Pattern Recognition Isn't Racist or Phobic, but People Who Assert Such Are.
People are so caught up in color that it is getting ridiculous. Observing events in terms of numeric accuracy does not make a person an IST or PHOBE in any manner whatsoever.
Disclaimer: herein is an exercise of hubris on my part. As such, I preclude that this may be a boring read. It is an explanation unneeded (I made this word up, I think), other than to refute the premise that everything negative related to social interactions in America is the result of some type of ism or phobia. This is presumptuously false and can be demonstrated using basic math and pattern recognition. Meaning, that recognizing patterns doesn’t make something racist, sexist, or xenophobic.
I started teaching Statistics on the university level at age 25. I had just completed my Master’s, which means I have been teaching the subject for 38 years. As a result, I am good at using numbers to recognize and point out patterns.
A pattern is a recognizable structure of repetition or order, something that happens in a way that’s not random, even if it evolves. To put it simply, a pattern is what lets you predict what comes next. A pattern exists when elements repeat, correspond, or follow rules, when there’s an underlying logic or structure, and when the structure can be noticed, learned, or anticipated.
In math, it usually takes the form of numerical sequences (2, 4, 8, 16…), Geometric progressions, and/or fractals (patterns that repeat at different scales). In human behavior, habits, predictable reactions under stress, and social rituals and norms can be considered as patterns.
Statistics and pattern recognition are basically two sides of the same coin; one formal, and one intuitive. At the core, pattern recognition is about noticing structure in data, while statistics is about proving whether that structure is real or just noise.
Statistics gives pattern recognition its backbone. As lowly humans, we are great at seeing patterns, even when none exist. Statistics steps in to ask is this pattern statistically significant? How likely is it to appear by chance? Does it hold across different samples?
Without statistics, pattern recognition drifts into guesswork and confirmation bias. Pattern recognition gives statistics purpose because Statistics isn’t just number crunching; it’s guided by questions like: (1) Are there trends? (2) Are there clusters? or (3) Are there outliers or anomalies? That’s the jump from “I notice” to “I can demonstrate.” Pattern recognition asks what is happening? Statistics asks how sure are we?
This is the basics for Natural Language Processing (NLP), the branch of computer science and artificial intelligence that teaches machines how to understand, interpret, and generate human language. But I will save this discussion for another time.
Once, pattern recognition skills were common practice 50-plus years ago, but not so much today. I reckon there are several reasons for this. What has changed, quite clearly, is how often schools train those skills and in what form. Before the 1980s, many curricula implicitly trained pattern recognition through long-form reading (novels, dense texts), mental arithmetic and number sense, diagram-based reasoning (geometry, physics), and even cursive writing and grammar drills that required rule inference.
All of the above force the brain to hold information in working memory, detect regularities over time, and infer rules without being told explicitly. Since the 1980s, education shifted toward procedural checklists, multiple-choice testing, and calculator and software dependence, just to cite a few. When test-aligned outcomes are accentuated over cognitive depth, the skill involved in thinking is dramatically reduced.
High-stakes testing (post-1980s, accelerating with No Child Left Behind) rewarded speed over exploration, recognition over discovery, correct answers over structural insight, and surface cues over deep regularities. Asking a student to “Identify which box this fits into,” is way less a form of critical thought than asking them to “Figure out the structure generating this situation.”
Pattern recognition thrives on open-ended ambiguity. Standardized systems punish ambiguity. Add to that, traditional explicit instruction replaced discovery learning. I mean, modern curricula oftePattern recognition thrives on open-ended ambiguity. Standardized systems punish ambiguity. On top of that, traditional explicit instruction has replaced discovery learning. I mean, modern curricula often tell students the rule first, then ask them to apply it. For example, when I attended school, the instructor would say, “Here are 20 problems. What do you notice?” Today, it is more like Here is the formula. Now practice.” Point being, pattern recognition is strongest when the brain infers rules implicitly, whereas being given rules short-circuits that process.
Pattern recognition in humans is deeply tied to reading. Since people read less than in prior decades, they are less often rewarded for seeing hidden structure. As a result, nuance and pragmatism are removed from common reasoning, as evident in the persistent screaming and calling everything racist, sexist, Islamophobic, and/or transphobic. Simple reasoning would note that disagreement with Hamas, the sexual mutilation of children, or achievement based on merit, does not indicate an intense, irrational, and persistent fear of anything, no more than saying I hate the Dallas Cowboys or vegam food, makes one football phobic or vegan phobic.
The Issue/Purpose/Point
Without the basic ability to recognize patterns, we wind up where we are, in a world in which the majority never apply logic to any thought or position, and all outcomes of reason are all about the feels and what’s popular in the moment. This is why, for the average degenerate, all things, when reduced to logic, are refuted and redirected against a person rather than the position they are maintaining. For them, the alpha and the omega are racism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, or islamaphobia. Of them all, racism takes the cake.
Saying that racism is the biggest problem in the world is wild. People are so caught up in color its getting ridiculous. I even heard Democrat Rep Maxine Dexter says putting “White milk” in schools is “White supremacy.” But I am black and too dumb to figure out how to get an ID or a copy of my birth certificate.
It gets even worse if you hit below the belt with math. Case in point is the criminal justice system. The average progressive will often assert that the criminal justice system in the U.S. is the perfect example of systemic racism. Maybe, maybe not, I am not to argue either way. But ask them if the U.S. criminal justice system is sexist, and they typically have no response.
It is obvious to the eye that men are more violent than women on average and engage in more behaviors that could result in violent actions than women. Take football as an example. The same is true for crime. In the United States, the overwhelming majority of people in prisons and jails are men. Does that make this the result of sexism?
About 90 % of the overall prison and local jail population is male, with women making up roughly the other 10 %. Recent figures specifically for those sentenced in state and federal prisons show about 93 % are male and 7 % are female. In federal prisons alone, approximately 93.2 % of inmates are men and 6.8 % are women.
So the pattern is that prisons and jails have more men than women because of actions and behaviors conducted by men more often than women. Does this fact support the contention that the criminal justice system in the U.S. is the perfect example of systemic sexism?
But take the same use of pattern recognition and toss in the variable of race, things become severely distorted. According to the FBI’s Crime in the United States 2019 arrest statistics (the most recent edition available), the proportion of black individuals among those arrested is substantially higher than their share of the overall U.S. population. Although black people make up about 14% of the population based on Census data, they represent 27% of all arrestees, including 30% of those arrested for property crimes and 36% of those arrested for violent crimes.
In addition, the FBI arrest data also shows that blacks constitute about 51% of arrestees for murder.
This data shows that most homicides involving black victims, about 89% (2,574 out of 2,906), were committed by black offenders. When cases in which the offender’s race is unknown are excluded, that proportion rises to 90%. It is important to note that this table does not represent all homicide cases, as it includes only incidents where some details about the offender, such as age, race, or sex, were available.
Although these are factual numbers, people would consider this an outcome of racism instead of recognizing the pattern. Although blacks are about 13 % of the U.S. population, we are substantially overrepresented in the prison population for violent crimes, including murder. Black inmates accounted for about 43.6 % of those incarcerated for murder/manslaughter in state prison, while whites were about 26 % and Hispanics about 27 %. The proportion for blacks is actually in the opposite direction in the case of systemic racism.
In state prisons, among people in U.S. state prisons whose most serious offense is murder or manslaughter, approximately 40–44 % of that population are black, compared to whites comprising about 26–28 %, and Hispanics about 27 %.
I know some will say this is too much of a macro analysis, so let me take a micro analysis using the District of Columbia as a case study. About 43.3% of the population in Washington, D.C., identifies as Black or African American alone (based on the 2019–2023 American Community Survey 5-year estimates). Although black people make up the aforementioned proportion of D.C.’s population, they accounted for about 97% of all gun homicide deaths in 2023. Moreover, from 2018–2022, analysis by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform found that about 94–96% of homicide victims and suspects were black, even though black residents are less than half the total population. Pair this with the detail that the examination of homicide and shooting data shows that about 94–96% of homicide suspects in D.C. are black.
Such patterns would suggest it would be reasonable, then, for about 90% of people held in the D.C. jail system to be black. Data from the District of Columbia Department of Corrections supports this (that roughly 89–93% of individuals in custody are black ), although again, black residents make up about 45% of the total D.C. population.
I wanted to use the specific example of carjacking in D.C, Chicago, and Philadelphia. However, the only data I could find was a recent report from the D.C. Sentencing Commission, which notes that among adult carjacking defendants sentenced between 2015 and 2024, about 96 % were black. This reflects the racial makeup of people convicted of carjacking in D.C. courts.
I could not find a recent city-specific statistic that breaks down carjacking suspects by race from official Chicago police sources. However, broad arrest data for violent offenses in Chicago historically show that African Americans comprise the large majority of violent crime offenders in available crime statistics. For example, in some violent crime categories, over 70 % of offenders and victims have been Black in earlier Chicago crime analyses.
Likewise, I could not find a publicly released, up-to-date city-specific racial breakdown for carjacking suspects in Philadelphia from police or city crime data. Many summaries of Philadelphia crime statistics focus on totals rather than race by specific crime type. However, national survey data suggest that, in general, U.S. carjackings (older national data), about 56 % of offenders were identified as black by victims, but this is not city-specific.
There is no comprehensive, publicly available official dataset that breaks down the race of people arrested specifically for carjacking (or vehicle hijacking) in the cities of Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Philadelphia in a way that lets us say “X % of those arrested for carjacking are black.” Local police departments generally don’t publish arrest race breakdowns for specific crimes like carjacking in their public dashboards, and national FBI data doesn’t separate that offense from broader categories. I suspect that if such data were maintained, it would be easy to detect a pattern that would likely show certain segments of the population in a criminal light.
Even based on this, the cry of racism is still proclaimed, albeit without reason. The same is seen when speaking on women, in particular black women in the U.S. As it stands, any reference to numerical facts regarding women is due to the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and sexism, and for black women, just add racism to that.
Using obesity as an example, about 41.3 % of adult women in the U.S. were obese during 2021–2023, according to CDC data. Combining overweight (BMI 25–29.9) with obesity gives a higher overall excess weight prevalence (overweight + obese). Overall, around 70 % or more of U.S. adult women are overweight or obese when overweight and obesity are combined using the BMI ≥ 25 criteria.
The CDC’s 2017–2018 NHANES data show that about 56.9 % of non-Hispanic Black women were obese, with around 70–80 % when including both overweight and obesity. In comparison, an estimated 39.8 % of non-Hispanic White women were obese (BMI ≥30). Combined overweight + obesity is lower than in Black women but still high, around the 60 % range for adult White women when using BMI ≥25, based on earlier aggregate NHANES estimates.
Nonetheless, to state this observation in the presence of some would just be falling in line with the toxic masculinity and sexism of the patriarchy, as opposed to simple pattern recognition. The result is retorts based on emotion rather than fact, as is the case when relationships are discussed.
In the United States, research consistently shows that women initiate more divorces than men, meaning they are the ones who start the divorce process more often. About 69 % of divorces in the U.S. are initiated by women. This figure is based on sociological studies and national surveys analyzing who files for divorce and who primarily wanted the split. Thus, roughly 7 out of every 10 divorces are started by the wife in a heterosexual marriage.
But if you mention this, the only conclusion from those who base their argument on emotions and feelings is that you hate women, especially black women. There is also the “you cannot deal with strong independent women,” when neither were issues to begin with, rather rates of divorce and who typically breaks up the family unit after marriage. Recognizing the numbers and noticing the pattern be damned.
No matter what people emote, patterns are noticed. When your plumber is always late for years, and does an average clean-up job after their services are delivered, people notice and conclude future behaviors and likely actions. When you call a woman, and she rarely calls you back or responds, then the pattern is recognized that she may not hold you in as high regard as you hold her, thus making it easy to conclude she does not value you as much as other things, and you are not a priority. The same is true when black men carjack and kill each other at higher rates than other races - you notice and draw conclusions, which have nothing to do with racism or xenophobia, for example.
Truth is, no one fears any of these personal beliefs. If you want to be a transgender or muslim, go for it. Just because I disagree doesn’t mean I am afraid of transgender people or muslims. But do not get mad at me when I observe that in communities that are not majority Islamic, there is less child rape, less terrorism, and jihadist extremism.
Patterns reveal that most documented suicide bombings globally in the modern era have been carried out by groups or individuals associated with Islamist extremist movements, not by mainstream religious communities. According to terrorism research databases, the vast majority of suicide bombings have been committed by groups identifying with Islamist extremist ideologies in recent decades. From 2018–2022, an estimated 89 % of suicide bombings worldwide were executed by groups with religious extremist ideologies, most of which are Islamist.
Suicide terrorism became much more common starting in the 1980s. Modern suicide bombings were first recorded in the Middle East, and from the 1990s onward, Islamist militant organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram have used suicide attacks extensively. Large numbers of suicide bombings have occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria, carried out by extremists, all of whom identify with a radical interpretation of Islam. Some high-casualty incidents include the Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombings in 2019 by ISIS-linked bombers, the Khar bombing (Pakistan), and the 2024 Lido Beach attack (Somalia).
There are very few documented cases of suicide bombings attributed to groups identifying as Christian. Moreover, there is no significant historical pattern of Christian extremist organizations conducting systematic suicide bombing campaigns like those seen in Middle Eastern or African conflicts. Similarly, there are very few, if any, widely recognized suicide bombings carried out by individuals or groups identifying as Jewish in modern terrorism data. But if one were to make note of this, doing so would automatically make one xenophobic, racist, and Islamophobic. If I pointed out the fact that more people are beheaded under the banner of Islam and Mexican cartel's, does that make me a xenophobic racist islamophobe?
Any religion that calls for killing infidels in the name of a religion is evil, evil, evil, and demonic. Islam and logic can’t be in the same room without the help of a sword, because the same people who decry genocide would celebrate a genocide of the Jews. If your religion were really truthful, there would be no need to force people to accept it under threat of death. The literal meaning of Islam is “submission” or “surrender,” specifically submission to God (Allah).
This is simple math and pattern recognition. It’s not about race, color, or religion; it’s about behavior. The larger the number of people who are followers of a faith that has not solved the extremism problem in its midst, the more extremism you will have. You don’t get that from the Catholic or Lutheran churches, or the Mormons and Quakers; only fundamentalist Islam. Pointing this out is not Islamophobic or racist. But it does make me wonder why Muslim women are the most vocal in the West on these topics, but in Islamic countries, women are speechless.
Typically, these people are the most racist and look upon the people they supposedly speak out on behalf of as pathetic vessels without agency, as is the case with the issue of needing an ID to register to vote and cast a vote.
The talking point for the new age progressive democrat is that asking for ID to vote is racist. The party that gave the world Jim Crow is calling requiring ID to vote Jim Crow 2.0. If this is the case, then requiring ID to buy cigarettes and liquor, open a bank account and cash a check, get on an airplane, and rent or purchase an apartment or home is equally racist. In the case of Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., at a recent campaign event, in order to attend, people were required to show government-issued photo ID, although he opposes similar standards for voters in federal elections. Zohran Mamdani is asking for 5 forms of ID (including 2 forms of ID and a social security card) to become an “emergency snow shoveler.” But I am racist for agreeing with needing to prove you are a citizen before you can register to vote should be standard, but not Gavin Newsom, who says that he's "just like" a mainly black, Georgia crowd because he did poorly on the SATs and "cannot read a speech."
For both, according to democrats, this means women and non-white people will not be able to attend or shovel snow, because, according to them, they do not know how to obtain or use an ID. Requiring ID to shovel snow but not to vote is insane. This means a person needs more forms of identification to shovel snow in New York than they do to vote for the president, imagine that.
Pattern recognition in behavior is easy. It is not difficult to learn or observe if a person is the type that does not do what they say they will do the majority of the time if one pays attention to numbers, trends, and patterns. Overweight and Obesity Combined, roughly 80% of black women are considered either overweight or obese. This is not sexist to notice this. Black women are 70% more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic white women. This is not racist to notice this.
In Saudi Arabia, there are no churches. Even in Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, muslim immigrants are rarely accepted. The United Arab Emirates issued a recommendation for students to avoid studying in the UK because there are allegedly too many extremist organizations operating there, and students return home radicalized.
It is absolutely frightening how many people lack critical thinking skills. There are 330 million people in this country. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stated that half of the citizens can't vote because of a lack of identification. Someone needs to ask him how 240 million people obtain their driver’s license?
Pattern recognition is the kryptonite for hypocrites who always play the cards of racism and Islamophobia. It is beyond their capacity to comprehend that observing events in terms of numeric accuracy does not make a person an IST or PHOBE in any manner whatsoever.
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Yes, it's amazing, the nonsensical arguments that people walk around parroting. Perhaps you have seen the documentary The Thirteenth? About the "prison industrial complex." The assertion is that black men are just randomly filling prisons because they are black. At the time, many colleagues and other constituents praised this documentary. I was looking around the room like, WHAT?????? Are you SERIOUS?????
Just randomly thrown into prison for no reason other than being black. You seriously believe that?
Of course it's even worse that the film was made with this silly assertion in the first place...but clearly a certain faction of the population nods along with these fallacies so that they can appear caring and good, when in fact they're just enabling very dumb beliefs that don't help the people they "care" about.
Applying logic to any discussion of current events or controversy these days is impossible. Thanks for a breakdown of why and when this happened in our education system — makes perfect sense. The question remains, how do we ever get logical debate back into the nation’s bloodstream? I’m skeptical it can ever happen.