Transgender, Transracial, Trans….species?

David:
I find it a bit ironic that many of the same people who have celebrated the change that has come over Bruce Jenner are now attacking the racial identity of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who claimed to be black. This strikes me as hypocritical.

Doug:
I agree. Although her name is Caitlyn now, and that has to be a hard path for anyone to take. Gender and racial identity are both fluid, and can change over time.

David:
So, to be clear, you're saying that anyone can choose both their gender and their race at any time it suits them, and the choice is "fluid", meaning they can go back and forth whenever they feel differently. If applying for a job or applying for college, a white male can "identify" as a black woman when checking boxes on the application, and the interviewer/application committee must act on that information, rather than their own eyes and the candidate's genetic code? That is your stance?

Doug:
Almost. But it has to be a decision that a person has made some commitment to. It is fluid in that it can change over times (perhaps over years) and would of course have a person living their choice. So, absolutely a person born a white male could identify, and live, as a back woman. But this is not an easy path. The chances of being murdered are much greater for a transgendered person than they are for a person fighting the most deadly war the earth has ever seen.

Of course, race and gender are social constructs. Even sex, which is a biological distinction, is also a continuum.

David:
Race and Gender are genetic. They are not social constructs. Every single cell in your body carries your genetic code. Believing something you are not does not change that. Surgery does not change that. The way you behave is a social construct, and you can behave in a way that defies that construct, but that  does not change your genetic code. Ms. Jenner can have all types of surgery done, and still, any tissue sample you send to the lab will come back with the same result: white male.

I find it interesting that you believe that someone can only say they are transgender or transracial if they make a "commitment".  Based on whose standards? If you don't feel they have made enough of a commitment, then they are a fraud? And who's to say that they must "live their choice" for it to be real to them?  And why couldn't someone change their gender or racial identity on a daily basis? Why should time have to be a factor, and why do you claim that the path must be difficult?

You are certainly placing a lot of societal restrictions on a person. Or, are you saying that there is a "proper" way to become transgender or transracial, and if you don't do it "correctly", then you aren't really transgender or transracial?

Doug:
If race is not a social construct what is it? If a person has a white parent and a black parent, what "race" are they? No, race does not exist except in your mind. Gender is similar, and is completely a social construct. Believing that you are a woman does indeed make you a woman. That, in fact, defines how trans people live.

The trans people I know have struggled with identifying with a gender, and have made a commitment to the other. This is often a horrible struggle, and not one that they would want to repeat.

But, I could see that one might be able to slide from one gender to another more easily, if one were in a supportive environment. You convinced me!

David:
Your politically correct psycho-babble confuses me. While a blending of racial backgrounds certainly provides people with an ability to define themselves as mixed, or to lean in one or the other direction, your gender is your gender. You can surgically alter yourself, but you cannot change your genetics. In the same way, believing you are another species does not make it so.

But, back to the original question. Since there is no "rule" as to how you decide to self-identify, and you can "slide" back and forth, you would say that an entire corporation of white men could decide to identify as black women in order to qualify for federal funding as a diverse, minority-owned business, right?

Doug:
I think so. But I also believe in the spirit of special support for those groups that are under-represented. So, I think the criteria would have to change for what is needed to get such help. It is not enough that one is a now a "black woman," but that one has lived a life as a "black woman." A lifetime (or more) of lost opportunity, and to make sure that it stops in this generation, is what we hope to correct for with such special programs.

David:
This is how bad ideas and government over reach get started. Now the programs that were intended to help poor minorities will have to be modified and overseen by a bureaucrat who will determine the quality of their blackness, or their woman-ness. Are you really black enough to qualify for our program? Have you suffered enough to be eligible. Have you been (fill-in-the-blank) long enough that we feel you are deserving.

How about this instead: everybody is equal. No favoritism should be shown by the government to any individual over another. Poor people need temporary assistance, regardless of other variables. No other favoritism allowed. Now, go and convince young people to stay in school, avoid unwanted pregnancies, make smarter decisions, and take responsibilities for your own actions. That happens through education - and better education happens through charters, vouchers, and parental choice.

If you agree that your race and gender are "fluid", then all race-based or gender-based assistance is mute. 

Hey, you may have just hit on the plan to eliminate racism in this country, and start putting a dent in the debt at the same time. Any one can be any race or gender,  so there there really are no races or genders (which you have already argued is true), so we can eliminate all of the programs and agencies that deal with these issues.  Bravo!!

Doug:
Remember, you just convinced me that it isn't your blackness, redness, or whiteness that one would measure, but one's need. That may be impossible to measure perfectly, but we have to try. Otherwise, we won't be able to make the country a just place to live.

You can't just proclaim everyone equal, and it would be so. We still have hundreds of years of institutionalized racism, let alone wealth that gets handed down on racial lines, to overcome. And we know that we all have implicit biases.

So, back to the general issue: I have no problem with anyone self-identifying with a specific race or gender. If that person tried to take advantage of an undeserved need, then I would have an issue with that. But I only have heard about Rachel Dolezal doing good. And Caitlyn Jenner doesn't seem to be doing anyone any harm.

David:
You're still on a collision course with yourself. Now, you're making a judgement that the person can change their race or gender only if they do good. Who is going to be the judge of that standard?

Don't you see that if there is no race and no gender (or if you can change either at a whim), then you cannot have benefits based on race or gender?

At least we agree that one's needs should be the basis of aid. Whatever the past held,  the future of governmental programs should be based on quantifiable measures of need, and your color or gender shouldn't matter.

How Should We Pick a President?

David:
The Republicans have so many candidates for the 2016 presidential election, that they are only going to allow the top 10 highest-polling candidates to participate in the debates.

The Democrats are desperately searching for someone other than Hillary Clinton, but their field is so weak, that most of them will overlook all of her ethical flaws and vote for her while holding their noses.

Is there a better way?

Doug:
I don't think you are qualified to speak for all of the Democrats. Nor all of the Republicans, for that matter. You may be right that there are many Democrats that are resisting Hillary Clinton. We have already explored the implicit bias against women. But the Democrats have a wide selection of candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chafee, Martin O'Malley, and Jim Webb. These candidates cover quite a spectrum of political views for people to chose from.

David:
Who? I think they have all been instructed to run so that Hillary can say she had a race. They are all failed, former politicians that no one has heard of. Except for you.

Doug:
But I'm sure there are better ways to elect a person that would be more fair to each voting person in the U.S.

Perhaps you are upset that Fox is picking the Republican candidates based on their national polling? That will surely bias crazy people like Donald Trump.

Or perhaps you are upset that the Electoral College actually picks the president. I'd be in favor of one-person, one-vote.

David:
I'm not upset at all. But in this world of social media, the movie "Idiocracy" seems more like real life everyday. Or perhaps we're becoming "1984" or "Brave New World", where the big-money holders will just pick the winners, and promote them through social media where the masses get the news.

Doug:
Better way? How about a better educated electorate, with high expectations? How about getting all of the money out of the process? Those two things are about all that I would like to change.

David:
Wow! I don't think we've been in total agreement about anything so fast ever before!

Ah, but how to achieve that goal? Republican governors, and some Democratic governors have made great leaps in improving the education of the electorate by giving parents the choices they need to send their children to schools of their choice. And the benefits are starting to be seen. But young people still lack a basic understanding of important principles, like economics. We are making progress, however.

Getting Congress to eliminate big money may be dang-near impossible, though. I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes: "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." ― Alexis de Tocqueville

Doug:
Well, that time has passed. But, we can agree on at least what to focus on, even if we don't agree on how to get there.

David:
I'm not sure what other ideas you have to educate the populace, but I might suggest individual states  restrict how much money is involved in campaigns. As long as everyone has the same rules applied, it might work. The problem comes with the unlimited money other groups pour in to destroy a candidate.

I'm not really sure how to get the money out, but it's refreshing to see that we both find the same issues and problems with the election process.

The Police Benefit Neighborhoods

David:
Police departments across the country have come under fire this year as an abusive force in neighborhoods. I contend that they are instead the single force preventing many of those neighborhoods from destroying themselves.

Doug:
That sounds like a hypothesis that could be tested. How could you test this idea? But there are so many variables, you would have to work hard to eliminate them.

But why are so many unarmed, young, black men being killed by police? I don't see how having more cops helps that issue.

David:
Statistics confirm that the primary killers of young black men are other young black men. And, even though African-Americans represent around 12% of the population, they account for half of all violent crime. So the question is, why are so many young black men killing each other?

Whenever crime goes up in any city, the response from the folks in charge is to increase efforts to hire more police officers. Why? Because more patrols in dangerous neighborhoods leads to a decrease in crime. This is how to test the hypothesis:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/TerrorAlertProofs.pdf

"We found that the additional police had a pretty big effect on crime," Klick said. "Our local and federal governments spend tons of money on policing, and it looks like we may be justified in spending much more."

Doug:
Welcome to science! This is what we would call a "data point". You need many data points, and they need to be reproducible. 

David:
So, does that mean you discredit the findings of the study? It seems to provide a good testing mechanism for answering the question: Do more cops deter crime? The answer is yes.

Doug:
I don't discredit the results, but there are lots of reasons that those particular results might not be indicative of a larger pattern and meaningful correlation. This study shows "terror alert + more police = less crime." That is an interesting finding, but does not imply "more police = less crime." For example, I could imagine that those crimes (whatever it might be, from jay-walking to murder) might be disrupted by a terror alert. One could also imagine that "terror alert + more police = less sleep" but also does not imply "more police = less sleep."

David:
The point of this study was that the terror alert caused more police to be out on the streets without a precipitating event. Therefore, it did show that increasing the number of police directly decreased the number of crimes, without any other affecting variables.

But back to your assertion that black young men are being gunned down by police. I might direct you to this site:

http://killedbypolice.net

The data is incomplete, but indicates that many more whites are killed by police each year than blacks. You might say that's obviously how it should be, because there are more whites in the population. But let's break down the stats a bit.

Blacks represent 12% of the population, but represent 30% of people killed by police. This is certainly evidence they are being targeted, right? No. Since blacks account for 50% of violent crime in this country, and you would be more likely to be killed by police while committing violent crimes, it appears that they are less likely to be killed by police. 


Doug:
Not just gunned down, but also choked to death. 

No, you can't claim a relationship between violent crime and deaths. You'd need data that showed what the each person being killed by police were actually doing. You can't just claim a relationship between killings and crime. But I do believe that people of color are being disproportionately killed by police. That we can agree on.


David:
The data is lacking in one key detail, however. Was the person armed when they were killed by police? Without that number (which is unrecorded, even by the FBI) you cannot claim that unarmed men are being slaughtered. Multiple reports have certified that in only a very minuscule number of these cases was the death unjustified. In other words, if you attack a police officer with intent to do bodily harm, they just might shoot you, and would be justified in doing so.

Doug:
It seems that even a "minuscule number of" unjustified police killings of black people are too many, right? We can argue about how wide spread it is, but first let's just agree that it does happen, and probably happens more times than we know, based on citizen video. Now we can ask, why does unjustified killing of blacks happen? And then come to the conclusion that a blanket statement that "more police = less crime" is fraught with some troubling possible results. It seems it would depend on who are these police officers and who make up the community.

David:
So, you expect the police to be 100% accurate at all times? Infallible?

There is no data that shows police are targeting blacks, and no data that they are unjustly killing blacks en mass. Assuming that it "must happen more than we know" because you saw a video of one man murdered by an officer does not equal data.

But the data does indicate that in some areas blacks are actually safer than whites with a larger police force.
How could the police be favoring the black population?


Doug:
I don't know where that reality-bending question comes from, but continue.


David:
Two theories have been suggested by Peter Moskos, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. 

He listed two possible reasons for the racial disparity. The first is that police assigned to largely black neighborhoods face “more political fallout when they shoot, and thus receive better training and are less inclined to shoot.” This is certainly true in today's media frenzy.

Doug:

So media frenzy helps keep down unjustified killings of blacks? Ok, I'm always looking for a silver lining for media frenzy.

David:
Sorry, my paparazzi kept me from seeing your last comment.

Number two, police assigned to communities with high crime rates are more accustomed to dangerous situations and thus are more likely to be able to resolve them without resort to lethal force. Blacks tend to reside in high-crime districts, but that's a discussion for another blog. In a more affluent area, where officers do not experience violent crime on a regular basis, they may be more apt to use lethal force early.

Doug:
Police are more likely to kill people there.

David:
Police are more likely to kill violent subjects, and violent subjects are more likely to be in violent areas. But the argument is police who routinely work in high-crime areas are better trained to deal with the people in those areas, and are able to diffuse tense situations better. So, better training equals better outcomes. On that, I think we can agree.

Doug:
"Blacks tend to reside in high-crime districts..." I think you mean that poor people are often left with no options to move, and people of color are more likely to be poor.

But I do agree that there is police training (and thinking) that could help prevent needless deaths. But without that, no way would I agree that more police is always better.