More on the Bad Assumption

In my previous post, I talked about the erroneous assumption that leads people to expect proportional representation in any group of people they observe. Thomas Sowell has written an excellent article on this and I am sharing a few key points for you to consider.
Here are some examples:

If you watch football, you have often seen black players score touchdowns, but probably have never seen a black player kick an extra point. Is there a reason that teams do not want minority players to kick the extra point?

In basketball, blacks are clearly overrepresented and whites underrepresented. Is this a bit of racial scheming by blacks to control the game?

Government regulation of the housing market was increased when statistics showed that blacks were turned down for mortgages more often than whites. The scream of racism went throughout the land and some really bad decisions were made to ‘fix’ the problem.  However they cherry picked the facts they wanted to see, and failed to mention these:
- whites were turned down more often than Asians

- black-owned banks also turned down blacks more often than whites

- credit scores differed from group to group

Thomas Sowell has this sharp concluding statement: “The bean-counters are everywhere pushing the idea that differences show injustices committed by society. As long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it – and the polarization they create will sell this country down the river.”

Don’t let baloney guide your thinking.

Bean-Counters and Baloney

This Bad Assumption about Race

An article by Thomas Sowell shows clearly how people get the wrong idea when they adopt a wrong assumption to start with.

This is the wrong assumption that people are making, “that different races, sexes, and other subdivisions would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations, and income brackets if there were not something strange or sinister going on.”

If a person has adopted this assumption into their thinking, they will be the first to speak up if their ‘type’ of person is not represented in a group of people in accord with overall representation in the population. This erroneous thinking is the foundation of ‘token’ mentality and people attempting to use the race card.

The New York Times is one example of media that wants to feed off the race issue, so they find amazing stats like this:

Baseball coaches from minority groups are more often coaching at first base than third base. Also third base coaches become managers more often first base coaches. The implication is that managers are more often selected out of the pool that has fewer minorities. Is there something strange or sinister going on?

Are we to then think that maybe all 9 positions on the baseball team are being populated according to race?

More on this topic in my next post.

Bean-Counters and Baloney