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Comment by farmaway | Hacker News Reader

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> Notably, South Korea has millions of the same vulnerable vehicles but no car theft epidemic.

I thought the US was the only country that was shipped Kias/Hyundais without theft security measures.

> Black men commit a wildly disproportionate fraction of violent crime in America. The reasons for this are complex. It is politically difficult to discuss.

There it is

Have we really gone so far off the deep end as a society that following up an objectively true statement with "The reasons for this are complex. It is politically difficult to discuss." is seen as some sort of racist dog-whistle?

The reasons are complex, and none of them are about genetics or racial superiority or any other such nonsense. And your flippant dismissal shows just how difficult it is to actually discuss things like this.

An ugly and uncomfortable truth to be sure, but truth nonetheless. I live in Wisconsin near Milwaukee and face these issues daily. You can't make this bad situation any better by ignoring it.

Sure, but there are plenty of other uncomfortable truths too.

White people are way over represented on arrests for alcohol-related crimes, whereas Black people are in-line with population, for example. [0,1]

Black people are way more likely to be arrested for loitering and curfew violations too (I was unaware that's even a crime category in the US).

Let's also not ignore that White people over-index on sex-crimes.

Adding to that, black people are also the victim of a disproportionate amount of crimes [2]

Overall, the point I'm making is the problem with your statements is the intellectually lazy framing. I agree it's a major problem that black people are arrested for violent crimes at a disproportionate rate, but let's look at the problem wholistically, otherwise we aren't fulfilling the point of this forum. It is just as important of a question to understand any racial disparities in data, not just the ones that get people riled up online.

[0]https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race... [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv20sst.pdf

>White people are way over represented on arrests for alcohol-related crimes, whereas Black people are in-line with population, for example. [0,1]

Yep, especially here in Wisconsin! I rarely drink, and find the whole culture around drinking here distasteful. I don't see the relation to Kia thefts, though.

>Adding to that, black people are also the victim of a disproportionate amount of crimes

Yes, crimes we can't freely discuss because of who commits them, another reason why obfuscation of the problem is harmful.

>Black men commit a wildly disproportionate fraction of violent crime in America.

>I don't see the relation to Kia thefts, though.

I didn't realize car theft is a violent crime [0]

I'd love to hear more about why you think that because I thought you had changed the subject to talking about crime generally.

[0]https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/crimes/violent-crime

I mean black people who have have been incarcerated for any reason, violent or non-violent, account for about 1% of the Black population, so I don't think it's a lack of black people that leaves South Korea's safe?

I'm a black immigrant and seeing commentary like this feels a lot like that comic of a man shoving a stick in his bike wheel and yelling out someone else's name...

But I also don't get how your original comment followed the racist comment section: White men commit a wildly disproportionate fraction of child sexual abuse in America, yet not every conversation about white men devolves into them being called names

I think it speaks more to the people making the comments.

Along the lines of how ChatGPT ends up being "racist against non-minorities": if you ask a comment section "What can whites do better", you'll get softballs like "be more mindful of privilege". Ask a comment section what black people can do better and you'll get something cancerous...

It's impolitic to mention, but black Americans commit most murders in the US despite their small share of the population. Black American women are more likely to commit murder than white American men, a sex reversal unique between large racial groups in the developed world. An average black man in the US is an order of magnitude more likely to commit violent crime than a non-black man. This effect is not fully explained by socioeconomic differences.

The overwhelming majority of black Americans are not criminals. It's important not to draw the wrong conclusions here. But the small percentage of black Americans who are criminals make up a proportionally much greater share of the whole. The reasons for this are complex and controversial, but it's some opaque combination of history + discrimination + nature + nurture.

I like how you came back to drop this nugget days later

> The overwhelming majority of black Americans are not criminals. It's important not to draw the wrong conclusions here.

So what conclusion are you trying to draw from 1% of a population?

White males commit an absurd percentage of pedophilia comparable to their slice of the population, how can we start drawing conclusions on that?

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