No More Bin Laden

[--Pete]

Hi,

So what you are essentially saying is that the majority of black people living in the US are below the poverty level, since 1 in 15 goes to prision, correct? I don't actually know if this is true or not, just trying to see if I understand you correctly.

No. Think it through. Even if you assume that 100% of the people in prison come from those below the poverty level, that still leaves 14/15 of the black people about whom you know nothing. They could be below the poverty level, they could be in the top 1% income bracket, or any other distribution. The information presented just isn't enough to draw any conclusion.

It is a fact that blacks in the USA are above average in per capita incarceration and below average in per capita income. They are also below average in per capita education, and thus underrepresented in (almost?) all the professions requiring advanced degrees.

Those are facts. How one wants to interpret those facts is a tad more complicated. At one extreme are those who place all the blame on the blacks, at the other are those who place none of it on them.

I am saying that the majority of the people below the poverty level are black or minorities, which is not exactly the same.

I don't know if this is necessarily true, but can't be bothered to track it down because it is meaningless anyway.

Consider an hypothetical case, a country that has a 90% 'purple' majority and a 10% 'mauve' minority. Let's say that 20% of the purples and 80% of the mauves are below the poverty level. Then 18% of the total population is poor purple, and 8% of the total population is poor mauve. So, there are a lot more poor purples (the majority) than there are poor mauve (the minority) in spite of the fact that a mauve is 4 times as likely to be poor as is a purple.

That little example is to make the point that the numbers aren't important, it is the ratios that are indicative of a situation.

Being able to blame a visibly different group of people (visibly because of e.g. their skin colour) for crimes always is a very comforting thing to do for many people, that's why this is so common.

And a great justification for sending them up a chimney. (Which, according to Godwin's law, should kill this rather pointless and mildly dangerous train).

--Pete