LIVE Debate: Policing Is Racially Biased
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Channel: Open to Debate
Views: 20,656
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Policing, Racial Profiling, Racial Bias, African Americans, Criminal Justice, Police Officer, Law Enforcement, Department of Justice, Justice, Violent Crime, Shootings, Police Shootings, Criminality, Fight Crime, Crime, Law and Order, Civil Rights, Minorities, IQ2, Debates, Live Event, Event, Live Debate, Marq Claxton, Gloria Browne-Marshall, Heather Mac Donald, Manhattan Institute, Harry Stern, Rains Lucia Stern, Intelligence Squared, US Debates, Black Law Enforcement Alliance
Id: -CQ5_qO6YJw
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 121min 20sec (7280 seconds)
Published: Wed Jan 11 2017
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.
At least it's being openly debated from both sides.
First speaker actual starts to present their view at 22:55
Video starts at 1:37. A couple of thoughts:
It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the notion that statistics don't matter, as is contended by the "for" side of the motion. Hannibal Burress had a similar reaction to Sam when discussing this topic on Josh Zepps' Podcast, and this debate gave me deja vu at a few points.
Of course, personal experience is quite a powerful, albeit misleading, source of persuasion. To understand that anecdotal evidence is not worth much in terms of actually understanding what is going on in the world can be bit of chore for even scientifically minded people. I notice that I have to actually tell myself sometimes that my own personal experiences are not necessarily generalizable. Is there a diplomatic way to get this point across to an African-American who probably has been the victim of a racist slight (or worse) at some point in their life? It seems to be a pretty difficult problem.
This debate was a bit painful to watch at times - Gloria's descent into nonsense at one point and Harry's lame jokes come to mind - but I did feel like the "against" side argued in good faith, and basically scored several deathblows against the "for" side. I worry that people like Gad and Rubin are making anyone who argues against a prototypical social justice argument look naive, so it was nice to hear these other two people. I'd be curious to know what others thought.
One more thing: conversations like Sam and Hannibal's and the debate linked to above underscore the desirability of a broad understanding of basic probability and statistics.
Still watching, but I find it strange/shady that they have only white people arguing against the statement and only black people arguing for the statement. Way to start a neutral conversation off on a bad foot.
This wasn't much of a debate because MacDonald brought a gun to a fist fight. Here's a much better dialogue challenging her ideas and facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvkbm9T_Fp4
I mean there's not much to say. The pro side did not understand their opponent's position and were so confident in their ignorance that they said MacDonald's evidence must be made up. It seems like they were confused about what points they were denying and which they were implicitly conceding. Claxton kept reminding the audience to not let those pesky numbers and statistics get in the way of what his experience tells him, and Marshall just ignored the points brought against her and diverted into different items that if true help the case that there is some disparity that comes out negatively for blacks. But the tight focus on the police force and homicide rates is just such a clear and important topic that diversion from it looks weak from any perspective. Read your opponents books before debating them folks.
I didn't think the debate was that bad, but there were definitely a couple of moments that were pretty poor. The bit where the Against man said that he was confident rape was well-reported was one, and the bit where the For woman said that she was unaware of the studies MacDonald cited (including the Roland Fryer study) and accused MacDonald of plucking them out of thin air was another.
The central problem I had was that I came away unsure about whether the nature of the disagreement was conceptual or empirical. At times, it felt conceptual because it felt like what was really at stake was whether policing policy that happened to have racially biased consequences (but isn't intended to do so) was, by this fact alone, racially biased. At other times, it felt empirical because it felt like what was at stake was that policing policy was actually intended to have racially-biased consequences.
The against position was relatively clear - the police basically go where the bodies are, and that means that they're going to interact more with black people. But the intent is to focus on violent crime, and it is this non-racially biased intent that ought to be the guiding thought when considering whether policing is racially biased.
The For position was harder to pin down, however. I wasn't sure if they were conceding the point that the intent is to focus on violent crime, but it's racially biased in virtue of the consequences, or if they weren't conceding that point at all.
Thus, Against clearly won the debate, but I think that better arguments could be made on the For side. I'm tempted to take seriously the conceptual point that, when it comes to bias, intent matters, but it's not a trump card. If you can demonstrate that there are serious, insidious racial effects of some apparently innocuous policy of following the bodies, then I think that does open the door for saying that policing is racially biased.
Think of an analogy - the principle used in the family courts that everything ought to be done 'in the best interests of the child'. Is this a sexually-biased policy? Is it enough for me to point out that one of the consequences of this policy is that there are sexually biased outcomes - i.e. fathers often get progressively shut out of their child's life? Or do I need something stronger here? I'm genuinely not sure, either on this case or the other one. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on either question, or preferably both.