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On Wed, 05 May 2010 13:25:05 -0400, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> wrote:
>> On Wed, 05 May 2010 07:32:46 -0400, Warp wrote:
>> > The problem is that when you say "profiling based on race", you are
>> > implying some kind of prejudiced discrimination and abuse based on
>> > race.
> [...]
>
>> Perhaps if you lived in or grew up in a country where racism was pretty
>> extreme and practiced not just by "normal" people but also by law
>> enforcement, your view would be different. It's not been so long ago
>> that in parts of the US, just being black could get you killed by so-
>> called "vigilante justice" and those who were supposed to actually
>> enforce the law would look the other way.
>
> A simple "yes" would have sufficed.
Perhaps, but I'm trying to explain things.
> That's kind of my point: We are using different meanings for the term
> "profiling". Your meaning assumes discrimination and prejudice. Mine
> doesn't. That's the reason for this back-and-forth argument which isn't
> really going nowhere.
I'm using the standard American English term used in law enforcement
discussions pertaining to "racial profiling".
ie:
racial profiling n. orig. and chiefly U.S. selection for scrutiny by law
enforcement based on race or ethnicity rather than on behavioural or
evidentiary criteria (cf. offender profiling n. at OFFENDER n.
Compounds); (later, in extended use) discrimination or stereotyping on
racial or ethnic grounds.
(From the Oxford English Dictionary)
So that should make it clear (hopefully) what definition I'm using in
this discussion. Perhaps I assumed you were using the same definition
since you were using the concept (or seemed to be) when talking about
profiling based on ethnicity.
>> Go do a little reading on Jim Crow laws (which doesn't get into
>> lynchings and the like, but is a starting point for understanding why
>> institutional use of race as a differentiator is a problem here), for
>> example - then maybe you'll understand better why it's such a hot
>> button over here.
>
> I know perfectly well that it's such a "hot button" over there. And
> it's
> precisely why I wondered in the beginning whether the opposition to that
> law was based on "racial profiling, baaad", or whether it has some
> logical reasons. (Again: No need to respond. I'm explaining, not
> asking.)
Fair enough. My mind reading skills are not terribly good, so until this
point, I had no idea that you had knowledge about it being a hot button
issue here or the historical reasons for why.
>> >> and then claim - quite counterintuitively, that you don't see race.
>> >
>> > I have made no such claim. (Why do I feel like I'm repeating
>> > myself?)
>> >
>> > What I have claimed is that to me race is exactly as important and
>> > unimportant as any other personal factor, such as gender, age, shoe
>> > size or hair color. I don't care about race any more or any less than
>> > about any of those other things. It's all the same.
>
>> Well, I could go back and find where you seemed to be saying that, but
>> I don't have the time at the moment to do so. I could swear, though,
>> that you said something to that effect.
>
> To what effect? I think I don't understand what "you don't see race"
> means. If it means "there are no races", then that's not what I have
> said.
To the effect that you don't 'see' race, by which I mean that you
consider it inconsequential (not that there are no races).
FWIW, I also think it is inconsequential - I try not to make judgments
based on race, ethnicity, religion, or other such factors. Sadly, there
are lots of people around the world who do. That's just it, though - it
is inconsequential, so shouldn't be used as a means of determining
probable cause for the commission of a non-specific crime (by which I
mean time/location of the commission).
Jim
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> >> and you've pretty flatly rejected
> >> those explanations instead of saying something like "that's not how it
> >> works here, but I can understand why people in the US might feel this
> >> way given the history".
> >
> > And now you are once again putting words in my mouth. I'm sorry I have
> > to say that, but it's just true.
> >
> > I have never said anything even remotely resembling "that's not how it
> > works here" when talking about racial profiling.
> That was an example of a way to respond, not something that you've said.
> Please reread what I wrote and let me know what's not clear about it,
> because I don't know of another way to say "this type of response would
> be better".
I misread "instead of saying something like" as "instead you are saying
something like", which lead to the confusion.
(I suppose I'm getting a taste of my own medicine here, as I taunted
Darren about him confusing "outlandish" with "outrageous", and now I misread
something and reacted based on that...)
(And btw, that's not how it works here either. Things like racial
profiling *are* touchy subjects here as well and sources of heated
discussions, especially nowadays.)
> I don't understand what you're trying to say here at all. I didn't bring
> up the driver sobriety test
It was the only thing that I have written that resembled the "that's not
how it works here", so I assumed you were referring to that. Of course this
assumption was based on the misreading of your post.
> I didn't say that I made such an assumption. My assumption here is that
> your experience is based on life in Finland, and when talking about the
> law (or anything), your views are coloured by your life's experiences
> (just as they are for the rest of us). It's important to be aware that
> things (in general) are done differently in different parts of the world
> and to be aware when saying/implying/setting someone up to infer
> (intentionally or not) "our way is better" that other peoples'
> experiences will differ because their background is different.
Well, Finland isn't too different from the US in that if you are too
loud about these things, you will very easily get labelled as a racist.
This has escalated a lot during the last few years when the discussion
about liberal immigration and its possible problems have been brought up
more and more.
--
- Warp
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On Wed, 05 May 2010 13:16:36 -0400, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Because profiling based on race assumes guilt rather than innocence.
>
> Well, there's where we are using different meanings of the word
> "profiling". You are using a rather loaded meaning of the word.
See the post I just wrote with the OED definition of racial profiling.
That's the definition I'm using.
>> "The person is of hispanic descent, therefore they must (or even are
>> highly likely) to be in the country illegally."
>
> That's not profiling. That's prejudice.
Yes, it is - but making the decision to make the stop based on ethnicity
and statistical probabilities *is* profiling.
Jim
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On Wed, 05 May 2010 13:40:43 -0400, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> >> and you've pretty flatly rejected
>> >> those explanations instead of saying something like "that's not how
>> >> it works here, but I can understand why people in the US might feel
>> >> this way given the history".
>> >
>> > And now you are once again putting words in my mouth. I'm sorry I
>> > have
>> > to say that, but it's just true.
>> >
>> > I have never said anything even remotely resembling "that's not how
>> > it
>> > works here" when talking about racial profiling.
>
>> That was an example of a way to respond, not something that you've
>> said. Please reread what I wrote and let me know what's not clear about
>> it, because I don't know of another way to say "this type of response
>> would be better".
>
> I misread "instead of saying something like" as "instead you are
> saying
> something like", which lead to the confusion.
Fair enough. :-) I thought that might be the case.
> (I suppose I'm getting a taste of my own medicine here, as I taunted
> Darren about him confusing "outlandish" with "outrageous", and now I
> misread something and reacted based on that...)
>
> (And btw, that's not how it works here either. Things like racial
> profiling *are* touchy subjects here as well and sources of heated
> discussions, especially nowadays.)
I thought that was probably the case (I have a good friend in Aaland and
he and I have discussed this in the past), but it's always good to have
confirmation. I would honestly have been surprised if it weren't a
touchy subject.
>> I don't understand what you're trying to say here at all. I didn't
>> bring up the driver sobriety test
>
> It was the only thing that I have written that resembled the "that's
> not
> how it works here", so I assumed you were referring to that. Of course
> this assumption was based on the misreading of your post.
Fair enough.
>> I didn't say that I made such an assumption. My assumption here is
>> that your experience is based on life in Finland, and when talking
>> about the law (or anything), your views are coloured by your life's
>> experiences (just as they are for the rest of us). It's important to
>> be aware that things (in general) are done differently in different
>> parts of the world and to be aware when saying/implying/setting someone
>> up to infer (intentionally or not) "our way is better" that other
>> peoples' experiences will differ because their background is different.
>
> Well, Finland isn't too different from the US in that if you are too
> loud about these things, you will very easily get labelled as a racist.
> This has escalated a lot during the last few years when the discussion
> about liberal immigration and its possible problems have been brought up
> more and more.
So, tell me a little bit about the issues there in Finland - I don't read
a lot of news from Finland, so I wasn't aware there was an escalation
regarding immigration laws there.
Jim
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > In other words, my question was whether
> > people are objecting to the law purely because they have an automatic
> > aversion to anything that makes a distinction between races, or whether
> > there are *logical* reasons to oppose the law.
> There are logical reasons to oppose the law. The number of false negatives
> found by avoiding investigating those who lack feature X is unrelated to the
> number of false positives caused by investigating those who possess feature X.
I didn't ask what those logical reasons are because they have been
presented countless times already in this thread. I think I said that
in the paragraph above, but you left that part out.
> Do you understand that?
I have said countless times in this thread that I do understand why the
law wouldn't work.
> Because you still seem to be asking the question
Even though I *explicitly* say that I'm not?
> instead of going "Oh! I see now! I no longer have to ask the question,
> because you answered it."
How many times do I have to write "but I understand why it wouldn't work
in practice" before it sinks in?
(And how many times do I have to write that it doesn't change my original
point?)
> > My personal opinion is that *if* in some contexts crime could be more
> > efficiently stopped by making the distinction, then it would make sense
> > to do so.
> I completely understand. And I'm telling you "the math shows that there are
> no contexts in which crime could be more efficiently stopped by making the
> distinction," in any case where you don't already know something about the
> specific criminal you seek. And yet, you still haven't said you understand
> this. Do you?
No.
Firstly, I don't see how the math says that.
Secondly, it was not my point. My point *still* is "if it could make a
difference, it would make sense to use it".
> Even when you use race to find a mugger reported (say) to be a black man,
> you're not using race to decide who to question. You're using location (near
> the time and place of the mugging) to decide who to question and you're
> using race to *eliminate* suspects from questioning. You don't question all
> black men. You question all people *near the crime scene*, *except* for the
> people you know *cannot* be the mugger. Which is entirely different than
> "focusing your attentions on those of the right profile."
You talk like using a profile is mutually exclusive with using other clues.
If your clues have narrowed down the list of suspects to 100 people, 50
males and 50 females, and your profile says that the criminal is most likely
a male (for example, in rape cases it's pretty unlikely for the criminal to
be female), you reduced your list from 100 to 50.
For some reason you seem to think that "using a profile" means "discard
all other evidence and *only* use the profile" (in some past post you even
explicitly talked about profiles *increasing* the amount of subjects, which
at the time I didn't understand at all because it made no sense, but now I
think you were implying "using a profile *and* discarding all other clues").
I don't understand where you are getting that. It's certainly not something
I have said nor implied.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Maybe if I emphasize it would help: *IF* race could be used as a trait
> to catch criminals more efficiently, *THEN* it would make sense to use it.
> The issue of "can a policeman check someone without probable cause?" was
> a completely different line of discussion which had nothing to do with
> racial profiling or anything.
Except, as I've tried to explain, these two features are 100% intertwined
and completely related. And we're trying to get you to understand why those
two are intertwined and related.
> I discussed it purely on the context of "checking without probable cause"
> because that separate issue came up in a post.
Except if you have probable cause, you don't need profiling. And without
probable cause, profiling doesn't help. So they're really quite related in
ways that you don't seem to be understanding.
>> When you do that, you come across as having an air of superiority - not
>> you personally, but culturally certainly - and it is interpreted as
>> "we're better than you".
>
> I don't think that "I'm surprised that the police is not allowed to do
> random sobriety tests on drivers there" shows an air of superiority.
Except they *are* allowed to do random sobriety tests. The problem is that
in the very same post, you went on to talk about doing profiling during
"random" sobriety tests to improve the efficiency of those tests. At which
point, it's no longer "random", but rather profiling. You see where the
confusion comes from?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
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On Wed, 05 May 2010 13:41:01 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:
> See the post I just wrote with the OED definition of racial profiling.
> That's the definition I'm using.
In digging through definitions for profiling (which led me to 'offender
profiling'), I think I see where there may be a disconnect here.
Racial profiling is what I previously defined it as (so I won't re-cite).
Offender profiling, however, is a compound usage that's common in
Britain, defined as:
offender profiling n. orig. and chiefly Brit. a system of analysing and
recording the probable psychological and behavioural characteristics of
the unknown perpetrators of specific crimes so they can be matched with
the known habits and personalities of suspects
This is something that is done in the US - the idea is basing the
criteria for a search based on common traits of offenders. This is not
the same as racial profiling, because offender profiling uses the
statistical characteristics of a known class of criminal and starts from
the traits of those who are known to be guilty of committing a class of
crime. It also focuses on psychology and behaviour rather than physical
traits.
Racial profiling starts at the other end of the spectrum - rather than
starting with a classification of the guilty, it starts with the
assumption that someone of a particular race must be guilty.
I can see how the two could be easy to confuse, though, especially when
popular culture presentations of offender profiling includes sentences
like "the suspect is probably a black male in his mid-30's [...]" which
isn't a behavioural or phychological trait that would be used for this
type of profiling.
Jim
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Warp wrote:
> Just because individuals can have mixed traits doesn't make the concept
> meaningless.
It makes the concept of assigning a single race to a person (especially
nowadays with global travel and all) mostly meaningless.
>> Why is Obama "black" but not "japanese"? I believe even you once pointed
>> out the absurdity there.
>
> I think that's more a political than a scientifical issue.
Exactly. You can't say scientifically what "race" he is, because the
boundaries of "race" aren't scientific.
>> Kenyans are tall, but not all of them, and some British are tall too. I'm
>> sure you know some people born where you are that have dark curly hair.
>
> Yet an anthropologist can easily distinguish whether a skull belongs to
> a Kenyan or a British.
No, they can't, any more than you can look at a person's race and tell
whether they're a legal resident or an illegal immigrant.
You can tell whether they have genetics more often associated with people
whose ancestors come from middle africa thousands of years ago, or more
often associated with people who come from northern europe thousands of
years ago. But you can't say whether they're from Kenya or Britain.
And *that* is the distinction people are trying to make. Other than for
information *about* genetics, "race" is a meaningless term. It's a statement
about genetics, and for anything outside the field of genetics, it's
meaningless.
You may say "Saying someone is Kenyan is a shorthand for saying they had
ancestors thousands of years ago who lived near what is now Kenya," but by
the time you actually *express* it that way, almost any assertion you make
about the person's behavior or location (especially classical "racist"
assertions) becomes obviously nonsense.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
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Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Because profiling based on race assumes guilt rather than innocence.
>
> Well, there's where we are using different meanings of the word
> "profiling". You are using a rather loaded meaning of the word.
>
>> "The person is of hispanic descent, therefore they must (or even are
>> highly likely) to be in the country illegally."
>
> That's not profiling. That's prejudice.
It's not possible to do profiling based on someone's appearance without
being prejudice about it. Hence, it is both.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> So, tell me a little bit about the issues there in Finland - I don't read
> a lot of news from Finland, so I wasn't aware there was an escalation
> regarding immigration laws there.
There are many people here who are looking at Sweden and its immigration
problems (which are completely real, as even the Swedish press, which
has traditionally censored every immigration-related issue in the past,
is slowly opening a bit to report problems with immigrant suburbs, such
as riots, arson, ambulances and firetrucks being thrown with stones and
bottles, and other such acts of violence performed by immigrants), as
well as Britain (a bit of googling should give good resources) and France,
and are fearing that Finland is going down the same path, and trying to
raise consciousness about this.
At the same time the so-called "multiculturalists" are trying everything
they can to deny any such problems either existing or being significant,
as well as trying to "educate" the Finnish people that we are, allegedly,
extremely racist and that we need tons and tons of immigrants. The vast
majority of the media is on this "multiculturalists" side, sometimes even
to rather amazing extremes (such as launching systematic public loathing
campaigns against politicians who criticize the current immigration policy
trends).
There was a big commotion some years, especially on the media, when a
politician who is quite known and very vocal about is critique of the
current immigration policies and "multiculturalism" was almost elected to
the Finnish parlament (he was just some votes short of getting there).
Afterwards he got elected to the city council of Helsinki. Since then
there has been, basically, a coordinated attack against him by the Finnish
media. He has been systematically loathed, and even criminally investigated
(this got so far as a court trial for something he wrote many years earlier).
Of course he is not the only one, but he has apparently been selected by
the media as the main target.
Rather than the whole thing dying down, this has only escalated in the
last few years. Even to the point where other politicians cannot keep
quiet anymore, but are more or less forced to take public stances on the
immigration issue. (This puts many of them in a difficult situation because
a significant portion of voters are leaning towards the critical side,
and the politicians don't want to alienate them.)
--
- Warp
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