One way to fight these biases is to remind ourselves that it’s a very small percentage of any demographic that commits violent crimes. It might be more useful, then, to say “99% of X people are never violent versus 99.2% of Y people.”
That's an interesting way of thinking of it. I suppose this reveals an inherent problem with using statistics to represent crime — their significance is easily distorted, even if the numbers themselves are accurate.
But to throw a hypothetical at you: is it right for an Asian person in San Francisco to be more scared when they see someone of "X" race than when they see someone of "Y" race?
Even if most of the people in the "X" group are nonviolent, if threats disproportionately come from the "X" group, it would not be unreasonable to be more wary of members of that group.
That’s the thing though, the percentage of a random person of any demographic attacking you is like <<< 0.1% (or something), maybe comparable to your chance of dying in a car crash. Yet people cling to stereotypes and don’t wear seatbelts. If people are afraid of a person of certain race approaching them they should be afraid of many other improbable scenarios.
But all risk perception is context dependent, isn't it? If you're in a bad neighborhood, your threat awareness should be a lot higher than in an air conditioned, well-guarded office building, for example. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that demographics may play a part in that threat awareness/perception of risk. That's not to say we shouldn't try to dispense with prejudice where possible.
Does this actually work? All that does is change the framing (ie. glass half full or half empty) but doesn't challenge the underlying fact that they commit crimes at a higher rate, which is what racists latch on to.
