Effect and Cause, Part 1

Suppose you drive by a bar and see two men fighting. What would you guess caused that fight? Maybe it is over a woman, an argument over a pool game, or maybe they have a preexisting dispute, or any of a myriad of other possible causes. The fact that there is a fight does not tell you what caused it. That is part of a general rule: knowing about the effect does not usually tell you the cause. In fact it is common for more than one cause to work together to create an effect.

Now let's change things just a bit. Again two men are going at it tooth and nail, but now one is white, one is black. Does that change our conclusion? It should not. Every possible cause of a fight between two white men is also a possible cause of a fight between a white man and a black man. True, there is one more possible cause in this case, but the operative word is possible. For all we know, the two men may have had a previous dispute, an argument over a woman, a disagreement over a bet, etc. Racism may or may not have had anything to do with it.

The sad fact is that, in today's world, too many assume that any dispute between people of different skin colors must be due to racism. It ain't necessarily so! It is quite possible for a white and a black man to fight over a woman, over who won a bet, over which football team is better, etc.

This knee-jerk reaction causes a lot of turmoil today. For example, we are now afflicted with demonstrations, mob action, even looting, all blamed on the murder of George Floyd. All reasonable people can agree that Floyd's death was terrible, but was racism involved? Probably not. We have no evidence of racist motives on the part of Officer Chauvin. Instead, we know that they had a previous dispute because Floyd accused Chauvin of being too harsh when they worked together in a security job. Barring new evidence, we should not blame racism for that murder. It is of course possible that racism was involved in the dispute, but that is speculation, and we should not make policy on the basis of speculation and guesswork, nor should we riot on that basis.