Repairing bridges

---Apologies for this being a repost. I fumble-fingered the scheduler---

I am going through a period when I am spending less time on the computer.

I am using some of this time to repair damaged bridges between me and some of my siblings.

I have two surviving sisters and four surviving brothers. Since "my brother" gets awkward, the subject of this post will henceforth be known as "Dirtbike".

Dirtbike works in an office and listens to NPR podcasts while working. He calls it "background noise". Lately, there has been lack-of-harmony between us.

Like the farmer said, "You cannot walk across the barnyard without getting manure on your boots."

I had the good fortune to run into Dirtbike twice on Tuesday. Once at the hunting lease and later at Mom's.

Dirtbike is more far more social than I am and the Covid restrictions really bruised him. He is a gentleman and lets others talk. That often leaves him constipated with things he NEEDS to say.

He trusts me to not get judgy or go off half-cocked. That is why he risked talking about the necessity of making "assault rifles" illegal. He also triggered on White violence against peoples-of-color and instantly went into "push" mode when I tried to reply with comments about the junk-culture of Black Americans.

We agreed to disagree. He agreed that I could send him links and data supporting my position. This blog post is a refinement on the email I sent my brother Dirtbike.

We both agreed

We both agreed that there is no point in looking for your car keys on Mary Street if you lost them on Joseph Street, even if the lighting is much better on Mary Street.

If murder is a problem in the United States and most people who do the murdering are Albanian-Amish, there is little profit in focusing on Mongolian-Lutherans.

Our disconnect is that Dirtbike thinks "white people" are the problem and I contend that "black culture" is the problem.

The Numbers

The most authoritative data on crime in the United States is the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting database.

While there may be a way to access the database and run queries, most people (that is, reporters) access the pre-canned reports.

I will provide link to one of the pre-canned reports and then attempt to tease out the story buried within the data.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls

Depending on how you chose to define "White", the US population is between 60% and 80% "White".

The FBI UCR data uses the more expansive, 80% number in defining "White" and then lists "Ethnicity" to back-out Latino/Hispanic sub-population as a separate group.

If you look at the image shown above and focus on the data circled with the thin-red line, you would deduce that five-out-of-six white victims of murder were killed by other whites. 

 

This is the image in Dirtbike's head when he hears the term "White murderers", courtesy of NPR. The Mainstream Media would have us believe roving gangs of white, Trump supporters are massacring Blacks in South Chicago

If you were to combine that with the data circled with the thick-red line, you would notice that one third of the "White" murderers are Hispanic and two-thirds are non-Hispanic white. 

In order to isolate the NPR vision of "white murderers" you have to back-out the Hispanic whites.

Looking specifically at the number of Black people murdered and extend the ratio to back-out the number of Hispanics you get 160 Blacks murdered by non-Hispanic white people compared to 2574 murdered by other Blacks. In 2019, if you were a Black person you were 16 times more likely to be murdered by another Black than by a non-Hispanic white. That is not the narrative you hear if you listen to NPR or the Main Stream Media.

"OK" you point out "Not all Hispanics are white. There are Black Hispanics"

No doubt. Five percent of Blacks identify as Hispanic and about three percent of Hispanics identify as Black. They exist but it is a small number.

So the narrative of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia being hunted down and executed by white people is NOT the norm, regardless of what NPR says.

The specific heuristic involved is salience. What is more newsworthy? A pretty girl in Bali who is stung by an beautiful, exotic, toxic octopus and dies or a poor, old, fat, Black woman in Cleveland dies of complications from diabetes? The pretty girl makes international news and the lady in Cleveland doesn't even get a post in Facebook.

So "newsworthy" is synonymous with "unusual" or "shocking" or "not congruent with normie's world-view" or just plain "freakish".

The relentless pressure to shock, amaze and wow the news audience results in people gradually coming to believe that the "unusual, shocking, incongruent and freakish" are the norm.

Summary

Dirtbike and I were able to have a passionate and honest and civil discussion and we fist-bumped afterward.

Claims that were made and the other called "Bullshit" on were tabled for later.

Those kinds of discussions have been sadly lacking, lately.

Dirtbike seemed to be happy to have somebody he respects (older brother and all that) who is happy to let him have the floor for 2/3 of the time and talk. It was cathartic for both of us.