Peter Coates
2 min readJan 28, 2024

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Don't you think there is an excessive emphasis on racial identity? It's a very crude way to classify people and almost always misleading. For example, it surprises most people to learn that in proportion to population, white people are only average in terms of probability of being a mass shooter. Asian Americans are actually by far the most heavily represented group in proportion to their population--there just aren't very many of them. African Americans are slightly over-represented, and Spanish speaking Americans quite under-represented, according to FBI statistics. AFAIK, nobody knows why. Nevertheless, most of the shooters you see in the news are white because most Americans are white! It's very misleading-- most plumbers, truck drivers, and ballerinas are also white. The most probable race of a randomly selected poor person is white, as is the most probable race of a randomly selected rich person. Because there are so many white people, the average of anything is necessarily almost always close to the white average. Despite most rich people being white, native born white people are very far from the most successful group economically. Asians on average are much richer and better educated. The economic difference between Asians and white Americans is larger than the difference between white and black. Several other groups are also significantly more economically successful than white people. Whites tend to be in the middle. Most statistically over-represented demographic at Harvard? Neither white nor Asian. It's Nigerians. You wouldn't guess it if you live in a big city, but, the population of white women in America is as large as the total population of all the non-white ethnicities, male and female combined. Breaking everything into white/color is a terrible idea in terms of understanding the world.

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Peter Coates
Peter Coates

Written by Peter Coates

I was an artist until my thirties when I discovered computers and jumped ship for a few decades. Now I'm back to it. You can probably find some on instagram.

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