The Wonderful World of Context
First of all, I don’t think you’ll find many people who would say everyone is literally equal in every regard. Usually, when people say all races are equal, they’re talking about the possible range of potentialities, rather than meaning to be completely literal. I have read and heard far too many racist statements and comments from ignorant people along the lines of:
A. “On average, African-Americans make better basketball players. On average, Asians score higher on the SAT. You cannot debate this.”
So let’s debate this. There are a few different avenues for argument here, and I’m going to wander away from those initial comments, but I will come back to address them specifically at the end. First, we will discuss context. So welcome to the wonderfully complicated world of statements that are true in one regard but not true in other regards. As an example, let’s first look at a simple statement that is free of any racial baggage:
B. “Dogs are larger than cats.”
Okay. Is that true? Well, free of context, that statement is neither true nor untrue. If we’re talking about domesticated dogs and cats, then yes, it’s true that, on average, dogs are larger than cats. There are, of course, particularly small dogs and particularly large cats, which make the statement untrue in every instance. Newborn dogs are often smaller than fully grown cats, but they’re still dogs. Even the words dog and cat need clarification; a tiger is called a cat, technically, so perhaps cats are ultimately larger than dogs on an individual scale.
What I am trying to explain is that, depending on the context, the statement can be read as true or untrue. By itself, it’s meaningless.
In a sense, the sentence exists in a linguistic superposition—it is simultaneously true and false until an observer defines the parameters. Without those boundaries, the statement is meaningless.
Let’s apply this thinking to a comparative statement about different races, and you’ve probably come across this one online before, as it is quite popular:
1. “Black people are more likely to be criminals than white people.”
When you do hear a statement like this, it is usually justifying a reported police bias against Black people or some such. So is it a true statement? Well, again, by itself, it can’t tell us anything. We need the context. So let’s talk about this statement, and we shall see if we can make it mean something.
First, we need a location. Where are we talking about? Are we talking about worldwide or in a specific country? To narrow it down a bit, we’ll say America:
2. “In the USA, Black people are more likely to be criminals than white people.”
Now then, what does “more likely” mean exactly? Are we speaking genetically? Outside of the capital R Racist – KKK, MAGA, and other eugenicist types, most people will say no, not genetically, just statistically, for whatever reason, be it cultural, social, economic or whatever. And if we’re talking statistically, we have to ask *where do these statistics come from?* because, of course, we don’t have a perfect record of all the criminals out there for what I hope are obvious reasons. It will usually be data taken from the police and the court system, so we must add that as a qualifier too. We will update our statement:
3. “In the USA, according to data provided by the criminal justice system, Black people are statistically more likely to be criminals than white people.”
And now this raises a lot of questions about how that data is gathered. Because there could be problems with the method of data collection.
Let’s imagine you’re a new police chief in a city and you’re looking at statistics that say black people are 20% more likely than white people to be criminals. You have limited resources, and obviously, you want to combat crime as effectively as you can, so logically choose to disproportionately target Black people. You’re not racist, you’re just spending your resources tackling crime where the statistics say it’s more likely to be. Here is the problem with that: A year down the line, when you update the statistics, you will see an increase in Black crime relative to white crime. The extra time and effort you spent chasing Black criminals meant that you caught more Black criminals. Also, the decreased focus on white criminals meant you caught fewer. Now you’re looking at statistics that say that Black people are 30% more likely to be criminals, and you end up in a spiral.
This is how you end up in situations like Black Americans being arrested for marijuana possession at a national rate which is more than triple that of white people, despite Black people and white people actually smoking weed at similar rates. And that is just on the police end. If we consider the court system, we are going to have to add another qualifier to our statement because the justice system isn’t perfect; sometimes guilty people go free and sometimes innocent people get convicted. And of course, Black people are more likely to be convicted of the same crimes than white people, and they receive harsher punishments than white people and that too has an effect on the statistics. So we will say that:
4. “In the USA, according to data provided by the criminal justice system, Black people are statistically more likely to be found to be criminals than white people.”
And now we have something that is actually measurable with a degree of confidence. And there is something else to be considered here. We know that what is considered a crime changes over time. That is, certain things that were illegal become legal and vice versa. Some of those things can disproportionately affect different races. For instance, what happens to that inflated number of black people considered criminals for marijuana possession if marijuana possession is legalised? Suddenly, you’re looking at a completely different set of statistics. So you really need a scale of time there as well:
5. “In the USA, according to data provided by the criminal justice system for a given year, Black people are statistically more likely to be found to be criminals than white people.”
I’m sure there are other things we could talk about. Consider one guy who is a banker who defrauds millions. He only counts as one criminal. The same as the guy who gets arrested for shoplifting, who counts as one criminal. And more realistically, the banker probably counts as no criminals because he donates huge amounts of money to the people who get to decide if he is a criminal or not. But I am getting off-topic, so for the sake of sanity, we will take a break from clarifying our statement there. If you have not noticed by now, I really don’t like statements like the first one, and I’m very keen on people giving the full context when they are talking about things like this.
Making statements on the implications of such averages is just that. If you just say this, “Black people are more likely to be criminals than white people”, a lot of people are going to start making assumptions–often genetic, racist assumptions–and of course, a lot of the time, if you do see a sentence like this, it is because the person saying it wants people to make those assumptions. This statement isn’t good enough by itself. My opinion is the same for what we will call the “positive statements” that are mentioned at the start of this chapter:
A. “On average, African-Americans make better basketball players.” “On average, Asians score higher on the SAT.”
Because both of those things are only true in certain regards.
If we look at something like “On average, Asians score higher on the SAT.” The assumption a lot of people will make is that this means Asians are, on average, genetically smarter than other people, and that is a lazy and unscientific deduction when there could be lots of other reasons behind why Asian people tend to score higher on the SAT. Let’s think about a few of those reasons.
First, a huge predictor of your own academic success is your parents’ academic success, and another is your parents’ financial status. Now, it supposedly follows that richer, better-educated parents have richer, better-educated children. But here’s the problem: A considerable number of American Black people alive today either remember having to go to segregated schools, or they are the children of people who went to segregated schools. It really wasn’t that long ago that Black people legally had to go to worse underfunded schools and get a worse education than white people. It’s not ancient history. The little girl in the Norman Rockwell painting titled “The Problem We All Live With” is still alive. These sorts of things take a lot of generations to shrink to the point where they are statistically insignificant.
On the other hand, Asian people are comparatively much more likely to be college-educated, and there are a few reasons behind that. It’s going a bit further back in time again here, and there are a few things you could read up on, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Immigration Act of 1924, the National Origins Act, the Asian Exclusion Act, etc… But you can probably guess right away from the names that, for a long time, the US government didn’t want Asian people coming to America. These acts were all repealed around the time of the Second World War. Now, legal Asian immigration into the US is voluntary and, of course, requires a certain skill set or a certain amount of wealth, or both. The population of China, for instance, is massive, and there are always rich, educated people looking to move to the US. The majority of recent Asian immigrants into the US have bachelor’s degrees, and their children and grandchildren will grow up with relatively rich, university-educated parents. They are the Asian people who are taking the SAT. If it were instead a group of impoverished North Korean farmers, they are not going to be taking the American SAT, and if they did, they would score lower results. So you see, this statement is just not enough by itself; it’s technically correct in one regard, but to really understand it, you need to know the history and the context.
One good point of comparison here is that young Black children who are adopted tend to do better on tests than other non-adopted Black children, and that’s because to adopt a child, you need to prove a certain level of financial security, safety, and stability that a lot of non-adopted children do not have. Adopted children generally grow up in richer, safer households, and as a result, they do better in early academic tests. See, if you change the circumstances, you get different results. However, we can only get so far looking at this scientifically because we’re missing a key part of a scientific process, and that’s a control test.
We don’t have another America (or any other country) that’s free of racial bias, where all races are economically equal to compare. We can’t do the SATs over one year and say okay this time we’re going to try it without a history of racial oppression, and where everyone grew up in a financially secure, stable household. It’s just not possible. So it’s a bit irresponsible to be throwing out unscientific ideas like this one just because they happen to be technically right in one regard after being reduced and stripped of context. I think there is a point to be made here about technically being right. But I’ll leave it there.
I hope you start caring a little bit more about context.
I hope you’re reading more in your daily life.
Yes, you do have time for it. Take a break from screens and pick up a book.
Thank you for reading.
Avi is a researcher educated at the University of Cambridge, specialising in the intersection of AI Ethics and International Law. Recognised by the United Nations for his work on autonomous systems, he translates technical complexity into actionable global policy. His research provides a strategic bridge between machine learning architecture and international governance.
