Defund the Police

It bugs me so much every time a Republican (or a "moderate" Democrat) inches toward being non-obstructionist and the media and Democrats fall all over themselves thinking that they've won. The football will be pulled away. People need to show support with votes on actual legislation or GTFO.

/rant

Can I just say, I love how Teen Vogue has become a kickass investigative journalism outfit?

I would be interested to know how you fail this psych evaluation.

True story. Only test I ever failed was … essentially a personality test. While in the military, I took a test to become a warrant officer. The questions were like … “would you rather go to the dentist or pop a blister on a friend’s foot”. I guess the test determined if I was a sadist or a masochist. Since I’m definitely not a sadist, I failed the test.

Most psych evaluations are just a way to weed out candidates the employer doesn't like for whatever reason. They're not truly a psychological test.

This implies some kind of psychiatric feature that could be selected to exclude minorities.

That implies some objective standard rather than "we didn't like those answers today".

The story shows that the evaluation includes a written test and a 30-60 minute interview with the department's psychologist. The story quotes a woman who happens to be Asian who cried during her interview when talking about some childhood trauma and ultimately earned a "not recommend" rating.

The department had consultants look at the evaluation and they found that it would be better if there were more than one person doing the psychological evaluation.

The article also talks about allegations that their particular psychologist has had levied against him in the past, and about how his overall failure rate seems substantially higher than others.

Still doesn't quite connect the dots to some kind of racist agenda, as was implied.

The thing about racism is that it isn’t always obvious - even to the person doing something racist. It could have been purely subconscious that the psychologist automatically approved white men, but gave a harsher look at women and people of color.

Or, it might not be racist at all, and someone with an agenda is attributing an agenda to an outcome based on fuzzy wish magic conjecture.

Issues like this in which people say “you have to look at each individual situation”, but really, that’s backwards. You’ve heard the phrase “you can’t see the forest through the trees”. This is just like that. Unless you look at the entire forest, you can’t see patterns. Individually, sure, everyone can make an argument why this person is acceptable, but that one isn’t. But, when you look at the whole thing, you start to see that there is, indeed, a problem.

Suspect a problem. At most.

I believe that is what is implied in the article.

Sure ... institutions in our society keep generating outcomes that are better for white people than non-white people, over and over and over and over again, but it might just be a coincidence!

A whole lot of coincidences!

A metric fuckton of coincidences!

It's funny that you use the word "implied." Because by now, the concept of "implicit bias" has probably been explained to you a number of times. Might as well do so again.

It is possible, and indeed probable, that at least some people who do not subscribe to notion that members of __________ group are truly inferior, fit a given stereotype or classification, etc. still harbor subconscious beliefs based on societal messaging, personal exposure or lack thereof, and that they then act on such beliefs, causing a disparate impact in favor or against members of ________ group.

So it does not need to be the case that the psychologist is a sheet-wearing, goose-stepping racist. He could just have various subconscious beliefs that have led him to fail minorities at what appears to be a statistically significantly greater rate than white people. Of course, it could be the case that the minority candidates who he evaluated would have been found to be statistically significantly worse than the white candidates if they were somehow evaluated by Spock or some means that didn't introduce the possibility of bias playing a role. There is no real way to know for sure without more info.

But some of the comments Clark apparently made in evaluations don't exactly fill me with confidence that I would want him to be the sole gatekeeper of an agency.

I understand implicit and unconscious bias. It ultimately just awards you permission to make accusations without proof.

it means, someone is doing some thing that they do not realize may hurt or otherwise inconvenience someone else. No proof is necessary.

It is if you expect anything whatsoever for it from me

Pretty sure that everyone, even you, makes accusations without proof. In your case, they frequently are accusations aimed toward people claiming the possibility of bias, as to what their accusations actually say or mean.

Oh, here we fucking go again...

UA- I am not my brother's keeper!!!

Rest of WF- Nobody asked. Nobody ever asks.

Me- Go live in the fucking woods then.

UA- *Hugs his TV and Jeep and makes baby cuddling sounds*

Me- Yeah, that's what I thought.

That's how it always goes.

Seems pretty simple to me.

Companies want stable and predictable employees. That means less drama, less problems, less turnover, and likely more likely to accept whatever the hell the company says.

Psychologists are good at screening out people with these issues.

And that's where UA stops. Makes sense, and is appropriate. To him.

What he doesn't do is then look at the next part.

Massive systemic racism has made several minority classes to be far more likely to be exposed to trauma, through lack of capability for wealth generation and the crime that brings with it, and for the majority to legislate that the recreational drugs of their choice are fine, despite decades of data saying otherwise, and the recreational drugs culturally chosen by several minorities are a felony and a quick trip to jail.

Then you get a police force that was originally created to put down slave rebellions, that morphed into one that prioritized enforcing segregation, then morphed again to target the war on drugs -which because of above legislation is overwhelmingly aimed at minorities.

So fuck yeah they are going to have more trauma.

It would be the exact same thing if it happened to any group. But it doesn't happen to any group.

The purpose of bringing these things to light is not to hurt you or expect anything at all from you, except to let you know, so that you are aware, that you may or may not be doing those same things, and also to let you know that other people aren't just whineing, that there are things happening that are not obvious, but do limit some people's ability to function in our society as easily as you can.

Again, no action necessary on your part. It's just awareness.

you figured it out yourself in your previous post

now, it may not - and likely is not- consciously biased. the answers in this sort of evaluation aren't so much right or wrong as they are ideal or undesirable responses to hypothetical situations. Hell, even how effectively the applicant responds is being judged. In this case (and based on the anecdote about an applicant crying when discussing trauma) its suggested there's evidence of an unintended exclusionary effect and a need to update the process based on this.

The outcome of course, is a more diverse police service better able to respond to a multicultural society. Or we can ignore it and leave policing to those that the present screening system appears to favour.

Well if the fucking weasels would pinned down to specifics that can be verified with direct evidence, instead of always leaving room to wiggle out of any real-world refutation, every conversation wouldn't start with a fucking scavenger hunt for actual substance.

Well if people would quit lying, there'd be no reason for evidence.
If people would quit denying being assholes, there'd be no reason for evidence.
If people did act like human beings, there's be no reason for anyone to prove anything to anyone.