CMV: Most Race based statistics are harmful and unnecessary

I was on Instagram the other day and saw a post about some African Americans (about four of them) moving to Germany because of the results of the 2024 election in the US. The comments were filled with people talking about how Germany was going to see an increase in crime because "why are Black people moving there?"

I've seen the same sentiment in a lot of other videos and in real life, where I hear statements like, "the stereotypes make themselves" or "typical suspects." When I ask people why they think this way, they often say something along the lines of "look at the stats."

A lot of these people (unfortunately) are unaware that just because two things correlate, it doesn't mean one is the cause of the other. For example, race and crime: there is literally NO reason these two should be correlated. Nobody correlates eye color with crime, hair color with crime, or any other arbitrary genetic trait with crime. That would seem extremely foolish, but the general public doesn't really seem to mind.

I'm not going to lie and say some of the statistics aren't true, but they can paint a very misleading picture and can take attention away from true issues like low socioeconomic status, lack of access to healthcare, and basic sanitation, etc. This also extends to statistics about gender orientations and other things we as humans use to define ourselves.

Even positive statistics about genetic traits can be harmful because people may put those traits on a pedestal for no reason.

Edit: I didn’t take into account the good that these types of statistics do in the big picture such as finding issues but I still find it kind sad that the statistics are needed in the first place

I also probably needed to clarify that that I don’t have a problem with the statistics themselves rather the way they are sometimes used

Thanks!!