Systemic Racism

 It is time once again to disassemble yet another ubiquitous, meaningless, leftist phrase which grates on the eardrums of any sane and rational person.

    In light of the recent mob riots and the prolific leftist riot apologists blaming the motivation of the rioters, and even legitimate protesters, on the presumed factual existence of “systemic racism” though-out American society.  They have been reciting this phrase for so many decades that no one even seems to question the validity of the phrase much less actually inquire into what it is supposed to mean.

    Let’s start with the adjective part of this phrase, which, unlike the word “hate” in “hate speech” or “hate crime”, actually is an adjective:  “systemic:  relating to or involving a whole system.”  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/systemic

    So when they state that any part of American society, or American society itself, suffers from “systemic racism”, what that phrase actually means is that “the whole of American society is racist”.  By definition, it must be pervasive and relate to the entire system as a whole in order to be systemic.

    (I’m just going to use the American society as a whole from this point forward for abstract illustrative purposed because it has been stated in that context often enough and not limit it to one system or another such as police or justice.)

    Thus anyone attempting to state that some or most of America, which the left has labeled as systemically racist, is immediately dismissed by the left because they have denied the very “systemic” or “pervasive” nature of the racism.

    To a rational person, the mere fact that the majority of people are not racist would by definition prove beyond any reasonable doubt that America was not systemically racism even if one admits that racism existed in some pockets of America precisely because it did not “relate to or involve the whole” as per the definition.

    Interestingly, the concept of “objective” or “overt” racism was the original target of the mislabeled “civil rights” movement.  The “civil rights” laws have been completely successful in eliminating overt statements of racial disparity from the public sphere, in particular expunged from the laws and statutes as well as expunged from even judicial reasoning of “separate but equal” justification for segregation laws.

    Even in the American culture the movement has been hugely successful in eliminating overt racism in the vast majority of people’s day to day conversations, rap songs excluded of course.

    Being thus overwhelmingly successful in eliminating objective statements of racism which everyone can hear or read and clearly say, “that is racist”, racism in America has been eliminated.  Except, to hear most media, leftists, and activists, America has never been more racist in its history because everyone is running around hiding their racism in symbolic mystical phrases called “dog whistles”.

    If that is true, then the “civil rights” movement is a colossal failure; if false, it is an overwhelming success.  Leftists making their living off of the continuation of this effort cannot afford to admit either of these possibilities even though one or the other must be true.

    So let us now look at the noun portion of the phrase:  “racism:  the belief that people’s qualities are influenced by their race and that the members of other races are not as good as the members of your own, or the resulting unfair treatment of members of other races.”  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/racism

    Naturally the noun “racism” is a belief, and there is no way to prove or disprove what a person actually believes.  It can only be deduced from the objective or overt statements and actions of a person consistent with a racist belief.

    To believe that “racism” is “systemic” in America, requires that there must exist a massive conspiracy throughout the entire country of white people covertly expressing, sharing, and propagating their beliefs despite anti-discrimination being preached by those same people in every school, pulpit, media, and court in the nation.

    None of this is to deny that racism exists, obviously there are people of all races who believe that their race is better than others, and I cannot logically conceive of the possibility that such a natural inclination of people to think they and people like them are better than other people would or could ever be eliminated from any human society.

    The best which could ever be achieved by any society is the elimination of objectively “unfair treatment”, or differential treatment, on the basis of race by the government towards its citizens; also known as equality before the law or the rule of law.

    Applying this analysis of the ignorant phrase of “systemic racism” to its current iteration of join riots/protests by BLM & Antifa, and don’t try to tell me the stupidity that it is the “outside” agitators as there have been more than enough evidence that the riots are the result of both locals and outsiders.

    We cannot look at racism itself, we can only objectively look at disparity or bias in the interactions between police and civilians.

    The excuse used is that there is “systemic racism” in police departments and justice systems throughout America.  The statistical evidence does not bear this out.  We hear that there is a plethora of police abuse, but out of over 10 million arrests each year https://www.statista.com/statistics/191261/number-of-arrests-for-all-offenses-in-the-us-since-1990/, there are about 1000 fatal shootings per year https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/, or one in 10,000 arrests.

    Of course one could argue that these number are way too high, that we ought not to be arresting as many people and that there should not be as many fatal encounters, but that is not the issue we are currently examining; we are looking for racial disparity indicative of “systemic racism”.

    To put it in context, in interactions with medical personnel, the fatality of medical errors in America are well over a hundred times the fatality of encounters with police.

    Of people fatally shot in confrontations with police, the number of white people fatally shot runs consistently about twice as many as black people.  White people are twice as likely in a confrontation with police to be the victims of police brutality.  Of course, police brutality is never excused, the context is whether this shows “systemic” bias.

    Understand that absolute numbers, or even rates, are not alone a complete picture of what is happening.  We must also look at the rate of arrests in comparison.  In this country about as many white people commit crimes as black people as reported by the victims of crime, which seems counter-intuitive to most people.  This results in approximately equal numbers of arrests between black and white suspects.

    It seems counter-intuitive because black people account for only 1/8 of the population but account for 1/2 of the crime and arrests.  Superficially people suspect that black and white people must commit crimes at equal rates and presume “systemic racism” from their false presumption of equality of criminality.

    (It is not relevant to delve into the various factors which may lead or contribute to the higher rates of criminality, because that is not the topic of the discussion but whether there is a bias in the interactions themselves.)

    On the other hand, white people make up about 6/7 of the American population (ignoring the further leftist divisions of people by other factors like language), meaning there are about six times as many white people as black people.

    Which leads to interesting variances of perception between different segments of society.

    Criminality being about equal, this means that a black person is six times more likely than a white person to have an interaction with police.  Combined with the evidence that a white man is twice as likely to suffer abuse at the hands of police during such reaction, you can see that white people and black people as a group have a different perception of police brutality situations.

    Combining the incarceration rates with the abuse rates, that means that black people are three times more likely that white people to suffer from police abuse, so they are three times more likely to have personal interaction or experience within their community with incidents of police misbehavior.

    However, because white people are six times less likely to know someone who is arrested and three times less likely to personally know a person who is the victim of police brutality, they are naturally more dismissive of the rate of police misconduct.

    Police misconduct affects the black community more than the white community simply because crime affects the black community far more frequently.  But there is nothing in this actually indicative of racism, it is merely a community mis-perception of probabilities based upon people’s relative perspective.

    Black people dismiss when white people point out that they are twice as likely to be the victims of police misconduct because they are three times more likely to know a fellow black person who was such a victim; while white people are simply more dismissive of police misconduct itself precisely because they are so much less likely to personally know such a victim.

    White people, in turn, are confused when black people are dismissive of the black on black crime because they view police misconduct as such a small factor of criminal behavior.

    It doesn’t help that the media hypes and exacerbates these perceived differences by turning instances of a white police misconduct against black victims while ignoring instances of police misconduct where the victim is white.  The media, race-baiters, and politicians, on the left stoke these perceptions at every turn for their own personal gain, amplifying these demographically driven differences in perception.

    I’d like to say that these mis-perceptions could be corrected with logic and reason, but that simply is not true, but we can challenge the stupidity of the idea of “systemic racism” which fuels the reactions to these differences.