Pundits, problems, prescriptions

When pundits make claims and prescriptions, it's useful to parse out the components of the problem.

1. Is is a problem? If you worry that most Americans do not go to college, stop a minute and ask why everybody should. If you think everybody would benefit, you should get out more.
2. Is it a new problem? Remember the epidemic of burning of black churches a few decades ago? When somebody bothered to look at the statistics, it turned out that this happened at the same rate it always had--and most of the fires were and are due to poor maintenance, not anger.
3. Is the description of the problem accurate? Activists typically have tunnel vision, to put it kindly.
4. Is the prescription relevant? "End capitalism" is a popular magic cure-all. The dark font in the human soul that pours out hatred and greed and lust is supposedly entirely due to private property.
5. What side effects does the prescription entail? "Defund the police" and then what happens? I used to wonder if people got their ideas of problem solving from 25-minute TV shows and 20-second commercials, but I'm coming around to the conclusion that a lot of people are neither very bright nor very experienced. But they have certificates.

I'm going to be a bit cold-blooded here.

About 6 black people hung themselves outdoors in the past month

Yes, of course that's a problem. Any suicide is. Or any murder, if that's what it is. (In one of the cases someone allegedly has video evidence that it was murder.)

Is it a new problem? Is the rate higher than it used to be? That might indicate dangerously greater stress, if it is suicide, or an extremely ugly revival of old styles of murder if it isn't.

Let's see. I don't have statistics broken out exactly, but if the suicide rate among blacks is 40% that among whites (from the article), and there were about 48,000 suicides in the USA (2018), there would have been about 2500 black suicides. If the rate of hanging is about 1/4 the total, then in a month you'd expect about 52 deaths by hanging, concentrated in areas with larger black populations. (and in places with higher rates of addiction and mental illness--like homeless camps) I'd expect some fraction of those to take place indoors: maybe 3/4 if one UK survey is applicable. So, 13 outdoors--or more, if the homeless camps contribute a lot to the numbers.

A count of "6" isn't exactly a smoking gun. It tells me that either the estimate for the rate of hanging relative to other methods is off by quite a bit (quite possible--the article didn't break that down by ethnicity) or that most of the incidents haven't been reported on here. In neither case is there evidence for a "new" or resurgent problem. An old one, yes--though one we prefer not to think about.

Maybe there will be. I would not be surprised. Until then..