COVID-19: Unwinding the Lockdown and Long Term Epidemic

[IllustriousLord]

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/3/1263

I was involved in a local effort to address a report that detailed anti-black police behavior when it came to street checks. What the community said over and over again: "We don't need a white guy to come in here with some numbers to validate our everyday experience."

Fortunately the police released the data that they were ordered to collect by a tribunal, but only after threats of further legal action. Surprise, surprise, if you were black you were something like 6 times more likely to be stopped. Most shockingly, almost a third of black males had been charged with a crime.

If you are black in my community, you do not feel safe around cops. That is smart, based on generations of lived experience. And more numbers don't mean shit to people who live this garbage out everyday.

I don't think training is the answer. I think accountability is. After all, white people get exposed to the same officers with apparently poor training, yet a fear of police is not built into the culture and stories of demeaning interactions are less prevalent.

[Campitor]

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/3/1263

I don't think training is the answer. I think accountability is. After all, white people get exposed to the same officers with apparently poor training, yet a fear of police is not built into the culture and stories of demeaning interactions are less prevalent.

Accountability without training will not get better results. You just get de-policing. I agree that Blacks shouldn't fear the police (I'm assuming they fear the police regardless of the color of the officer in uniform) but neither do Blacks deserve to be de-policed which is what happens when you have accountability with no training. Last thing we want is drive by police who see crimes and look the other way - this doesn't help the Black community either.

[IllustriousLord]

Accountability without training will not get better results. You just get de-policing. I agree that Blacks shouldn't fear the police (I'm assuming they fear the police regardless of the color of the officer in uniform) but neither do Blacks deserve to be de-policed which is what happens when you have accountability with no training. Last thing we want is drive by police who see crimes and look the other way - this doesn't help the Black community either.

I don't follow your logic. How does accountability mean de-policing and drive-by police?

If you want you could experiment and raise the number of cops in middle class white neighborhoods and put the same quotas on the officers. I bet you'd see the rates rise in those communities.

[Campitor]

I don't follow your logic. How does accountability mean de-policing and drive-by police?

If you want you could experiment and raise the number of cops in middle class white neighborhoods and put the same quotas on the officers. I bet you'd see the rates rise in those communities.

Not my conclusion - this was the conclusion of a African American professor who studied the issue: Roland G Freyer. Below is a video where he discusses his findings of police behavior (17:21 to 20:52 timestamp) and how it plunges when a police investigation is launched and the effects it has on crime in the African American community. You should watch this 2 hour video in its entirety.

https://youtu.be/J8KvHbWSypA?list=FLv8y ... Sng&t=1041

[IlliniDave]

Those numbers Campitor linked to represent which communities we choose to police as much as which communities are more afflicted by crime.

That's true but it's sort of a vicious cycle. If you have a city with areas of much higher reported crime rates than others, but deploy the police uniformly on an officers/block basis, the residents of the high crime area will (rightfully) complain they are being underserved because there is less protection provided per reported offense. So the right thing to do is concentrate more police presence in areas where more crimes are committed/reported (that's one thing people sometimes forget. In general the cops show up because people call them). When you have more crimes and more police presence you are going to have more "contacts"*. That's part of what Harris was discussing. On raw numbers basis, twice as many "unarmed" white men are killed by police as "unarmed" black men. But unarmed black men are twice as likely to be killed by police versus white men on a per capita basis. That's where the discussion of the numbers usually stops. "See, cops are racist!" But if you peel it back further, given an unarmed black man and unarmed white man have contact with the police, on a per contact basis the white man is statistically more likely to die. At the same time, incidents of police brutality, excessive force, etc., have gone down a lot in the last 30 years.

I suspect I know the answer but not with certainty, but it would be interesting to delve into the the recent trend in crime in areas like Ferguson/St Louis and Baltimore where police presence in higher crime areas has been curtailed because of headline news incidents in the recent past. Did incidents of crime go down because fewer cops were around tossing young men in the pokey for walking/driving around with pot? Has crime drastically changed in the states where pot is now legal (something I support in principal, btw)? Or maybe the only crime is getting caught.

None of that indicates racism/bias does not exist, it only speaks to whether it is systemic and rampant among police actions. People will draw their own conclusions. I would offer that the real systemic issues that wind up producing disparities are more social and economic in nature, and fundamentally linked in some ways to the accelerating concentration of wealth, something conspiracy theorists might claim is deliberately wiping out the middle class. I'm sure it disproportionately hits minority and immigrant communities, but it's not limited to those. An example of its reach is the so-called opioid epidemic that is resulting in escalating opioid and methamphetamine overdoses and crime rates in poor, rural, and largely white communities.

Attributing every problem to racism (I'm not employing hyperbole, that's the implication of systemic) is an easy sell in an election year when people who want rid of Trump are happy to burn it all down to get their way. But I honestly do not believe it will result in improvements for desperate communities. To me the real issue is why have these communities, characterized by high crime rates among other things, many of which have been the focus of programs seeking to break the cycle for decades, gained no ground and oftentimes appear to have lost ground? Seems like anyone looking at the situation motivated beyond dumping Trump or advancing identity politics would be anxious to look into what's really going on in those neighborhoods in a comprehensive manner. The rise of the rust belt I'd bet directly correlates with the downfall of many such communities. Our laws seek to establish a reasonably inviting playing field for all. Schools are the on ramp to the field. Are state/local leaders providing an effective school system? Are state/local leaders providing adequate safety net programs that do more good than harm? And yes, are state/local leaders policing the areas and enforcing laws in a way that's fair and avoids doing more harm than good?

Which leads me right back to my first post on the topic in this thread so I'll stop. People are frustrated and stressed and scapegoats are tempting. Maybe it is better to address the shortcomings and sins directly instead of transferring them to a goat and driving it out in the desert to bear the consequences for us.

*I forget the precise definition of "contact" but it's something along the lines of an incident where a person is stopped and detained by police.

[IlliniDave]

If you want you could experiment and raise the number of cops in middle class white neighborhoods and put the same quotas on the officers. I bet you'd see the rates rise in those communities.

I don't think crime rates are determined by the number of arrests, rather the number of reports. Unsolved burglaries, assaults, rapes, and even murders count too. A universal "blind" stop-and-frisk type policy would result in more arrests certainly, and probably an uptick in crime but I'd think more of the petty variety where no one would have reported anything to the police nor the crime be discovered at all if the cops didn't check some kids pocket or spot a potentially drunk driver or whatever. Might pick up some firearm possession violations and such along the way though. But murders, shootings, armed robberies, etc., aren't going undetected in middle class or wealthy neighborhoods because there are fewer patrol cars riding around.

While cops do patrol and maybe in some areas still walk beats, most of the non-traffic incidents/crimes they encounter are because they are called to the scene of a reported incident, as was the case in both of the recent high profile cases that ended with a dead suspect.

[daylen]

I would offer that the real systemic issues that wind up producing disparities are more social and economic in nature, and fundamentally linked in some ways to the accelerating concentration of wealth, something conspiracy theorists might claim is deliberately wiping out the middle class. I'm sure it disproportionately hits minority and immigrant communities, but it's not limited to those.

I would offer that these problems are inseparable from institutional racism because genes do not travel much between communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_wa ... ted_States

[chenda]

This thread seems to have taken new direction from its original purpose which is fine, but globally Covid seems to be getting worse, a vaccine seems unlikely before Spring 2022 at the earliest and I am guessing we are looking at another 18 months minimum of quasi-lockdown with several new waves ? My employer today told us the office is likely to shut permanently and working from home is the new norm. And part of me thinks this is actually going to be far worse than most of us want to believe.

Is anybody now considering a major relocation or life change ?

[Jean]

What I really dislike, is that there is no clear demand, that could be attained and measured. Whenever something is given, more is immediatly asked.
It's a debt for which no payment will ever be accepted. Myth are merged with facts to justify this debt. It creats too much confusion to hope for this to ever be settled.
It's even weirder In France, were a Malian woman, whose grand father was a slave owner, is leading riots against the system, while being supported by most of the government, because one of her criminaly notorious brother was killed during his arrest. To, it's just a bunch of maniac seeking to have power onto other people. I'm allergic to this kind of pervert behavior.

[nomadscientist]

Discussions like this remind of discussing Christianity at my old schools where Bible stories were taught in a class like math class or English class and with no distinction of type. This was in Europe so there was no US-style culture war aspect and one could discuss such things in a relatively civil manner, at least for a while.

It became clear to me (irreligious from irreligious household, one of few and certainly only one who wanted to discuss it) that the belief in Christianity was prior and impervious to any argument (remember, not presented to me, a child, differently than mathematics, so that was a surprise at the time), that belief was based on group identity and good feelings associated, and if I pushed too hard (which I generally chose not to) I would encounter real hostility not because anyone thought I was wrong but because I threatened group identity and good feelings.

Anti-racism is that in the US. If whites cause blacks problems, blacks are victims of problems caused by whites. If blacks cause whites problems, blacks are victims of whites making them cause problems, and in turn victims of any attempts by whites to stop the problems. Any clear evidence of whites causing problems is damning and we must riot even if the authorities already acted. Any clear evidence of blacks causing problems needs more academic studies to discover/manufacture complicated arguments how really whites are to blame. Circular, invincible reasoning. This is not to say that whites never do cause blacks problems but the methodology doesn't admit any other answer whether it's right or wrong.

Mass delusions to build collective feeling and suppress our worse tendencies at least among fellows is pro-social and good. The problem of building your socio-political identity as white guy on a religion of blaming white people and punishing them for unfalsifiable crimes is that you lose even when you win. At least the Christian kids I grew up with just believed in harmless nonsense, and probably I was the asshole for drawing too much attention to it.

[daylen]

I was under the impression that everyone here has been looking beyond the "black vs. white" zero-sum. Of course, the movement going on in the broader social sphere may be sending a different message. Reflecting the K3 vs. K4 interpretation of what the problem is. The ideas of "institutional racism" or "privilege" do not necessarily imply population-level finger pointing. They can be reduced to such but this fails to acknowledge that social relations can go beyond group-identity.

[IlliniDave]

I would offer that these problems are inseparable from institutional racism because genes do not travel much between communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_wa ... ted_States

Here's another aspect of the lens I see things through. My boss is a black female. Prior to her my boss was a black male. Prior to him a white female, and prior to her a black male. I like all of them, they all like me. Where's the systemic racism (or misogyny for that matter)? I live and work in Alabama, a place that should arguably be ground zero and seething with systemic racism. 55 years ago it was, literally and for real. I could go on with the anecdotal stuff. I get suspicious when people tell me the world is 100% opposite of what I see when I step out my door every day.

So I look at it and say, if our system is designed to force minorities to fail, then how are these wonderful people thriving? Why weren't they trapped in a crime-ridden impoverished urban prison? The answer is, at least in part, that they weren't in one to begin with. One thing they have in common is they grew up in the south, 2/3 in relatively small communities. So that starts one asking questions. The obvious ones to me are what happened in the islands of misery that they became what they are? And who's in charge and what have they done to better the situation, and did any of it make a difference? I think at that level there are things that can be identified that need to be done, and should be done. Decrying the entire nation as racist and unfair I believe directs energy and attention from where it should be. No doubt racism and other marginalization of immigrant ethnic groups was a log in the nation's eye for many years and some of that is intertwined with the situation today (ironically, less so in the south than elsewhere apparently), but after multiple generations and decades have passed, with enormous amounts of resources spent, maybe it is time to focus on the hot spots, and the local leadership, and see if something can't be fixed there.

[daylen]

Decrying the entire nation as racist and unfair I believe directs energy and attention from where it should be. No doubt racism and other marginalization of immigrant ethnic groups was a log in the nation's eye for many years and some of that is intertwined with the situation today (ironically, less so in the south than elsewhere apparently), but after multiple generations and decades have passed, with enormous amounts of resources spent, maybe it is time to focus on the hot spots, and the local leadership, and see if something can't be fixed there.

A nation is "a stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture". Institutions go beyond people fused by cultural identity to include what policies/systems govern their interaction. States usually contain a collection of nations that are glued together by state institutions. Institutional racism, therefore, is not just about stereotypical racism or problems at the national level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

Keep in mind that your anecdotal evidence is not likely to be of much help in this situation given communal separation and survivorship bias. Every major city in the U.S. has "good" and "bad" neighborhoods.

I am not denying that we should not focus on the hot spots but this has already been going on for decades. Indicating that the problem can only be resolved at a higher systemic-level. Given that the world economy is so heavily coupled together at this point and genes are still slow travelers, it appears that this problem may as well be equivalent to the overshoot problem (i.e. solving one solves the other for some people but not indefinitely). Yet, in some sense, keeping things the way they are now is a solution to some problems for some people for a limited amount of time. We are looking at a multi-faceted coalition of problems for which no solution can benefit everyone across all future generations.

Similar to how a solution at the level of a police-force is likely to conflict with several other institutional solutions. Using money or tweaking policies to solve any one of the several dozen problems we are currently facing is likely to have higher-order consequences which cannot be solved with money/policy.

So, I think [one way to phrase] an individual solution(*) includes some mixture of frugal lifestyle design according to personal values (Te-Fi) and of navigating/directing social movements(**) towards the least destructive ends through reason (Fe-Ti).

(*) ..which helps a decent number of people worldwide on a decently long time-frame.

(**) ..which are quite dangerous without clear leadership and/or definite ends.

[IlliniDave]

...
Keep in mind that your anecdotal evidence is not likely to be of much help in this situation given communal separation and survivorship bias. Every major city in the U.S. has "good" and "bad" neighborhoods.

...
So, I think [one way to phrase] an individual solution(*) includes some mixture of frugal lifestyle design according to personal values (Te-Fi) and of navigating/directing social movements(**) towards the least destructive ends through reason (Fe-Ti).

(*) ..which helps a decent number of people worldwide on a decently long time-frame.

(**) ..which are quite dangerous without clear leadership and/or definite ends.

Agree, my anecdotal experience isn't science or anything, but looking at such situations in the aggregate might give some insight into what aspects of institutional intervention (I'm thinking primarily governmental) might have played a complementary role, and what sort of social environment might foster the realization of potential. Anecdotal evidence taken piecemeal can neither prove nor disprove the relevance of systemic racism on some axis.

Your suggestion that a solution is only available at a higher system level might prove correct, but I think our first obligation is to staunch bleeding and set broken bones wherever we can. Repeating the same actions and hoping for different results is not a very sound approach, so at minimum throwing out proven-ineffective sections of the old playbook and bringing in new ideas based on a rational assessment of historic results should be a priority. That suggestion is where I entered the discussion. Unfortunately prior to the pandemic minority employment was pretty high and I think some of the initiatives Ben Carson was trying to promote from HUD might have had some potential (e.g., the creation of "Opportunity Zones"). Likely those conditions and ideas are OBE now.

I do have sort of a biased viewpoint in the sense that from where I grew up the closest three large cities were Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. Even my hometown is sort of a microcosm that reflects similar issues to those cities. Painting with a somewhat broad brush they display one particular manifestation of apparently systemic issues and for good or ill that tends to be my reference point. I'm sure they don't have a monopoly on economic decay accompanied by high rates of minority-on-minority violence, and doubtless other areas face different challenges. Being a little provincial in my outlook is indeed one of my shortcomings.

In terms of individually steering social movements, I'll have to leave that to my betters. And I'm not read-in on the "Te-Fi" jargon, so apologies if I'm missing some nuance and misunderstanding.

[7Wannabe5]

There are always people who defy the odds, but based on my own personal anecdata due to my experiences dating successful black men and teaching very poor inner city kids of all skin tones, number one with a bullet factor that is going to keep you down for the rest of your life is having a mother who is too young, still Level 2 adolescent in functioning, mentally ill, and/or addicted to drugs or alcohol. This is true whether you are a black kid living south of 8 mile today during the Covid epidemic or a pale white kid growing up in a bad neighborhood in London 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic, or even the unfortunate spawn of somebody like Lindsay Lohan (although you will be falling from higher starting place and more likely to have other forms of support available.)

That said, it is very true that the context in which your personal tragedy takes place is relevant. For instance, things went much worse for one of my sisters when she had a psychotic break complicated by alcohol consumption and an intense need for public artistic expression,because she was living in a low rent district at the time. She actually ended up in jail in Detroit with a huge bruise on her head from her altercation with the police. My other sister who is a lawyer who used to defend juvenile offenders in Miami and the Bronx, said “When a middle-aged, middle/clas, white woman gets into this much trouble with the cops, you know she has to be acting flat-out batshit crazy.” However,while my sister was in jail, she did help organize an effort with her fellow inmates to clean up the disgusting shower area using maxi-pads as scrubbers.

Anyways, IMO a good part of the reason why things tend to work out for the worst in bad neighborhoods is that the cops, just like the teachers, are already frayed, fried, and burnt out. Your sense of normalcy gets skewed and you stop responding as compassionately as you would in a situation where the air conditioner was working, there weren’t 32 kids in the room, somebody answers when you call the office for back-up, you didn’t have to pull 2 sixth graders off a 4th grader they were pounding, and the kid in desperate need of special services wasn’t wrapping his face in plastic wrap while emitting a high keening wail. The contrast between this reality and how things usually go in the typical classroom in an affluent suburban or exurban district couldn’t be more striking. I have been getting all sorts of reach outs for inner city teaching jobs as I lie here still invalid and avoiding Covid, and part of me wants to do it, but another part of me feels/thinks/knows that it is just too damn hard of a job. So, that’s why I think that defunding the police is a bad idea.

[ZAFCorrection]

@ffj

I think you might be over-playing it a bit. The loudest shouting seems to be about getting the police to kill fewer black people, which is a fairly modest and reasonable proposal.

I guess the black contribution to that endeavor would be to appear scrupulously upright to a standard no white has to maintain*, sound more white, and dress more white (no hoodies, obviously).

*This 50+ white dude (dressed in an upper middle class dad fashion) was rummaging around my apartment complex and checking doors to storage units bold as you please. I asked him what he was doing and he had some story about needing to find some tools to fix some trivial piece of the front door to our part of the building. He got the hint and stopped fucking around, but a black dude probably wouldn't have thought they could have gotten away with that.

[7Wannabe5]

@ZAFCorrection:

I don't entirely disagree with you, but you are confounding too many variables with your example. Older, more conventionally middle-class dressed people of any complexion will be judged to be more trust-worthy. Same, obviously, goes for female gender. Sadly, factor most correlated with unlikelihood of committing another crime upon release from prison is simply being over the age of 40. Anyways, I hang out with a 50 something year old, usually middle-class appearance even when covered with compost, African American gardener who is always taking plant clippings without first asking for permission And I used to date another 50 something year old African American man who would strongly encourage me to eat way too much "free" shrimp while he was shooting craps at the casino And I was waaay more afraid of getting busted as minor accomplice to these activities than they were Aaaah, good times...

[fiby41]

Regarding questions in the OP:
The self-sufficient community is one way. All that is required is procured from someone in the community itself. This way the money does not leave the local economy but circulates in it. It makes you a bad consumer though. There could be a resurgent interest in FIRE/ERE and other methods of self-sufficiency.

Its not that difficult for peaceful protesters to distinguish themselves from vandals. A couple of years ago there was a violent incident on a member of community A. Police investigation found out the perpetrators were from community B. Members from community A beat up perpetrators in community B. Both took to street vandalism. One of the communities made a list of four demands including reservations and held silent march protests in 19 cities (1 US and Russian each) In cities where it turned violent or was being hijacked they postponed in for a week to let the steam boil over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha_Kranti_Morcha
Needless to say I don't support these protesters or their demand for birth based reservation in government jobs and education but I'd have been upseter if there was more destroying of public utilities I use. Instead it was well done PR wise with distribution of hoodies and shirts with their insignia and culminated with submitting their demands to the city mayor.

A page was linked on this forum a long time back which had info on how 75 years ago due to segregation the money spent by blacks remained in their community longer rather than being siphoned off by consumerism.

[IlliniDave]

Telling them that every hardship they encounter is someone else's fault or holding them accountable for the life decisions they make on a daily basis? Which stance is more respectful to the individual? Which has better results?

This is all a sideshow anyway so I'm not so sure why I've allowed myself to become invested in this circus. Apologies for the rant.

I think it might be somewhere in the middle. Institutional racism in this country has been written out of the institutions. Systemic racism ... that I have a hard time defining in a useful way. But there are patterns (borrowing that term from Bret Weinstein) that have been set up that date back to the Jim Crow era, and maybe all the way back to slavery itself. Even though the original constraints (institutional racism) are gone, the patterns have continued. New constraints showed up in the 70s and 80s in the form of the rise of the Rust Belt and the exodus of middle class blue collar employment opportunities, expanding and intensifying the patterns.

If you go too hard on the individual accountability angle then you get people blaming themselves or their parents for their starting point, and being caught in the pattern makes it really hard to consistently discern what the good decisions are. It's really the kids that need to be reached because by 16 or 18 too many are already swallowed up in the pattern (long rap sheets, prison, addiction, teenage parent, maybe even graveyard).

At the same time one of the worst things you can do for a person is teach them a worldview that whatever bad things happen (or even the good things) are out of their control and the fault of some faceless boogeyman, or to the credit of some disingenuous politician.

I don't know how to balance the two, but it's a matter of instilling individual accountability (which is the flip side of individual empowerment and therefore hope) without heaping guilt or shame on them because of their origins.

ETA:
Here's Weinstein talking about what I mentioned borrowing and some other relevant things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

[IlliniDave]

There are always people who defy the odds, but based on my own personal anecdata due to my experiences dating successful black men and teaching very poor inner city kids of all skin tones, number one with a bullet factor that is going to keep you down for the rest of your life is having a mother who is too young, still Level 2 adolescent in functioning, mentally ill, and/or addicted to drugs or alcohol.

I think your anecdotal observations are pretty close to the mark. I don't think anyone would dispute that poverty correlates with bad outcomes, well, unless Trump said it, then 5 Pinocchios and twisted knickers everywhere. One of the strongest predictors of a kid growing up in poverty is growing up in a single parent home, especially when headed by a very young mother without education. I suspect the same would be true for a single-parent home headed by a very young uneducated father, but those are somewhat rarer. The additional factors (mentally ill or suffering from addiction) would be expected to worsen it.

That's one of the points brought up regularly by black conservatives. Not sure what can be done about it, but their assertion is the dissolution of "the black family" over the last 50 years has been more steep than with any other group (all have growing numbers of kids raised by single parents), making the mountain to overcome that much taller.