When two sarcastic people start commenting on Medium.... HAHA
Murray points out in the "Bell Curve" that people are so sensitive to the objective issues of IQ that they can't see the questions through the anxiety they have about their personal IQ. So forget everything I said except this--if a minority race is in prison at a significantly larger percentage than the majority does that indicate racism?
I believe it does. It's a bottom line in the book of racial accounting.
You point to "many factors" which to me is why racism persists. It's almost impossible to assign causation through multi-variate statistics. The Bell Curve, tries to cut through those "many factors", but again, most tar and feather the book before getting very far.
My 100 black/white experiment is meant to explain why you can't measure differences in IQ between blacks and whites in America. Their populations are not similar. I was basically just rephrasing the clever point you argued ;) I should have left well-enough alone haha
However, the issue is important because without it whites still believe blacks have lower IQ! That's why I argued blacks should accept those findings so they can win the argument through appeal, so to speak.
In general, I agree with you that there are many factors to why the prison population has a disproportionate population of blacks. Factors which "non-criminal" blacks keep in mind when they think about releasing prisoners. In general, we're all risk averse.
For me, even if other factors means more blacks should be in prison than white, I still feel the only way to solve it, the only way to address the real problems, instead of talk, is to adjust prison populations.
If the environment did turn a black into a criminal, then we should figure out how we can fix them. If they can't be fixed, then we should keep them in prison but one with much more freedom and care.
If we, as a society, are really interested in "black lives" then we should live with our problem--we don't make a business out of it. When I hear BLM I hear talk is cheap. That's why I harp on the black prison population.
There's no motivation to fix racism if everyone is making a good business out of it ;)
On the other hand, I'm 61 and I've seen mind-blowing progress. I wouldn't be surprised if prison populations become more rational in the next 50 years.
