Slashdot Mirror
Could Technology Create Modern-Day 'Leper Colonies'?
theodp writes "Back in the day, leprosy patients were stigmatized and shunned, quarantined from society in Leper Colonies. Those days may be long gone, but are our mapping, GPS, and social media technologies in effect helping to create modern-day 'Leper Colonies'? The recently-shuttered GhettoTracker.com (born again as Good Part of Town) generated cries of racism by inviting users to rate neighborhoods based on 'which parts of town are safe and which ones are ghetto, or unsafe'. Calling enough already with the avoid-the-ghetto apps, The Atlantic Cities' Emily Badger writes, "this idea toes a touchy line between a utilitarian application of open data and a sly wink toward people who just want to steer clear of 'those kinds of neighborhoods.'" The USPTO has already awarded avoid-crime-ridden-neighborhoods-like-the-plague patents to tech giants Microsoft, IBM, and Google. So, when it comes to navigational apps, where's the line between utility and racism? 'As mobile devices get smarter and more ubiquitous,' writes Svati Kirsten Narula, 'it is tempting to let technology make more and more decisions for us. But doing so will require us to sacrifice one of our favorite assumptions: that these tools are inherently logical and neutral...the motivations driving the algorithms may not match the motivations of those algorithms' users.' Indeed, the Google patent for Storing and Providing Routes proposes to 'remove streets from recommended directions if uploaded route information indicates that travelers seem to avoid the street.' Even faster routes that 'traverse one or more high crime areas,' Google reasons, 'may be less appealing to most travelers'."
i've lived in NYC since the early 80's and if you were white you were dumb to go to the south bronx or harlem. especially at night. if your kid passes the gifted and talented test to get into accelerated kindergarten, the crappy schools will have spots open in their G&T classes because parents don't want their kids going there
Ghettos are frequently the only place housing is actually affordable.
So how is this actually racism again?
In other news, companies simultaneously invent app than can predict areas of low income!
This is pure human nature. We try to isolate ourselves from anything that could negatively impact our standard of living, thereby reinforcing the things
that could cause it in the first place.
have a higher crime rate and higher risk of $badthing, am I being racist against green people? I don't think so. Maybe when I'm in the good side of town, I see a green person and I greet them normally. I don't hate green people, I just am going to stay out of the part of town where most of them live because I don't want to risk $badthings happening.
Now, if I hate all green people and think they're a lower form of life because of $badthings that happen, then yes I'm being racist. But the distinction between the two cannot be legislated or governed.
There are rough neighborhoods and bars in white neighborhoods that I would not expect women to go near at night in good cities.
Facts are facts.
race have to do with crime-ridden neighborhoods?
What the fuck /. ? Your summary is more racist than the technology you're referring to. Well done.
Could use the same information to improve places.
Pretty sure we already had this discussion here.
I value my safety over the feelings of others. Label it however you want, it is better than ending up dead, brain dead, maimed for life, or having my eye sockets reconstructed with titanium plates.
I once asked in several forums about the neighborhoods of a city I was going to move into with my family. I didn't want to fall into bohemian neighborhoods (want rest at night, not party) or ghettos just because I didn't know the place. The answers were all about racism, how beautiful and diverse those places were, how much of a lousy father I was for denying my children such enriching experiences, etc.
I resorted to look around for external signs, such as crowded balconies, abandoned cars, how people dressed, etc.
I think I have the same right to be informed when I look for somewhere to live than when shopping around for stuff that suits my needs as precisely as possible.
How is bypassing neighborhoods with a high crime rate "racism", unless you yourself are saying high crime areas ALWAYS have people of a certain race...
There are criminals of every race. The desire to reduce the probability of crime is not a matter of race, but of common sense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So now it's wrong, and even RACIST, to mitigate the risk of my family becoming victims by avoiding areas that have exceptionally high rates of crime?
Being wrong and allegedly racist never felt so good.
I don't get why people are upset about this. If a neighborhood is crime ridden, people avoid it; why shouldn't they? High crime has lots of other negative consequences (outmigration, plummeting real estate values, decrease in tax base, etc.).
I don't see what this has to do with racism. If crime is higher in a neighborhood composed of some racial minority, that's incidental; people don't avoid it because of its racial makeup, they avoid it because of crime, and the correlation with race has other causes.
Furthermore, racial minorities have no reason to live in ghettos these days; if they do, it's by choice or inertia.
If this technology got interwoven into our lives tightly enough, could it create a ghetto in an area where none previously existed? Let's take an area like the Wasatch Front or rural Iowa where the demographics are fairly homogenous. Then you just have one little city with a slightly lower rating due to random noise. Then a positive feedback occurs, and the next thing you know American Fork is da 'hood.
High crime is high crime. The areas are what they are. Fuck Jesse Jackson. He's one of the reasons that areas with high black population tend to also have high crime rates.
(This statement has been approved by both my wife and me, who are caramel colored and slightly tan.)
If there is actual utility, then by pretty much by definition it's not racist. It's simply a statement of how things are.
How things got that way may be associated with racist problems, and racism concerns might be raised regarding how to change something, but to call the app itself racist is just stupid. Then again, a lot of how the US handles race issues is just stupid, so I suppose that's not unexpected.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
As an analyst, to me it's a question of data cleanliness. Yes, people should be able to look at the facts (i.e., crime rate) and route around a higher risk area if they so choose. Trouble is, there's a partial racial component driving those crime statistics (i.e., minorities more likely to be arrested) which probably inflates the "true" crime rates for those neighborhoods. If people are going to get all bent out of shape, they should do so up-stream. Tackle the issues that inject a racial element to crime statistics and leave the people looking for an objective measure of risk assessment alone - they're only using the best available data to make a decision.
Easier said than done of course...
Soon, the only good neighborhood will be the orbiting city. The entire surface of the planet will be one big ghetto.
The word is just used too often, for too many things, that it is ceasing to have any meaning for me, besides "somebody doesn't like something".
This is "racist", that is "racist", the next thing is "racist", he's a "racist", she's a "racist", my car won't start because it's "racist", my program has a memory leak because it's "racist" . . . on, and on, and on . . .
It seems to me to be the hobgoblin of tiny little minds, who can't think of anything else better to say, when they've run out of all other arguments.
For me, now, it is akin to telling someone Jewish that they're cheap, someone German that they're evil because of the Nazis, someone Italian that they're in the Mafia, someone Spanish to leave those poor bulls alone, someone French that they're military cowards, etc, etc, etc . . .
Calling someone or something "racist" . . . is in fact as about as "racist" as you can get these days.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Crime is present in every neighborhood. Methods may vary.
This article, and the topic reminds me of a quote by Thomas Sowell: "The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'"
I find it quite a fair bit telling that the majority of posts currently visible on this article are written by AC's. Even completely non-racist and innocuous posts. To me, that says a lot.
And like another poster below mentioned. Why are people getting so uppity, when the app and it's users are just trying to make the best possible decisions for their own livelihood based on the best/only available data on the matter. If anything, such data would probably be less likely to be racist as it removes peoples' biases and interpretations (assuming the data isn't tainted by the stats, but then you're just opening up a can of worms).
to sacrifice one of our favorite assumptions: that these tools are inherently logical and neutral...the motivations driving the algorithms may not match the motivations of those algorithms' users.'
Information has to be seen in context and used in context. If you don't know the neighbourhood and you feel vulnerable you probably want to go with whatever information you can get and worry about whether it's prejudiced when your safe. If you've some first hand information it's probably going to trump some app. Either way information is almost always welcome even if it's a way to find out later the source can't be trusted. Information isn't money. It doesn't have a face value backed by something like the government. Information acted on without judgement is naive.
headline should read,
Could Humans Use New Technology Create Modern-Day 'Leper Colonies'?
I love these discussions...how will a new tech affect human society? fun stuff...
But it is an engineering and cultural geography question...not a purely sociological or psychological concept...
Here's what I mean:
Engineering: when new tech is developed, the next problem is getting people to use it. "The last mile" so to speak. It's often a question of scale as well, handling 10^8 users on a system. The internet itself is a good example. Countless articles and TED talks have been given about how the internet affects society, but it is a moot point completely for places that have no internet access.
Most of the current thinking (good and bad) is about having 'universal broadband access'...not any one magic gadget or laptop...even Zuck is in on it with his new initiative....that's really just an IT and T-Com question.
Cultural Geography: It's different than sociology and psychology..soc. and psych. are theoretical quasi-sciences (definitely scientific). Cultural Geography is descriptive more than theoretical.
Psychology will tell you if playing video games changes your reactions to questions on a test.
Sociology will tell you how internet access in school and the home correlate to things like finishing college or going to prison.
Cultural Geography describes what humans do with technology.
I'm not dogmatic about these distictions, these are academic disciplines and there is always wiggle room.
Basically I'm saying that this new GhettoFinder app is nothing more than a potential tool for individual cultural geography.
It does nothing more than give data in a context. After that it is all up to the human.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Perhaps the gunshot triangulation technology from the earlier rhinophant poacher story can be used here as well.
There is definitely a fine line between utility and racism in this case. How does one overcome cries of racism while still maintaining accurate data? One could of course discount race from the algorithms but I imagine having a user rate a neighborhood as 'safe' or 'not safe' or even 'dangerous' does from a technical point. Of course, the wetware inserting the rating could be using race as a reason for the rating.
There's no fine line; it's a Venn diagram, with significantly overlapping areas. If you're doing anything that involves social profiling, you're not going to avoid cries of racism, as even in this day and age, racial background is a strong indicator of social grouping. Just yesterday the article came out mentioning that people tend to become friends with people who have similar DNA. Race is nothing more than a combination of history and a few chromosomes; it'd be silly to think that sometimes, that might be the similar DNA that causes social clustering (just like sometimes it's other structures).
This said, the whole idea of "safe/dangerous" neighbourhoods is often very subjective, as others have pointed out. Whether you're safe depends more on whether you stand out and whether you understand the local dangers than anything else. Take someone from Orlando and drop them in the middle of Seward, and it's not going to be a very safe place for them. Drop someone from Seward in the middle of Orlando, you'll have similar issues.
So I don't think the article's premise actually holds much water -- we aren't clustering "unclean" people together; people just socialize with people who are like them in some way -- even if that way is only income.
A better method of finding desirable routes might be via social network -- "x proportion of people in this area are within 3 degrees of separation from you on Facebook. Proceed?"
Given that TFA is only using leprosy as a metaphor, I suppose this is, strictly, off-topic.
But I have to say, in the many countries where leprosy hasn't gone away, there are still plenty of very real, non-metaphorical leper colonies. I know because I'm an eye surgeon who used to work in Africa, and I've been involved in outreach trips to operate on cataracts in leper colonies. If we hadn't arranged the trips, the people would have had no chance of getting their sight back. Nobody much cares about them.
Find another bloody metaphor.
Aberrations have appeared in my destiny prognostication engine!
Take an existing societal problem.
Add technology to it.
Write an article about it as if totally new.
.
Profit?
As if this hasn't been happening forever and a day. Roman citizens were telling each other "That one area downstream from where the Cloaca Maxima empties into the Tiber is really bad.". When a diplomat came to Rome, I'm sure they'd ask the locals where a good place to put a house was.
The "technology": Word of mouth. And if you really wanted to be fancy, writing.
The first point is that racists seldom believe that they're being racist. Because that would be irrational and they all have very rational (to them) reasons for believing whatever they believe.
The second point is that you would be basing your opinion upon a visual characteristic when the real reason might be something you cannot see. Such as economics. Bad neighborhoods have low property values. So poor people live in bad neighborhoods. Not because they're bad people but because that is what they can afford.
Maybe. But if you're aware that you're greeting him "normally" then you're probably a racist.
When I see an old Chinese woman walking her poodle on the street I treat her the same as I would any other person who was not ...
Old?
Chinese?
Female?
Poodle-orientated?
I am unalterably opposed to collective action of any kind to address the alleged drawbacks of what happens when technology empowers me and others to effectively make choices that others may dislike whether because the idea offends them or the consequences harm them. Actionable harm ought to be limited to damage or threat of damage to life, liberty or property. If all the businesses in a neighborhood go broke and none of the property has much value on the market because outsiders avoid the place, so what.
And it does not matter if its a racial think or even a conscious conspiracy. There is no particular reason people's choices should be limited because of harm to others - unless the harm involves use of force or its threatened use. There are criminal laws about that.
I think it is a distinct possibility. If you were for example to canvas a few acres of land with trampolines and bouncy castles you could construct a colony of people with impressive abilities to leap.
Reintegrating leapers from the colony back into non leaper towns could prove quite disruptive proposition for all concerned. Townsfolk may object to lack of toy stores to keep stocks of trampolines or the increased price associated with sudden demand spike. Townsfolk may also not appreciate right of ways being canvased with trampolines or stripmalls with bouncy floors.
Likewise leapers may find the lack of bounce outside the colony to be so disheartening they may become depressed and require counseling.
Yep, the whole thing is stupid. My "black" wife is lighter in color than our "white" friend Kristi, also known as Krispy because she tans often. So there goes the whole black/white thing.
There is such a thing as thug culture. In Boston, you'll find plenty of pale redheads engaged in that culture. It has little to do with race or color, and for Al Sharpton to tell "black" people that they should be part of thug culture is offensive.
It doesn't matter whether you are discriminating on non-racial criteria. If such discrimination has a "disparate impact" on a racial basis, it is racist.
Seastead this.
Being able to tell the difference between human beings and ghetto trash (of any race and income level) is a vital skill. The difference between calling it racism and calling it street smarts is determined by some linear combination of malice, ignorance, and desire to troll.
Poodles are vicious, subhuman creatures and must be kept inside, fenced in, caged, or when brought into public, leashed. Sometimes they even have outrageous hair styles that go completely against what nature intended! - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Rather it is an example of "confirmation bias".
You can tell the false negatives - the people you thought were "good" turn out to be "bad".
But you have no way to verify the false positives - the people you thought were "bad" are really "good". So you do not believe there were false positives.
The result being that the number of "bad" category characteristics keeps increasing. But each one has a clear example that you can cite. Therefore, it is completely rational. And anyone who does not agree is being irrational (opposing that which is rational).
Nothing racist about avoiding crime-plagued areas. Now, if the app was avoiding black middle-class areas, would be entirely different, but that's not what's happening here.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
If all the neighborhoods where green people live have a higher crime rate and higher risk of $badthing, am I being racist against green people? [...] I don't hate green people
If you do nothing about it, yes. Racism is not always an irrational reprehension against green people, it's usually a very utilitarian response to risk and asymmetrical information. If green people have more thieves and crooks among them, it's rational to watch your pockets around them and avoid their services. Not because all greens are crooks, but because by buying from whites reduces your risks.
Being green is a signal you are forced to send regardless of how good your skills are and how honest you are. And once the signaling game starts it becomes a runaway self-fulfilling prophecy:
1. Less greens are hired, they sell less goods etc.
2. The proportion of poverty stricken greens increases, well correlated with crime rates among greens
3. The incentive for whites to discriminate is stronger, reinforcing 1.
This whole cycle is at the core of racial relations. Greens are first socially marginalized, and only then hated for being lazy, violent, uneducated etc. And by avoiding green areas you are doing your share of point 3. There shouldn't be any "neighborhood where green people live, with higher crime rate". You as a citizen, a voter and a man should do something about it, it's not right. If you get on with your life and simply adjust your GPS route to avoid the higher risk, then yes, you are making a racist choice.
It's worth pointing out that the analogy made in the headline doesn't indict the practice. "Leper colonies" were a rational and reasonable public health precaution at a time where no treatment was available and no epidemiological data was available. The reason we don't have them anymore in the West is simply that patients are isolated in hospitals until they have been adequately treated and become non-infectious. "Leper colonies" probably also didn't just house leprosy patients, but also people with more highly contagious conditions. If you have a risk that you can't prevent or treat, the best way of dealing with it is to avoid it altogether, whether it's leprosy or violence.
racists are calling it racist.
This is true, and it cuts both ways: people are naturally apt to be risk-averse, but you can't really blame them for that and shouldn't try to dissuade them from looking out for themselves, their families, and their stuff; it's a natural instinct. Hence, the ghetto-tracking apps.
Hey.. look.. it is sad... but.. what do you expect? some people want to see their kids go into adulthood, preferably without any bullet and/or knife wounds. Problem here is that WE as a society do NOT work together.
It's our fault. Every one of us. Why? Because we only care about ourselves, we judge and segregate.
Worse is, our government is doing very little about it in ways that actually make an impact.
The only way we can make all neighborhoods safe, is to promote work, wealth and equality for all Americans.
Rip out that racism at the root. Stop the imbalance. Let's be serious about our so call "life is sacred" attitude and let's really mean it.
The problem will never solve itself. It needs everybody's participation. North Americans are complacent. That's the truth. We don't care enough about others. Ultimately, when we are in trouble, then, nobody cares about us. This is what must stop.
It's not racism to avoid someone, and it's not racism to choose someone else. It's only racism if what you're doing hurts, stifles, or restricts the freedoms of someone. I can choose not to buy that house, or not to take those streets, or not to patron that restaurant. It's not racist. It's me having a preference.
So if I don't like greeks, and hence don't want to pay greek owners of a greek restaurant, I don't eat there, and it's not racist. If I picket the restaurant and stop others from going there and ask my political representative to tear down that restaurant, then that's racism.
Greeks have the right to not be hindered by my preferences. They don't have any right to my money. See the difference?
(Incidentally, I love greek food, and recently found two fantastically greek-family restaurants in Oshawa and in Whitby.)
I think the graffiti, broken windows, unmowed lawns, and unfixed potholes are enough of a sign of bad neighborhoods. No need to go to a website and rate them.
Walking through an area know to be very statistically high in violent crimes, at night, I am a racist?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Now I can't get anywhere near Fort Meade, Maryland.
Have gnu, will travel.
When rich White people or Jews avoid areas with high crime, it is not racism, it is just them wanting what is best for their familty. When middle class and poor Whites avoid areas with high crime, it's racism.
A US urban "ghetto" is easy to spot. Your first clue will be the boarded-up buildings, perhaps collapsed ones, trash-filled abandoned lots. Often enough, graffiti on everything. Any businesses will look run-down, typically will have metal gates, and the types of businesses will be characteristic -- check cashing, fried chicken joints (typically no-name ones, but sometimes Church's or Popeyes), dollar stores. If you're there during the day, there will be people just hanging around, smoking, drinking, and generally looking hostile.
Technology didn't create these. Technology just lets you avoid them before you get carjacked.
Groups of strutting "youths" obviously want to look intimidating.
Why complain if people actually are intimidated, giving them exactly what they want?
If wandering into a neighborhood means you are likely to get car-jacked or to have your skull caved in and you wallet taken, someone warning you not to go there is doing a service. If the local residents don't like the opprobrium, they can fix the problem. There is no right to behave like an animal and expect others to put up with it.
if the neighborhood is in fact high crime rate, i don't see a problem with using that data to advise accordingly. they can even make it explicitly non-racist by not providing any information at all about demographic.
sure, this could create a downward spiral situation but that's not really the responsibility of these kinds of utility apps and websites.
besides... everything is a feedback loop... can't help it. just the way of the world.
Am I the only one seeing the fundamental flaw here?
God, I wish I had mod points right now. Best post I have seen today. Sad you had to do it as an AC but I understand why.
If I say "avoid crime ridden areas" I am not saying "avoid these races"... That crime ridden areas and given races happen to correlate is a coincidence and not actually something that people are intentionally trying to avoid.
The tendency to label things as racist has really gotten out of control. I think my favorite example of this was a greeting card from Hallmark that had an astronomy theme. It was a verbal greeting card that talked. And part of its little rant included references to "black holes" which is an astronomy term with no racial meaning. Regardless, the NAACP claimed that the cards really said "black hoe"... they didn't... and the NAACP also found the term "black hole" to be inherently racist which of course it isn't.
But this sort of thing happens because we give as a society these advocacy groups license to redefine what racism means to include pretty much anything including very innocent behavior.
If I am in a bad neighborhood is it racist to avoid packs of young men? Not really. What if they're also of some touchy minority race that like to turn everything into a civil rights issue? Doesn't matter. You're not avoiding them because of their race. You're avoiding them because its a pack of young men in a bad neighborhood.
People really need to learn the difference between causal and correlative statistics. Simply because you can show various variables correlating doesn't mean a given variable causes the other variable. Often there are third or fourth variables which themselves caused BOTH or even more correlative variables to all move in the same direction.
For example, why is it that certain races have bad neighborhoods? Does the literal color of their skin cause their crime to be higher? Unlikely. So there are other issues which ACTUALLY cause the crime. NOT the race.
Address those issues and the crime will statistically reduce to national norms. And what's more, once it gets known that the crime has gone down and people are statistically as safe... then suddenly people won't be so inclined to avoid those areas.
It has NOTHING to do with race and is therefore not a racial issue. Race is at most a correlative variable that is otherwise irrelevant to the situation.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So say the racists.
Learn to love Alaska
No, if you were to sit in your house, and look up crime statistics by precinct and then look for real estate based on precinct location for lower crime stats, looking solely for violent crimes. Property crimes are judged by insurance rates. If you do that, then you are an intelligent non-racist avoiding high risks.
But the self-described smart people drive the neighborhoods to get a "feel" and by that, they mean if they see negros, they assume high crime, and avoid the "risk", not the negros, then they believe themselves to be like you, intelligent and non-racist, despite being wrong on both accounts.
Learn to love Alaska
How is wanting to avoid a crap part of town Racist? PPuullleeaaaseee, Next someone will be wanting to name an Asteroid Treyvon?!?! Race baiting nimrods!
So zimmerman was now larger then travyon? What lie next. He was younger as well?
Your stupidity is amazing!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The entire point about avoiding a ghetto says something about an area you do not want to go to. It says NOTHING about race or do you think every ghetto in the world is about black people? Plenty of white areas you want to avoid as well. Or brown, or yellow or other brown.
But you are right, people often aren't aware they are racist. Like YOU, you automatically assume a ghetto area is all about race. You cannot even consider the idea that a ghetto area might NOT be about black people. That is how deep racism goes. When you can hear the word ghetto and not immediately assume the inhabitants are black, then you can claim not to be racist.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The UK police site (www.police.uk) offers a facility to view the crimes in a neighbourhood. It's got nothing to do with race - just what's happening on the streets. And that appears to be the purpose of these apps; the fact that the commentariat immediately assumes it's got a racial component is a sign of how deeply pathological the American liberal establishment is. Remember: the definition of a conservative is a liberal who's just been mugged. One's almost inclined to suggest that one might want to see a few of them mugged...
How dare humans protect themselves? That's racist.
if the niggers in the ghetto were not such a bunch of criminal gangstas then racism would not be an issue,
the bleeding heart liberals and ghetto niggers can holler "racism" all they want, and i will holler "go to hell nigger gangster" because i have a right to know where the danger zones are despite it being populated with mostly trashy criminal niggers
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I wish I could provide a citation of the account I'm about to provide, but years have passed. Cornell West was speaking somewhere on racism, and this white person during the comment period said "I'm sick of these racists; I'm not a racist"--something like that. And West said something like "Good for you because I'm a racist. We're all taught to be racists here. I walk down the street, I'M afraid of young black men." I'm summarizing the hell out of it, and my memory is old, but his point seemed to be that no one of us is free of this BS because it's so pervasive, that black people even internalize it. And that he was calling this holier-than-though person on lack of self-awareness and sanctimony. Racism and prejudice is human nature, but it's really bad in the US because we lie to ourselves so much about it and don't face up to our problems and past. Could be worse, sure. But it's bad enough.
@"Enough Already With the Avoid-The-Ghetto Apps" article Enough already with bullying headlines that tell you exactly what to do, think, feel, act and try shame you. Really, this crap is all over the place these days.
A few years ago, I spent about 9 months working a fairly rural section of Missouri.* I'm white and my supervisor was a very dark-skinned black man. We got to talking about fishing and I casually suggested a few fishing spots in the more remote areas. My supervisor very calmly looked at me and said "You're white. You can go anywhere you like around here. I'm a black man in Missouri. There are just certain places I don't go for my own safety."
If these kinds of app provide data on racially-motivate crimes (anyone out there who uses them to shed more light on this?) it would go a long way to helping minorities avoid areas where they might find themselves in trouble with the law by virtue of not being white. It also might give them a better sense of security going into areas they might not normally frequent.
*The town I worked in had a population of about 4500 and I lived 30 minutes up the road in town of 1500. There was a college town of about 20,000 about 30 minutes east by highway. From the town I worked in it was 2 hours in either direction to a major population center.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Of course there is going to be some discrimination/racism in these kinds of apps/datasets. But they can also be useful for helping keeping the "unsavvy" from wandering into the wrong neighborhood. Some relatives of mine went to Detroit to a baseball game, they got a bit turned around and stopped at a gas station to try to ask for directions. An officer noticing that they could get into a world of hurt asked if they needed help, after hearing their story he noted that the average attendant in this neighborhood didn't like "their kind" and would probably send them to an even worse neighborhood in the hopes that they would be carjacked, threatened or robbed. The officer escorted them to one of the stadiums parking garages telling them "keep up with me, don't stop, don't slow down, even if you have to go through red lights & stop signs. I'm all for trying to prevent outright discrimination in these kinds of apps/datasets. But I personally don't call it discrimination when those in a particular neighborhood, no matter particular skin color/religion/etc, DO desire to do you harm.
You are racist, because skin color is not a predictor of behavior. Even if 90% of green people were criminals, you are still sort of an asshole for prejudging the remaining 10% for the crimes of their neighbors.
If there was no race, there would still be bad neighborhoods.
Except you probably don't, and most people don't. I'll give an example. Black people routinely call each other the N word, in casual jest. Yet white people can never do that, even if in jest. Ill give another example. There is one manner in which you act around your friends, and another manner in which you conduct yourself professionally at the workplace. What flies in one location might not necessarily fly in another. Hell, I've seen many cases of people attempting to great extents to tie actions to racism where there is no visible tie whatsoever -- I'd argue that very action is far more racist than the claim being made.
Not just in the sense of areas to avoid, but in the sense of having fewer modern conveniences that we might take for granted, these places already exist. This lack of facilities and conveniences engenders frustrations that eventually boil over and end up as neighborhoods controlled by gangsters or terrorists (as in the "les banlieues" of France).
Imagine the situation in the large and restless cities of Asia, Africa and LatAm.
Some of the facilities that they lack are - Access to banking, good sanitation and housing etc.
OK