[Firadeoclus]

> "More people with cards tend to be white and therefore the cards are racist" is such a weak take - there are more white people than minorities, for one.

But this is quite different from what the article actually says. What they're saying is P(Card|White) > P(Card|Minority), not P(White|Card) > P(Minority|Card).

>> White drivers in the borough, the complaint said, “are significantly more likely to have courtesy cards than minority drivers”. As a result of a ticketing quota system, this means “police officers are forced to disproportionately ticket minority drivers”.

[tpoacher]

Yes, so the argument is, if the main token influencing the posterior is the prior rather than the likelihood, then in the presence of such highly unequal priors, presenting unequal posteriors as strong evidence of unequal likelihoods is disingenuous, or weak argumentation at best.

OP simply adds on top that it is also less useful (or even actively harmful) in the discussion, and does a disservice, because it serves to weaken the argument pool and desinsitize/polarize people to the topic in the long term.

The quotes you quoted don't seem to contradict that view in any way.

Having said that, I didn't feel that the article struck the wrong tone in flagging the inherent racial bias issues here. Specifically, they were very careful to avoid a "racist cops" / "racist cards" wording/angle, which is probably good reporting in this case, and I would argue should go some way towards alleviating OPs concerns.