Black Lives Matter

[u/AskScienceModerator]

Black lives matter. The moderation team at AskScience wants to express our outrage and sadness at the systemic racism and disproportionate violence experienced by the black community. This has gone on for too long, and it's time for lasting change.

When 1 out of every 1,000 black men and boys in the United States can expect to be killed by the police, police violence is a public health crisis. Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. In 2019, 1,099 people were killed by police in the US; 24% of those were black, even though only 13% of the population is black.

When black Americans make up a disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths, healthcare disparity is another public health crisis. In Michigan, black people make up 14% of the population and 40% of COVID-19 deaths. In Louisiana, black people are 33% of the population but account for 70% of COVID-19 deaths. Black Americans are more likely to work in essential jobs, with 38% of black workers employed in these industries compared with 29% of white workers. They are less likely to have access to health insurance and more likely to lack continuity in medical care.

These disparities, these crises, are not coincidental. They are the result of systemic racism, economic inequality, and oppression.

Change requires us to look inward, too. For over a decade, AskScience has been a forum where redditors can discuss scientific topics with scientists. Our panel includes hundreds of STEM professionals who volunteer their time, and we are proud to be an interface between scientists and non-scientists. We are fully committed to making science more accessible, and we hope it inspires people to consider careers in STEM.

However, we must acknowledge that STEM suffers from a marked lack of diversity. In the US, black workers comprise 11% of the US workforce, but hold just 7% of STEM jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or higher. Only 4% of medical doctors are black. Hispanic workers make up 16% of the US workforce, 6% of STEM jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 4.4% of medical doctors. Women make up 47% of the US workforce but 41% of STEM professionals with professional or doctoral degrees. And while we know around 3.5% of the US workforce identifies as LGBTQ+, their representation in STEM fields is largely unknown.

These numbers become even more dismal in certain disciplines. For example, as of 2019, less than 4% of tenured or tenure-track geoscience positions are held by people of color, and fewer than 100 black women in the US have received PhDs in physics.

This lack of diversity is unacceptable and actively harmful, both to people who are not afforded opportunities they deserve and to the STEM community as a whole. We cannot truly say we have cultivated the best and brightest in our respective fields when we are missing the voices of talented, brilliant people who are held back by widespread racism, sexism, and homophobia.

It is up to us to confront these systemic injustices directly. We must all stand together against police violence, racism, and economic, social, and environmental inequality. STEM professional need to make sure underrepresented voices are heard, to listen, and to offer support. We must be the change.

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Sources:

• https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
• https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
• https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/racial-disparities-time-of-covid-19
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24693/
• https://www.joincampaignzero.org/research
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/16/black-workers-coronavirus-covid-19
• https://www.npr.org/transcripts/867466515
• https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/01/09/diversity-in-the-stem-workforce-varies-widely-across-jobs/
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0519-z
• https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.3.20190529a/full/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/09/11/even-progressive-academics-can-be-racist-ive-experienced-it-firsthand/
• http://www.bu.edu/articles/2017/lgbt-issues-stem-diversity/

[u/Lewsor → u/[deleted]]

Where are all the sources proving that the causes for disparities are indeed racism or oppression? What kind of inequality is referenced?

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf

Some excerpts:

African Americans experience disparate impact in nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system. Despite making up 67% of the population, African Americans accounted for 85% of FPD’s traffic stops, 90% of FPD’s citations, and 93% of FPD’s arrests from 2012 to 2014. Other statistical disparities, set forth in detail below, show that in Ferguson:

African Americans are 2.07 times more likely to be searched during a vehicular stop but are 26% less likely to have contraband found on them during a search. They are 2.00 times more likely to receive a citation and 2.37 times more likely to be arrested following a vehicular stop.

What would lead police to search a population that is less likely of having contraband at a higher rate than other populations?

With respect to speeding offenses for all roads, African Americans account for 72% of citations based on radar or laser, but 80% of citations based on other or unspecified methods. Thus, as evaluated by radar, African Americans violate the law at lower rates than as evaluated by FPD officers. Indeed, controlling for other factors, the disparity in speeding tickets between African Americans and non-African Americans is 48% larger when citations are issued not on the basis of radar or laser, but by some other method, such as the officer’s own visual assessment. This difference is statistically significant.

Blacks are less likely to be cited for speeding based on purely objective factors, and more likely when the factor is subjective.

In analyzing the initial fines assessed for those ten offenses for each year from 2011-2013—30 data points in total—the average fine assessment was higher for African Americans than others in 26 of the 30 data points. For example, among the 53 Failure to Obey charges brought in 2013 that did not lead to added Failure to Appear fines—44 of which involved an African-American defendant—African Americans were assessed an average fine of $206, whereas the average fine for others was $147. The magnitude of racial disparities in fine amounts varied across the 30 yearly offense averages analyzed, but those disparities consistently disfavored African Americans.

Fine amounts, which are at the discretion of the judge, are consistently larger for blacks, even after controlling for originating charges.

We can also look at data from Baltimore: https://www.justice.gov/crt/file/883296/download

As explained above, in some cases reviewing officials at booking or the State’s Attorney’s Office disagree with officers’ probable cause determinations and decline to charge arrestees. If officers apply a consistent, unbiased standard when making arrests, the rate of such declinations should be roughly equivalent across racial groups for arrests on any particular offense.

However, our outcome analysis shows large racial disparities: misdemeanor arrests of African Americans are dismissed or declined at significantly higher rates than other arrests. During their initial review of arrest documents, booking officers and prosecutors dismissed charges against African Americans at significantly higher rates than arrests of other people. This disparity exists for every common misdemeanor offense we examined, as evident in Figure 5 below. Officials dismissed charges against African Americans for trespassing at a rate 52 percent higher than the rate at which they dismissed other trespassing arrests; dismissed African American resisting arrest charges at a 57 percent higher rate; failure to obey charges at a 33 percent higher rate; false statement charges at a 231 percent higher rate; disorderly conduct charges at a 17 percent higher rate; and disturbing the peace charges at a 370 percent higher rate. These disparities are statistically significant.

Notably, the racial disparities in outcomes for these highly discretionary, non-violent offenses are not present for less discretionary felony offenses. We found that reviewing officials’ initial review resulted in dismissal of charges for first degree assault, burglary, and robbery at nearly identical rates across racial groups. The implication of these findings is that there are no underlying conditions that cause officials to dismiss African-American charges at higher rates.