On 1/16/2017 11:44 AM, Mirimir wrote:
What's racist is judging someone, based on race. It's unreliable. First, because reliably determining someone's race is nontrivial.
It is a lot easier, and a lot more reliable, to determine someone's race, than to determine their character. And their race often gives a good enough prediction of certain important aspects of their character. In particular, in the events leading to the mortgage meltdown, race was a better predictor of propensity to default on one's mortgage than any of the permissible credit characteristics. You are walking down a dark street. Two other people are also walking down that street. One is a black male, one is a white male. The black male is quite unlikely to murder you. But if you are worried about being murdered, and you probably should be, he is one hell of a lot more likely to murder you than the white male. About thirteen times more likely in fact. Similarly, if you are a banker who is worried that someone is going to blow off his mortgage ... well doubtless there are a lot of blacks, probably most of those blacks with good credit ratings, who will not blow off their mortgage. But if someone is black with a good credit rating, he is one hell of a lot more likely to blow off his mortgage than someone who is white with a good credit rating. The more you know about a debtor, the less is race adds to accuracy of predicting the likelihood of default. But even if you have complete credit data, race is still substantially predictive. The chance of a white man and a black man with equal credit ratings defaulting on a mortgage is far from equal. Similarly, if a white man and a black man both have long and horrible criminal records, they are about equally likely to murder you. But if a white man and a black man both have minor criminal records, the chance that the black man will go on to commit murder is far from equal.