San Bernadino Terrorism and Radicalization

[kandrathe]

Too many good links to chose from I didn't bother putting. Next time, Google before opening your mouth.

The trouble with the internet is there is sometimes too much data, without much filtering, or analytical scrutiny.

The problem with the interpretation of statistics on the links you provided;

• This is a national tally, whereas people of color are geographically focused. The proper way to cite this would be to look at locality, rather than a nationwide aggregate. For example, here in my state of Minnesota, black people make up just under 6% of the population, however they are about 35% of the prison population. Native Americans make up about 1% of our state population, but comprise 10% of the prison population. Even looking at this as a statewide issue is too broad.
  
• This is an opinion piece, which is twisting the source statistics. But again, the view is not a fair comparison of police killings in relation to the population. A better comparison would be one that related the data "per capita" like The Counted -- the source cited in the article, but was misread, probably intentionally, to argue that there is not a problem. My reading shows that black people are more than twice a likely to be killed than other races.
  
• Same source as the above, with the same misinterpretation of the charts.

To frame the statistical issues more generally. Are apples the "favorite" fruit (29% of the fruit consumption) in the US due to their price and availability? How about in Florida, or California where citrus is more abundant?

But, allow me to frame the police shooting issue the way I see it. Most people of color live in certain neighborhoods in the largest urban areas due to historic redlining by financial institutions, and realtor racial profiling. The per capita incarceration rates in certain neighborhoods is therefore very, very high. Poverty, and substance abuse yields more crime which has been used to justify more intensive "community policing", "stop and frisk", and "zero tolerance zones".

Looking at a *real* study -- Assessing the Effect of Race Bias in Post-traffic Stop Outcomes Using Propensity Scores



In summary then, people of color face discrimination in housing, which puts them into higher crime areas which have more intense policing. And, within these high intensity policing zones, people of color face higher rates of scrutiny by police, and thus, are arrested, and incarcerated at higher rates. They also get shot by police twice as often.

What exactly is racism?

I'm not really so concerned with the semantics, or artificial means of attempting to enforce equality. For me, it's really the end results that matter. The injustice occurs whenever a person is disproportionately accused, suspected, or denied any common social transaction based upon subjective biased judgements. You may not be able to see it in each unique social transaction, however in aggregate, adjusting for other factors you can see trends. My field involves studying education; ACT - Do race/ethnicity-based student achievement gaps grow over time? My answer, supported by data analysis, is most definitely. Poor outcomes in education, perpetuate lower enrollment in college, and lower income attainment throughout the lifetime. Disenfranchisement in one domain, like education, propagates into career, and housing (see above).

They conclude the above article in what I would call a mostly wishy-washy manner;

This analysis indicates a seemingly intractable aspect of academic achievement gaps—higher entering achievement levels are related to higher growth rates, resulting in greater race/ethnicity-based achievement gaps over time. Despite family income and parental education levels being related to differences in student academic achievement, these factors inherently do not suggest an immediately workable set of policy or practice recommendations. In fact, the reasons for such academic gaps are numerous and, admittedly, are not all explored within this brief analysis (e.g., student course-taking patterns, educational and career aspirations, and other institutional factors).

In education, we know that what matters is setting reasonably high expectations for all students, then implementing intensive coaching to meet each students goals, and set new higher goals. For my sons, having two parents who can help keep a them on track and focused on the best possible outcomes is crucial. They don't do as well as I'd like sometimes, but I'm focused on coaching them where they are at, and helping them get better. My eldest goes to a very high achieving secondary school, but he's struggling since he's not very self motivated, and is not getting much encouragement from his teachers. They seem very content to deliver the curriculum, and assess the results without intervening to affect the outcome. That is, I feel like he gets zero coaching. If my eldest son had parents who were unable to be his coaches, he'd be failing and dropping out of school.

So then, circling back to the main topic. These mass violence incidents seem to dissemble into three arguments; 1) the ability to access weapons, 2) the care of mentally ill, or 3) an extremist philosophy. In the San Bernadino terrorist mass murder, there is a political knee jerk xenophobic focus on "rounding up the extremists", but I'd place the blame pretty squarely on the FBI's inability to discover the plotting of this "group" (which appears to be a guy with his new jihadist wife and his friend so far). Then again, this FBI blind spot is more reminiscent of the OK City bombing, the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, or the Boston Marathon Bombing. Each of these were violence committed in the name of some (wrong headed) cause. We cannot know the intentions of people, but we can be suspicious of their militant actions. It seems had anyone cared to look, this guy was a red flag for many years (as were Tim McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, or Tamerlan Tsarnaev).