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0 pointspessimizer3y ago0 comments

> Statistically black people are more likely to commit crimes

Statistically black people are more likely to be arrested and convicted for crimes. So if you use an algorithm to determine who should be arrested and convicted, how long they should be sentenced, and likelihood of recidivism, and seed that algorithm with historical information about arrests and convictions tagged by race (even inadvertently through names or addresses), you end up permanently encoding untrue information like "black people are more likely to commit crimes."

an example from a particular class of crimes:

Study: Whites More Likely to Abuse Drugs Than Blacks

https://healthland.time.com/2011/11/07/study-whites-more-lik...

Black and white Americans use drugs at similar rates. One group is punished more for it.

https://www.vox.com/2015/3/17/8227569/war-on-drugs-racism

0 comments

skrbjc3y ago

For the first article: "The study, which was published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, controlled for variables like socioeconomic status because rates of severe drug problems tend to be greater amongst the poor. Despite this, Native American youth fared worst, with 15% having a substance use disorder, compared to 9.2% for people of mixed racial heritage, 9.0% for whites, 7.7% for Hispanics, 5% for African Americans and 3.5% for Asians and Pacific Islanders."

You can get into a debate about the merits of controlling for factors, but the title is somewhat misleading. They are suggesting that whites have higher rates of drug use when you control for factors like socioeconomic status, not that the hard numbers show that whites use more drugs than blacks.

The second article is literally two paragraphs with no actual data other than an infographic. I think you need some better sources if you want to make the claims you are trying to make.

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