This is, very unfortunately, looking at the situation from the wrong end.
Look at the issue from the perspective of dealing with dogs.
It is well-known that some breeds are more aggressive than others. When suddenly confronted by a pit bull is it appropriate to perceive yourself as at greater risk than if suddenly confronted by a golden retriever, all else being equal?
Obviously it is. Is the difference in breed the only relevant factor? Obviously not. Behavior is more important.
It is interesting that this analogy has been used in reverse, to claim that it is "breedist" or something equally silly to recognize this difference.
Let us say your chance of being assaulted in a black neighborhood is one in 10,000 on any given day and in a white neighborhood one in 100,000. The relevant issue is the difference in risk, not the risk factor itself.
Your chance of dying in a car crash is very low on any given day. That doesn't mean that driving without a seat belt is a good idea, even though your risk of dying without it is low.
It is interesting that up to and through the 50s, race riots consisted largely of whites attacking blacks. Since then they have consisted largely of blacks attacking whites.
I am personally astonished by the enormous reservoir of goodwill by most white Americans towards black Americans. Have expected (not wanted, but expected) the mythical "white backlash" for decades. But the reservoir is not infinite in extent.
Oddly, statistics show that as a breed, Golden Retrievers and Pit Bulls are in the same range of aggressiveness. Pit Bulls are perceived to be more dangerous, and for that reason some think more poeple raise them to be aggressive because they want an aggressive dog as a weapon, and that makes them more dangerous. But Golden Retrievers really are listed as one of the safest dogs.
You are absolutely correct that, because of “what we know”, people when confronted with a random dog will feel more threatened by a pit bull than a Dachshund.
But how do you use that information? Do you teach your children to take “special care” around what they think is a “pit bull”? Do you have training sessions for dog identification? About 16 people are killed by dogs each year, and some of them are not pit bulls; so if you tell your kid too much about avoiding “pit bulls”, will they fail to ignore the “really nice dog” who is being mistreated by his owner and therefore will lash out if you try to pet them?
Of course, you can reasonably tell your kid to never go near ANY dog that they don’t know. That is also a great rule for kids when dealing with people. But training people to be scared of pit bulls means that people act differently around pit bulls. In fact, there is some anecdotal evidence that people get more aggressive around pit bulls, EXPECTING to be attacked, and this invokes more aggression in the dogs, thus bringing on the attack they feared.
Dogs are pets. We are talking about fellow human beings. Imagine a world where every white child is trained that they should fear black people, should avoid black people, shouldn’t stop to help black people. They should not go to places where black people are. They should expect black people to be stupid, to be aggressive, to do a bad job at work. They should never vote for a black person because they make lousy politicians. When confronting a black person, they should assume that black person is going to cause them harm, and be prepared to strike first if necessary. And if they happen to find a really nice black person, they should work hard to pretend to be friends with them, because it’s good to have a pet black person.
I find it remarkable that so many people want to actually DEFEND that last paragraph, simply because it was written by a guy who worked at National Review, and the “left” is attacking him for it. You can’t treat human beings like dogs, and we will not survive as a society if we train our children to fear, loathe, hate, and ostracize entire races of people.
Of course, if I am walking in an unfamiliar place, and see someone who is acting suspicious, and they are black, I might feel more anxious — I was raised in that environment; I think I’d be suspicious regardless of race. I would also avoid large groups of kids of any race if they looked like they were up to no good. There are places I don’t walk when I am walking, especially at night, even in my own surroundings, because one area has a reputation of having more crime (it is a majority hispanic neighborhood with a large other minority population, and quite close in fact to where Zimmerman grew up — I live in Zimmerman’s old home town).
People see some of what Derb wrote and think it sounds reasonable, and ignore all the things he said that were well beyond polite. One writer at NR made a good point that Derbyshire may have been angry because Marion Barry gets away with attacking asians, and Derb is married to an Asian. I think if Derb had made it clear he was being sarcastic, writing satire, and was trying to point out the double-standard where his wife can be attacked by a black politician with no consequence, he would still have a job.
The problem is that too many people think Derb actually believed everything he wrote. I have no idea — I didn’t think he meant it, but I don’t know the guy.
As to your point about “relative risk”, my argument is that it is NOT particularly relevant. If you were trying to live the safest life possible, and had a choice with no other consequence where the ONLY decision was which street to walk down, it would be relevant that one street is “10 times more dangerous”. But nothing is in such a vacuum. The harm to teaching people to live a life in fear of an entire race of people is far greater than the minor increase in risk of not always choosing the more absolutely safe path.
There was an interesting statistic leading up to the last powerball lottery. Apparently, if you drove your car more than a mile to buy a ticket, you were more likely statistically to get killed in a car accident than to actually win the lottery. So, should everybody have stayed home and not bought tickets? Well, no, because while driving is dangerous, people want to drive because there are great benefits.
And we don’t all buy the safest car to drive, even though the statistics tell us which cars are safer. We don’t all buy the safest dog, or live in the safest neighborhood, or work at the safest job. We judge our happiness, satisfaction, hundreds of other things, and properly dismiss the minor risk of harm, even though one job is 10 times as dangerous as the next job.