Race, class, and criminal adjudication: Is the US criminal justice system as biased as is often assumed? A meta-analytic review - "It is widely reported that the US criminal justice system is systematically biased in regard to criminal adjudication based on race and class. Specifically, there is concern that Black and Latino defendants as well as poorer defendants receive harsher sentences than Whites or Asians or wealthier defendants. We tested this in a meta-analytic review of 51 studies including 120 effect sizes. Several databases in psychology, criminal justice and medicine were searched for relevant articles. Overall results suggested that neither class nor race biases for criminal adjudications for either violent or property crimes could be reliably detected. For all crimes, effect sizes (in terms of r) for Black vs White comparisons were.054, for Latinos vs Whites, 0.057 and for Asians vs Whites −0.028. There was significant heterogeneity between studies, particularly for Asian vs White comparisons. Effect sizes were smaller than our evidentiary threshold, indicating they are indistinguishable from statistical noise. For drug crimes, evidentiary standards were met, although effect sizes were very small. Better quality studies were less likely to produce results supportive of disparities. Studies with citation bias produced higher effect sizes than did studies without citation bias suggesting that researcher expectancy effects may be driving some outcomes in this field, resulting in an overestimation of true effects. Taken together, these results do not support beliefs that the US criminal justice system is systemically biased at current. Negativity bias and the overinterpretation of statistically significant “noise” from large sample studies appear to have allowed the perception or bias to be maintained among scholars, despite a weak evidentiary base. Suggestions for improvement in this field are offered. Narratives of “systemic racism” as relates to the criminal justice system do not appear to be a constructive framework from which to understand this nuanced issue."
Of course, nowadays if a "minority" population is disproportionately affected by a problem, this is considered injustice and due to discrimination, even if there's no procedural injustice
Genetic confounding - "When you hear "privilege" or "discrimination" always think "genetic confounding" or risk wasting billions on futile efforts"
There're 29 studies linked here
It is more comforting for the left to believe in tabula rasa
The implications for left wing economics are also interesting
Displacement, Diversity, and Mobility: Career Impacts of Japanese American Internment - "One of the largest population displacement episodes in the U.S. took place in 1942, when over 110,000 persons of Japanese origin living on the West Coast were forcibly sent away to ten internment camps for one to three years. Having lost jobs and assets, after internment they had to reassess labor market and location choices. This paper studies how internees' careers were affected in the long run. Combining Census data, camp records, and survey data I develop a predictor of a person's internment status based on Census observables. Using a difference-in-differences framework I find that internment had a positive average effect on earnings in the long run. Chiefly due to strong pre- WWII anti-Asian discrimination, the comparison group is composed of non-interned Japanese and Chinese Americans. The evidence is consistent with mechanisms related to increased occupational and geographic mobility, possibly facilitated by the camps' high economic diversity. I find no evidence of other potential drivers such as increased labor supply, or changes in cultural preferences. These findings provide evidence of labor market frictions preventing people from accessing their most productive occupations and locations, and shed light on the resilience of internees who overcame a very adverse initial shock."
Clearly, racism really destroyed their lives and they need reparations
Sexual offending runs in families: A 37-year nationwide study - "We report strong evidence of familial clustering of sexual offending, primarily accounted for by genes rather than shared environmental influences. Future research should possibly test the effectiveness of selective prevention efforts for male first-degree relatives of sexually aggressive individuals, and consider familial risk in sexual violence risk assessment."
Obviously, poverty causes crime
Final Fantasy XVI Review - Victory In The Land Of Gods And Monsters - Game Informer - "FFXVI fails to say anything new or remarkable on this front; a miss made all the more glaring given the main cast of FFXVI features few people of color. Inspired by medieval Europe, a majority-white cast commenting on and fighting against slavery and the systems that uphold it, with little insight or representation from the types of real-world people often affected by slavery, is the biggest miss of FFXVI."
Any media product that doesn't have a racial quota and doesn't shove wokeness is bad
The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization - "We talk grandly about the globalized Great Reset. We blindly accept the faddish Green New Deal. We virtue signal about defunding the police. We merely shrug at open borders. And we brag about banning fertilizers and pesticides, outlawing the internal combustion engine, and discounting Armageddon in the nuclear age — as if on autopilot we have already reached utopia. But meanwhile, Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies in the first place. Take fuel. Europeans arrogantly lectured the world that they no longer need traditional fuels. So they shut down nuclear power plants. They stopped drilling for oil and gas. And they banned coal. What followed was a dystopian nightmare. Europeans will burn dirty wood this winter as their civilization reverts from postmodern abundance to premodern survival. The Biden Administration ossified oil fields. It canceled new federal oil and gas leases. It stopped pipeline construction and hectored investors to shun fossil fuels. When scarcity naturally followed, fuel prices soared. The middle class has now mortgaged its upward mobility to ensure that it might afford gasoline, heating oil, and skyrocketing electricity. The duty of the Pentagon is to keep America safe by deterring enemies, reassuring allies, and winning over neutrals. It is not to hector soldiers based on their race. It is not to indoctrinate recruits in the woke agenda. It is not to become a partisan political force. The result of those suicidal Pentagon detours is the fiasco in Afghanistan, the aggression of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the new bellicosity of China, and the loud threats of rogue regimes like Iran. At home, the Biden Administration inexplicably destroyed the southern border, as if civilized nations of the past never needed such boundaries. Utter chaos followed. Three million migrants have poured into the United States. While some cross over clandestinely, others clear border stations without an adequate audit, and largely without skills, high school diplomas, or capital. The streets of our cities are anarchical — and by intent. Defunding the police, emptying the jails, and destroying the criminal justice system unleashed a wave of criminals. It is now open season on the weak and innocent. America is racing backward into the 19th-century Wild West. Predators maim, kill, and rob with impunity. Felons correctly conclude that bankrupt postmodern “critical legal theory” will ensure them exemption from punishment. Few Americans know anything about agriculture, except to expect limitless supplies of inexpensive, safe, and nutritious food at their beck and call. But that entitlement for 330 million hungry mouths requires massive water projects, and new dams and reservoirs. Farmers rely on steady supplies of fertilizer, fuels, and chemicals. Take away that support — as green nihilists are attempting — and millions will soon go hungry, as they have since the dawn of civilization. Perhaps nearly a million homeless now live on the streets of America. Our major cities have turned medieval with their open sewers, garbage-strewn sidewalks, and violent vagrants. So we are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions and the methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed, and sheltered America. Instead, we arrogantly are reverting to a new feudalism as the wealthy elite — terrified of what they have wrought — selfishly retreat to their private keeps. But the rest who suffer the consequences of elite flirtations with nihilism cannot even afford food, shelter, and fuel. And they now feel unsafe, both as individuals and as Americans."
Pitfalls of Relying on "Lived Experience" to Resolve Debates over Public Policy - "Activists, politicians, commentators, and others often say that we should judge policy issues based on the "lived experience" of members of various groups, particularly those that have been victimized by various types of injustices... one major pitfall of relying on personal "lived experience" is that it can't tell us whether the experience in question is representative... people who have experienced some type of evil do not have any special insight on how to address it... members of the groups in question often differ among themselves about how to address the wrongs they have suffered. The left can cite survivors of school shootings who say the solution is more gun control. The right, in turn, points to those who say the answer is more gun rights. Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas are both black men who grew up in largely fatherless homes, and have experienced racism and discrimination (Thomas, perhaps more so, because he grew up in then still-segregated Georgia). Both have written eloquent memoirs based on their experiences. Yet they also have drawn very different conclusions from them... Perhaps the conundrum could be resolved by saying we should privilege the views of the majority within the group in question... But majority public opinion is often influenced by ignorance, partisanship, and a variety of other biases. That's true of a wide range of groups. Thus, we cannot assume that majority opinion within a given group is necessarily the "correct" interpretation of that group's lived experience. Admittedly, there are some situations where lived experience really does have great epistemic value. If someone claims that "X never happens," the claim can readily be refuted by citing someone who can credibly claim to have personally witnessed X. The testimony of Holocaust survivors is an important part of the evidence proving that the Holocaust actually happened (though there is a lot of other evidence, too). The testimony of former inmates of Chinese concentration camps for Uighurs gives the lie to Chinese government claims that such camps do not exist. At the same time, however, Holocaust survivors rarely have any special insight into how to prevent similar atrocities from occurring again... subjective feelings are rarely enough to base policy decisions on. And a person who cannot grasp the subjective experience of being a concentration camp inmate or a victim of racial discrimination, can nevertheless still come to understand why these are grave injustices... if the perceived lived experience of women or racial minorities must be privileged when it comes to wrongs members of those groups believe they have suffered, the same logic applies to other groups, as well. For every left-wing life experience narrative, there is a right-wing one that can be used to bolster the other side—and vice versa. If we want to get at the truth, we cannot give a privileged status to either"
The left hates the lived experience of those who have suffered side effects from covid vaccines, or white victims of racism
Lived Experiences Aren’t Special - "the Facebook group for the news website Vox bans “comments that invalidate the lived experiences of group members.”... let’s suppose that I made the argument that smoking causes cancer, and that I backed this up with a mountain of scientific data and peer-reviewed studies. Now suppose that someone responded to all of this with the following: “But my grandpa Bob smoked cigarettes all of his life and never developed cancer! So smoking doesn’t cause cancer after all!” Would you be convinced by this reply? I hope not... Most students have no difficulty seeing this point, perhaps because the link between smoking and cancer has been made abundantly clear to them. Yet students will often turn around and commit this error later on when talking about issues that they might have a personal stake in... it’s not just progressive activists who will build cases on experiences or anecdotes. When others do it, the reasoning is equally flimsy. But progressive activists are unique in that they view these experiences as sacred and unquestionable. While most recognize that experiences are useful illustrative tools, lived experiences take on the status of quasi-divine revelation for them... Either lived experiences have special weight on their own merits, or they have special weight within the context of a larger postmodern epistemic system. If the former, then according special weight to lived experiences amounts to nothing more than fallacious statistical reasoning. If the latter, then it is circular reasoning, which is also fallacious."
Left wingers always get upset when I mention the cigarette smoking and lung cancer example
The Poverty of "Lived Experiences" - "A “Lived Experience” is an event that has been interpreted by Woke Folk as manifesting oppression: i.e, while I was walking down the street, someone bumped into my shoulder without stopping to apologize because they were racist. This is the difference between an experience and a “Lived Experience;” the former is an empirical claim that relays an event that is independently verifiable and is thus subject to scrutiny under public reason. The latter is a phenomenological claim which colors an event with intentionality, or its “aboutness relation;” and crucially, that relation is not subject to independent scrutiny. The empiricist reports on an event that occurred at some point in time and space; the phenomenologist relays the meaning of that event as interpreted by the phenomenologist... Matters which are of interest to those who analyze the truth of empirical claims have unambiguously right and wrong answers, and matters which are of interest to those who evaluate textual interpretations have no such answers. It is a category error to attempt to apply the equations of force and motion to the question of how to properly interpret the ending of Anna Karenina, and it is similarly erroneous to attempt to apply to the tools of literary criticism to the question of how much rocket fuel needs to be loaded onto a spaceship. It is this category error that is central to the problems of Woke Folks’ understanding of “Lived Experiences” (as well as much of the contents of social science research which rely on interpretive methodology- a discussion for another time.)... It is this latter question of what it means to “know” something that represents the point of greatest philosophical divergence between Woke Folk and political dissidents, as the former hold to radically subjectivist accounts of knowledge whilst the latter insist upon at least some measure of objectivity. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the epistemic chasm that separates Woke Folk from political dissidents; indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that if this epistemic dispute were to be resolved immediately, the Culture War would end tomorrow. The problem is that Woke Folk are radically skeptical of objectivity; they do not believe that it is possible to acquire knowledge of the world in a manner that stands independently of particular social values. A detailed exposition of how their epistemology is derived lies beyond the scope of this article, as does a comprehensive critique of it; for the present purposes, it is sufficient to note that Woke Folk believe in a plurality of “knowledges” that are dependent upon membership in particular demographics, and that “objectivity” is just the name given by straight white males to their own particular type of “knowledge.”... y pivoting from standards of discourse that are universally and independently accountable to our senses and reason, to standards of discourse in which the conclusions that are rendered are not open to challenge or confrontation from the outside, Woke Folk aim to introduce ideas that are effectively immune from criticism. Under a paradigm that values reason and evidence, an interlocutor is welcomed to challenge ideas in a fashion that allows anyone from any walk of life to evaluate concepts. But under a paradigm in which “Lived Experiences,” which are the subjective interpretations of events from one’s demographically-dependent base of “knowledge,” are held as immutable and not open to discussion or debate, all interlocutors are obligated to listen and believe."
Meme - James Lindsay, anti-Fascist @ConceptualJames: "Remember, the Woke listed "2+2=4" explicitly as "white supremacy in math education."
Heather Theijsmeijer @HTheijsmeijer: "There are many math education practices that we (white folk) don't see as racist or supremacist, because they are so ingrained in our background and experiences (and we have been the ones to benefit from them). Thanks, @Jason_To for shining a light on these."
"White Supremacy in Math Education
"2 + 2 = 4"
Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: "If all white people are responsible for "Jim Crow" all Black people are responsible for "Black crime" - and all men for rape, women for infanticide, etc. It's literally one or the other: citizens bear responsibility for the sins of their tribal members, or not."
Frank McCormick I Chalkboard Heresy @CBHeresy: "Individuals can shoot people. Demographics cannot shoot people. Ascribing collective racial guilt to an entire demographic of people is race Marxism."
"Dear White People: Stop using Dr. King as an example of a peaceful protest... YOU SHOT HIM TOO"
Power relations means never having to say you're sorry
Meme - Lucky: "I think it would be cool to own some slaves"
*crowd boos*
"Don't worry, I'd only want to have white slaves"
*crowd cheers*
"Because they'd be the most reliable"
*crowd boos*
Right Fragility: Trumpists Adopt Woke Habits - The Atlantic - "Some on the hard left believe that it is wrong to generalize about groups, but quite readily delineate “whites” and “whiteness” as unitary categories. Some leftist education reformers justify racial-preference policies on a quest for diverse views in classrooms, even as they consider it racist if Black students are expected to represent their “diversity” in classroom discussions. This tension is not considered inconvenient as long as both phenomena are processed as countering racism: fostering diverse views to decenter whiteness, and countering white supremacy by pushing back at unfair expectations. To question any of this is to not “get it,” because the overriding principle of battling white privilege is sacrosanct even in the face of logic."
People of Color Have Agency - "Several times in my life I have gotten into a fight with other members of the anti-imperialist left over a question that I would not ordinarily consider a question: was Japan an imperial power? I felt (and feel) that there was not much to debate. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Japan engaged in what would be seen, in any European context, as straightforwardly imperialist behavior... I know people who will unapologetically tell you that there is no such thing as a historical crime conducted by people of color that they are themselves ultimately morally responsible for... The arguments as I understand them include the idea that British and other European actions in China provoked Chinese behavior that in turn provoked Japan’s behavior which we called imperialism, that Japan’s expansionism can be excused because they suffered from land and resource constraints other expansionistic powers did not, that Japan would never have thought to engage in these behaviors if they hadn’t seen the European example first…. One way or another, all roads lead to a world where white people were responsible for Japanese rulers ordering invasion after invasion, slaughtering local populations, and raping local women, where the Japanese committed war crimes and yet were blameless. Blameless - and thus powerless. This is, on the face of it, anti-white ideology - all of the bad stuff in the world happens as a direct result of white actions, white power. Yet I have always felt that there’s something else going on in these debates. I suspect that placing all of the blame for historical crimes on white people is strangely comforting for white leftists: it advances a vision of the world where only white people matter... All of this to score meaningless political points in debates about inequality and injustice.... this condition has been generalized to domestic politics too: in the liberal mind of 2021, white people do, people of color are done to. Were I a person of color, I would find this impossibly insulting... you can’t expect Black students to follow such rules, as they are too damaged by white supremacy to comply. I find this attitude, which I heard from both Black people and white, to be really ugly. Quite racist, in fact. You really have to marvel at where we’ve come in race relations in this country when “Black people are incapable of following rules” is represented as an antiracist position... should progressives view Black people and other people of color as empowered adults with the capacity to make their own decisions, and thus as responsible for the consequences of those decisions, or as noble, permanent victims? Worth saying, of course, that the large majority of Black people in this country live their lives every day without breaking such rules - including most Black Smith students. But to recognize this is to give the lie to the proffered defense. We can, I think, generalize this in some ways. The movement that I grew up in that would eventually come to be called the LGBTQ movement once held that queer people were strong, that they were so much stronger than they were given credit for by society. The foundational assumption of the LGBTQ movement of today is that people in those communities are permanently and existentially weak; any insult or injury to them, no matter how small, will inevitably be a life-altering trauma... This is not progress... Many seem to think that their duty, as defined in the past year of post-George Floyd America, is to simply pretend that crime does not exist as a political issue... Consider this “study” out of the University of Michigan. The authors launched it with great fanfare, particularly claiming that this report debunks the idea that Black men have committed many of the anti-Asian crimes that have been so much in the news lately. How did they arrive at this conclusion? By defining what counts as a hate incident in utterly absurd ways. The report aggregates statements the researchers consider racist with actual violent incidents, leading to (for example) a gross equivalence between the vicious beating of an elderly Asian man with a cruise line refusing to serve those with passports from China and Macau. Of the 184 listed incidents, 55 are just Trump saying his usual looney anti-China shit!... this dishonest aggregation allows them to release headline numbers that show that Black men are responsible for a low percentage of the incidents... One of the biggest problems with this condescending insistence that people of color are permanent victims is that insisting that they have no ability to make change in the world hinders our ability to make intelligent determinations about choices of relevance to them moving forward. The existence (and persistence) of challenges to nations that were once colonized is routinely chalked up 100% to the influence of the imperialists who were responsible, in the circles in which I run... Consider, for example, Botswana and Burkina [edit: Burkina, not Burkini] Faso. Both are African countries that suffered under imperialism for about 80 years, Botswana under the English, Burkina Faso under the French. Both are landlocked, which is typically seen as a significant disadvantage to development. Both must import their oil and do not have the kind of energy wealth that fast-rising African nations like Gabon enjoy. Both count mining of valuable minerals as their major economic driver and have, at times, struggled to diversify. Both face many of the basic challenges to African nations writ large, such as a lack of transportation and telecommunications infrastructure. Yet despite these similarities, their internal conditions are very different. Botswana is flourishing while Burkina Faso struggles... how can you derive meaningful lessons for the rest of the continent from this difference if you insist that imperialism determines everything?... to act as though everything that happens in Africa is an expression of the crimes of white people inherently devalues the hard work and sound choices of countries like Botswana. And for what? To insert white people into every conversation? To ensure that every political discussion inevitably becomes a disquisition on the habits of Europeans, who many critics correctly say are overrepresented in published history?... when Asian Americans who are not political obsessives look at the news about these attacks, then read in the newspaper where some elite liberal explains that Black people have nothing to do with it, it does not convince them. It makes them more suspicious of all progressive arguments and leaves them subject to conspiratorial thinking."
The anti-imperialist left don't hate imperialism - they hate the West/white people
Another example of how criticising China is considered racism / racist
School indoctrination is turning British youth woke – and Tories remain silent - "Contrary to the fairy tales Conservative politicians tell themselves, these young people will not change their views as they pass through milestones like taking a job, owning a home, or having children. The woke revolution is cultural, not material. Consider the findings of my recent Policy Exchange reports on the politics of young Britons and public opinion on culture war issues. Among survey respondents under 26, more were opposed to than supportive of the vice-chancellor of Sussex University’s defence of the academic freedom of gender-critical philosopher Kathleen Stock, who was hounded by a mob of campus trans activists. This age group is evenly divided between those who want J K Rowling dropped by her publisher and those who think she should stay, or between those who want Churchill’s statue to be removed or for it to remain in Parliament Square. By contrast, those over 50 support Rowling and Churchill by an overwhelming 85 to five margin. Young people are influenced by social media, but schools play an important part in reinforcing woke beliefs. A clear majority of British schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with cultural socialist ideas. Among the 18-year-olds I sampled, 63 per cent were taught or heard from an adult at school about at least one of “white privilege”, “unconscious bias” or “systemic racism” – three concepts derived from critical race theory. If we include radical feminist ideas such as “patriarchy” or the idea of many genders, this rises to 78 per cent. Those who have been taught more of these critical social justice (CSJ) ideas are more likely to favour political correctness as a way of protecting disadvantaged groups, rather than viewing PC as stifling free expression. Those young people who dissent from orthodoxy do so at their own risk, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda forces them to self-censor. A majority of Right-leaning young people who said they were taught at least three of five CSJ concepts worried about being expelled or punished for voicing their opinions. Nearly half of Right-leaning employees under 35 who have taken diversity training worry about being fired or losing their reputation. Peer pressure is often immense, adding to institutional sanctions. The vast majority of young people support Remain, and only a third of Remainer youth say they would date a Leave supporter. Those who discriminate in dating are also far more likely to discriminate in hiring. Eight in 10 young Remainers who say they would be “very uncomfortable” dating a Leaver say, all else being equal, that they would favour a Remainer over a Leaver for a job. As Ed West remarks in his book Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, there is a powerful anti-Tory youth culture, reproduced in the media and education system, with the momentum of two decades behind it. This outlook has turned more strident among the under-25s as politics becomes moralised into a cosmic struggle between good and evil. No wonder the 2019 election revealed an unprecedented 43-point partisan gap between the voting patterns of the over-65s and under-25s. This is not about “generation rent” failing to achieve middle-class material goals like home ownership or a family. Neither housing tenure nor marital status makes much difference to attitudes toward free speech or the British past when you control for education, age and other factors. While there is evidence that people shift 20 points to the Right over their lifetime, this is nowhere near enough to make up for the Tories’ current deficit among those under 35... My work shows that the public opposes wokeness by more than two to one across 25 issues, and these questions split the Left while uniting the Right. Yet the Tories seem incapable of tacking the spread of cultural socialism in schools, the NHS, the police and civil service. Conservative MPs lack both the conviction and courage to act, unlike their US Republican counterparts like Ron DeSantis. Too many are business liberals who pray at the altar of economic dynamism and care little about the country’s culture and traditions. This is reflected in the unprecedented net migration figure of over half a million and the years-long inattention to the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Channel. If most Britons no longer believe in freedom of speech or scientific reason and view our past as a racist nightmare, this is not some “culture war” sideshow. It undermines the very essence of British civilisation."
