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Comment by deepakhj | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe white and black people are on the same footing economically. They've been held down since slavery and it still affects them today. Here's a few examples: real estate redlining (even though that was banned it's still happening today in other forms https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-...), the Tulsi race massacre (This story is crazy), urban renewal (Fillmore, West Oakland), all the neighborhoods they destroyed building freeways through them (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of..., https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/01/11/senate-considering-10...). The crack cocaine sentencing disparity split up families, creating the single parent unit, throw in the gang explosion in the 90s, and tough on crime sentencing, it's amazing people make it out of the hood.

Do you think we can improve the damage we've done through policing?

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>I don't believe white and black people are on the same footing economically.

I agree! I infer you think it has some causal connection with murder rates. I think that's probably true, but that the relationship is weak. Black people in the U.S., while poorer than average compared to the rest of the U.S. population, are some of the richest people in the world in terms of their actual material consumption. There are lots of poorer (and much poorer) populations out there who do not display similar murder rates. I take that as evidence that not being on the same footing economically is probably not a primary driver of the high murder rate among Black Americans.

>Do you think we can improve the damage we've done through policing?

Yes! Step one is stop causing new damage. I think the easiest way to accomplish this is to end the War on Drugs once and for all. It's the lowest-hanging fruit--a watermelon-sized apple really. We're starting to go down this path as a nation, and it's imperative we keep going down that path. There will be negative effects, but I think the positive effects will greatly outweigh them.

The vast majority of the murders are from violent gangs. That has a much stronger correlation than skin color

This actually isn't true.[0]

If you want to try to paint a picture of the modal murder in the U.S., it's "Young brown man argues with other young brown man about something silly, things escalate, someone pulls out a cheap pistol and shoots the other guy"

Gang murders, while profitable fodder for mass media, are a clear minority.

0: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

And, I should note, "violent gangs" are by definition going to be the gangs committing violence, so that's a circularity in your logic. And I would also wager that there is a very strong correlation between gang membership and skin color, so that's a problem too.

I have heard the 'red-lining' problem, at is is a problem in wealth accumulation but it still doesn't explain high crime rates at all.

Problem is that you have lots of poor immigrants that immigrated here from former communist countries, or latin america, or Laos/Cambodia, with no money and no savings whatsover. Some came as starving refugees, and are still poorer than the average.

Yet, they don't end up doing crime at the same rate as some other poor people.

Being poor seems like a copout and doesn't address the issue.

I imagine immigrants self-select for traits like conscientiousness, ambition, and drive. Comparing them to the general population won't yield useful results.

There are all sorts of immigrants...economic migrants, refugees, etc.

Immigrants are by definition the hardest working people. Comparing them to normal people is worthless.

lolwut?

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