[ellery]

Grrr...that makes me so mad. I saw Al Sharpton on with Bill O' Reilly, talking about racial profiling. I think Al is a slickster, but for some reason I kinda like him. Anyway, Bill was citing stats in support of profiling, and Al just smiled and said, "C'mon, Bill, you know that if black people are stopped disproportionally, then black people will be caught committing crime disproportionally." Bill had to agree -- can't argue with that math.

PS: I was also driving around a Saab in '88 (in fact, I still am). I didn't get any stares at all out in rural Western PA (aside from dirty looks from folks who think I should have been driving an American car:-)).

[Wordsmith]

"C'mon, Bill, you know that if black people are stopped disproportionally, then black people will be caught committing crime disproportionally."

Wow, that's an interesting argument I haven't specifically come across before. Turns it into a chicken-or-the-egg question. Are more blacks stopped because proportionately blacks commit more crime, or are more blacks caught for crime because more blacks are stopped?

[On the Road to Serfdom]

and Al just smiled and said, "C'mon, Bill, you know that if black people are stopped disproportionally, then black people will be caught committing crime disproportionally." Bill had to agree -- can't argue with that math.

It is more logic than math and it has been disproven in the case of speeding at least. A study was done with pictures of 40,000 motorists photographed with speed cameras like the ones they use to give out tickets. The drivers' faces were identified by race from the pictures by a panel of people who did not know the speed of the car. Then the speeds were matched up with the race and black people were more likely to be speeding (defined ahead of time as >15mph) than white people, even more so than they were being pulled over for. In other words, if anything, a black speeder is less likely to be caught than a white speeder. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/674707/posts