Supposedly, in academia, very smart people ask a question. How many of x? What are the causes of Y? Etc. Then they make a hypothesis. We think x happens because of A. Then they test the hypothesis. Does the evidence support the hypothesis? If not, the hypothesis is discarded and a new one is made based on the evidence. Then they test again.
In math you have proofs. Can we find x? Here's how you do it. If it results in finding X every time then we know the formula is valid. If it fails to find X in any case then the formula is invalid.
Then we have fake academia in which these "very smart people" make unfalsifiable hypotheses. That is, they declare that the cause of a phenomenon IS Z and cannot be anything other than Z. Furthermore any other possible cause IS ALSO the result of Z and therefore Z is the cause.
The most popular, pernicious and damaging of these is "systemic racism" also known as "Institutional Racism." With this phenomenon, since the institution allegedly [my word] controls and determines the behaviour of everyone in it, any and every explanation is subsumed by it. That is; the victim of systemic racism has no agency. No responsibility. Whatever ails him is directly the result of Institutional Racism. On the flip side all non-victims (the racists) are de-facto perpetrators of Institutional Racism. To quote The Matrix, if you are not one of us you are one of them.
Those in the designated victim class who refuse to see and/or operate as victims, instead of being seen as evidence that the hypothesis is unsupported are instead identified as oppressor adjacent. That is, their refusal to play the victim gives cover to the oppressor class by making excuses for their behavior.
This neat packaging makes life easy for the new breed of academic. One doesn't have to prove anything. You don't need actual evidence. Instead just show the assigned victim class being "victimized" and you're done. So with this we come to the article of the day.
CNN *smh* puts out this headline:
Black children are 6 times more likely to be shot to death by police, study finds
So being the thorough person that I am, I went to the paper:
In this cross-sectional study, we used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS). WISQARS collects data from death certificates compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics. This study included adolescents aged 12 to 17 years who died of firearm injury from legal intervention (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision code Y35) from 2003 to 2018.1 We used 17 years as the upper age limit to prevent inclusion of law enforcement who were killed on or off duty.So children is anyone under the legal age of consent. And note the "we don't want to include police killed on or off duty". Why would a police officer be SHOT and killed by children who pose no threat to them?
During the 16-year study period, 140 adolescents died by legal intervention, and of those deaths, 131 (92.9%) involved firearms. The average annual mortality rate was 0.32 (95% CI: 0.27–0.38) per 1 000 000 adolescents. The majority were boys (93.18%) with a mean age of 15.94 (±1.80) years (Table 1).
Seems the article could and should be about how boys are "disproportionately" killed by police but who cares about the boys. But m ore relevant is, why are boys so "over-represented"? Could it be that boys engage in more violent criminal behavior that warrant aggressive police responses than girls do? And; if that is the case wouldn't the explanation for the other factor be "more violent criminal behavior"? No?
Institutional Racism. Nothing else to see here folks.
Maybe it's the cities.
No one wants to discuss the urbanization of violence? No?
So here's their "disparate impact" chart.
Clearly these blacks are victims of police. Look at the chart.
What do these very smart people have to say?
"Although this study does not address the underlying causes of these disparities, evidence suggests a role for structural racism as well as explicit and implicit bias among police officers.8 A recent report suggests a victim’s race may be associated with use of police force. In addition, the authors of this report also found that white officers were more likely to use firearms in minority neighborhoods.9 Further research is needed to address underlying causes and develop evidence-based interventions to reduce police shootings, especially among adolescents of color."
They didn't address underlying causes (too much work and foils the narrative) but we're going to make claims about "structural racism" and "implicit bias" among police. Not that we have any actual evidence of such things but because we have the unfalsifiable hypothesis on our side we don't need any actual evidence.
Well I have already addressed the reason why these police shootings happen.
Look at that. 70% of murder and non-negligent manslaughter victims, suspects and arrestees are black in NYC.
So if blacks (mostly...overwhelmingly) males are 7x more likely to be suspects AND VICTIMS of murder (not by police) than it stands to reason that when the police get involved nearly 7x of those shot will be black.
Of course that in "structural racism" because all these murderers just wanted a loaf of bread to feed their families. Everybody knows that.
Nothing to see here. Not a viable explanation. No reason to look at the behaviors of black males [in cities] lets blame white folks and implicit bias like say the bias against being shot.
So this isn't an exercise in bashing on black folks. However; we cannot walk around blaming other people for our current issues. Ain't none of us had to escape slavery and get north. None of us had to sit at the back of the bus (well 95% of us). The vast majority of us have never seen a whites only sign for public facilities. None of us have been denied access to a school that *we can afford to send our children to*. Many of us HAVE had our resume's tossed in the trash or have been eliminated from potential employment in part due to people not wanting to deal with our "racism" drama.
So back to the article. What this "academic paper" really is is an opinion piece posing as scholarship. It should have never been accepted much less published since it makes conclusions wholly unsupported by the provided evidence. It would be like publishing an article that said 2+2=5 and saying that the reason it is true is because 5 is greater than 2.
Now some of you are saying: Yeah, but the article was about children. How do we know these stats hold for children? Good question. I partially dealt with that back in 2013:
Looking at the age data we see the that for African-American women between the ages of 15 and 24, homicide is the second leading cause of death. After age 24 homicide drops to the 4th, then 7th and then drops off the chart.
For black males, Homicide is the second leading cause of death for 10-14 year olds.
10 to 14 years of age.
Homicide is the number one cause of death of African-American males between the age of 15 -34.
15 to 34.
So unless you are on some very powerful opiates, you'll have to realize that all of these "homicides" are not police shootings. Consider:
White males between the ages of 15 and 19 have homicide as the number 3 cause of death (compared to number one for black males)
White males between the ages of 20 -24 have homicide as the number 3 cause of death (compared to number one for black males).
White males between the ages of 25 and 34 have homicide as the number 5 cause of death (compared to number one for black males).
Homicide drops to number 6 and then off the charts for the remaining age groups.
Clearly black minors are engaging in a lot of violent criminal behavior relative to their white counterparts.
But of course "structural racism" is a much better explanation. Because it's white people's fault why black children are engaging in homicidal behavior. The white man is GOD and affects all things.
