Or, as is far more often the case, they find someone of colour (usually Black) driving a car that fits some racially biased‡ preconceived notion (e.g., the only way a Black man could be driving this car is either (a) they are a drug dealer because they’ve got lots of cash or (b) they’ve stolen it).

‡ While an unfortunately large number of police officers in the U.S. (and elsewhere) are outright racist, not all are. However, most do pattern matching according to what they’ve been trained as "indicators of criminality", and most of those patterns have their basis in systemic racism that have no connection to real criminality. As I pointed out on a wholly separate discussion the other day, the most common and largest form of theft — and the one least prosecuted — is wage theft by white collar workers.

This is provably the case.

https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2020/05/05/veil-dar...

Daytime, black drivers get disproportionately pulled over. Nighttime, same rate as others. Daylight savings time switch used to eliminate other variables in a really elegant way.

This data suggests traffic stops are more often pretext stops rather than in response to dangerous driving

New Jersey Turnpike seems to suggest the opposite. That different groups break traffic rules at different rates, and given the amount of speeding the police under enforced black speeding tickets

Got a cite you'd like to share? The only one I can see is a 20 year study that the DOJ asked not be released due to methodology problems.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-racial-profiling-my... It is a two decade old article. Heather MacDonald has been harping on it for that long

> However, most do pattern matching according to what they’ve been trained as "indicators of criminality", and most of those patterns have their basis in systemic racism that have no connection to real criminality.

Somewhat going off topic here but I'm curious: do you think in the USA African Americans have the same real rate of serious criminality (such as murder, not speeding) as other groups once you adjust for poverty?

I don’t have time to search to show my work (nor do I care to do so), but my understanding of the data is that suggests the same or lower.

The real incidence rate is hard to tease out because of the presumption of criminality baked into the American system — we know, for example, that Blacks in America are on average charged more frequently, convicted more frequently, and imprisoned for longer than any other group. White defendants are more likely to be offered diversion programs or be offered leniency, even if they are from the same economic circumstances.

In Canada, that presumption of criminality is placed on Indigenous peoples and the imbalances between groups on charges, convictions, and imprisons are similarly lopsided as those for Black Americans.

> The real incidence rate is hard to tease out because of the presumption of criminality baked into the American system

I don't think it's as hard as you make it out to be. We have multiple independent sources collecting this data. The FBI collects racial data on perpetrators and victims, and multiple national surveys ask victims of crimes about the demographics of the perpetrator. The numbers from all these independent sources are fairly consistent.

Murders are especially easy to get reliable numbers on because there's a body. We know black people are murdered at dramatically higher rates than any other race and that most murder is intraracial. The reported racial crime statistics are accurate unless we believe that white people are sneaking into inner city majority black areas to murder black people undetected in massive numbers and the FBI is conspiring with multiple independent data collection groups to cover it up.

As someone who likes to have a "beater" vehicle for work/puttering, this is shockingly noticeable.

I've gotten pulled over multiple times in a crappy old pickup, while never being pulled over in a slightly less crappy, slightly less old Lexus that I drove far more regularly and far more... spiritedly.

> Basically, if you look somewhat rich (e.g. in a suit) or in trades clothings, and your car isn't too shabby you won't get stopped randomly.

Might this make sense if what they're looking for are outstanding warrants or drugs?

I could see those two groups having a lower likelihood of those two things.

In high school I had a friend who received a pretty cheap car as a gift from his grandmother. I was with him when we were stopped and essentially harassed for some 30 minutes. We all knew it was the car and the disparity to the nicer neighborhood we were in.

His parents knew it too. He literally never once drove the car again and got rid of it soon after. They continued to let him drive their cars until college.