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Everything that it can predict. I don't think it's pointless to have a correlate that outperforms economic factors, considering the weight people place on those. If there's a metric that is better or worse, you as a person who doesn't care about race has no reason to care about using the race metric or not. Telling stories about how your black neighbors were better than the white ones in some area you lived in is not you not caring. Which is why I asked what the big deal was. Some people are a different color and commit more crime. Using that one can predict various things. Given that it can predict this, I'm inclined to believe that it has some value. I can not possibly understand why you take issue with this. Like I've said countless times, it's not either or.
For instance, black people have ingroup bias greater than that of whites. Black children are more likely to bully than white children. These two things might show up on some direct metric like crime or school evaluation, but they also might not. Since no metric is perfect. Considering we don't care about race, do we care that one group of a different color has a baseline higher rate of bullying than another when we are choosing a school? Knowing that bullying can be very insidious and go under the radar of any stat collecting authority for a long time. Maybe that's parental paranoia, and the factors that account for bullying are reliant on not just the bully but the victim and whatever else. But regardless of that, if we don't care about race, why on earth would we place our lot with a group that has a baseline higher than another? All else being equal.
I asked a question that relied on you acknowledging the fact that you were implicitly avoiding blacks. You, for some reason, said you weren't implicitly avoiding blacks. Now that we have that finally sorted maybe you could just answer that question.
That's not the fact I was asking you to recognize. I was asking you to recognize that there might be truth to the proposition that different racial groups have different problems that don't show up in crime reports. And that this might influence ones decision about where to move. You said you have better metrics, but don't elaborate on what those are. I think expressed racial kinship is a relevant factor. If it's one black neighbor, I see no reason to assume anything. If it's a group of black neighbors or a black neighborhood, they seem to have decided to live with 'their own'. I don't find that irrelevant regardless of how well behave they are.
Like I said before, it's not an either or. I'm not looking to placate your baseless need to only use one metric when making a prediction about something. I honestly find it ridiculous and I don't believe you would be so adamant about only using a single metric in a different context. Considering I've given use cases for race in areas that crime rate does not cover I don't see the objection as being relevant to anything I'm saying.
Right, the link to spurious correlations threw me for a loop. The point I was making wasn't that it would be more useful than direct metrics, like I've said many times now. That doesn't mean it isn't a useful predictor for related things, like if the neighborhood is growing darker or lighter or whatever else. In that case, moving to an area that is growing darker would likely be bad in the long run. But you could not tell by looking at crime stats for the past year.
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