When proponents of America’s culture war try to use statistics to justify their conclusion that white culture is superior to other cultures, opponents should arm themselves with the proper statistical data that clearly refutes these false claims.
One of the right-wing’s most pernicious claims is that U.S. crime statistics demonstrate a “subculture of violence” among non-white groups. To investigate this fallacy, I will use neutral designations for populations and groups, and proportional data that was derived from reports published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Suppose the U.S. population has exactly two subgroups — Group X (829,000 people) and Group Y (171,000 people). For this analysis, the total population for both groups combined is assumed to be 1,000,000 people.
Suppose further that 37 members of Group X were convicted of a particular violent crime in a given year, and 45 members of Group Y were convicted of that same crime in that same year.
This is where the right-wing culture warriors stop. They say that because perpetrators from Group Y commit more of those crimes per capita (which is true), Group Y’s culture must be inferior (which is false). This fallacious argument audaciously asserts that all or most of the 171,000 members of Group Y have adopted a violent culture because 45 of their members committed a violent crime.
The reality is that 99.97% of Group Y did not commit this violent crime, which is only slightly different than the 99.996% of Group X that did not commit that same violent crime. These are the statistics that define the culture, not the tiny minority of violent criminals in each subgroup. In other words — both of the two cultures are overwhelmingly non-violent.
Suppose we then we ask if there is a different statistic that might reveal more about the superiority or inferiority of the subgroups. I believe I have found one that is more valid and it cuts the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the statistics are based on surveys, and therefore, they are not totally reliable...but I will present them anyway, because I think they illustrate a useful point.
Based on my analysis of these exit polls (in a way that cross-checks against the BJS data pretty closely), 54% of Group X’s population voted for a soon-to-be-indicted white-collar criminal in a very important American political race last year and 82% of Group Y’s population voted for an honorable, non-corrupt candidate who ran against the unindicted criminal.
That sounds to me like pretty good justification for saying that “on average”, Group X’s culture is inferior to Group Y’s culture.
But the more important take-home message is that Americans should not be hating on each other for their cultures. The vast majority of us have habits and cultures to be proud of...with the one exception being when nearly half of our population votes for a lying, cheating criminal who stokes fallacious culture wars.