Well, this is unrelated, but it's about crime and minorities.
I have wondered whether the ethnic classification of the "perps" is valid since 'race' seems to me not causally relevant in why crimes are committed (though ironically I wouldn't say the same thing about victimisation--I think racialized minorities are on account of their racialisation and dehumanisation more likely to be victimized by, among others, racialised minorities).
At any rate, why do we need a racial breakdown of who carjacks? Why is it interesting if over 50% of carjackings are done by blacks? Does being black have anything to do with why someone jacks someone up in a car? If so, in what precise sense?
And why do cops know as common sense what percentage of grave felonies are committed by minorities but not but what small percentage of minorities have committed such felonies...It can't be simply a lapse in logic or at least the lapse must be explained since its murderous effect is clear for everyone to see after the Diallo killing. And since the lapse also appears in the the Sunday Magazine section of the liberal NYT.
And why aren't we concerned with what percentage of carjackings are committed by people who are left handed or whose big toes are smaller than their adjacent ones? Why are we so sure that those will be causally less significant variables than race in the determination of car jacking propensity once confounding factors have been controlled for? What is it about race that it becomes the object of focus?
See you all on the New Jersey turnpike.
Yours, Rakesh