Who is more likely to be arrested--a white or black rapist?

Looking at the period 2005-2010, Steve Sailer shows that the black rate rape was 3.5 times higher than the white/Hispanic rate. His calculations are based on a very large national survey of Americans that asks about being a victim of crime and the characteristics of offenders.

If we do the same calculation based on FBI arrest data for the years 2008-2010 (2005-2007 are not available), the black rate is 3.1 times higher. What this tells us is that black rapists are less likely to get arrested than white/Hispanic rapists. The bias at the level of arrest is in favor of blacks and is in direct contradiction to the message that is drummed into us on a daily basis that the criminal justice system is deeply racist.

Do blacks perceive more discrimination in high-black or low-black regions?

I don't know if anyone has put forward the hypothesis in some formal way, but I have run across the idea that while mistreatment by whites is common among blacks generally, it's REALLY bad in areas with few blacks. The reasoning seems to be that whites are very racist everywhere, but concentrations of blacks are able to push back and suppress the discrimination to some extent. By contrast, isolated blacks are more powerless and consequently have it really bad.

The General Social Survey (GSS) asked blacks, "How much discrimination is there that hurts the chances of blacks to get good-paying jobs?" Since there were only 152 respondents, I took the nine regions used by GSS and collapsed them into two: one high-black and one low-black category.
I also divided up the country into North vs. South under the assumption that the South is more racist.

Answers ranged from "a lot of discrimination" (4) to "none at all" (1) so higher numbers indicate greater perceived discrimination. Here are the means:

Mean perceived job discrimination

North High Black  3.56
North Low Black   3.38
South  3.29

The region with the greatest perceived discrimination is made up of parts in the north that have the most blacks. Contrary to the stereotype, there is no evidence here that the South is more racist--it scores the lowest. In the middle are low-black areas in the north. When I say north, I mean the mountain states and the west coast as well as the north proper. (You don't see a low-black southern region because there is no such place in GSS data.)

So GSS data contradict the view that black communities that are small, isolated, and surrounded by many whites have it really bad. Blacks think they have it better when their numbers are small.

My guess would be that perceived discrimination is affected a great deal by exaggeration, a phenomenon that gets magnified among large concentrations of blacks.

UPDATE: This hypothesis of large numbers magnifying the perception of discrimination doesn't work for the South which has many blacks but scores the lowest on discrimination. A reader suggested that progressives encourage blacks to see mistreatment, but some low-black areas contain many liberals: the West Coast, New England, Minnesota. I wonder if the perception of bias depends on how one is treated when applying for a job. Southerners and perhaps many people in low-black areas might have a softer touch than employers in places like Chicago or Detroit. Discrimination is typically an ambiguous thing. People are not going to admit that they're not hiring you because they don't like blacks, so people have to rely on cues. A brusque manner could be interpreted as bias.

Data: Is anti-black discrimination rampant in the US?

General Social Survey respondents were asked, "Do you feel in any way discriminated against on your job because of your race or ethnic origin?"  Here are the percentages (in red) of blacks who answered yes for various years (sample size = 1,031):

America is supposed to be a fatally flawed country because of its deep, omnipresent racism.  It's supposed to be so awful, some people call for a fundamental restructuring--perhaps socialism will fix it.

And the number of blacks who perceive or claim job discrimination (discrimination is hard to be sure about, and some are certainly wrong)?  A whopping 7.7% in the latest year polled.

Gimme a damn break.

Does perceived racial discrimination screw up teenage victims?

This new meta-analysis of 214 studies and more than 90,000 participants found that adolescents who perceive more racial discrimination tend to be more depressed, distressed, aggressive, sexually risky, drug abusing, and they have more deviant friends. They have poorer self-esteem, lower academic motivation and achievement. In other words, they are the problem kids.

Of course, all these liberal researchers assume that racial discrimination is driving victims to negative behavior. It's more likely that disagreeable, cynical, suspicious, and hostile people interpret ambiguous interactions as racist, buy into the message that their society is oppressive, and at the same time they have more emotional and behavior problems than trusting, agreeable people.

This is a huge analysis conducted by researchers who seem very concerned with the well-being of adolescents. All racial groups are studied here... except whites. The possibility of white teens suffering from racial mistreatment doesn't seem worth even looking into. Not in 214 studies. Whites are the oppressors, after all.

Of course, the reader who is paying attention may accuse me of being suspicious and cynical for suggesting that anti-white discrimination exists. Well, I never claimed to be a sweetheart.  

Compared to their light-skinned compatriots, dark-skinned Mexicans are much poorer

In the latest issue of American Sociological Review--the flagship journal of U.S. sociology--Andres Villareal finds that even after a number of factors are taken into account (i.e., gender, age, indigeneity, educational level, region, and rurality) darker skinned Mexicans--in Mexico--are poorer than their paler counterparts. The poverty gap is roughly as large as the American black-white difference. Even though the main ethnic division in Mexico is between indigenous people and mestizos, and skin tone variation among mestizos is not socially emphasized, Villareal concludes that the results are strong evidence for intense discrimination based on color. 

Keep in mind that this research has appeared in the best quantitative sociology journal in the United States; perhaps in the world. The author is interested in discrimination, but treats skin tone variation as his measure of discrimination. Why not measure discrimination directly? At least ask respondents concerning perceived instances of mistreatment. Is that too difficult to ask about? Why doesn't he save himself a lot of work, skip the data collection and analysis, and simply write a speculative paper asserting discrimination?

The relationship between skin tone and poverty could be explained in many different ways. If I claimed that the link is explained by genes associated both with economic success and skin color, my assertion would be just as plausible as his. But it goes without saying that he wouldn't admit (and doesn't mention in the paper) that a genetic explanation is possible since it is morally out of bounds. This trick of not measuring what you are studying and ruling out other explanations as unacceptable has been used in a thousand similar studies. Instead of relying on data, a whole discipline is based on moralistic faith. If we're going to defund NPR, let's do the same to sociology.     

The need for more discrimination

The MIDUS Study asked participants a series of questions about different types of discrimination that they been victims of over their lifetimes. These were summed to create a liftetime index.

We should expect black folks who experienced more discrimination to have suffered in terms of how much school they completed and what economic level they reached, right?

I correlated that index with completed years of education and a measure of current socioeconomic status for black respondents (N = 136). Recall that this is a sample of middle-aged people.


Correlations wth lifetime discrimination index

Education .17*
Socioeconomic Status .09 

Those who were more often victims of discriminatory acts tended to go further in school. The correlation with the socioeconomic level of one's job is also associated with more discrimination, but the relationship is not statistically significant. 

Moral of the story: if we want to help blacks move up, we need to discriminate against them more often.

More on discrimination

Here's another list of discrimination questions from the Midus Study asked of black respondents. The numbers indicate the percent who have never been victims. Keep in mind that this is a middle-aged sample, so many of these are folks were born in the 1950s or even earlier (the survey was conducted in 2004, and the mean age is 53.5). They have been around a long time. In spite of this, the vast majority have never been hassled by a police officer, for example. I thought this was a constant occurrence among blacks. 

Respondents were asked how many times they have been victims, but I didn't list the numbers because reports go up to 100 times (e.g., not hired 100 times).  But more on this tendency later.

Frequency of discrimination

The MIDUS Study asked 149 blacks about the frequency of experiencing different types of discrimination. Here are the percentages:

You can see that a vast majority of blacks rarely or never experience the various forms of mistreatment. I thought racism was like a thick cloud that leaves no one untouched. If this were true, all blacks would give the same answer: "often" or at least "sometimes."

This looks like a case of some blacks interpreting everything in terms of racism, while others do not. You can see how supposed racist incidents are inherently ambiguous. Did the guy call you an idiot because you're black or because he thinks you're dumb? Notice how the interviewers did not ask, "How often are you called a racial slur?" This is an unambiguous incident, but it wasn't asked because it rarely happens. Researchers like to help blacks "find" racism.

In a later post, I'll look to see if we can use a person's characteristics to predict their perceiving racism. For example, I expect that suspiciousness will predict it.

Discrimination against vets

Academics disgust me. This week was the second time that I witnessed what looks very much like anti-military discrimination. We were doing telephone interviews for a replacement position, and one candidate seemed particularly strong. Great vita. Ivy League. Post-doc at an impressive place. Good publications. Math whiz. Then I heard the man speak. I literally thought to myself, "This guy sounds like Steven Pinker." Beautiful answers.

When we hung up the phone, a committee member beat me to the punch and started rattling off all the reasons why we didn't want the guy. They were all bogus. I'm a little slow on the uptake, but then it hit me that she didn't want him because he is ex-military. Of course she is not going to admit that. Either she outright dislikes the military, or she sees it as a sign that the candidate probably does not have a lifetime subscription to The Nation like she does. I proceeded to debate her but then the others jumped in and took her side. And veterans are supposed to get a break--what a joke.

I consoled myself that he's too good for us anyway and will do very well somewhere. Who knows, maybe he'll be out with his own Blank Slate in a few years, and I'm damn happy it won't have our university's name on it.   

Incidents of discrimination I have witnessed: I can't resist a note on personal knowledge of discrimination. I know I should stick to data, and I plan to show at some point that the research supposedly documenting how rife the country is with racism is mostly crap. But indulge me.

I've witnessed white people up close and personal for four decades. I have had conversations with hundreds of these folks. Of course, people talk more frankly about race with people of their own group, and I'm the kind of guy that people open up to. I've chatted with employers--the people who actually matter on the question of discrimination. In four decades, I am aware of one objectionable incident, and this was related to me by my wife.

She was working in an office at the time, and her boss had advertised some position. She (the boss) was going through a stack of resumes, saw one with the name "Shanneequa" or something like that, said she had seen enough, and threw the resume in the trash.

The other incident I can recall was not discrimination against a minority, but it is relevant. While in grad school, I was having a conversation with a white security officer. He told me that his career goal was to be a cop. About two years before, he had gone through the long application process, had learned that he had one of the top scores on the written examination, but subsequently found out that he was being dropped because the department needed to make more room for minority officers. The guy told me that as a kid he had never had any problem with blacks, but after losing his chance to go to the academy, he was looking for a white sheet.

Here is my personal experience with discrimination against white men. In my career, I have sat on nine faculty search committees. In every case, our ad strongly encouraged minorities to apply. This is the 21st century's way of telling white men they "need not apply." In three cases, we were told by the dean that she didn't want to see any white men sent up to her. In eight of nine cases, someone other than a white man was chosen, although they were roughly 40% of applicants.

Discrimination against minorities, my ass.

More evidence that white NFL players are discriminated against: In the fall of 2005, I did an analysis of NFL stats to assist Steve Sailer who wrote a piece for VDARE about possible discrimination against white players. Using data from Caste Football on the number of white starters and nonstarters, I found that over a three-year period, teams with more white benchwarmers were noticeably more likely to win games. The number of white starters didn't matter much, but each additional 2.2 to 5 white nonstarters (depending on the year) resulted in an extra win. Caste Football’s J.D. Cash has suggested that perhaps white utility players are more likely to master the playbooks for multiple positions, and Steve added that perhaps benching black athletes who often have large egos poisons the atmosphere and lowers team spirit.

In the scientific spirit of replication (and the fact that tomorrow is the Super Bowl) I ran the numbers again for the year that is now coming to an end. Looking at the regular season, we see the same pattern observed in previous years: the percent of white starters does not seem to matter (r=.06) but the correlation between nonstarters and wins is noteworthy: .20. An example based on estimating a regression model will make more intuitive sense: if Jacksonville, who had only 5 white non-starters, were like the Jets who had 15, they would have won an estimated 2 additional games. This may not sound like all that much, but as Sailer wrote, in a game of many complex factors, identifying a factor that might turn an average team into a playoff contending team is a big deal.

Discrimination, my ass: I have avoided commentary on this blog, figuring that the last thing the blogosphere needs is another fact-free gasbag, but after reading yet another "achievement gap" article, I really need to vent.

Students of the so-called prejudice problem obsess about race (thereby making ME obsess about race) but there are people with any number of traits that those in power might not want to help. The traditional power-holder has been a Christian, an English speaker, an American by culture, heterosexual, a member of a particular family, a man, and a white. An employer or professor, for example, might have something against people not matching himself in any of these characteristics.

So let's forget the facts for a moment and predict who would be at the bottom of the social ladder on the basis of the preceding points. He, or rather, she would be non-Christian, not good at English, not steeped in American culture, and not white. The woman who fits this desciption perhaps the best is Chinese. So is she at the bottom? Exactly the opposite of correct. She is more likely than a female member of any other American ethnic group to have a bachelor's degree or higher. In fact, according to the General Social Survey, the only men more educated than she are Chinese and Indian men. Discrimination, my ass.