Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

A few hours ago I put up a posting linking to a Laurence Auster piece that contrasts black-on-white rape figures with white-on-black rape figures. My point in putting up the posting was to ask this question: Is it a good thing or a bad thing that our mainstream press doesn't discuss these kinds of statistics?

Visitors Peter and Peter Johnson have alerted me to the fact that Auster's figures are in some dispute. The stats that seem far more likely are awful enough but nothing like the ones Auster used. They still seem to me much worth taking note of and discussing; it also seems to me worth saying that it's absurd that these figures should be so hard to get hold of and make sense of in the first place. But, given that the general discussion has veered off in the direction of accuracy, percentages, definitions, and survey methods, none of which I know a darned thing about, the responsible thing now seems to me to be to take my previous posting down, which I've done.

The discussions at Half Sigma and at Auster's own blog will bring the curious up to date.

Best,

Michael

Well, cripes, that's why we should be discussing the issues openly - to get our facts straight if for no other reason. I mentioned those same Justice Department figures in a comment here a few weeks ago. Like Auster and almost all of his commenters (pro and con) I looked only at the 2005 series, in which black attackers accounted for 33% of sexual assaults on whites. Apparently, 2005 was a fluke. (The number of sexual assaults even in a sample size of 135,000 is likely to be small and therefore variable from year to year.) So the overall crime figures are not quite so striking. Still pretty interesting, if you like statistics.

Ever since I first began travelled to the States in the 80s, I've been struck by how big a role race played in people's outlook. It's a very interesting issue. Black poverty and black crime are part of it, besides more positive things we all know about.

Posted by: Intellectual Pariah on May 8, 2007 9:23 PM






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