Don't Judge A Racist By His Statistics

Here at work, the repairman has spent the morning dissecting the $45,000 copy machine we have in the plot room, trying to fix its consistent tendency to paperjam during large print jobs. I just overheard him telling a coworker of mine that part of his difficulty is that the innards of the copier are very small, and the space he has in which to move his hands is very small. "The Japanese design these things around their smaller hands," he argued.

My first reaction was "what a racist chucklehead." But as I sat there, pondering it, I wondered if this is truly racist. And I realized racism is a question of statistics, and the interpretation of those statistics.

If there are statistics that support that as a race, the Japanese have smaller hands than Americans, then it is possible the copy repairman is not racist, but rather just well read in biological literature. However, this must be coupled with evidence that the Japanese have designed copy machines (and presumably other machines) around Japanese anatomical averages, and not the anatomical averages of middle-aged, overweight American copy repairmen.
So the racism in this case is a question of statistics.

However, if I were to say "Black men are more violent than white men," I'd clearly be a racist. Or would I? Statistics show that nationally, crime is perpetrated much more commonly by black men than by white men. But statistics are always open to interpretation. Although statistically black men are evidently more prone to violence than white men, statistics also show that areas of crime have a higher population of blacks. Statistics also show that these areas are low income areas. So it could be heuristically argued that poor people are more prone to crime, and it's simply coincidence that those poor people committing crimes are predominantly black. Or you could as easily argue that certain areas (like the urban core of cities) encourage crime, and the people living there are simply following social cues. Racism, in this case, is a question of interpretation of the statistics.

So what of our copy repairman, who called out Japanese as small-handed? Personally, I chalk that one up to racism. I have my doubts that he actually has studied statistical comparisons of American versus Japanese hand size (my quick internet search returned zero results). I also doubt the copy manufacturer neglected to think of the American market (and ease of repair) when designing their $45,000 copier.


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