Month: March 2019

Comparing Interracial Crime Statistics

I try to be very careful with statistics. First, there is the possibility that someone has actually misrepresented the underlying data. Second, even if the underlying data is correct, it is easy for a statistician with an agenda to use mathematical techniques to show results that don’t really give a correct context for the data.

When it comes to levels of crime committed by different racial groups, it’s really hard to find reliable data. (My theory on that is because most left-leaning academics know what it will show, and they don’t want the public to know it.)

I knew that black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. (That is, they are only about 13% of the population, but they commit more than 13% of the violent crimes.) What I was having trouble finding was numbers on interracial crime -that is the number of black on white violent crimes and the number of white on black violent crimes.

Thanks to an article , I found good credible data from the FBI on interracial murders. So, for instance, in 2015, of the 3,167 white people murdered, 500 of those victims were murdered by a black person. In 2015, of the 2,664 black people murdered, 229 of them were murdered by a white person. (Intra-racial murder is much more prevalent for both groups. In other words, most whites are murdered by other whites, and most blacks are murdered by other blacks. But, that is not what I am focusing on here.)

So, there were 500 murders of white people committed by a black person in 2015 and there were 229 murders of a black person committed by a white person. Right away, that number is clearly disproportional from the number of black people in the United States. Since black people make up only about 13% of the population, the fact 500 white people were murdered by blacks, while only 229 black people were murdered by whites is remarkable.

But, I don’t know exactly how to compare these two numbers. My probability and statistics skills are not that strong. One possible way to compare them is to take the total number of black on white murders (500) and divide that by the total number of black people in America. (Roughly, 40.5 Million). Similarly, take the number of white on black murders (229) and divide that by the number of white people in America. (Roughly 233.7 Million). This will give you:

500/40.5 Million= 0.00001235 and 229/233.7 Million = 0.00000098

Then, you turn both of these into percentages by multiplying them by 100, which is: 0.001235% and 0.000098%

My thinking is that this is like rolling a six-sided die. The probability that you will roll a 6 is 1/6. The probability that you will roll a 5 or a 6 on one roll is 1/3.

You can think of the statistics on homicide above as like rolling two different dice. One die is a 40.5 Million-sided die. This is the black on white crime die. There are 500 “sides” of that die that would be a black on white crime, while the rest of the sides are all the black people who don’t murder white people. Similarly, there is another 233.7 Million-sided die, and on that one, there are 299 sides that are white people who commit a white on black murder. If you make that assumption, then the way to compare the two probabilities seems like it would be to take the first percentage, 0.001235% and divide it by the second percentage, 0.000098%. The result is 0.001235%/0.000098% = 12.6. To me, this means the probability of a black on white murder is 12.6 times as great as a white on black murder.

However, I am not sure this reasoning makes sense entirely. I am assuming that *every* black on white murder and *every* white on black murder is committed by different people. In other words, I’m assuming that of the 500 black on white murders, each murder was committed by a different black person. It’s possible that the *same* black person committed all of the 500 black on white murders in 2015. You cannot tell from these numbers alone. (Same for the white on black murders.)

It’s also possible that I don’t understand probability calculations very well (which I don’t), and I’m making some other mistake. I wish more people would discuss this matter, and try to come up with good numbers, but the data, much less an analysis of it, seems to be almost completely non-existent. (Like I said, I think most people know what the results of the analysis would be, and they don’t like to think about it, or they have a political agenda.)

 

 

Dancing With Black Women

Some time back, a friend of mine pointed me to a web site in which the author called white men racist for not asking black women to dance in the East Coast Swing dancing scene. (Rampant leftism is one of the reasons I’ve largely dropped out of this dance style.)  I ignore it when someone calls me racist. (Or sexist.) The term has lost whatever meaning it once had, and is now just a way for black people to try to make you feel guilty so that they can get something from you that they didn’t otherwise earn or deserve. I don’t owe black people anything, and I’m not going to pretend that I like a black person when I don’t, just to avoid being called a “racist”, but I digress.

Whether you should dance with anyone really depends on your goals for dancing. I dance because I enjoy it, and I need a partner to do so. When I ask someone to dance, 9 times out of 10, it’s because I want to dance, not because I’m attracted  to the person. Now, does that mean I’ve never asked a woman to dance because I was interested in her sexually or romantically? No, but, that’s no different than me striking up small talk with someone, or asking them about the book that they’re reading in a coffee shop. Yes, I sometimes do those things to converse with a woman I’m attracted to, but I also sometimes ask someone about the book that they’re reading because I’m interested in the book that they’re reading. I may have no attraction to them. Basically, sometimes, there is a “sexual subtext” or “agenda” that I have when I interact with a woman regarding something, but not always. I might have a non-sexual motive for it. If most people introspect, I think they’ll see they do the same thing. Sometimes that object in your mouth is a phallic symbol, and other times, a cigar is just a cigar.

Other people may have different goals from me for dancing, and that is fine. They may be there looking for a girlfriend. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dating being your primary or only agenda in dancing. It’s your life, and you have to live it. As long as you aren’t initiating physical force, being dishonest, or otherwise being unjust (in a “non-sjw sense”), I have very little interest in what you do.

If you are dancing to get a girlfriend, then, of course, you are going to want to dance with women you are sexually attracted to. Most white men, for the most part, are sexually attracted to white women, so that is who they are going to ask to dance. Nothing wrong with that, and if someone is tempted to say this is “racist”, then they need to rethink their definition of racism. Being attracted to whites is no different than being attracted to blondes, or brunettes, or women who are only attracted to taller guys. It’s called a preference. Everyone has physical preferences, and if they don’t, then they are making the extraordinary claim that they would be happy dating a brain being kept alive in a vat of nutrient fluid.

I, personally, have no problem dancing with black women. But, like I said, that’s because I’m there primarily to dance, not to meet a girlfriend.

But, the woman for me when it comes to dating is probably going to be white for several reasons.  I avoid dating black women, not because I’ve never seen an attractive black woman, although that is *very* rare for me, but simply because I find that there is too much cultural baggage associated with the average American black. There is a disproportionate amount of crime being committed by blacks, and there seem to be higher rates of mental illness there. Additionally, I’ve seen studies that seem to say that the level of spousal-abuse is higher in the black community, and that there appears to be more domestic violence committed in inter-racial couples than mono-racial white couples. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3611980/ )
Even if a particular black woman were none of these these things, when you marry, you are, in a sense, marrying that person’s family. So, you are more likely to encounter a criminal or a mentally ill person in a black person’s family. This means that your children are more likely to encounter a criminal or mentally ill person in your black spouse’s family. Additionally, most blacks that I encounter want to play some amount of the “make white people feel guilty” game. So, I wouldn’t want to put up with her or her family trying to make me feel guilty for being white. (Asian women and Hispanic women are also women I am attracted to with some frequency, and would probably date -because I currently see no evidence that they are different from white women on levels of mental illness, criminality, or spousal abuse.)

Are there black women out there that would be none of this, and would be great to marry? Possibly, but that number is exceedingly small once you take all of the above into account, and there is a great expense and “search cost” associated with dating to find even the right person in just the pool of available white women. There is also “opportunity cost” – every black person you go out on a date with on a Saturday is a missed opportunity to go out on a date with a more-likely-to-be-suitable white person. Why would you want to add additional search cost and expense to find the rare exception among black people, unless it’s about something besides finding a suitable romantic partner? (I have my suspicions about the motives of a lot of white people who date black people, but that’s a whole other blog post.)

I’ve concluded it’s easier to just have a policy of not dating black women and stick to white women in order to reduce search costs.

The Riddle of Gun Control; the Even Bigger Riddle of Open Borders

Friends who are left of center have asked me about my position on gun control in light of the shooting in New Zealand. (I’ve titled this blog entry based on a podcast by Sam Harris called: “The Riddle of the Gun”)

As I’ve said before, I think no one, including the State, should initiate physical force against other people. The purpose of the state is to stop force-initiators by using sufficient physical force to stop that initiation, or to stop subsequent initiations by the same person(s). A person who commits murder should be locked up (or executed, depending on your view on capital punishment). A person who robs, rapes, or commits assault is a force initiator, and the state should use retaliatory force to stop them. Without getting bogged down in minutia here, a person who starts planning to murder, and takes objective steps to carry out the plan is also a force initiator. So, a person who buys bomb-making material, and says that he plans to blow up someone has already initiated physical force, and the State, if it has probable cause that was the bomber’s intent, can arrest and prosecute him for that. If the State shows that was the bombers intent beyond a reasonable doubt, he should go to prison for a time.

I’m consistent. I think people should be free to immigrate to this country. Stopping them from crossing the border, absent some objective knowledge that they intend to initiate physical force once they are here, would be an initiation of physical force. (If the state sees a known terrorist crossing the border, that is different, just like the bomber I already discussed. The mere crossing of the border, combined with the terrorists’ past actions, constitutes an initiation of physical force, and he can rightly be arrested. I won’t get bogged down in the minutia of that, either, here.)

I am okay with the statistical fact that immigration of Muslims leads to more Islamic terrorism in a country, because: (1) I think there are more narrowly-tailored social and law-enforcement options that don’t violate the rights of people who just want to live in America and have peaceful, productive lives; and, (2), it is just the price we pay for a free society. It’s the same as having a free press, which leads to copy-cat killings, or having a 4th Amendment right to be free from arbitrary search and seizure causes some criminals to go uncaptured. These facts don’t mean we should eliminate the First Amendment or the Fourth Amendment. Similarly, the right to own and carry guns for self-defense shouldn’t be abrogated on the mere fact that, statistically, someone will commit a crime with a gun.

But, most of my left-of-center friends are not that consistent. They are fine with allowing large numbers of Muslims to come into the country, even though, statistically, a certain number of those Muslims are certain to commit acts of violence in the name of their religion, once they get here. (Don’t talk to me about how there are more domestic terrorists in America than Islamic terrorists. That is dropping context. We could still stop *some* terrorism by completely closing our borders to Muslim immigration, even if the domestic variety continued at the same rate or level as before.)

When it comes to guns, my left-of-center friends say: “If we save even one life, it’s worth it.” When it comes to Muslim immigration, they say: “Don’t be racist.” This is because it’s easier than trying to reconcile the contradiction between their belief in free immigration and their opposition to the right to self-defense.

Study on Military Sexual Assault and Race of the Perpetrator

The issue of sexual assault in the military has been in the news a lot this past week. I suspected I knew a major reason for the majority of sexual assaults in the military, but I was concerned that I might be making unfounded assumptions or generalizations without sufficient evidence to support it. I did a couple of hours of Internet research today, and found a study published with the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a government-sponsored web site. My “uninformed assumption” on the subject appears to have data to support it, in the form of a study called “Predicting Sexual Assault Perpetration in the US Army Using Administrative Data“, NIHMSID: NIHMS917120 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683072/)

In this study, the researchers obtained data from several Army databases that kept track of service personnel arrested for some sort of sexual assault:

“This study investigated administratively-recorded sexual assault perpetration among the 821,807 male Army soldiers serving 2004–2009.”  (“Predicting Sexual Assault Perpetration in the US Army Using Administrative Data”, NIHMSID: NIHMS917120,  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683072/)

The study looked at what were considered only “founded cases” of sexual assault, i.e., cases for which the Army found sufficient evidence to warrant a full investigation, even if there was no conviction:

“Six HADS databases were used to obtain information on date, type, and judicial outcome of all reported crimes occurring over the study period. Crime types were coded according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) classification system.24 Qualifying sexual assault crimes included (Appendix Table 2): rape (i.e., forcible vaginal intercourse), forcible sodomy (i.e., attempted or forcible oral or anal sex), and “other” sexual assault (i.e., attempted rape, fondling, indecent assault). The outcomes were founded cases; that is, cases for which the Army found sufficient evidence to warrant full investigation regardless of whether the investigation resulted in a formal conviction.” (Id, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683072/)

The sample size of the persons studied seems to be described here, although I am no expert on statistics:

“A total of 4,640 men had records indicating an occurrence of sexual assault perpetration against non-family adults, 1,384 against non-family minors, 380 against intra-family adults, and 335 against intra-family minors. All four outcomes included perpetrations against both opposite-sex and same-sex victims, though data were not available to distinguish between the two.” (Id, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683072/ )

If I understand it correctly, the study looked at what are known to be common predictors of sexual assault in the military world:

“Predictors
As mentioned in the introduction, there is a rich civilian literature on risk factors for sexual assault perpetration,9–11 but few studies have examined these risk factors among military personnel.12,13 A considerably larger literature has examined predictors of any (physical or sexual) violence perpetration among military personnel.27–34 As reviewed by Elbogen and colleagues,35 four broad classes of predictors have been identified in these military studies: socio-demographic and dispositional predictors (e.g., sex, race-ethnicity, personality); historical predictors (e.g., childhood experiences, military career experiences, prior violence); clinical predictors (e.g., mental and physical disorders); and contextual-environmental predictors (e.g., access to weapons).”” (“Predicting Sexual Assault Perpetration in the US Army Using Administrative Data”, NIHMSID: NIHMS917120,  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683072/ , emphasis added.)

In other words, the above says that gender (presumably being male) and one’s race are predictors for committing sexual assault. I’m sure you’ve already guessed which race if you are at all honest with yourself. The article sums this up here:

“Non-family adult predictors Unmarried, racial-ethnic minority, and combat support or service support soldiers had elevated odds of perpetration against a non-family adult.” (“Predicting Sexual Assault Perpetration in the US Army Using Administrative Data”, NIHMSID: NIHMS917120,  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683072 , emphasis added.)

In other words, non-white males who are single, and are not likely to be involved in combat, are the most likely to commit rapes against adult people (likely women) that are not family members.

The study’s Table 2 seems to give the odds that a member of a particular category will commit a sexual assault, although I’m not certain of this, because I’m no expert on statistics. The percentages don’t add up to 100%, so I’m not sure what these mean exactly. But, it lists “Race/ethnicity – Non-Hispanic Black” at 18.2%, and “Race/ethnicity – Non-White” at 34.7%.

Essentially, what seem to be the predictors for persons who commit rape in the civilian world are the same in the military. Black people commit a disproportionate share of the rapes in the civilian world, and they appear to also commit a disproportionate share of the rapes in the military world.

None of this will be addressed in the news media or in Congress, of course. Recognizing reality on this topic isn’t conducive to keeping one’s job as a reporter or getting elected to public office in the society we live in today. It would call into question too many sacred cows.