about their pathologies.
And lying about criminality is not a race thing as you’re obviously trying to persuade us to believe. All groups of people have skeletons in their closet, and that includes those of European descent who want to keep theirs hidden to maintain their holier-than-thou appearances.
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@Da Jokah
Unfortunately for you it is my ability to read the fine print that catches you in a lie. Seeing as your game is less about the truth and more about what you can use to con the unsuspecting individuals that is. This study like the rest does not prove such, but allows you to simply twist it to believe what you want to believe. Come back when you have concrete.
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@Brothawolf
The results also stated that there may actually be a greater mistrust of the people assessing them.
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@ Da Jokah
It is a shame you go through all the work of finding a study for it to only support half of what you say, but it such a pleasure for me to quickly break it apart. You made this claim:
“I’m skeptical of surveys that depend on self-reported criminality because studies have shown blacks are more likely to lie about their criminality”
What your studies shows is blacks are more likely to lie about child molestation and even the results are concluded to be a possible mistrust rather than flat out lying. So I don’t know about you but child molestation is not the only criminal activity, so you drew a conclusion to satisfy your own bias (which is what you usually do so I am not surprised). So I look for to the study that actually supports your said conclusion rather than one that always only supports half (if that much).
Oh and in your spare time I am still looking for those raw numbers on black serial killers . You swore up and down your source supported it and it really just didn’t. Perhaps you should focus on putting out one fire at a time. 🙂
Ciao
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Sharina,
Exactly, and I saw that part. It’s not surprising that Jokah purposely overlooked it. Like I said, he’s trying to twist the information and leave out key points to suit his obsession with black criminality. Hence, his need to throw in the subject of child molestation stats into a subject about drug crime stats looks like a sign of desperation to get out of the corner he’s boxed himself into.
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correction forward to
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@Brothawolf
I am ok with him using child molestation stats but I have a major issue with him saying one thing and using stats that don’t support what he is saying or half supports it. yet still claiming that it fully does. That is why I always recommended people look through and read his whole source. I have not gotten to it but the source he used against kiwi and jefe actually prove something that he keeps claiming it does not. I found where someone else actually broke down the study and was able to point out what DJ conveniently left out.
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@ brothawolf
Another way to also look at those results is that those men don’t really see a problem with child molesting. So white men are more likely to see the act as natural and feel less shame in revealing. Also having less remorse for the act, so you can see how easy it is to twist or view the results. Just a thought.
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Sharina,
I’m afraid of the child molestation veering off topic as the graphs above illustrate marijuana use and possession.
I personally have a problem with stats in general, but I digress. People like DJ use them to state their “race-realist” case, but most of the time, people like DJ get it wrong. Like I said, I’m no expert, and I’m honest to admit it, but I don’t think DJ is one either.
Racists like DJ cherry-pick their information precisely to fit their agenda. If they show where they got it from, someone with enough knowledge and an eye for detail will see major flaws, including omitted information.
I saw that with DJ’s article that he left out certain key points. But that’s lmost expected. His only “mission” is to prove that we are somehow more criminally prone than whites. But his arguments are disingenuous, flawed, manipulated and edited to turn simple assumptions and stereotypes into simpler facts, and I think he believes we’re too dumb to see through this con and understand what the material actually says.
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Also, I think these links are important to the discussion:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/03/how_bad_is_the_black-white_disparity_in_your_states_drug_arrest_rate.html
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/04/crime_myths.html
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It stands to reason that someone is way more likely to lie about not molesting children than about not smoking weed. If Blacks lie about child molesting at a higher rate than Whites, that might only mean that it is more abhorrent to Blacks.
Also, why would anyone assume that the honesty of child molesters says anything about the honesty of marijuana users?
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@ Da Jokah
Hi.
According to the link of the study you posted, which was solely about child molestation and not all crimes I might add, there was a complete survey of men, distributed into two separate groups: group 1 consisted of those who admitted to child molestation and group 2 consisted of those who were either lying or denied committing the crime all together. Black men made up
-10% of those in the complete survey and
-12% of group 2 (those either lying or denying)
Btw you do understand that the denial of a crime does not equate to one being guilty of committing the crime? For the sake of simplicity, let’s just assume that all of those in group 2 are lying. That would mean that black men lie at a rate of 2% greater than their representation in this survey.
That being said, I have two questions for you: 1) Do you honestly believe that the likely hood of lying about being a child molester can be rightfully translated into the likely hood of lying about committing other crimes? 2) Do you feel that a 2% greater rate of either lying or denying a committed crime is really all that significant?
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Folks, notice how Da Jokah changes the goal posts?
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@The Pragmatist
Thank you very much for pointing out the exact things I was seeing in his little “study.”
@Brothawolf
I can’t argue you there. It was off topic, but you know how trolls are. Throw in the random if it proves their views. As to leaving out key points, he does that every time he has presented a study that I cared to notice. I think the key reason he does this is because he thinks no one will read it and just either automatically reject it.
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Sharina,
That’s why I assume he thinks we wouldn’t take the time to actually read and examine the link or that we are too slow to understand it.
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@Brothawolf
Agreed and it is quite refreshing that someone else sees it and I am not the only one.
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Interesting, as if supply and demand meant nothing to economics. I guess a store could sell something no one buys but then it wouldn’t make money. And then it would have to start selling what the majority of consumers demand. But, I forget, which group has the greater demand as well as the greater resources to buy the product? Of course, look at the rates, not the total numbers. Never just look at the numbers.
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Sharina,
You’re definitely not alone in this.
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The Pragmatist
“Btw you do understand that the denial of a crime does not equate to one being guilty of committing the crime? For the sake of simplicity, let’s just assume that all of those in group 2 are lying. That would mean that black men lie at a rate of 2% greater than their representation in this survey.”
The difference between whites in groups 1&2 is 71% vs 67%. The difference between blacks in groups 1&2 is 10% vs 12%. This means 5.6% of white child molesters lied versus 20% of black child molesters.
That being said, I have two questions for you: 1) Do you honestly believe that the likely hood of lying about being a child molester can be rightfully translated into the likely hood of lying about committing other crimes? 2) Do you feel that a 2% greater rate of either lying or denying a committed crime is really all that significant?
I answered your first question in my response to abagond. And, yes, I do think that blacks being nearly 4X as likely to lie about a particular crime is significant.
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abagond “It stands to reason that someone is way more likely to lie about not molesting children than about not smoking weed. If Blacks lie about child molesting at a higher rate than Whites, that might only mean that it is more abhorrent to Blacks.”
It’s not unreasonable to think one would be more likely to lie about a more serious crime than a less serious one. Though I see no reason to think one group of child molesters finds it more abhorrent than another. If they did then they wouldn’t have molested in the first place.
“Also, why would anyone assume that the honesty of child molesters says anything about the honesty of marijuana users?”
As I mentioned above, one may be more likely to lie about more serious crimes. But if someone has a propensity to lie they’re more likely to lie about both. I don’t consider blacks lying about their child molestation at a higher rate as conclusive proof blacks are lying about smoking marijuana at a high rate. I do however think it suggests they would.
I only mentioned it in the interest of covering all the possibilities for the gap in possession arrests versus self reported usage. I think you’ll agree that honesty has to be considered in any survey in which people are asked to admit criminality.
I certainly have no objection to others questioning whether the results are applicable to marijuana usage. I do however object to people seizing on that while ignoring what I said was likely the primary cause of the difference in usage versus arrests — more interaction with the police.
In fact, I specifically said that I thought blacks and whites used marijuana at about the same rate. So while I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to either mention the child molestation study or for others to question its relevance, I do think it’s unreasonable for some to make that the whole basis of their disagreement with me. It constitutes cherry-picking on the part of some to avoid my real argument.
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@da jokah, cf:
Click to access Grey_Matter_Article_Valid_Sampling.pdf
“If nine out of ten people in a focus group really liked your new prospecting mailing, this does not mean that a majority of people you send it to will feel the same way. The sample size is too small and the sampling methods too non-representative for focus groups to provide projectable data, even if you’re conducting a number of groups.”
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V8, don’t waste your time. If he talked to two black men and one of them lied, he would say they have a fifty percent rate and call it a fact.
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@anne you are right. I am just watching dj plug through these threads, trying to create a ‘negative image’ of each concept, it’s kinda creepy
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@ Anne
Meanwhile he bends over backwards giving J. Marion Sims the benefit of the doubt.
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Well agabond, it is a known fact that 100% of trolls have some petty agenda to accomplish. Ask anyone.
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@Da Jokah
All i can say is that your math is horribly off.
Page 4 gives the raw numbers of those who either admitted to child molestation and those who either lied or denied. Page 7 gives the percentages of those who admitted and those liars/deniers by race; from which you can determine the raw numbers of the aforementioned groups by race. Approximately 66.3% of black men lied or denied vs. 45.5% of white men. That means black men were only about 1.5 x’s more likely to lie or deny
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Approximately 66.3% of black men lied or denied vs. 45.5% of white men. That means black men were only about 1.5 x’s more likely to lie or deny
Most likely the white men are not ashamed of molesting children, hence they do not lie about these things. Seriously, how did this post descend from smoking spliffs to molesting children?
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Herneith, I think everyone fell for the trap again. The original argument was that there are more black dealers than buyers and that increases their chances of being caught which in turn was supposed to explain the difference in arrest rates. What that explanation does not answer is whether or not the higher amount of dealers comes from the fact that there is an existing prejudice against blacks as being involved in dealing. If no one suspects someone of wrong doing then they won’t go after them.
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@Anne:
I wrote a post stating similiar commentary on March 20, 2014, on this thread. I chaulk it down to racial profiling for the most part. Believe me, these street dealers are nickle and dime operators. The real ‘kingpins’ are the white and non black distributors. Blacks are racially profiled by police. I will say it again;for every black person stopped and possibly charged, ten white criminals are getting away with a crime. They are also given more chances at court before they actually see a jail cell unless they commit some serious crime where a detention order is placed on them.
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V8, don’t waste your time. If he talked to two black men and one of them lied, he would say they have a fifty percent rate and call it a fact.
Assuming he would talk to them, instead of at them.
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@ jefe
Thanks for pointing out to da jokah that the second table is actual FBI data gathered from police agencies…not “self-reported criminality” as da jokah claims.
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@resw77 i was thinking about sample size and so forth today, and yes, i feel that figure 10 [super] can hold true as a ‘representative sample’ due to the fact that it is — well minus corruption and errors — plumbing the ‘whole well’ so to speak; whereas, in regards to figure 21 [super] asking ANYONE regarding ILLEGAL things will have a skewed margin of error that will naturally be larger than ‘normal’ as well as the fact that they did not contact 330,000,000 ‘americans,’ give or take — it is trivial, relativistically speaking, except to, obviously show the delta between the disparity between b/w marijuana (self-reported) use numbers and b/w marijuana (“actual”) arrest numbers.
figure 10 (the first one) is the “self-reported criminality,” and shows the closer numbers.
hmm, “poisoning the well”, but not really, except from a perspective of ‘this information is presented from a black blog?’
IT’S GUESS THE FALLACY TIME AGAIN!!!
I’m stumped, what “classically defined fallacy” is DJ presenting here?
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
“lies, statistics, and damned statistics,” for sure.
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in re: Da Jokah this probably a good ‘catch-all’:
“Description of Appeal to Authority
An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:
Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
Person A makes claim C about subject S.
Therefore, C is true.”
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
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resw77 “Thanks for pointing out to da jokah that the second table is actual FBI data gathered from police agencies…not “self-reported criminality” as da jokah claims.”
The first table is based on self-reported usage in a survey. I never claimed the second table was self reported.
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v8driver
Referencing data in a study is not “appeal to authority”.
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abagond “Meanwhile he bends over backwards giving J. Marion Sims the benefit of the doubt.”
You accused Sims without a shred of proof. It was hardly “bending over backwards” to point that out.
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Jokah has a severely biased definition of what constitutes as proof, whether he admits it or not.
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@ Da Jokah
I am not making this stuff up. The post on J. Marion Sims is based on the book given at the end of the post. That book in turn is thoroughly footnoted, citing all its sources.
If you honestly think I have to make this stuff up, then you have no idea what kind of world you are living in.
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@dj you purport to be an authority on everything!
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@DJ OK maybe i got it a little bit off, but still, using an external source to supposedly say black people lie about criminality more than whites has little or anything to do with the purpose (that i inferred) of this article!!!
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v8
Willingness to admit criminality is relevant to this article because abagond’s argument was based on the difference been admitted illegal drug usage and arrest rates.
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@DJ I just read that PDF file you posted about child abuse. Not only is it a horrible horrible thing, I can’t find anything in there to support your statement. It is also encrypted or something so i can’t extract text via cut and paste, but on pg., 7 it clearly states the variation of the ethnic groups when part of them was separated out into ‘convicted offenders who denied their involvement in child sex abuse’ “may not be statistically significant.”
it also implied white people were doing the survey? or exo-ethnic (is that a word) interviewers were working with hispanic and black questionees and there may be a cultural issue with self-reporting of HEINOUS crimes, again, not weed.
do you even read this stuff? I don’t think this is a valid support for your argument. I am done with this dead horse it been ran over by a steamroller at this point.
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@ Da Jokah
Drawing conclusions about Black people or any one based on their child molesters is ridiculous. They are hardly a representative sample.
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Willingness to admit criminality is relevant to this article because abagond’s argument was based on the difference been admitted illegal drug usage and arrest rates.
Is it me, or is this his weakest argument yet on this issue?
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Its not you.
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I found this article on Alternet.com. It’s an interview done with a former police officer who was part of the War on Drugs. Now, he says he regrets it, because it caused way more harm than good. He also explains the real reason police don’t arrest whites who use drugs:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/former-undercover-drug-narc-why-police-dont-bust-white-people-and-how-he-turned-against-drug
But I bet, Jokah will explain how he is either wrong or how it doesn’t prove anything since he is an expert on everything. LOL
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I was just about to post about the danger of matching data from two different sources to draw a conclusion. Love your blog, A, but research methodology is a fairly established concept that plays a big part here. Self report data is subject to bias (social desirability bias in most cases). That means people will respond based upon how they desire to be perceived in a setting, not necessarily with the truth. Table 1 may reflect under-reporting of use by blacks, over-reporting of use by whites, or both. Table 2 represents factual data from a completely different sample. What you have here is mixed methods from two distinct samples. While each shows an insight of data, that data cannot be overlapped to form a generalizable conclusion (which is what you are doing in your post).
Just thought I’d give you a shout out on that, and to let folks know that pointing this type of thing out isn’t playing into the system. It’s to make sure that when we swing for truth and change, we can do it in a way that’s solid.
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abagond “Drawing conclusions about Black people or any one based on their child molesters is ridiculous. They are hardly a representative sample.”
Drawing conclusions about illegal drug usage based on self-reporting is ridiculous. And drug users are hardly a representative sample either.
YOU made a claim in your post. The burden of proof is on you. In order to discredit your claim I don’t need to prove you wrong. I need only show reasonable doubt. If it’s possible that the people would lie about their drug usage then your claim is unsupported. The child molestation study shows that people are not only willing to lie in self-reported surveys but do so at different rates. Therefore you can not use self-reported criminality as the basis for your argument.
You’ve long since lost this argument. Be man enough to admit it. More than that, show me you at least have some semblance of sanity.
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Da Jokah,
Illegal drug usage has been documented by numerous scholars for years.. The disparities of arrests and sentencing have been well documented for years. It was even explained extensively in the book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, for example
Has it ever crossed your mind that other factors aside from simple admission could be at play such as:
1. Unfair sentencing
2. Racial profiling
3. More police in certain neighborhoods as opposed to others
4. White drug users in the suburbs have more connections with police, lawyers and the courts, especially those who are politicians
5. Drug planting by police
It takes much more thinking and research than handing in a mere PDF of several pages on child molestation. I honestly think that if you pulled that on a professor at college, he would probably laugh you right out of the building.
Your PDF holds very little weight to solidify your black crime obsession. And your attempt to explain how admission plays into this issue is meager. Stating that blacks lie more about criminality than whites is hardly significant to this topic at all. Like I said in an early comment, this is desperation talking.
You act like you’re so concerned with proof from others to dispute you, but you really don’t care about proof. You barely present any of your own. That one article is flimsy in this case. Why not present some research yourself before you blab about how we don’t provide ours when it’s more than obvious that it’s been recorded for years. Maybe you’re just too lazy to do any research yourself. Either that, or you don’t know how, outside of using Wikipedia and Amren. lol
Do yourself a favor and stop lecturing others on topics you think you know about and end up sounding completely ridiculous. lol
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@resw77
Believe, whatever I point out is never for DJ’s benefit. It is for the attention of other readers, like you, who recognize the lack of credibility in his arguments.
Of course, you never needed that pointed out to you, but it just shows how simply erroneous his assertions are.
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Notice how this ‘Da Jokah’ character completely ignores my last reply calling out his magic math and statistics.
@Da Jokah
Do you mind re-answering my questions with this new information in mind?
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The Pragmatist, Jokah ignores or doesn’t answer certain comments and questions that put him on the spot. Sometimes he will answer, but it will be a nonanswer. And he expects you to bend over backwards to provide evidence for your arguments to which he will dispute anyway.
He claims he won the argument, but he doesn’t know how to argue properly. And fairness and tact with him is outta the question as he thinks he’s always right about everything.
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Don’t your post and your title contradict each other?
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@DOCMO, good point but I wonder, did you miss the part about the troll using a report about child molesters to debunk the hypothesis? Is that considered overlapping different types of data to form a generalized conclusion also? I’m just asking because it would seem that THAT issue is actually the point being proven here….that people always seem to have “data” to explain why black people are arrested more often.
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@ Da Jokah
Docmo makes a good point. You, on the other hand, were being ridiculous.
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@ Gaylord
No, because the point is that you cannot take crime statistics at face value, no matter which way you take them.
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Apologies. It just seemed strange that you used crime statistics to prove that racism isn’t dead, yet you said that they couldn’t be trusted.
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Gaylord, it also seems that you have interpreted the goal the post to suit your own purposes? The fact that statistics can be manipulated is no new discovery thus the point of the post.
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@abagond, thanks man. Be encouraged and keep up the writing. There are many readers who may not chime in on the forums, but are actively reading nonetheless.
@Anne, actually, I think what Da Joker was trying to do was to state that the conclusion (of abagond’s hypothesis) should be evaluated critically in light of the bias inherent in self report data. He then made that simple idea a whole lot more confusing by citing the study on child molestation. We can all agree that child molestation has nothing to do with abagond’s ideas (or extensions of those ideas related to race or criminality). The important takeaway is that self report data has bias (though it does have value), that self report answers to questions related criminality tend to have increased bias (as opposed to questions related to mundane topics, such as satisfaction at work, for example), and that given the potential of bias, broad conclusions drawn from matching that data set to a fact based set from a different sample are questionable.
This type of critical analysis of data is something that everyone should learn. If one is not a good “consumer” of data, then they might fall into all types of fallacies. The news presents us “fact based” fallacies all the time.
I can show you data that proves that as ice cream sales increase, so does violence. That’s real data. It can be “proven”. Of course, the conclusion is wrong. There’s a missing variable which drives both ice cream sales AND violence – temperature. As temp increases, ice cream sales increase and violence increases. But if you’re not looking at ALL data critically, I can ignore temperature and have you running around talking about the dangers of ice-cream.
That’s all I’m trying to encourage. I don’t know DaJoker. He might be a troll, I don’t know. He seemed to have an idea, but not the tact to help increase understanding very effectively. I don’t know. Everybody has something. My goal is to help increase power (empower) through wisdom and education.
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not even bothering to read the discussion on this one before I post. I wish I could say those two charts were shocking or could dispute especially the second one, but they weren’t and I can’t.
Until two years ago I ran a gas station in the richest (you can probably guess the racial profile) neighborhood in Alabama. I smelled pot on my customers regularly, black and white.
The ones who were afraid to get caught were often black and poor (at least by the community standards), the ones who didn’t care were affluent and distinctly resembling vanilla more than chocolate (I’m fat, food metaphors come naturally. give me a break) three guesses why.
nuff said
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The title of your post “Why crime statistics cannot be trusted – in two charts” is misleading and your logic is flawed. There is nothing wrong with the two charts and nothing wrong with the reported statistics. The statistics illustrated in these charts are not the problem, in fact, they form the basis of your argument. The problem is that there are systemic racial and economic inequalities in our nations’ criminal justice system. Your title implies that there are problems with the statistics (and there certainly are issues with crime statistics) but the larger is why are Blacks disproportionately arrested and prosecuted for marijuana offenses?
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