RangerDave wrote:
...Ta-Nehisi’s core point is that making such blanket warnings about an entire group of human beings is just dumb if you actually care about the safety of your kids. It puts the race/gender/age category before all other obvious contexts: neighborhood, street, school, college, inner city, distant suburb, daytime, night, crowded places, dark streets, and the actual observed behavior of the young black man.
No, see, this is why the whole argument doesn't work.
Profiling does not provide blanket warnings about entire groups of human beings. The arguments against profiling are a strawman arguments.
They are indicators. Very simplisticly...
Let's say factors W, X, Y, Z are common statistical indicators of a high likelihood of certain criminal activity. Conversely, factors A, B, C, and D are common statistical indicators of a low likelihood of the same criminal activity.
When put together, "If any 3 of W, X, Y and Z are true, and none of A, B, C, or D are true, pay extra attention to this individual."
That's profiling. Race is only going to be one of those factors.
Almost all decisions humans make are playing probabilities. We weigh risks against benefits, likelihoods and unlikelihoods. Our entire decision-making process is based on this. But now people are asking us to ignore areas where there is a potential for SIGNIFICANT statistical data to be had, in the name of political correctness. It's bullshit.
The FBI employs entire teams dedicated to profiling many aspects of potential suspects, to try to figure out what type of person they are likely searching for, when trying to solve a crime. This is not "quack-science." It's related to psychology (which is a little more on the "quack" side), but is far more testable and reliable. (And it uses statistics more than psychology, anyway. "8 times out of ten, this type of killer has been from a broken home." It doesn't mean they exclude the 20% long odds, either, it just changes the focus.)