US police kill up to 6 times more black people than white people

The above headline is perfectly accurate.  But it is still misleading.  OF COURSE the police kill more blacks in Chicago.  There are more blacks there.

It is rare that raw numbers tell us much.  What is needed is context.  In this case we need to look at percentages.  Is the PERCENTAGE of blacks killed different?

More technically, if we control for population size, are blacks killed more often than whites?  The number of whites killed in Chicago is probably low.  But Chicago is primarily a black city.  So the absolute number of whites there is also low

It could well be that cops are more prone to killing people with brown skin than people with white or pink skin -- but we are not actually shown that.  Context is missing


In some parts of the US, police kill black people at a rate six times higher than they kill white people. The differences are most stark in the northern Midwest, especially Chicago, and in north-eastern states like New York.

Protest movements like Black Lives Matter have highlighted the disproportionate killing of black people by US police, and called for major changes in policing practices. However, official data on police killings can be unreliable. The database run by the Bureau of Justice Statistics is known to undercount deaths, partly because police forces don’t have to contribute data. That makes it harder to stop the killings.

Gabriel Schwartz and Jaquelyn Jahn at Harvard University compared police killings in different regions of the US between 2013 and 2017. They used data from Fatal Encounters, an independent organisation that gathers public and media reports of killings, and fact-checks them.

The researchers assigned each death to one of the US’s 382 “metropolitan statistical areas”. These are “cities and the areas surrounding cities”, says Jahn, and reflect where people spend most of their time.

Rates of police killings varied widely. For the overall population, the highest rates of killings were in south-western states like California and New Mexico, where more than 1 in 100,000 people were killed by police every year. In the north-east, rates were often lower than 0.3 people per 100,000.

However, the pattern changed when the team looked for differences linked to ethnicity. In south-western states, police killed black people 1.81-2.88 times more often than they killed white people. In the north Midwest and north-east, the disparity was often more than 2.98. In the Chicago metropolitan area, black people were killed 6.51 times more often than white people.

“They are showing for the first time that there’s a lot of variation by place in racial inequalities in police killings,” says Justin Feldman at New York University. That in turn should help us understand why some places have such large disparities, and how to reduce the deaths, he says.

Schwartz and Jahn’s study is the latest of a raft of studies showing that black people in the US are killed by police more often than white people. Young black men are at highest risk. A 2019 study found that black men aged 25-29 were being killed at rates between 2.8 and 4.1 in 100,000.

Neighbourhoods are also a factor. Death rates are highest in poor neighbourhoods and neighbourhoods with high non-white populations, but black people are at higher risk of being killed in white neighbourhoods.

SOURCE 





Be Careful Who You Call a White Supremacist

This past Saturday, after President Trump’s Tulsa rally did not draw the expected capacity crowd, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID.”

“Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. ??”

Ocasio-Cortez was responding to claims that TikTok, with apparent help from within China, flooded the Trump campaign with fake reservation requests, discouraging others from attending.

But what was most telling in her tweet was the reference to Trump’s “white supremacist open mic.” This dangerous and ugly accusation is now standard fare for the left. Trump is a white supremacist, as are his white supporters.

Of course, you could see this building for several years now.

First, the leftwing media branded candidate Trump a white supremacist, based especially on his comments about Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

Confirmation for this was found when men like David Duke endorsed him.

Then, there was the misrepresentation of his words about Charlottesville, where he allegedly said that there were some “very fine people” among the neo-Nazi demonstrators.

To the contrary, he categorically condemned those very people, saying, “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups.”

But the misrepresentation continues to this day, repeated regularly by presidential candidate Joe Biden.

The next step in the leftwing media’s strategy was to brand you a white supremacist if you were white and supported Trump. In fact, in some circles, it is assumed that, for white supporters of Trump, MAGA really means, “Make America White Again.” (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made this very claim.)

For people like Ocasio-Cortez, this is simply taken for granted.

I documented these accusations in my new book Evangelicals At the Crossroads: Will We Pass the Trump Test?

In the book, I meticulously lay out the case against Trump, including the charges that he is an unashamed racist. And I do this, not to whitewash such charges but to examine them carefully and fairly. Is Donald Trump a white supremacist and racist?

Some of Trump’s statements have certainly lacked precision, leading to further misunderstanding and confusion. And I recognize that, in many ways, he has been highly divisive. I have no desire to defend those aspects of his speech or conduct.

Still, as I demonstrate in my book, the charges of “white supremacy” have no substance at all. (According to Merriam-Webster, a white supremacist is “a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.”)

White supremacists do not go out of their way to meet regularly with black leaders for input and wisdom.

White supremacists do not pass major criminal justice bills that largely affect non-whites.

White supremacists do not gain stories in the New York Times like this one, from September 10, 2019, headlined, “Trump Focuses on Black Economic Gains and Support for Historically Black Colleges.” As the Times reported, “Since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the administration has, in fact, made an effort to support historically black schools, increasing investment in their programs by 14.3 percent.” (For further documentation of these points, see Evangelicals at the Crossroads.)

White supremacists do not immediately call for the FBI and the Department of Justice to look into the death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white cop, Derek Chauvin.

And white supremacists do not call for special forums titled “transition to greatness,” where the focus is on listening to black leaders address the problem of racism in America.

Cynics would say, “He’s a politician. He’s just doing this for votes.”

But real white supremacists do no such things, especially white supremacist politicians, whose very reputation depends on their racism. (When it comes to politicians doing things for votes, which politician does not do things for votes?)

Yet, as bogus as the charge of “white supremacist” is when it comes to Trump, it is even more bogus for the vast majority of his white supporters.

Many of them would have voted for Ben Carson in a heartbeat had the elections been between Dr. Carson and Hillary Clinton. White supremacists would not do this. (Of course, white Trump supporters would have voted for Hispanic candidates like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio had they run against Hillary.)

And the vast majority of white Trump supporters opposed President Obama because of his policies, not because of the color of his skin. (The last I checked, both Hillary and Biden are white, so our rejection of them has nothing to do with skin color.)

Not only so, but some of Trump’s most prominent white evangelical supporters have been involved in interracial ministry for decades, with a long history of opposing racism. And of the many, white Trump supporters I know, not a single one of them fits the definition of “white supremacist” cited above.

Let us, then, call this ugly accusation for what it is: slanderous, libelous, and dangerous. Shame on those who use such ugly words as a political and ideological tool.

SOURCE






HHS Scraps Obama Rules on Gender Identity, Abortion

Federal health officials announced a final rule Friday scrapping an Obama-era regulation that forced medical workers to perform abortions despite their religious beliefs.

The Obama administration’s 2016 regulation, already vacated by a court ruling, also redefined sex-based discrimination in health care to include questions of gender identity.

The old rule would have imposed nearly $3 billion in costs on the economy, the Department of Health and Human Services said in announcing the change. Prompted by the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, the rule had not been implemented after being halted in court.

When Congress passed the Obamacare law in 2010, it included a section broadly prohibiting discrimination among health insurance plans.

Under the  Obama administration, HHS tried to apply that provision to both abortion and gender identity in the 2016 rule. The rule defined gender identity as “one’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”

The real-world effects of prioritizing gender identity in health care became clear after a 32-year-old pregnant woman went to the emergency room complaining of abdominal pains and claiming to be a man.

The attending nurse treated the patient as a man, based on the electronic medical record, and the end result was a stillborn baby in a case first reported by The New England Journal of Medicine in May 2019.

“That’s one example where confusion over what the meaning of sex is—whether it’s based on biology or based on gender identity—can have some real-world and in this case tragic consequences. That’s why clarity is so important,” Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, told The Daily Signal.

“This [new] rule will establish clarity over the confusion that was unleashed by the Obama administration’s previous definition, which included male, female, neither, both or some combination, which is very difficult to administer in a health care setting.”

The new rule will enforce the provision by returning to the government’s interpretation of sexual discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word “sex” as male or female and as determined by biology, HHS said.

The 2016 regulation did not recognize sexual orientation as a protected characteristic, and the Trump administration’s rule doesn’t change that.

“The Obama administration itself thought that was a bridge too far. And this final rule leaves undisturbed that judgment from the Obama era,” Severino said. “So if people take issue with that, they should also take issue with the Obama administration as well.”

The Trump administration’s HHS says it will continue to enforce federal civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination in health care on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, age, and sex.

The final rule keeps a section that ensures physical access for individuals with disabilities to health care facilities, as well as communication technology to assist those who have impaired vision or hearing. 

Regulated entities still will have to provide written assurances of compliance to HHS.

“Truth matters and words have meaning,” said Ryan T. Anderson, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, asserting in a written statement that the Trump administration was right to rescind the previous rules:

In addition to being an unlawful abuse of agency power, these rules would have caused serious harm. They would have required doctors, hospitals, and health care organizations to act in ways contrary to their best medical judgments, their consciences, and the physical realities of their patients, or face steep fines and become easy targets for unreasonable and costly lawsuits.

All people should be treated with dignity and respect. Therefore, federal law should not outlaw reasonable disagreements about the best medical care for gender dysphoria. Nor should federal law force anyone to violate their pro-life conscience or the privacy and safety of others in the name of political correctness.

The revised rule provides protections for non-English speakers, including the provision of translators and interpreters.

However, the final rule relieves Americans of approximately $2.9 billion in regulatory costs over five years by eliminating a mandate for regulated health care entities to insert “notice and taglines” to patients and other consumers in 15 or more languages in almost every mailing. Those costs got passed down to consumers.

In December 2016, a federal court preliminarily enjoined the Obama administration’s attempt to redefine sex-based discrimination. The court said the provision likely contradicted existing civil rights law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

In October 2019, a second federal court agreed. That same month, the initial federal court vacated the Obama HHS rule and remanded the provisions it found unlawful back to the department.

The court action stemmed in part from an Obama administration  rule regarding abortion. Existing laws said doctors and nurses can’t be compelled to perform an abortion if it would violate thier religious beliefs or conscience.

“Other federal laws prohibit discrimination against health care providers who refuse to participate in abortion,” Severino said. “If not performing abortion is sex discrimination, then of course you have clear conflicts of federal law protecting conscience.”

Also Friday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development began to undo an Obama administration regulation by proposing a rule to allow men’s and women’s shelters to make their own sex-specific housing policies.

“The Trump administration is also correct to unwind an Obama-era housing regulation that imposed a gender identity mandate at the expense of privacy and safety,” Anderson said. “The proposed HUD rule allows shelters to determine their own policy on single-sex housing, thus protecting female-only spaces.”

SOURCE 






Indigenous peoples’ problems show Australians are in denial about their racism

This article is completely empty of any proof or evidence for what it asserts.  There is NO evidence advanced to counter the argument that Aborigines bear a large part of the blame for their own backwardness.  Mentioning a couple of anecdotes proves nothing.  You can prove anything by anecdotes


Police on horseback gathered in a circle to defend the statue of Captain James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Australians inspired by American protests, and calling attention to the plight of their country’s indigenous peoples, might have toppled the statue. The moment was replete with historical irony. The “discoverer” of Australia met his end on a Hawaiian beach, at the hands of a crowd of angry natives. The police seemed determined not to let it happen to him a second time.

The whole messy issue of Australia’s past rose up and wound itself in knots around Cook’s bronze form. The conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, condemned the protesters. But he drew a distinction between Australia’s history of white settlement and America’s. Australia had been “a pretty brutal place”, he conceded, “but there was no slavery.”

That is some gloss to the real story of white settlement. Australia’s indigenous peoples have endured land seizures, massacres, servitude and, well into the second half of the 20th century, children forcibly removed by government agencies and church missions in the name of racial assimilation—the so-called stolen generations. An uproar over his comments compelled Mr Morrison to backtrack and clarify that he had meant no legal slavery. To many of his government’s supporters, muttering over their barbies, the furore was political correctness gone mad.

Nobody denies that Australia’s indigenous peoples face bleak odds. Aboriginals and Torres Straits Islanders are 3% of the population but 27% of prisoners. Their life expectancy is eight years less than the national average. They do terribly at school.

But Australia has made strides to improve the Aboriginal condition, starting with a referendum in 1967 granting full citizens’ rights to indigenous Australians. In 1992 a High Court case over land title overturned the long-held legal fiction that Australia had been an uninhabited terra nullius for the taking. And in 2008 the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, formally apologised to the “oldest continuing cultures in human history” over the stolen generations and other past mistreatment. Mr Rudd’s and successive governments have committed to “closing the gap” in socioeconomic outcomes.

Many Australians therefore share Mr Morrison’s contention that Australia is not a fundamentally racist country but its opposite, a “fair” one. From this some conclude that Aboriginals’ remaining problems—the drinking, the domestic violence, the supposed indolence—are of their communities’ own making, not a consequence of discrimination. One columnist even claims that the protesters are “enablers for systemic and entrenched indigenous problems to fester”.

In the past, bottom-up efforts by indigenous folk to improve their lot tended to work only if the political climate encouraged it. The “Uluru statement from the heart” in 2017, which called for constitutional change to give indigenous Australians a special voice in laws and policies that concerned them, was rejected by the ruling coalition, on the ground that the proposed body would constitute a third legislative chamber.

That argument, Mr Rudd contends, is “bullshit”: the body would have had no authority to introduce or vote on legislation. Rather, the rejection was a dogwhistle to the same kinds of voters who were encouraged to believe, after the High Court ruling on land rights, that Aboriginals would soon be camping in their back yard. Mr Morrison’s criticism of protesters was intended for much the same audience.

It is no surprise then that indigenous people believe Australia does not offer them a fair go. “There’s a view here that we’re all mates,” says Pat Anderson, an Aboriginal leader. “But this is a mythology they tell themselves.” Petty racism abounds. One Aussie-rules star, Adam Goodes, who complained when a 13-yearold called him an ape, was booed into early retirement.

Yet some think the social and political ground might soon shift. A younger generation of indigenous Australians, many better educated than their parents, is beginning to puncture the cosy selfimage of Australia projected by the likes of Mr Morrison—using wit to get their point across. It was hardly salutary that a recent study concluded that three out of four Australians have a “racial bias” against Aboriginals. But it did bring cheer when Briggs, an indigenous rapper, tweeted that the fourth Australian was probably “conducting the survey”.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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