What about the racism that occurs when neither applicant has a criminal record, but the white one is chosen because the employer bases his decision on the fact that blacks are arrested more frequently. As far as your disbelief that racism can make up the gap seen in these arrest rates. I think you would need to make a much deeper look at society. Racism and white privilege is so prevalent in society, that these numbers may be very close. I don't argue that the rate of committing crimes is precisely equal but the rates are close enough to where it should not be a factor in hiring an individual.
This is not hard to understand, and I personally think that this is a valid explanation for what the cause of this may be. However, where Timing and pgabriel seem to have a point in my opinion is that you explain the potential reason and just say "rightly or wrongly" and stop right there. Why not say it - it's not "rightly or wrongly", it's wrong. One might argue that, purely looking at rational decisionmaking, given these crime statistics are correct, one cannot blame people for acting irrationally in the hiring process if they don't know the criminal record of the person and hire a white guy over a black guy (although I would still definitely not support this kind of behavior). But if the white guy has a criminal record and the black guy does not, then the prejudice (based on statistical evidence or not) overrides the facts. After all, the hiring decision is a decision based on the individual person it is about, and I do think it is a form of racism if a white guy with a criminal record gets hired over a black guy without a criminal record. This attempt at an analogy is thoroughly flawed. The statement "all black males are going to murder people" is absolutely ridiculous, it is NEVER a true statement. The statement "tattooed and nose ringed white males cannot perform a job that requires a college degree" will NOT ALWAYS be true, but will probably be true in 90 % of the cases (wild guess, perhaps it is 70 %). But in any case, both statements are not equally correct or incorrect, as you suggest by saying "just like it is not correct...".
Well I'd say it is just not in the way you're thinking about it. We can rule out personal accountability as a root cause in crime stats by race unless someone is going to claim that a person born to any particular race is inherently incapable of being accountable for his actions, seems like a ridiculous argument to me but if anyone wants to make it be my guest. Then it becomes an issue of finding the root causes of crime. Once you identify the root causes (take your pick... poverty, lack of education/opportunity, high % of single parent homes, etc.) it's plain to see why those situations are so much worse in the black community. So at the end of the road yes racism is a root cause of the whole problem.
NO. . . black are not more likely to COMMIT embezzlement .. . just more likely to be accuse or convicted If a Fraud is being done . . . it is more than a 2 to 1 chance the perpatrator is white Those statistics alone say little It does not break white down . . nor does it define fraud Mail fraud, Welfare fraud etc were not a part of my argument. Rocket River Key Lay is still a free man . . if he were black . . he would not be
Not really an argument, just thought I would chime in a bit on some stats I know. First, the majority of blacks in the US live in cities - where there is more crime. Second, many cities have higher black populations than white, with the highest being places such as DC and Atlanta with about 70% black population. I can't remember Houston...but I know whites are in the minority (to hispanics or blacks or both). Then there is the stuff that pgabriel and Timing mention, such as the statistic (backed up by many studies) that about 80% of cocaine users/dealers are white, but about 85% of those convicted for cocaine use/dealing, etc. are black. Oh, and unfortunately this article is not news to me. And of course there have been some studies on voice and employment as well. If you "sound black" on the phone (and not just gangsta...) the odds are much more in favor of you not going far than if you sound white. Even when the "black sounding" person is fully or overly qualified.
What is your basis for that? Statistics show that Blacks are *arrested* for embezzlement three times more than whites when their populations are normalized. It is true that whites commit embezzlement more than blacks but you have to get things on a common basis, River, to really make comparisons. Your conjecture is that...you can't prove or disprove it. See response to rfw2. Once again, going by pure numbers, you are right, whites commit more fraud than blacks, but looking at it further and after normalizing, it is the same thing as embezzlement. Huh? I think those stats say a lot. Do you not have Adobe Acrobat, seriously? What do you mean "break white down"? Like how many times whites commit frauds on whites and whites commit frauds on blacks? Fraud is fraud, river. I didn't know that you were looking for a special definition of it. Do you think there are people out there getting away with things that you feel is fraud but they weren't arrested? The bottom line is this: whites commit more crimes than blacks; however, to truly look at this, you have to normalize , i.e. get the 2 races on a common ground. When you do that, you see that blacks are arrested three times more than whites for overall crimes. Heck, blacks are arrested in total more than whites on crimes like murders and robberies. This "theory" that blacks are convicted more than whites or that blacks are subjected to WAY more false arrests than whites (espoused by rfw2 and now by River) is an unprovable conjecture just like the existence of a heaven and a hell.
While you guys were here calculating the ratio of blacks to fraud, I was out on Friday night, uhh, having a life. In any event, I don't dispute your statistics as to fraud, manny, but "fraud" is a very broad term which can encompass any number of statutory violations. Example: guys playing 3-card monty out on the street for money with a fixed game are committing (and can be convicted for) fraud in most states. Are they white collar criminals? I stand by my statement that whites are more likely to commit SECURITIES fraud than blacks (10b-5 violations, insider trading, etc.). I don't know if statistics even exist of the number of whites charged with SEC violations. And finally, even if statistics show that the percentages of blacks, asians, haitians, venusians, or whatever are higher for securities fraud than whites, the PERCEPTION in society as a whole, based on images conveyed by the media, culture, etc. of prominent white collar criminals, (name ONE high profile non-white insider trader) such as Ivan Boesky, Michael Milliken, Sam Waksal, Andrew Fastow, etc. is that they are mostly/entirely white. Since that is what we are arguing about here, people's inherent perceptions and biases, then I believe, even if statistics show that blacks are comitting securities fraud all the time, that the analogy remains valid.
By the way manny, I just noticed in going over your statistics that I don't see how you arrived at the 133 million figure for population "living in cities" or whatever it was, and why any %'s calculated by that number are considered valid Considering that the population of the USA is about 300 million, over twice your sample size, I'm a little doubtful that 170 million people in the US live in rural areas. Finally, I will point out that all your statistics are based on "arrests" and not convictions or guilty pleas, or anything like that.
The 133 million number is what was used by the link, Sam and that was for the cities only. The 192 million number was used overall. Now, I don't know where you came up with 300 million, but I do give you that the US had more than 192 million people that lived in the country in 2001. My guess is, and it is a reasonable one, that the population base of 192 million is the people who are eligible to be arrested. Obviously, I don't think you can count babies up to 18 year olds in this survey, so they were taken out. And I don't disagree with you about perceptions, but remember, this whole argument of using stats on crimes was brought out as an explanation of perceptions used by employers to discriminate, which I have said several times is wrong and racist. Sam, I have a math degree. I work with facts and crunch numbers. I enjoy it, because mathematics have exact answers. However, it is interesting to get into arguments where things are not "black and white" but have "gray" areas. That is why I am primarily posting in this forum some now. And there are some things that have been brought up by rfw, River, and yourself that cannot be disputed because they are perceptions, conjectures, and opinions. However, when some of these are passed off as a fact when there is evidence to the contrary, well that is when you have to use statistics. As for convictions, I am afraid to say that I am not that great of a "googler" when it comes to finding stats on convictions as I was on crimes. Oh and by the way, I did go out last night myself, but it didn't last as long as I thought it would.
I think the best estimates by the census bureau are around 290 million currently. I don't dispute that your embezzelment statistics hold up with whatever sample you used, and I agree that if your sample is roughly the same with that of the national population then blacks are more likely (even thought the %'s are so miniscule as to make little real difference) to be arrested for embezlement. I stand by my belief that whites have both greater numbers and a greater rate of securities violations (insider trading, 10b-5 securities fraud, etc) than blacks, and I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. Since that is what my initial argument was premised on, I don't retreat from that. Off the top of my head, the Bureau of Justice Statistics probably has the best stats on this btw. I would go look stuff up, but it is a sunny, 72 degree day here and I am going to celebrate it by going out and getting drunk.
Hey Manny, can you find stats on the average amount of money being embezzled etc by whites vs. blacks?
Oski, This is the best that I can do, considering that I am pressed for time (got to get ready for the Miami-Florida game). You may find this data useful or not:
According to the US Census Bureau, the US population in 2000 was 281,421,906. Of that, 194,552,774 (69.1%) were white; 33,947,837 (12.1%) were black; and 35,305,818 (12.5%) were of Hispanic origin. Additionally, 2,068,883 (0.7%) were Native American, and 10,123,169 (3.8%) were Asian. Source: US Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, Census 2000 Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File for states, Population by Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: 2000 (PHC-T-a) Table 1, from the web at http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t1/tab01.txt , last accessed September 8, 2001.
I realize the these stats are only for drug crimes, but these numbers certainly point to racial disparities in enforcement rather than elevated drug use or crime rates among minorities. According to the federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998." And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%. Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p. 13; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52; Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Mumola, Christopher J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 10, Table 16; Beck, Allen J., PhD, and Paige M. Harrison, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 11, Table 16.
Here is a chilling statistic that leaves very little doubt that there are racial disparities in enforcement. At current levels of incarceration, newborn Black males in this country have a greater than 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes, while Latin-American males have a 1 in 6 chance, and white males have a 1 in 23 chance of serving time. Source: Bonczar, T.P. & Beck, Allen J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, March 1997). White men are nearly 8 times less likely to go to prison in their lifetimes and unless you have some documented evidence, you will not be able to convince me that black men commit crimes at a rate 8 times higher than white men. If you actually try to make the claim that black men commit crimes at that elevated a rate, you put yourself in the same corner with the skinheads, Nazis, and KKK, all of whom have argued the same thing for quite some time, and all with a lack of any kind of evidence to support that claim.
andymoon, when you dispel the evidence available out of hand, what kind of evidence would you like provided and find acceptable? No doubt that poverty is at the root here...
The evidence shown in this thread does not prove that blacks commit eight times more crimes than whites. There has been no study quoted, no research into the rate at which the races COMMIT crimes, only statistics on arrests and convictions. I provided estimates of all three that show skewed enforcement.
No one said that blacks commit eight times more crimes than whites, only three times more. Blacks do commit, according to the stats I found, robberies eight times more than whites.
No, Manny, you need to read your stats. You found stats that show that they are eight times as likely to be ARRESTED, not that they are more likely to commit a crime. The races commit crimes at roughly the same rate when equalized for income level. It is interesting to me that conservatives look at numbers that show that black and brown people are arrested and incarcerated at much higher levels and point to that as proof that minorities commit more crimes when the sad truth is that they are just more likely to be arrested and/or incarcerated despite the fact that all races commit crimes. There may be disparities in types of crimes committed (blacks commit more robberies, whites more extortions or some such), but your statistics have nothing to do with crimes committed, only arrests and convictions.
