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Discussion on: Is Robert "uncle Bob" Martin a racist? Or how come people recently call him that?

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chrispardy profile image
chris-pardy

Part 2, implication:
By asserting that disperity in police outcomes doesn't exist after "accounting for variables" he is asserting intentionally or not that people of color are more likely to "deserve" these outcomes. While also stating that there isn't a systemic problem in the country it must follow that fundamentally POC should be more aggressively policed. This is the racist and logical conclusion sitting just below his argument.

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dm19 profile image
dm19

The argument that police are treating POC fairly when accounting for variables is not inherently racist. Besides being supported by statistics, the conclusion is what we would expect to see based on structural inequality. POC don't commit more crimes per capita because of their skin color or some other intrinsic characteristic; POC commit more crimes per capita because racist policies resulted in POC populations being concentrated in urban areas with bad schools and poor economies. As a result they don't have the same opportunities and support most white people enjoy, which increases crime rates. Both the higher crime rate and population density means more contact with police and more opportunity for things to go wrong, but it's the environment which creates the disparity, not, as far as studies have shown, police behaving unfairly within the environment.