Thread by @marcowenjones

Thread 1) @elonmusk is promoting racist misinformation in the wake of the #allentx shootings. There are a number of examples but I want to focus on this graph, which has been shared and liked hundreds of thousands of times. What's the story behind it, and why is it misleading?

2/ The graph is shared by an account called 'end wokeness' (agenda much), and the message is quite clear. 'Black-on-white violence is the biggest form of interracial violence but media focuses more on white-on-black violence'. First, where's the data from?

3/ The numbers presented are actually accurate and taken from a 2018 US Bureau of Statistics Report on Violent Victimization. Specifically, the data is taken from Table 14. However, the original table is not just about 'inter-racial' violent incidents bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pd…

4/ It is about inter-racial (between different race or ethnicity) and intra-racial (between the same race or ethnicity). The first thing that the graph maker did was to selectively present the figures to relate to inter-racial violence only. This has a profound visual impact

5/ As @GeorgeTakei 's response to Musk indicates, if you factor in white-on-white violence the graph looks dramatically different, as white-on-white violence is clearly the highest in the table. However, this is perhaps not the biggest problem

6/ The original report presented the information as percentages, not raw numbers. This is because percentages factor in the relationship with the number of victims as a whole. White victims are more likely to be victims because they makeup around 60% of the US population

7/ population, while Black or African Americans make up around 12% of the pop. In fact, the US bureau of statistics makes a point to create rolling averages in order to highlight this very point. As the graph below shows, the rates of white on black and black on whites aresimilar

8/ The graph gives the misleading impression that inter-racial violence, and particularly black-on-white violence, is the biggest issue in the States. In fact, intra-racial violence is by far the largest proportion of violent victimization incidents

9/ This brings us to @elonmusk, who replies wondering why the media would 'misrepresent the "real" situation'. Musk is doing several things here. Firstly, he is amplifying the graph by replying. Secondly, he is endorsing the graph as an accurate reflection of crime statistics

10/ in the US. Thirdly, he is making unfounded claims about the media coverage in the US of crime (a straw man). While findings vary about coverage of violent perpetrators in US news media, most studies tend to find that white people are OVERREPRESENTED as victims in crime

11/ Many studies tend also to find that black perpetrators are overrepresented, but the idea that the media focus on white-on-black violence lacks any substantial basis, with white victims (especially white women) overrpesented as victims.

12/ So the maker of the graph meme has done several things.
1) Disaggregated data to raw numbers to make them appear more sensational
2) Excluded data from the original report in order to emphasise black-on-white violence
3) Added a straw man in terms of how media covers crime

13/ These selective manipulations can be termed 'misleading statistics', and qualify as mis or disinformation (depending on whether you see it as deliberate). I just prefer to call it 'deception', since there is a clear desire to mislead to promote harm

14/ Hundreds of thousands of people have liked or retweeted the graph (not all in agreement), and Musk has essentially endorsed it. That such content flourishes in the wake of such tragedies again highlight attempts to exploit them for the purpose of societal polarisation

15/ So @EndWokeness is right about one thing, 'Perspective IS everything'. You can manipulate graphs and stats to suit your agenda, and maybe, the tech 'genius' Musk will embrace your content uncritically, cos he's a great scientist...

16/ And in case it wasn't clear, to share content that engages in manipulation to frame black people as inherently more violent is racist. To embrace that uncritically is ignorant, and probably reflects confirmation bias.

17/ Just an addendum. The US bureau of statistics reports are fairly descriptive, and of course do not go into various reasons that can motivate forms of violence, e.g. relative inequality, deprivation etc. There is plenty of good reading out there on this.

18/ These should always be factored in when trying to examine extant discrepancies in inter-racial or intra-racial violence (as well as institutional violence, e.g. police violence). Statistics only tell a very partial story and don't always offer explanatory power.