Racist, Reactionary, Evil, Hateful, and Loathsome (Was Re: [lbo-talk] Villon on executions)

[Miles Jackson]

Bill Bartlett wrote:
> At 1:03 PM -0500 16/12/05, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> 
>> Any
>> competent statistician will tell you that inferences based on sample N=27
>> split four ways  are not very robust - to say the least.
> 
> 
> The 27 cases were not a "sample", it wasn't a sample of the 27 victims, 
> but the entire number of victims:
> 
> "My listeners were surprised to learn that the majority of those we 
> Californians have put to death have been white. But they were astonished 
> when I added this statistic: Among the 27 victims of these 12 condemned 
> prisoners, [since 1992] not a single one was African-American! (Five 
> were Asian; three were Latinos; and 19 were white.)"
> 
>  "Sampling error" is a risk when a small number of cases are being used 
> to represent a larger population, but since it wasn't a sample, sampling 
> error can't apply. Your objection on the basis of possible sampling 
> error is misguided.

Woj will probably reply, but I can't resist jumping in.  Even if the 
population of interest is 12 convicted murderers on death row (or their 
27 victims), it is possible that the 0% representation of African 
Americans could have occurred by chance.  It's like flipping a coin: if 
you flip a fair coin just a few times, it is possible that you could get 

   a run of flips that deviate substantially from 50% heads and 50% 
tails.  In the same way, even if there were no substantial racial bias 
or disparity in homicide sentencing, you could get 12 murderers whose 
victim pool does not perfectly represent the existing proportions of 
ethnic groups living in their area.

On the other hand, I recall larger scale studies that show the same 
effect: in regression models that include a variety of sociodemographic 
factors, the race of the victim is a statistically signficant predictor 
of a death penalty sentence in homicide cases.  If I recall this 
correctly, Woj's criticism is valid for the example that Dennis C. 
brought up, but not for these larger scale archival studies.

Miles