I don't buy that, today many say things like "Men are on average more prone to violence than women" without intending it in an essentialist way. So then why would "Jamaicans are on average more prone to violence than Japanese" have to be essentialist?
The interesting part is that few people take the same stance on both of these statements, people thinking the first is fine rarely accepts the second and vice versa. Seems like this argument is more about each side shutting down ideas they are uncomfortable with.
However, I think that it is possible to contextualize fact-based-generalizations to remove sexist/racism from them. If you say 'society conditions men to be less emotionally open, thus men end up being more violent, see these psych studies', that's all well and good. On a similar note, if you say 'Jamaicans on average grow up in higher poverty with worse education, and more end up involved in crime', that contextualizes it to show that you are not speaking about the nature of the people, but rather about specific situations and facts.
A final factor you're ignoring is that there's always a much broader social context through which your generalization is interpreted. "Black fathers are lazy" is a more racist generalization than "white fathers are lazy" because the first has racist context associated with it, and the second has much less of such a context. This context may be global or regional, though with the dominance of american media, that context is basically global at this point.
On a similar note, anything to do with a specific people or race needs more explicit context because there's so much racist ambient context.
> Seems like this argument is more about each side shutting down ideas they are uncomfortable with.
I am not okay with anyone stopping you from providing facts and ideas about crime in different societies, just trying to stop you from generalizing in such a way that implies one race is inferior to another. This isn't a matter of discomfort per-se, but rather a matter of us having already seen the end of the slippery slopes such talk, when weaponized as rhetoric and internalized, leads to.
There is no meaningful semantic difference between the statements "Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese" and "Jamaicans have a higher homicide rate than the Japanese". Your outrage is exactly the kind of behaviour that so many in this thread are decrying: the OP said something that is indisputably real and you reacted by saying "you can and should be banned from platforms".
You are literally trying to expel someone from the internet for saying something true, because you feel a statement of statistical fact implies things you don't like or can't accept (but which weren't actually stated anyway).
You're mis-using facts to represent one culture as more violent than another, and implying that it's a trait of the people, not a much more complicated result of economic and legal differences. It's an incredibly racist and insidious thing to say.
Maybe it's easier on you if the example only discusses white people?
If I said the homicide rate amongst Americans is much higher than amongst the Swiss, I'd be making a negative but true generalisation about Americans (it's 5.35 vs 0.54 murders per 100,000 inhabitants). What is it that causes such a difference in rate? Is it economic differences? Surely not. Legal differences? Perhaps, but there are plenty of guns in Switzerland and violence is equally illegal in both countries. If anything the USA has much harsher punishments so it stands to reason it should have a lower rate.
If you insist on refusing to consider the huge bundle of intuitively defined and often nameless attributes we collectively call "culture" then not only are you wilfully blinding yourself, but you are finding yourself literally attacking and trying to silence people who are less intellectually limited. This sort of behaviour is not a good thing to practice.
I would not be fine with the similar, but different phrase "American people are more homicidal than the swiss", assuming no further context.
One of those is clearly meant to discuss a fact. The other is meant to play up nationalistic tensions.
I know negative generalizations can be supported by fact. I'm fine with those facts being presented and discussed, I'm just not fine with the facts being obscured and rephrased such that it serves more to create a climate of racism and nationalism.
Context and phrasing do matter, especially when it comes to hateful and divisive speech.
It doesn't need to be a moral distinction. When negative statements are made neutrally, discussion goes much better than when they are made pejoratively. This entire site, if not the entire internet, is evidence of that.
Let's start by agreeing that "Americans" and "American people" are equivalent, at least when discussing statistical facts about populations. Then the two sentences can be rewritten as:
"the homicide rate amongst the American people is much higher than amongst the Swiss"
and
"American people are more homicidal than the swiss"
or taking out the nouns:
"the X rate amongst Y is much higher than amongst the Z"
vs
"Y is more X than Z"
which I am 100% sure, if put to people in a neutral poll, would be considered the same.
But I'm also mystified as to the wider goal. TheDong admits the two constructions are similar, yet his reaction is extreme - one is fine and the other triggers calls for banning people completely, labels of "hateful and divisive" and so on. That kind of unpredictable and over the top behaviour triggered by almost non-existent differences in phrasing is negative to Hacker News, and clearly violates the various guidelines about reading what people say in good faith, let alone the one about reacting to the strongest possible interpretation!
Given that TheDong knows how similar they are, one must wonder what the purpose of treating them so differently is.
That is not true. The fact you presented might be true, but the statement that "Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese" is not identical to the fact about homicide rates.
Your statement implies that those two groups of people are somehow differing in temperament such that one has more violent tendencies than the other.
The reality is that there are many complicating factors, and your statement removes enough of those that it no longer is true.
For example, a similar but more obviously false statement from the same vein: "It is a fact that americans have more total car accidents than the ancient greeks. Therefore, the americans are worse drivers than the ancient greeks" (or similarly "more americans own cars and have no accidents than ancient greeks, so it follows americans are better drivers). The obvious confounding factor there is the fact that ancient greece had no cars, but it follows an identical pattern to your statement. It starts with a simple fact, and then creates a phrase which neatly avoids all confounding factors and has a negative implication that relates to the fact, but ignores how complex reality is.
I think that if you, in seriousness, made a statement like your example, you can and should be banned from platforms. You're mis-using facts to represent one culture as more violent than another, and implying that it's a trait of the people, not a much more complicated result of economic and legal differences. It's an incredibly racist and insidious thing to say.