quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
My reaction is that, around 2013, people who had previously sighed and accepted certain things started saying, "that's enough. No more."

It also corresponds to the rise of social media as a communication mechanism.

This is pretty much what I think those peaks show, but I recognize that, as PD said way back up top, raw numbers plus my gut reaction isn't much to hang my hat on.

Another way I might say what Quirt said is that we're having a conversation that's been coming on for 400-plus years. I don't always like the tone or tactics of everybody on either side, but I'm not sure I know a better way to do it. It feels like ripping off a cultural band-aid.

Social media has exacerbated both the constructive and not-constructive conversation. All the shouting makes it hard to hear reasonable voices, but I'm not sure we'd be having the conversation at this level without social media.

I was pretty sure that there would have been a substantial peak in the "police brutality" chart in 1991 when Rodney King was beaten if it didn't start twenty-five years later than some of the other charts, so I went looking for more information on who "Random-Guy-on-the-Internet" was and on his methods.

The first thing I found out was his name: Zach Goldberg. His Twitter account gives no bio so I can't tell y'all anything about him. And I found the Twitter thread where he posted his charts.

First of all, he has the data for "police brutality" prior to 2001, so he chose not to use it. The chart in the original post wasn't in the thread I found, but he also posted this chart showing the percentage of articles that mention the phrase.



As I thought, the data prior to 2001 are a lot more noisy than the ones he chose to show in the chart in the original post, which makes it look suspiciously like he's massaging his data so that he can make sure that every graph shows the same start-from-zero-and-skyrocket-around-2013 shape.

This targeted omission makes me suspicious of his methods. This is doubly true because I do think that there probably has been a significant increase in the use of most of those keywords in the last few years, so there was no need to massage the data. If he can't tolerate data points that vary even a bit from the point he's trying to make, then I don't find him trustworthy at all.

That chart actually makes the 2000-2013 period look aberrational, which is probably just another way of saying what you already said. If you don't pick a starting point to avoid all the earlier action, and then factor in rising media coverage of everything as the internet and social media expand, the later period seems less exceptional.

So, Jon, who is the mysterious source of the data, and how did you happen to come across him?

Again, twitter. I don’t know who the guy is, though some credible people follow him, such as Jonathan Haidt. I came across it through someone’s retweet, possibly Haidt, I don’t remember.

I also really don’t think it’s important who he is, as long as he’s not making the graphs up of course. There is nothing I take away from these graphs that is at all undermined by mentions of “police brutality” in decades past. And that’s one graph of a dozen.

Again, we’ve all lived through this, so it isn’t really a surprise. What’s fascinating to me is the uniformity of these surges and their magnitude.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

I also really don’t think it’s important who he is, as long as he’s not making the graphs up of course.

Of course it matters who he is. Putting aside complete falsehoods, which are of course possible, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. A graph published by Nate Silver has more immediate credibility with me than a graph published by Peter Navarro. As just one example that my lovely spouse mentioned to me last night, we can't even be sure that this guy isn't a Russian troll.

And it matters to you, too. Which is why, when people requote things, you have, at times, asked for the source of the information. Sauce for the goose ...

Which is not to say that I wouldn't question a graph by Nate, or eventually accept a graph by Navarro. But my starting presumption would be different.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

Again, we’ve all lived through this, so it isn’t really a surprise. What’s fascinating to me is the uniformity of these surges and their magnitude.

And, as we all know, it's entirely possible that, depending on the source used, it's been influenced by Russian meddling.

I'm really surprised at the reaction here. This really got people's partisan hackles raised and had them seeking out the messenger to see if he might take a bullet.

As I've said, we all lived through this. Did someone really not notice? Do people really not remember that just a decade ago it would have been unthinkable to use 'white' as an epithet in the op-ed pages of the times (or any other bald expression of racial animus)? Do people not remember that 'white supremacy' meant the hoses of Bull O'Connor and not the use of words like 'meritocracy' or 'melting pot'? Does no one remember that borrowing from other cultures was celebrated rather than condemned?


I expected some disagreement as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, and what the cause might have been. But the pushback on the data itself (in outline, not every detail) has been surprising.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
George Zimmerman and the birth of the BLM movement--2013--seems to correspond to both these graphs and my memory of when racism and other "isms" became part of the national conversation.

Yes, and I think it may correspond with the number of unarmed black men being killed by the police.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
I'm really surprised at the reaction here. This really got people's partisan hackles raised and had them seeking out the messenger to see if he might take a bullet.

As I've said, we all lived through this. Did someone really not notice? Do people really not remember that just a decade ago it would have been unthinkable to use 'white' as an epithet in the op-ed pages of the times (or any other bald expression of racial animus)? Do people not remember that 'white supremacy' meant the hoses of Bull O'Connor and not the use of words like 'meritocracy' or 'melting pot'? Does no one remember that borrowing from other cultures was celebrated rather than condemned?


I expected some disagreement as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, and what the cause might have been. But the pushback on the data itself (in outline, not every detail) has been surprising.

It comes from poor sourcing. And the fact that we know that obscured Twitter accounts might be Russian trolls.

If it didn’t fit your preconceptions, you’d be the first one to point those things out.

I never said that the rise in use of the words he selected didn't reflect my informal observations. I did say that he was playing fast and loose with his data in a way that is obvious during a cursory glance.

His methods and delivery do not pass the sniff test, and it's important not to believe something that's presented on the sole basis that it confirms one's own opinion.

There are similar twitter-voices on the left who also post similar tweetbursts that one has to take with a grain of salt. Or a peck of salt. One of them is Seth Abramson. He was already widely known in the creative writing world because, and in retrospect this is hard to believe, he single-handedly created a ranking system for MFA programs that tried to do what the US News rankings do for undergraduate programs...and he was able to sell a leading industry magazine on printing it and promoting the heck out of it.

He produced scads of fine print (not unlike this guy) explaining his methods, which amalgamated data as disparate as the number of assistantships awarded, the program's perceived ranking, the program's historical perceived rankings, and on and on. Then he churned that information and, not unlike US News, came up with a single ranking order that was now the gospel. Because numbers.

Seth's qualifications for doing this? He is a lawyer who writes experimental poetry.

The outcry from programs who felt his MFA ranking system was completely arbitrary (because it pretty much was) finally caused the magazine to drop Seth's years-long project. What's he doing now?

He's a Twitter troll for the left with 670,000 followers. I don't believe a word he types, even when it meshes with my own world view, and I don't believe Zach Goldberg, either.