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Comment by mshake2 | Hacker News Reader

Whites are 60% of the population though, so they're being arrested in proportion with their representation. They also do not separate white-latino and white-non-latino, so the colloquial "white" is being lumped in with another ethnicity. Also, in 2019, blacks were just under 13% of the population, yet they are represented 2x-4x over in virtually ever crime category in that table.

So it is true and you're distorting the table.

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How am I distorting the table if I reprinted verbatim what the FBI itself reported?

In any case, the picture you're suggesting is itself distorted given that other correlating factors such as social class, are ignored.

You're responsible for the truthfulness of the statements that you make, especially when the data is right there on the page for you to verify for yourself. "Oh I'm just parroting someone else's distortion as fact" is not a defense.

>the picture you're suggesting is itself distorted given that other correlating factors such as social class, are ignored.

The picture I'm suggesting is that which the data shows, and you seem to be making some other leap to say something that I have not said.

But I'm repeating what the actual purveyors of the data said about their own data? They analyzed their data and came to the conclusion you seem to have an issue with- that whites account for 59.1% of violent crimes.

In any case, the picture the data suggests is incomplete (because it is missing a crucial data point: social class), therefore the picture you're suggesting is also incomplete.

So if 100 people in group A average a total of 10 crimes, and 5 people in group B average a total of 9 crimes, you think you are being intellectually honest when you say "group A commits more crimes" in the context of comparing the crime levels of those two groups?

the thing that's always confused me is why would this category of white lumping together latino even be a thing in the first place? Just seems like a really harebrained idea. That association always confuses many hispanics I know during each census. Was there a rationale for this lumping? I never understood it, just seemed to beg for fuzzy/blurred/confusing metrics.

Maybe it's something that made sense at some point in the past and now it's too difficult to change because it will mess up historical analysis/trends? Not to mention motives will immediately be questioned by anyone who tries to fix it and who really wants to die on that hill in the current political climate?

South Asian vs East asian is another group that often gets lumped together in demographic statistics as 'Asian'. Despite significant differences in geography/race/culture/etc.

Regardless, I'd also be curious to hear the real rational for the Latino one

What does "white" mean? Light skin tone, certain physical features? If so, many Latinos are white and that would explain the grouping.

Or does it only mean anglosaxon heritage? If so, why?

yah I'm fuzzy on what white is too precisely. I was going to say caucasian but I don't even know what caucasian means exactly. I guess going by today's landscape I think most people would assume European, but that's a pretty broad swath too with lots of variation in it.

Well, Italians, Spaniards, etc. are European. Latinos have a lot of heritage from those countries.

they certainly do. You know I wonder if the mixing of the category was a reflection of what the majority of latinos presented as in some region in the US at the point in time the category was developed. Most of the latinos in the US dating around the time of the genesis of the white category were European phenotype looking. Who knows.

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