Arrested Development: The Pre-school to Suspension Pipeline

[Toni]

I lived in the upper midwest for more than 20 years. It is where most of my kids were raised; two of them started preschool here and they all attended elementary school, middle and high school and university in the upper midwest. I spent a great deal of time working as a volunteer in all of their schools and also worked in an anti-poverty program which was directed at preschoolers and their families. Being the upper midwest, the population is almost entirely white, with immigrants from S.E. Asia and Native Americans outnumbering blacks in the smaller towns where I raised my kids.

IOW, all of your vast experience is completely non-representative of the situations in which most black kids are getting suspended, which is in the places where most black kids are. Any racism, no matter how rampant in your "almost entirely white" midwest town would account for about .0001% of the black kids getting suspended, which is mostly happening in mostly black areas where most of the kids in the class are black and many of the teachers are black. The kids being suspended are a fraction of their class, mostly comprised of fellow minorities that are somehow not getting suspended, despite being minority. Thus, the primary causes are clearly not racism by the teacher by things that have some correlation with race but on which black kids differ from each other (which can include their own traits, but also those of their parents, the disciplinary styles of their varied teachers, or the school contexts they are in.

Besides, the fact that you would act skeptical about how SES factors and parenting resources could possibly impact a kids behavior undermines any credibility you have in discerning the variables at play even within your own limited and non-representative personal experiences.

FWIW, I spent quite a number of years living in two different major metropolitan areas with a predominately black population. In fact, that is where my two oldest children started school.

I spoke of the upper midwest because that is where I had the greatest opportunity to spend time in schools.

Perhaps you believe that people are vastly different in large cities compared with smaller cities. I've lived in both and spent a number of years working with people from all over the world. I've come to the conclusion that people are people, no matter where they were born or raised. Some things are easier to pick out in smaller cities is all that's different.

 

[Metaphor]

He did not claim that blacks committed a disproportionate number of crimes but that they commit more of almost any type of crime--except rich white people crime.

It makes no sense that he would be talking about raw numbers. White people are probably the majority of sufferers of Type 2 diabetes in America (in raw numbers), but if you were to say that I would say it's almost intentionally misleading -- because Black people are disproportionately more likely to have Type 2 diabetes. To talk about 'raw numbers' would mean I'd be able to scupper any public health efforts to reduce Type 2 diabetes in Black communities by saying 'the majority of sufferers are not Black'.

Hell, it's likely the case that heterosexual men have more anal sex than homosexual men -- if you're going to count raw numbers. But why would you do that? Raw numbers, without any context, without any reference to the base rate of something, present at best incomplete information about something. Indeed, Blacks only make up 48% of suspensions, so they're not the majority! There's no problem!

So, in context: the fact that Black children are disproportionately more likely to come from single-parent families is meaningful in explaining the higher suspension rate of Black students. Of course, it won't explain all of the differential, any more than any single factor has ever explained a complex social phenomenon. But to suggest it explains none of it is to bitchslap reality in the face.

 

[Toni]

He did not claim that blacks committed a disproportionate number of crimes but that they commit more of almost any type of crime--except rich white people crime.

It makes no sense that he would be talking about raw numbers. White people are probably the majority of sufferers of Type 2 diabetes in America (in raw numbers), but if you were to say that I would say it's almost intentionally misleading -- because Black people are disproportionately more likely to have Type 2 diabetes. To talk about 'raw numbers' would mean I'd be able to scupper any public health efforts to reduce Type 2 diabetes in Black communities by saying 'the majority of sufferers are not Black'.

Hell, it's likely the case that heterosexual men have more anal sex than homosexual men -- if you're going to count raw numbers. But why would you do that? Raw numbers, without any context, without any reference to the base rate of something, present at best incomplete information about something. Indeed, Blacks only make up 48% of suspensions, so they're not the majority! There's no problem!

So, in context: the fact that Black children are disproportionately more likely to come from single-parent families is meaningful in explaining the higher suspension rate of Black students. Of course, it won't explain all of the differential, any more than any single factor has ever explained a complex social phenomenon. But to suggest it explains none of it is to bitchslap reality in the face.

You'll have to take it up with him about why he said what he did and what he meant. Personally, I think he meant it as raw numbers because it is a commonly held misperception helped along by mass media. Still, it is what he said and here's why I think that is important:

In the U.S. there is a widely held misperception that blacks commit most of the crime. Not proportionally more crime, but sheer raw numbers: most of the crime. This is false and dramatically false. White crime vastly outnumbers crimes committed by blacks in sheer numbers in almost every single category. And blacks are twice as likely as whites to be victims of violent crime:



Conservatives are fond of quoting that the overwhelming majority of crimes committed against black people are committed by other black people. That is true. But likewise, most crimes committed against white people are committed by other white people. The same is true of any other racial or ethnic group. Because the truth is that most criminal acts are committed against someone known to the victim. Often family members or close acquaintances/associates.


Despite this fact, the stereotype held by many (white or at least not black) Americans is that blacks are committing all of the crimes except, as doubting it pointed out: white collar crime because we all 'know' that black people don't hold white collar positions--even though that is also not true. By extension, blacks are considered to be more of a threat to white people than other white people, although the reality is that most white crime victims are victimized by other white people--and usually people they know to some extent. Which is true for black people, Hispanics, etc. However, blacks and persons of mixed race had much greater rates of crimes against them committed by strangers or acquaintances (vs family members or close associates) compared with whites or persons of any other race.

The fact that blacks, especially black males, are perceived to be a much greater treat to white people than other white people---contrary to all facts and statistics--accounts for a very good portion of WHY black teenagers and young black boys are considered to be so threatening in schools. The same behavior committed by two students: one black, one white: the black student's behavior usually is regarded as being more serious, more threatening.

I think up thread you agreed that boys are often treated more harshly than girls are in school settings, that they get in trouble more often. I think you agreed that at least part of the reason was sexism. I certainly do believe that to be the case--and I think it would be a good topic for another thread.

If sexism accounts for differences in treatment of girls vs boys in school settings, why wouldn't it make sense that race also accounts for differences in treatment of blacks vs whites?

 

[laughing dog]

We also have a mountain of evidence that countless other factors greatly increase the odds of suspension. So, the general stats don't point any more to race in this particular case than to other factors. Which means the OP anecdote is nothing more than that, and the odds are much higher that is was 1 of the countless other differences that are either completely unrelated to race or only related to race indirectly and not at all a case of racial bias by the teacher....

One of the peaks of these mountains of statistics is the 3 to 1 factor. Other than obsfucating that fact, nothing you have written deals with that reality. Yes, we could do countless other studies to clearly demonstrate what are the other true casual factors (assuming, of course, there is some consensus in moving from statistical correlation to social causal factors in this situation). In the meantime, the problem continues.


On the otherhand, if race appears to be a problem, why not deal with it? What is the problem with acknowledging it may be problem and dealing with it in a reasonable manner?

 

[Metaphor]

In the U.S. there is a widely held misperception that blacks commit most of the crime. Not proportionally more crime, but sheer raw numbers: most of the crime. This is false and dramatically false.

But it's not dramatically false: in the table you linked to, the majority of some crimes, by raw numbers, are committed by Blacks, and others are close to 50%.

White crime vastly outnumbers crimes committed by blacks in sheer numbers in almost every single category. And blacks are twice as likely as whites to be victims of violent crime:

Yes, and men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than women, but not much is ever said about that.

By extension, blacks are considered to be more of a threat to white people than other white people, although the reality is that most white crime victims are victimized by other white people--and usually people they know to some extent.

Except that the majority of crimes where the criminal and the victim are discordant for race (White or Black), there are 15 times as many Black criminal-White victim crimes as there are White criminal-Black victim crimes.

The fact that blacks, especially black males, are perceived to be a much greater treat to white people than other white people---contrary to all facts and statistics-

But it's not contrary to all facts and statistics. A black male walking down the street is much more likely to rob you than a white male walking down the street (and of course, both are much more likely to rob you than a woman is to rob you). And, no-one faults a woman for feeling more apprehension if a male walks into an elevator with her. Even though the chance of her being raped by that particular male in that elevator are miniscule, you wouldn't tell her she is irrational to believe she'd be safer if a female had walked in, because she's not safer.

-accounts for a very good portion of WHY black teenagers and young black boys are considered to be so threatening in schools. The same behavior committed by two students: one black, one white: the black student's behavior usually is regarded as being more serious, more threatening.

That might be the case, in fact, it probably is the case, but that doesn't mean all the differential in behavioural problems (and suspensions for them) are due to race-biased perceptions by teachers.

I think up thread you agreed that boys are often treated more harshly than girls are in school settings, that they get in trouble more often. I think you agreed that at least part of the reason was sexism.

No, that isn't what I said. I believe boys actually do more things that should get them into trouble, like physical violence, compared to girls. There's no doubt in my mind that boys more often engaged in fisticuffs in my all boys highschool than girls did in my sister's all girl highschool.

Now, if a boy was more likely to be suspended for the exact same incident than a girl, that appears to me a sexist double standard. But boys are still more likely to engage in the behaviour that warrants suspension.

If sexism accounts for differences in treatment of girls vs boys in school settings, why wouldn't it make sense that race also accounts for differences in treatment of blacks vs whites?

No: if boys and girls are suspended at different rates, at least part of that can be explained by entirely non-sexist application of rules for suspending people with problem behaviours, because boys are more likely to have problem behaviours.

Men make up less than 50% of the population but they make up nearly all of the people executed in the United States for murder.

This requires no special invocation of a hopelessly and institutionally sexist justice system, but merely plain acknowledgment that men commited most of the murders that end them up on death row.

 

[Toni]

But it's not dramatically false: in the table you linked to, the majority of some crimes, by raw numbers, are committed by Blacks, and others are close to 50%.

I have not been successful at copying over tables so I will go line by line for the first 5 crime categories. I have highlighted the highest number for ease:

Total Number of Arrests: 9,499,725
Whites: 6,578,133
Blacks: 2,697,539
American Indian/Alaskan Native: 142,422
Asian or Pacific Islander: 81,631

Total murders/non-manslaughter 8,341
White 4,000
Black 4,149
American Indian/Alaskan Native 105
Asian or Pacific Islander 87

Total Number of Forcible rape: 14,611
Whites: 9,504
Blacks: 4,811
American Indian/Alaskan Native: 170
Asian or Pacific Islander: 126

Total Robbery: 18,353
White: 5,580
Black 12, 574
American Indian/Alaskan Native 81
Asian or Pacific Islander 118

Total aggravated assault: 31,173
White 17,372
Black 13, 175
American Indian/Alaskan Native 376
Asian or Pacific Islander 249

Total Burglary 227,899
White 151,934
Black 72,244
American Indian/Alaskan Native 2,095
Asian or Pacific Islander 1,626


It's too late in the evening for me to go through every single category of crime but in almost all categories, whites account for most of the crimes.

Yes, and men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than women, but not much is ever said about that.

A) Way to change the subject and B) Now that you did, BLACK males are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than white males.

Except that the majority of crimes where the criminal and the victim are discordant for race (White or Black), there are 15 times as many Black criminal-White victim crimes as there are White criminal-Black victim crimes.

Actually, blacks and mixed race individuals are twice as likely as whites to be victims of crimes committed by strangers or acquaintances vs family members and close associates. ALL groups are more likely to be the victim of someone known to them and of the same racial group.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vvcs9310.pdf

See page 14, Appendix Table 4

But it's not contrary to all facts and statistics. A black male walking down the street is much more likely to rob you than a white male walking down the street (and of course, both are much more likely to rob you than a woman is to rob you). And, no-one faults a woman for feeling more apprehension if a male walks into an elevator with her. Even though the chance of her being raped by that particular male in that elevator are miniscule, you wouldn't tell her she is irrational to believe she'd be safer if a female had walked in, because she's not safer.

Actually, that's not true at all.

-accounts for a very good portion of WHY black teenagers and young black boys are considered to be so threatening in schools. The same behavior committed by two students: one black, one white: the black student's behavior usually is regarded as being more serious, more threatening.

That might be the case, in fact, it probably is the case, but that doesn't mean all the differential in behavioural problems (and suspensions for them) are due to race-biased perceptions by teachers.

No one has suggested that it is the reason for ALL of the differential but it certainly does account for a significant portion of the differential.

 

[Metaphor]

It's too late in the evening for me to go through every single category of crime but in almost all categories, whites account for most of the crimes.

Whites also probably account for most abortions. It's meaningless to look at raw numbers in such a context, don't you think?

A) Way to change the subject and B) Now that you did, BLACK males are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than white males.

Yes, they are more likely. But the majority of victims of crime are not Black!

Can you see how talking about raw numbers without context is misleading?

Actually, blacks and mixed race individuals are twice as likely as whites to be victims of crimes committed by strangers or acquaintances vs family members and close associates. ALL groups are more likely to be the victim of someone known to them and of the same racial group.

This has no connection to the claim I made. At all.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc.../crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl06.xls

In 2010, there were 3,327 White victims of homicide and 2,720 Black victims, where partial or complete offender information is known. The majority of victims were killed by someone of their own race.

However,

Of the White victims, 447 or 13% where killed by a Black offender.
Of the Black victims, 218 or 8% were killed by a White offender.

Of the 665 'inter-racial' victims, two thirds were Black offender-White victim.

Actually, that's not true at all.

What's not true? That a man is more likely to rape a woman than a woman is likely to rape a woman? I assure you, it's true.

No one has suggested that it is the reason for ALL of the differential but it certainly does account for a significant portion of the differential.

But how do you know it's a 'significant portion'?

 

[Toni]

Whites also probably account for most abortions. It's meaningless to look at raw numbers in such a context, don't you think?

A) Way to change the subject and B) Now that you did, BLACK males are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than white males.

Yes, they are more likely. But the majority of victims of crime are not Black!

Can you see how talking about raw numbers without context is misleading?

Do you know what else is misleading? Outright saying that most crime is committed by blacks when that is demonstrably false. By sheer numbers, whites commit the vast majority of most crimes in the U.S. and the most crime overall. This is contrary to what was claimed by doubtingt and actually, by you:

But it's not dramatically false: in the table you linked to, the majority of some crimes, by raw numbers, are committed by Blacks, and others are close to 50%.

Which, while technically correct--blacks were arrested for >50% of two categories of crime out of what? 30 categories--quite deceiving as blacks do not commit nearly as many crimes as do whites.

As I mentioned: this is important as the assumption made by MANY is that most crime is committed by blacks, which is absolutely false. But people form opinions of an entire demographic on that bit of falsehood, to the detriment of all.



Since you love context so much, try this link. See Table 6. Personal crimes, 2008: Number of victimizations and victimization rates for persons age 12 or older, by type of crime and sex and race of victims Page 18 and 19

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus0801.pdf

 

[doubtingt]

Your own link shows him to be right -- Blacks commit more of almost every type of crime. Take the very first crime in Table 43: Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter. 49.7% of arrests. You don't really think that Blacks make up 49.7% of people in America do you??

You are mistaken:

<snip>
BTW, the underlying causal processes are largely the same one's responsible for why blacks commit more of almost type of crime, except for crimes like insider trading and violating EPA rules and other crimes for which you need relatively high levels of wealth or power in order to have the opportunity to commit them.

<snip>

He did not claim that blacks committed a disproportionate number of crimes but that they commit more of almost any type of crime--except rich white people crime.

I would never intend to refer to raw frequency when comparing categories because such raw numbers unweighted by base rates have no meaning and are uninterpretable, and because the numbers from the OP to be explained are not raw numbers but frequencies. So, sure I failed to anticipate anyone would think that raw frequencies matter, and did not specify proportional numbers to avoid that interpretation. But whether the raw number or the proportional number in higher, either one refutes your argument and undermines your efforts to infer racism from the OP's 3:1 suspension stat. IOW, the distinction in this case between raw frequencies and proportional frequencies is irrelevant to the argument, which is why you are trying to use it as a red herring distraction since anything relevant refutes your position an shows the absurdity of your faith based denial of basic facts about predictors of behavioral problems and their relation to race.

So, the real question is how could any remotely reasonable person go to the effort to cite the stats your cited, without acknowledging that those very stats refute your own position and show that rule-violating "bad behavior" is generally much more frequent (2-5 times for most crimes) among blacks, which corresponds with black pre-schoolers being 3 times more likely to engage in behavior that gets them suspended (regardless of whether suspension is the optimal response to such behaviors in general).
You've tried to dodge the fact that any reasonable and non-racist attempt to explain the greater crimes rates for blacks relies upon the same kinds of SES, education, parent-related, and community-related variables that I posited to explain why black kids get suspended more often. Your pretense of denying the plausibility of how these variables might impact behavior requires you to deny that these variables or anything correlated with them have anything to do with other well established worse outcomes for blacks, including their higher crime rates and lower academic achievement. So, I ask you "Do you acknowledge that variables other than skin color that include or are correlated with SES, education, or parental-resources have an impact upon the negative outcomes that blacks disproportionately experience, including criminal behavior and lower educational achievement?"
If your answer is "No", then what do you attribute these worse outcomes to?, because denying the impact of these variables is just what racists do who want to attribute the outcomes to the more direct impact of race itself.
If your answer is "Yes", then how could you possibly pretend not to see how and why such variables would impact negative outcomes related to bad behavior in school, given that the mechanisms would be largely the same as for those other outcomes?

Please answer these questions at the end rather than trying to throw another red herring into the mix to distract from the indefensibility of your position.

 

[Toni]

You are mistaken:

<snip>
BTW, the underlying causal processes are largely the same one's responsible for why blacks commit more of almost type of crime, except for crimes like insider trading and violating EPA rules and other crimes for which you need relatively high levels of wealth or power in order to have the opportunity to commit them.

<snip>

He did not claim that blacks committed a disproportionate number of crimes but that they commit more of almost any type of crime--except rich white people crime.

I would never intend to refer to raw frequency when comparing categories because such raw numbers unweighted by base rates have no meaning and are uninterpretable, and because the numbers from the OP to be explained are not raw numbers but frequencies. So, sure I failed to anticipate anyone would think that raw frequencies matter, and did not specify proportional numbers to avoid that interpretation. But whether the raw number or the proportional number in higher, either one refutes your argument and undermines your efforts to infer racism from the OP's 3:1 suspension stat. IOW, the distinction in this case between raw frequencies and proportional frequencies is irrelevant to the argument, which is why you are trying to use it as a red herring distraction since anything relevant refutes your position an shows the absurdity of your faith based denial of basic facts about predictors of behavioral problems and their relation to race.

So, the real question is how could any remotely reasonable person go to the effort to cite the stats your cited, without acknowledging that those very stats refute your own position and show that rule-violating "bad behavior" is generally much more frequent (2-5 times for most crimes) among blacks, which corresponds with black pre-schoolers being 3 times more likely to engage in behavior that gets them suspended (regardless of whether suspension is the optimal response to such behaviors in general).
You've tried to dodge the fact that any reasonable and non-racist attempt to explain the greater crimes rates for blacks relies upon the same kinds of SES, education, parent-related, and community-related variables that I posited to explain why black kids get suspended more often. Your pretense of denying the plausibility of how these variables might impact behavior requires you to deny that these variables or anything correlated with them have anything to do with other well established worse outcomes for blacks, including their higher crime rates and lower academic achievement. So, I ask you "Do you acknowledge that variables other than skin color that include or are correlated with SES, education, or parental-resources have an impact upon the negative outcomes that blacks disproportionately experience, including criminal behavior and lower educational achievement?"
If your answer is "No", then what do you attribute these worse outcomes to?, because denying the impact of these variables is just what racists do who want to attribute the outcomes to the more direct impact of race itself.
If your answer is "Yes", then how could you possibly pretend not to see how and why such variables would impact negative outcomes related to bad behavior in school, given that the mechanisms would be largely the same as for those other outcomes?

Please answer these questions at the end rather than trying to throw another red herring into the mix to distract from the indefensibility of your position.

I haven't 'dodged' anything. You made a patently false statement and you haven't actually backed down from it. In fact, your statement is one frequently bandied about by conservative media and even main stream media. In fact, blacks do not commit the most crime and the rate of victimization by crime is higher for blacks than it is for whites.

If you view a child as being more likely to misbehave, then you will see more misbehavior. Because of your own bias. Just as if you believe someone to be crazy, then almost anything they say or do seems crazy.

Start in pre-school and decide that a kid--any kid--is 'bad.' Or 'uncontrollable.' Or 'not very smart.' Repeat in elementary school. Continue in middle school and high school. Is it any wonder that that kid is more likely to be given detentions and suspensions? To under-achieve? To drop out?

Look, I've watched this happen, starting when I was in elementary school, with plenty of white kids who the teacher saw as being 'bad.' And/or 'dumb.' Since the classroom style of the day was that kids who were ahead should help the kids who were behind, I got to work on math with some of these kids. Who were as likely to be quite bright as they were to be actually behind. I saw teachers make excuse after excuse for terrible behavior by their pet directed at slightly disabled kids while at the same time blaming every misplaced item or torn poster or smashed pumpkin on the kid they didn't like--even when their scapegoat was gone for those days.

I know which kids dropped out before they graduated and which made it through to the end.

Do you really think it works differently for black kids?

And can you really justify a preschool deciding in advance that certain kids with certain skin tones misbehave and need harsher punishment?

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ979953.pdf

Students who feel more teacher support are more likely to achieve at higher
levels, demonstrate stronger critical thinking skills, and have higher concepts of self-
ability (Pollard, 1993). Conversely, those who feel less supported by their teachers are
less likely to expend energy in classes or to believe that they can be successful in
academic schoolwork (Howard, 2002). “If students do not believe that their teachers care
about them and are actively concerned about their academic performance, the likelihood
that they will succeed is greatly reduced” (Noguera, 2003, p. 449). This is especially true
for African American students as teachers’ perceptions have a significant impact on
minority students (Ferguson, 2003). For African American males, a disparity exists
between the value they place on education, and the support they feel they receive from
adults. In a study of African American students in the Bay Area, Noguera found that
African American boys were likely to disagree or strongly disagree with the following
statement: “My teachers support me and care about my success in their class” (Noguera,
2003). However, almost 90 percent agreed that education and educational success were
important to them. Despite how they feel about education, the lack of strong support from
teachers intensifies students’ underachievement.
Alvidrez and Weinstein (1999) found teachers’ judgment to be one of the “strong
predictors of future achievement” (p. 732). Their longitudinal study focused on children
at age 4, 6, 11, and 18, finding that “preschool teachers’ over and under-estimates of
children’s ability...predicated GPA and SAT test-taking in high school 14 years later” (p.
740). Underestimates had the most significant impact with regard to high school GPA, providing evidence that negative expectancy effects are more potent than positive ones.

 

[doubtingt]

We also have a mountain of evidence that countless other factors greatly increase the odds of suspension. So, the general stats don't point any more to race in this particular case than to other factors. Which means the OP anecdote is nothing more than that, and the odds are much higher that is was 1 of the countless other differences that are either completely unrelated to race or only related to race indirectly and not at all a case of racial bias by the teacher....

One of the peaks of these mountains of statistics is the 3 to 1 factor.

That is not a notable "peak" in the data, given that the ratio for law-breaking bad behavior (i.e., crime rates) is more than 2:1 for almost all crimes and closer to 4:1 for many crimes. The 3:1 bad behavior leading to suspensions is right within that range that would be expected if the factors shown to contribute to criminality also contribute to more minor behavioral problems at younger ages (and since most of these factors are present at those younger ages, they would be expected to have an impact). Like most people without basic grasp of the social sciences and the multiple-determination of complex human behavior, you jump to a uni-causal explanation of race and want a single factor to explain the entire observed difference, even though everything in the fields of psychology and sociology predict that the difference is likely a product of many factors each contributing a small portion to the difference. I listed multiple factors that mainstream theories would predict could each impact and contribute to the difference via multiple pathways (e.g., impact on the child's actions, on the parent's response to prior actions, on how black teachers who disproportionately teach black pre-schoolers react to such behaviors). To everyone with knowledge of the general research on these kinds of factors, it is not only not a surprise that black kids would get significantly more behavioral punishments in pre-school even without any racism by the teachers, it would actually be something just short of a miracle and contradict all literature grounded predictions if they did not get more punishments.

Other than obsfucating that fact, nothing you have written deals with that reality.

While it might seem unfamiliar to you, what I am doing is applying the relevant empirical research and established theories to construct the most scientifically plausible causal explanation for the observed difference in suspension rates, rather than assume on faith that teacher racism is the primary causal factor. What feels like "obsfucating" to you is just me trying to inject an ounce of science and rational thought into your efforts to push for faith-based intervention policies. Everything I have posted helps to explain that fact and predict such a ratio, without having to assume any racism on the part of the teachers in their decisions to suspend. Your inability to understand basic statistics and the principles of correlation, causation, and how multiple factors can contribute to large differences between groups is not a problem on my end.

Yes, we could do countless other studies to clearly demonstrate what are the other true casual factors (assuming, of course, there is some consensus in moving from statistical correlation to social causal factors in this situation).

We already have a mountain of evidence that strongly supports (as much as social science methods can support) the conclusion that many factors other than racism by teachers are impacting the 3:1 ratio. It requires nothing more than a matter of an ounce of intellectual honesty to apply the valid scientific reasoning to realize it. I realize that might seem like an insurmountable requirement for some, but those of us who actually care about the problem and solving it rather that just selfishly using the number to support our faith-based assumptions have already done it.

In the meantime, the problem continues.

Yes, and it will continue and likely get worse precisely because of you and those who share your anti-science faith that we should just ram a solution based in known false but ideologically pleasing assumptions down the throats of society, because even though (like most treatments based in false causal theories) it will likely make the problem worse and harm the kids in question (not to mention harm the teachers, schools, and parents), it will at least make you feel better that you made the world conform to your faith-based assumptions.

On the other hand, if race appears to be a problem, why not deal with it?

Race does not appear to be a problem in this case, to anyone honestly and rationally looking at the relevant evidence. The differential outcomes to be explained have much in common with other negative outcomes for blacks related to schooling and to problem behavior more generally. The massive body of evidence on those problems shows that when you take the kinds of other variables I have referring to into account, there is little difference left to attribute to race itself.
Ironically, you, Toni, Athena, and others are usually the first to acknowledge this when it comes to crime and educational achievement, but are conveniently ignoring the exact same factors and logic and when your faith motivates you to want to conclude that the cause is more directly tied to race of the kids, because that is needed to conclude the cause if racism by the teachers. It only "appears to be race", in the same way that statues of the virgin Mary appear to crying, only to the blindly faithful and not to the rational observers applying their relevant knowledge. Based on the relevant science we already have, the rational assumption that while race might have to do with a small % of the observed difference, most of it is due to other factors known to predict problem behavior and account for race differences in such behavior. That is where any rational policy would direct its resources.

What is the problem with acknowledging it may be problem and dealing with it in a reasonable manner?

Because just like in medicine, giving a treatment based on wrong assumptions about the causal contributors to the observed condition can cause serious harm and is at minimum a massive waste of finite resources that now are not available to direct towards other problems were the effective solution is more clear. What your comments suggest is a total lack of concern for actually fixing the problem or avoiding additional harm, but rather just a concern to make yourself feel good by pretending that your doing what is needed to fix it, despite having no rational basis to believe that is the case.

 

[doubtingt]

You are mistaken:

<snip>
BTW, the underlying causal processes are largely the same one's responsible for why blacks commit more of almost type of crime, except for crimes like insider trading and violating EPA rules and other crimes for which you need relatively high levels of wealth or power in order to have the opportunity to commit them.

<snip>

He did not claim that blacks committed a disproportionate number of crimes but that they commit more of almost any type of crime--except rich white people crime.

I would never intend to refer to raw frequency when comparing categories because such raw numbers unweighted by base rates have no meaning and are uninterpretable, and because the numbers from the OP to be explained are not raw numbers but frequencies. So, sure I failed to anticipate anyone would think that raw frequencies matter, and did not specify proportional numbers to avoid that interpretation. But whether the raw number or the proportional number in higher, either one refutes your argument and undermines your efforts to infer racism from the OP's 3:1 suspension stat. IOW, the distinction in this case between raw frequencies and proportional frequencies is irrelevant to the argument, which is why you are trying to use it as a red herring distraction since anything relevant refutes your position an shows the absurdity of your faith based denial of basic facts about predictors of behavioral problems and their relation to race.

So, the real question is how could any remotely reasonable person go to the effort to cite the stats your cited, without acknowledging that those very stats refute your own position and show that rule-violating "bad behavior" is generally much more frequent (2-5 times for most crimes) among blacks, which corresponds with black pre-schoolers being 3 times more likely to engage in behavior that gets them suspended (regardless of whether suspension is the optimal response to such behaviors in general).
You've tried to dodge the fact that any reasonable and non-racist attempt to explain the greater crimes rates for blacks relies upon the same kinds of SES, education, parent-related, and community-related variables that I posited to explain why black kids get suspended more often. Your pretense of denying the plausibility of how these variables might impact behavior requires you to deny that these variables or anything correlated with them have anything to do with other well established worse outcomes for blacks, including their higher crime rates and lower academic achievement. So, I ask you "Do you acknowledge that variables other than skin color that include or are correlated with SES, education, or parental-resources have an impact upon the negative outcomes that blacks disproportionately experience, including criminal behavior and lower educational achievement?"
If your answer is "No", then what do you attribute these worse outcomes to?, because denying the impact of these variables is just what racists do who want to attribute the outcomes to the more direct impact of race itself.
If your answer is "Yes", then how could you possibly pretend not to see how and why such variables would impact negative outcomes related to bad behavior in school, given that the mechanisms would be largely the same as for those other outcomes?

Please answer these questions at the end rather than trying to throw another red herring into the mix to distract from the indefensibility of your position.

I haven't 'dodged' anything.

Yes you did and you continue to do so by refusing to answer the very specific and direct questions that I asked you to answer and that (unlike everything you did include in your replies to me) is actually relevant to the OP or to my argument that the 3:1 suspension are explicable via the same factors that you would likely endorse as causal impacts on the higher crime rates of blacks. Whether the higher crime rate also means higher raw numbers is completely irrelevant to understanding the causal factors behind the difference, so it is irrelevant to the OP, the point of my posts, or to your own position that those factors are not relevant. Thus, harping on that irrelevant distinction is a blatant attempt to distract from the indefensibility of your position and the obvious fact that you are denying causal factors that you fully realize are important but don't want to admit in this case because it undermines your political agenda.

You made a patently false statement and you haven't actually backed down from it.

Nonsense. I acknowledged that an aggregate raw frequency interpretation of my statement would be technically incorrect, despite the fact that a relative frequency interpretation is correct and just as strongly supports my argument and refutes yours thus it is an irrelevant distinction to the present discussion.
In fact, thanks for the tables you linked to, because they not only show a 2-4 times greater crime rate among blacks but they show that the greater rate is even higher when you look at kids under 18, making these stats even more relevant to the issue of school suspensions and even more supportive of my argument and undermining of yours (to the extent you've presented anything resembling an argument beyond the pretense of just blindly denying the causal influence of SES factors on behavioral problems).

This next paragraph is superfluous to any argument about the causes of the suspension rates, but since you clearly have no interest in an honest discussion of that topic and want to harp on the raw vs. relative frequency issue, I feel the need to respond to your false claim that my statement was "patently false".
My statement is not "patently false", but is just as true as the statement "Men are taller than women". It is a true because the statement refers to a quantitative difference between the two group distributions, and the mean difference is one such quantitative dimension, as is median, mode, greatest observed value within each distribution. On every one of these quantitative dimensions the statement is true as is my statement that "Blacks commit more crimes than whites". Only in your chosen interpretation of total raw number summed for each population is the statement about crimes incorrect. Your interpretation is not the only or "the" correct one, and if anything is abnormal and violates discourse assumptions among scientifically literate people who use my phrasing all the time and don't assume that raw summed frequencies for each population is what is meant by "more" because such a statistic is utterly meaningless and uninterpretable. As someone who doesn't just use science to accept and reject its conclusions based on coherence with my faith but who makes a living reading, writing, and peer reviewing science across disciplines, I know that such phrasing is used constantly and that qualifiers such as "on average" are often left out except when people are initially reporting original empirical results that they collected, and even within those papers additional references and discussion of those differences typically leave out any qualifiers and assume that the audience has the basic statistical literacy to interpret the "more" or "higher" as comparable central tendencies and not uncomparable total sum frequencies based upon highly unequal group sizes.

In fact, your statement is one frequently bandied about by conservative media and even main stream media.

No, its also the kind of phrasing "bandied about" in reference to countless variables in every area of science by scientifically literate people. There is no reason for conservatives to misrepresent the relative rates as though they are raw sums, because as I explained and your ignored, the relative rates support the greater crime among blacks just as much or even more than notions of raw sums would, so they have no incentive to hide the fact that it is true for relative rates but not sums. It is unfortunate that you and so many others without basic understanding of statistics construe such statements in the one way in which they are no longer valid and perhaps more caution should be taken by them (and me) when speaking to lay audiences, but it is a problem of interpretation of a statement with multiple potential meanings and not one of "patently false" statements as you claim.

the rate of victimization by crime is higher for blacks than it is for whites.

OF course blacks are victimized at higher rates, because about 85% of crimes are committed against people of the same race as they perpetrator. Since blacks are 2-4 times more likely to commit most crimes that means blacks will have a higher rate of victimization too. Once again, thanks for the additional data that further supports my argument and undermines yours. I can see why you are a bigger fan of personal anecdotes rather than valid scientific data, given how you tend to use valid stats to shoot your own arguments in the foot.

If you view a child as being more likely to misbehave, then you will see more misbehavior. Because of your own bias. Just as if you believe someone to be crazy, then almost anything they say or do seems crazy.

This just further illustrates your basic misunderstanding of what statistics mean and what they imply and how the should (or not) be used to draw inferences.
The fact that the rate of something is higher in one group does not imply that every individual in that group has that something, which is the false inference in your comment above. It does imply that a person selected at random about which nothing else is known, is more likely to have that something if they are from one group than another. BTW, application of this basic fact of reality is how every treatment in medicine or anywhere else is made effective and not harmful, so I suggest that you avoid medicine or really any policy making areas for all of our safety. These statistical differences bear logically upon various theories about the causes of the group level differences in rates of the variables, which is the point of this thread. They cannot be used in themselves to infer that a specific person has that something or why they have it if they do. The factors that cause group differences in likelihoods are often not the same things that cause an individual person to have that something. For example, biological differences between men and women are the primary factor causing different rates of breast cancers between those groups. Yet, having female biological is clearly not the major factor in why a specific women got cancer while another did not.
No one here has suggested that teachers make the same fallacious leap you have and use statistical realities that relate to likely causes of the suspension rates to then assume that every black kid is about to engage in suspension worthy misbehavior. In fact, I have pointed out that the vast majority of black pre-schoolers are not suspended, which in addition to refuting your fallacious leap also supports that race is not the primary factor and that it is other variables more child-specific that vary both within and between the kids of different racial groups.
Apparently you think that only by denying basic factual realities about differences in group rates can we avoid to fallacious leap to the conclusion that every black child is misbehaving. Not all of us have such trouble avoiding logical fallacies and have means to do so other than denying basic scientific facts.

And can you really justify a preschool deciding in advance that certain kids with certain skin tones misbehave and need harsher punishment?

No one here has said anything to imply that schools or teachers should do any such thing. Once again, your failure to reason has lead you to invalid conclusions that do not follow at all from their premises. Because you (understandably) do not like those conclusions, you then (irrationally and on faith) reject the objective factual premises upon which you (and you alone) have fallaciously lept to that conclusion.

It is actually your denial of environmental influences on behavior (which the root of our entire exchange) that is likely to lead to such policies where black kids are just assumed to be "bad" with no viable preventative measures. The denial of the influences on behavior of environmental factors on which blacks and whites differ leaves on 2 options: Either 1) the 3:1 difference is entirely due to teacher bias in which case nearly all teachers, including all black teachers, would need to be engaged in rampant racism against black kids on a daily basis, or some of the difference is due to differences in bad behavior which since, according to you, cannot be due to environmental factors, must be due to the inherent and direct influence of biological race on bad behavior.

In contrast, my argument is that the difference is likely due to a host of environmental factors, some of which can be addressed with pre-emptive measures including aiding parental resources. In addition, my rational application of statistical facts about rates of bad behavior suggests that even though the rates may differ between groups, the large majority of kids of all groups do not do anything suspension worthy, even by the current perhaps knee-jerk standards. Therefore, applying these stats means the rational presumption should be one of innocence and that any ambiguous behavior should be assumed to be unworthy of suspension unless there is clear evidence otherwise.
You see, if you understand facts, statistics, and science, then you do not need to blindly deny them and turn to anecdotes to defend your prefered policy. You can actually acknowledge facts, even unpleasant ones, then use them to craft a preferred policy that actually is effective at achieving change rather than just making you feel good by denying any unpleasant realities. Facts do not ever necessitate any policy because no "is" every necessitates and "ought". Sadly, most political activists on both the left and the right don't grasp this, and so they spend more time denying and distorting relevant fact and science rather than applying it.

 

[Toni]

You are mistaken:

<snip>
BTW, the underlying causal processes are largely the same one's responsible for why blacks commit more of almost type of crime, except for crimes like insider trading and violating EPA rules and other crimes for which you need relatively high levels of wealth or power in order to have the opportunity to commit them.

<snip>

He did not claim that blacks committed a disproportionate number of crimes but that they commit more of almost any type of crime--except rich white people crime.

I would never intend to refer to raw frequency when comparing categories because such raw numbers unweighted by base rates have no meaning and are uninterpretable, and because the numbers from the OP to be explained are not raw numbers but frequencies. So, sure I failed to anticipate anyone would think that raw frequencies matter, and did not specify proportional numbers to avoid that interpretation. But whether the raw number or the proportional number in higher, either one refutes your argument and undermines your efforts to infer racism from the OP's 3:1 suspension stat. IOW, the distinction in this case between raw frequencies and proportional frequencies is irrelevant to the argument, which is why you are trying to use it as a red herring distraction since anything relevant refutes your position an shows the absurdity of your faith based denial of basic facts about predictors of behavioral problems and their relation to race.

So, the real question is how could any remotely reasonable person go to the effort to cite the stats your cited, without acknowledging that those very stats refute your own position and show that rule-violating "bad behavior" is generally much more frequent (2-5 times for most crimes) among blacks, which corresponds with black pre-schoolers being 3 times more likely to engage in behavior that gets them suspended (regardless of whether suspension is the optimal response to such behaviors in general).
You've tried to dodge the fact that any reasonable and non-racist attempt to explain the greater crimes rates for blacks relies upon the same kinds of SES, education, parent-related, and community-related variables that I posited to explain why black kids get suspended more often. Your pretense of denying the plausibility of how these variables might impact behavior requires you to deny that these variables or anything correlated with them have anything to do with other well established worse outcomes for blacks, including their higher crime rates and lower academic achievement. So, I ask you "Do you acknowledge that variables other than skin color that include or are correlated with SES, education, or parental-resources have an impact upon the negative outcomes that blacks disproportionately experience, including criminal behavior and lower educational achievement?"
If your answer is "No", then what do you attribute these worse outcomes to?, because denying the impact of these variables is just what racists do who want to attribute the outcomes to the more direct impact of race itself.
If your answer is "Yes", then how could you possibly pretend not to see how and why such variables would impact negative outcomes related to bad behavior in school, given that the mechanisms would be largely the same as for those other outcomes?

Please answer these questions at the end rather than trying to throw another red herring into the mix to distract from the indefensibility of your position.

I haven't 'dodged' anything.

Yes you did and you continue to do so by refusing to answer the very specific and direct questions that I asked you to answer and that (unlike everything you did include in your replies to me) is actually relevant to the OP or to my argument that the 3:1 suspension are explicable via the same factors that you would likely endorse as causal impacts on the higher crime rates of blacks. Whether the higher crime rate also means higher raw numbers is completely irrelevant to understanding the causal factors behind the difference, so it is irrelevant to the OP, the point of my posts, or to your own position that those factors are not relevant. Thus, harping on that irrelevant distinction is a blatant attempt to distract from the indefensibility of your position and the obvious fact that you are denying causal factors that you fully realize are important but don't want to admit in this case because it undermines your political agenda.

You made a patently false statement and you haven't actually backed down from it.

Nonsense. I acknowledged that an aggregate raw frequency interpretation of my statement would be technically incorrect, despite the fact that a relative frequency interpretation is correct and just as strongly supports my argument and refutes yours thus it is an irrelevant distinction to the present discussion.
In fact, thanks for the tables you linked to, because they not only show a 2-4 times greater crime rate among blacks but they show that the greater rate is even higher when you look at kids under 18, making these stats even more relevant to the issue of school suspensions and even more supportive of my argument and undermining of yours (to the extent you've presented anything resembling an argument beyond the pretense of just blindly denying the causal influence of SES factors on behavioral problems).

This next paragraph is superfluous to any argument about the causes of the suspension rates, but since you clearly have no interest in an honest discussion of that topic and want to harp on the raw vs. relative frequency issue, I feel the need to respond to your false claim that my statement was "patently false".
My statement is not "patently false", but is just as true as the statement "Men are taller than women". It is a true because the statement refers to a quantitative difference between the two group distributions, and the mean difference is one such quantitative dimension, as is median, mode, greatest observed value within each distribution. On every one of these quantitative dimensions the statement is true as is my statement that "Blacks commit more crimes than whites". Only in your chosen interpretation of total raw number summed for each population is the statement about crimes incorrect. Your interpretation is not the only or "the" correct one, and if anything is abnormal and violates discourse assumptions among scientifically literate people who use my phrasing all the time and don't assume that raw summed frequencies for each population is what is meant by "more" because such a statistic is utterly meaningless and uninterpretable. As someone who doesn't just use science to accept and reject its conclusions based on coherence with my faith but who makes a living reading, writing, and peer reviewing science across disciplines, I know that such phrasing is used constantly and that qualifiers such as "on average" are often left out except when people are initially reporting original empirical results that they collected, and even within those papers additional references and discussion of those differences typically leave out any qualifiers and assume that the audience has the basic statistical literacy to interpret the "more" or "higher" as comparable central tendencies and not uncomparable total sum frequencies based upon highly unequal group sizes.

In fact, your statement is one frequently bandied about by conservative media and even main stream media.

No, its also the kind of phrasing "bandied about" in reference to countless variables in every area of science by scientifically literate people. There is no reason for conservatives to misrepresent the relative rates as though they are raw sums, because as I explained and your ignored, the relative rates support the greater crime among blacks just as much or even more than notions of raw sums would, so they have no incentive to hide the fact that it is true for relative rates but not sums. It is unfortunate that you and so many others without basic understanding of statistics construe such statements in the one way in which they are no longer valid and perhaps more caution should be taken by them (and me) when speaking to lay audiences, but it is a problem of interpretation of a statement with multiple potential meanings and not one of "patently false" statements as you claim.

the rate of victimization by crime is higher for blacks than it is for whites.

OF course blacks are victimized at higher rates, because about 85% of crimes are committed against people of the same race as they perpetrator. Since blacks are 2-4 times more likely to commit most crimes that means blacks will have a higher rate of victimization too. Once again, thanks for the additional data that further supports my argument and undermines yours. I can see why you are a bigger fan of personal anecdotes rather than valid scientific data, given how you tend to use valid stats to shoot your own arguments in the foot.

If you view a child as being more likely to misbehave, then you will see more misbehavior. Because of your own bias. Just as if you believe someone to be crazy, then almost anything they say or do seems crazy.

This just further illustrates your basic misunderstanding of what statistics mean and what they imply and how the should (or not) be used to draw inferences.
The fact that the rate of something is higher in one group does not imply that every individual in that group has that something, which is the false inference in your comment above. It does imply that a person selected at random about which nothing else is known, is more likely to have that something if they are from one group than another. BTW, application of this basic fact of reality is how every treatment in medicine or anywhere else is made effective and not harmful, so I suggest that you avoid medicine or really any policy making areas for all of our safety. These statistical differences bear logically upon various theories about the causes of the group level differences in rates of the variables, which is the point of this thread. They cannot be used in themselves to infer that a specific person has that something or why they have it if they do. The factors that cause group differences in likelihoods are often not the same things that cause an individual person to have that something. For example, biological differences between men and women are the primary factor causing different rates of breast cancers between those groups. Yet, having female biological is clearly not the major factor in why a specific women got cancer while another did not.
No one here has suggested that teachers make the same fallacious leap you have and use statistical realities that relate to likely causes of the suspension rates to then assume that every black kid is about to engage in suspension worthy misbehavior. In fact, I have pointed out that the vast majority of black pre-schoolers are not suspended, which in addition to refuting your fallacious leap also supports that race is not the primary factor and that it is other variables more child-specific that vary both within and between the kids of different racial groups.
Apparently you think that only by denying basic factual realities about differences in group rates can we avoid to fallacious leap to the conclusion that every black child is misbehaving. Not all of us have such trouble avoiding logical fallacies and have means to do so other than denying basic scientific facts.

And can you really justify a preschool deciding in advance that certain kids with certain skin tones misbehave and need harsher punishment?

No one here has said anything to imply that schools or teachers should do any such thing. Once again, your failure to reason has lead you to invalid conclusions that do not follow at all from their premises. Because you (understandably) do not like those conclusions, you then (irrationally and on faith) reject the objective factual premises upon which you (and you alone) have fallaciously lept to that conclusion.

It is actually your denial of environmental influences on behavior (which the root of our entire exchange) that is likely to lead to such policies where black kids are just assumed to be "bad" with no viable preventative measures. The denial of the influences on behavior of environmental factors on which blacks and whites differ leaves on 2 options: Either 1) the 3:1 difference is entirely due to teacher bias in which case nearly all teachers, including all black teachers, would need to be engaged in rampant racism against black kids on a daily basis, or some of the difference is due to differences in bad behavior which since, according to you, cannot be due to environmental factors, must be due to the inherent and direct influence of biological race on bad behavior.

In contrast, my argument is that the difference is likely due to a host of environmental factors, some of which can be addressed with pre-emptive measures including aiding parental resources. In addition, my rational application of statistical facts about rates of bad behavior suggests that even though the rates may differ between groups, the large majority of kids of all groups do not do anything suspension worthy, even by the current perhaps knee-jerk standards. Therefore, applying these stats means the rational presumption should be one of innocence and that any ambiguous behavior should be assumed to be unworthy of suspension unless there is clear evidence otherwise.
You see, if you understand facts, statistics, and science, then you do not need to blindly deny them and turn to anecdotes to defend your prefered policy. You can actually acknowledge facts, even unpleasant ones, then use them to craft a preferred policy that actually is effective at achieving change rather than just making you feel good by denying any unpleasant realities. Facts do not ever necessitate any policy because no "is" every necessitates and "ought". Sadly, most political activists on both the left and the right don't grasp this, and so they spend more time denying and distorting relevant fact and science rather than applying it.

Rather than debate you point by point please answer:

Do blacks commit most of the crime in the U.S., as you previously stated? (see quote below)

BTW, the underlying causal processes are largely the same one's responsible for why blacks commit more of almost type of crime, except for crimes like insider trading and violating EPA rules and other crimes for which you need relatively high levels of wealth or power in order to have the opportunity to commit them.

Which of these numbers (in bold) is MORE than the other numbers?

Total Number of Arrests: 9,499,725
Whites: 6,578,133
Blacks: 2,697,539
American Indian/Alaskan Native: 142,422
Asian or Pacific Islander: 81,631

 

[Playball40]

All this really seems off topic. I thought the problem was that black pre-schoolers were being punished more often and more harshly than whites. It didn't say that black pre-schoolers were actually guilty of misbehavior more often.

 

[Toni]

All this really seems off topic. I thought the problem was that black pre-schoolers were being punished more often and more harshly than whites. It didn't say that black pre-schoolers were actually guilty of misbehavior more often.

Exactly. Thank you.

 

[Metaphor]

Which of these numbers (in bold) is MORE than the other numbers?

Total Number of Arrests: 9,499,725
Whites: 6,578,133
Blacks: 2,697,539
American Indian/Alaskan Native: 142,422
Asian or Pacific Islander: 81,631

Toni, you've completely ignored two points doubtingt made

i) He never meant 'more' to mean raw numbers, I did not interpret his statement that way and neither have -- seemingly -- most of the other readers on the thread. You've chosen to interpret doubtingt's statement that Blacks commit more crimes than Whites by adding 'in absolute number' to the end, whilst he has told you repeatedly he meant 'on average'. Importantly though, adding 'in absolute number' to the end makes the sentence false, which is why I believe doubtingt did not mean it that way. On the other hand, adding the equally valid 'on average' to the end makes the sentence true, and is the actually important part for his argument.

You won't gain any points by insisting that an interpretation of his statement that doubtingt has denied he meant is the only valid reading, when an equally valid different reading makes the sentence true and is the reading required for for doubtingt's argument to make sense.

ii) His argument does not in any way depend on the raw numbers being higher; the raw numbers are actually irrelevant. The OP article talked about ratios with reference to base rates (e.g. 18% of students are Black but 48% of suspensions are for Black students) so of course the raw number of suspensions (of which Blacks are a minority) are irrelevant. The OP talks about ratios, that's what doubtingt was talking about too.

 

[Metaphor]

All this really seems off topic. I thought the problem was that black pre-schoolers were being punished more often and more harshly than whites. It didn't say that black pre-schoolers were actually guilty of misbehavior more often.

No: that's speculation. We don't know what the rate of misbehaviour by race is. We don't even have suspension rates from a single school. So, we have no idea, from the OP anecdote, whether Black children are misbehaving more (but given the socioeconomic circumstances that Black children are more likely to experience, it's probably true that they do misbehave more).

 

[Toni]

All this really seems off topic. I thought the problem was that black pre-schoolers were being punished more often and more harshly than whites. It didn't say that black pre-schoolers were actually guilty of misbehavior more often.

No: that's speculation. We don't know what the rate of misbehaviour by race is. We don't even have suspension rates from a single school. So, we have no idea, from the OP anecdote, whether Black children are misbehaving more (but given the socioeconomic circumstances that Black children are more likely to experience, it's probably true that they do misbehave more).

What we do know is that it doesn't matter if more black children behave badly compared to white children.

What does matter is if the same offense committed by a white child is punished in the same manner and with the same severity as if a black child committed the same offense.

In this particular case, it appears that the child in the OP, who happens to be black, was indeed punished more harshly than other children who committed similar or worse offenses. Those other children happen to be white.

The question then is: why was this particular child punished more harshly?

Since some insist that rates of criminal behavior by adults is relevant to this discussion, then so should be punishment meted out to those convicted of criminal acts. Data demonstrates that black defendents receive prison sentences at rates which exceed those of white defendants for almost all offenses, and that black defendants are more likely than whites to receive the maximum sentence for similar criminal offenses.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/black_prisoners_tend_to_serve_longer_sentences_than_whites

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...887324432004578304463789858002.html#printMode

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377

http://www.allgov.com/news/controve...ties-in-conviction-and-sentencing?news=839106


It appears that under our criminal justice system, blacks receive harsher penalties for offenses for which they are convicted compared with whites.

Isn't it reasonable to at least consider that the color of the child's skin had an effect on the way the child was assessed and judged by the teacher and the school?

If two three year olds commit the same offense and receive punishments which differ in severity, then that opens the question of why the difference in severity of punishment. If there is a pattern: children with red hair receive harsher punishment than children with blonde hair, for example, one might wonder if the teacher has an unconscious preference for blonde children. If the child who receives the harsher punishment is non-white, it is also reasonable to wonder if the teacher has an unconscious prejudice against non-white children and tends to assess their behavior more harshly.

 

[Toni]

Which of these numbers (in bold) is MORE than the other numbers?

Total Number of Arrests: 9,499,725
Whites: 6,578,133
Blacks: 2,697,539
American Indian/Alaskan Native: 142,422
Asian or Pacific Islander: 81,631

Toni, you've completely ignored two points doubtingt made

i) He never meant 'more' to mean raw numbers, I did not interpret his statement that way and neither have -- seemingly -- most of the other readers on the thread. You've chosen to interpret doubtingt's statement that Blacks commit more crimes than Whites by adding 'in absolute number' to the end, whilst he has told you repeatedly he meant 'on average'. Importantly though, adding 'in absolute number' to the end makes the sentence false, which is why I believe doubtingt did not mean it that way. On the other hand, adding the equally valid 'on average' to the end makes the sentence true, and is the actually important part for his argument.

You won't gain any points by insisting that an interpretation of his statement that doubtingt has denied he meant is the only valid reading, when an equally valid different reading makes the sentence true and is the reading required for for doubtingt's argument to make sense.

ii) His argument does not in any way depend on the raw numbers being higher; the raw numbers are actually irrelevant. The OP article talked about ratios with reference to base rates (e.g. 18% of students are Black but 48% of suspensions are for Black students) so of course the raw number of suspensions (of which Blacks are a minority) are irrelevant. The OP talks about ratios, that's what doubtingt was talking about too.

Actually, I think that words do have meaning. Yes, blacks are arrested at rates higher than whites are arrested and further, they are also convicted at higher rates than are whites. This is not something that I have denied or ignored.

However, it is a popular belief that blacks are responsible for all or most of the crime in the U.S. when raw numbers certainly demonstrate otherwise. There is a difference between rate and proportion which is often lost in media and in popular culture.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Isn't this an empirical question requiring investigation?

I'll bet that boys are more likely to be suspended than girls. Would that be because preschool teachers are sexist?

As an aside, I've raised three girls. At every level, at every class, the boys were the disruptive ones. It is very frustrating to see all the attention going to the boys getting them to stop talking and stop being disruptive, while the girls sit in their desks getting less attention.