Does gun possession signal that a white man is a criminal? How about a black man?

Many people who saw armed white citizens in the Michigan Statehouse recently assumed they were violent-prone, and that armed black men would not be given the freedom to act that way. (I remember seeing armed black men unmolested at conservative rallies.) 

The General Social Survey asked participants if they own a handgun and also if they have ever been arrested (male sample size = 5,194). The percent of male handgun owners with at least one arrest is as follows:

Percent of men with a handgun who have ever been arrested
Whites  18.4
Blacks  28.3
Other race  26.7

Let's keep things simple and call arrestees criminals.  The conclusion we can draw here is that if all we know about a man is that he has a gun, our best bet is that he is NOT a criminal. Second, a black man with a handgun is 1.5 times more likely to be a criminal than a white man, and the increased risk for a man of another race is 1.45. 

Research indicates that black males are more reluctant than white males to admit to ever having been arrested, so the actual racial gap might be even bigger. Studies of large cities like DC or Philadelphia have found that roughly 50% of black men have ever been arrested.

Study: Compared to whites, blacks are 1.75 times more likely to believe that there is no wrong way to make money

It is a common belief in sociology that the source of our greed is the market. Our economic system turns us into unprincipled money chasers.

If that were the case, then the people most integrated into the market would be the most unprincipled. Compared to whites, blacks are more often at the margins of the system, so they should be more likely to retain the natural, biological desire to earn an honest dollar.

General Social Survey respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: "To make money, there are no right and wrong ways any more, only easy and hard ways."

Here are the percentages listed by race of those who agreed (sample size = 4,376):

Percent agreeing there is no wrong way to make money

Whites  22.8
Blacks  39.9
Other race  33.3

Blacks are 1.75 times more likely than whites to feel there is no wrong way to make money. This helps explain their greater involvement in illegal money-making.

The hypothesis that is consistent with this data is that integration into the market makes one more honest about how to make money, and the data here contradict the Rousseauian view that innocent human nature is corrupted by social institutions.

Study: More African ancestry predicts diabetes among blacks

You know a social problem becomes serious and legit when we discover--and only when we discover--that it is hitting blacks disproportionately. Brain cancer--not a major problem.  It hits whites worse.

Now that we see that WuFlu is bad in black communities, we get the same old lament about omnipresent anti-black racism. Heck, you'll see it on Fox about as much as anywhere. The American people can never hear enough that disease is colorblind... but we are not.

Let's see what actual scientific research has to say about one of the conditions putting you at risk of Covid-19, diabetes:

The risk of type 2 diabetes is twice as high for blacks as whites, even after adjusting for  socioeconomic status (SES). This suggests that genetic factors may help explain the racial gap.

The researchers in the linked study conducted an admixture analysis using 2,189 ancestry-informative markers in 7,021 African Americans. The group that was highest in African ancestry was 1.3 times more likely to have diabetes than the lowest ancestry group. This was true after adjustment for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and SES.

Race is genetic, and it matters, people. But you'll never hear that on Fox.


(Hat tip to Greg Cochran on the article.)