
I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It - listenallyall
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-disavowed-it-11594250254
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rbecker
Archive link: [https://archive.is/tNht3](https://archive.is/tNht3)

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Miner49er
Is the study not poorly framed? It attempted to see if police killings by race
were explained by differences in violent crime. However, violent crime rates
are reported by law enforcement. If black people are policed harder, they'll
have greater rates of crime simply because they are caught more. Studies have
found that white and black people commit crimes at the same rate, black people
are simply caught more and punished more harshly.

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hhernandez
A subset of the studies you mention have in particular looked at illegal drug
usage. Why are black people arrested at higher rates than white people if
their rates of illegal drug use are the same? Surely it must be
discrimination?

Not so fast. That's the conclusion often drawn, but at least one recent study
has shown that Marijuana purchasing behavior differs significantly between
blacks and whites.

From the study abstract: "Using trivariate probit regression with demographic,
drug use, and drug market covariates, analyses reveal that African Americans
are nearly twice as likely to buy outdoors (0.31 versus 0.14), three times
more likely to buy from a stranger (0.30 versus 0.09), and significantly more
likely to buy away from their homes (0.61 versus 0.48). These results provide
an additional explanation for the differential in arrest rates between African
Americans and Whites."

Study:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7178364_Racial_diff...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7178364_Racial_differences_in_marijuana-
users'_risk_of_arrest_in_the_United_States)

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throwanem
Yeah, no, it's discrimination. Having a connection so you don't need to be
buying on corners is a privilege.

I don't expect the authors of that paper from 2005 in a journal nobody's ever
heard of to be aware of it, but I was buying weed on the weekly back then and
I'm here to tell you that paper doesn't say what you say it says. That it and
you both think it does is unsurprising, but it also doesn't make either any
less wrong.

