Understanding Per Capita

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About

Understanding Per Capita refers to a series of memes that ridicule people failing to grasp the per capita distribution in statistics and have been primarily used to target Black people in online arguments on sites such as 4chan. The per capita memes have been used similarly to The Breakfast Question and other dog whistle memes.

Origin

Per capita is a Latin phrase meaning "per person." In statistics, per capita means that the provided distribution is normalized per size of each represented group. For example, the total amount of money spent daily by group A is $10,000 and the total amount spent by group B is $100,000. However, if group A consists of 10 people and group B consists of 500 people, then group A spends $1,000 daily per capita and group B spends $200 daily per capita.

On October 8th, 2017, X^[1] / Twitter user @millze2010 wrote, "Like I said per capita is a system that whites created to look less violent while making us look more violent" (shown below) The screenshot of the post was shared on imageboards^[2] and forums^[3] in the following years.

@millze2010 Replying to @HydroCyanide_B Like I said per capita is a system that whites created to look less violent while making us look more violent 10/8/17, 10:19 PM

On January 3rd, 2022, an anonymous 4chan^[4] user created a /pol/ thread in which they wrote that Black people did not understand the concept of "per capita," with the thread garnering over 90 replies in two years (shown below, left). On September 5th of that year, an anonymous user created another thread in /pol/^[5] about people having issues understanding statistical averages and per capita, with the thread garnering 320 replies in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

71KiB, 1248x1504, 1618182485529.png View Same OCR Google iqdb SauceNAO Trace Anonymous [98 / 15/64] ID: /ixYeWpo Mon 03 Jan 2022 04:59:35 No.354778101 View Reply Original Report Quoted By: >>354778174 >>354778217 >>354778228 >>354778230 >>354778234 >>354778267 >>354778309 >>354778365 >>354778539 >>354778679 >>354778745 >>354778880 >>354779564 >>354780105 >>354780252 >>354780754 >>354780813 >>354780827 >>354780904 >>354781745 >>354781802 >>354783309 >>354783855 >>354784591 >>354785263 >>354786229 >>354787634 >>354787799 >>354788324 >>354788541 >>354789618 >>354789697 >>354789709 What are some things that black people don't understand? This is not a racism/bantz thread, I simply want to compile an accurate, politically-relevant list so we can better understand the different races. I'll start >"per capita"

Anonymous ID: kvKJcRim Mon 05 Sep 2022 07:11:10 No.393945418 View Reply Original Report Quoted By: >>393945693 >>393945764 >>393945869 >>393946444 >>393946591 >>393947080 >>393947328 >>393947543 >>393947843 >>393947938 >>393948515 >>393948962 >>393949030 >>393949116 >>393949137 >>393949652 >>393949779 >>393950196 >>393950569 >>393950737 >>393955135 >>393955391 >>393955631 >>393955691 >>393955692 >>393955755 >>393955761 >>393956695 >>393956755 >>393957385 >>393957582 >>393957686 >>393957965 >>393958106 >>393958408 >>393958454 >>393960443 >>393960725 >>393961384 >>393961388 >>393961588 >>393961686 >>393962135 >>393962359 >>393962459 >>393962804 >>393962898 >>393963172 >>393963314 >>393963360 >>393963515 >>393964023 >>393964077 >>393964100 >>393964176 >>393964642 >>393964783 >>393965466 >>393966907 >>393966983 >>393967920 >>393968936 >>393969196 >>393969735 >>393969759 >>393971147 >>393971388 >>393973664 >>393973946 >>393974115 >>393975306 >>393975392 The easiest and quickest way to test someone's intelligence is to make a generalized statement about a group. View Same 234KiB, 1240x1058, fdvcvxvcx.jpg SauceNAO Google iqdb Trace [320 / 53 / 157] ↓ Say something like "asian men are shorter on average" if they say any variation of "not all asian men are short" or "I know a tall asian guy" you are dealing with someone genuinely low IQ. They have proven that they aren't intelligent enough to understand abstract ideas like a statistical average or per capita. Why else would they think bringing up an exception like it was some profound statement? They literally CAN NOT understand abstracts, no attempt at rationalizing or explaining yourself will increase their IQ.

Spread

Screenshots of the latter thread saw viral spread online in the following years. For instance, on September 22nd, 2022, Redditor Quelzalquartz posted it to the /r/4chan^[6] subreddit, where the screenshot garnered over 3,300 upvotes in two years. On May 30th, 2023, iFunny^[7] user aphroditesdaughter posted it, gaining over 12,200 smiles on the platform in one year.

On December 15th, 2022, X^[8] user @BasedPeterP posted a meme that received over 47,100 views, 120 reposts and 1,000 likes in roughly one year and saw further spread through reposts.^[9]

Peter @BasedPeterP "Seriously try it, they don't understand per capita. They see that one number is bigger than the other, and that's all they can process...” AGELENIDAE ont 9:42 PM Dec 15, 2022 47.1K Views . :

Memes about not understanding per capita achieved significant spread on 4chan and X / Twitter in May and June 2023, notably following the virality of The Breakfast Question, Smoke Detector Beeping and other similar memes ridiculing Black people (examples shown below).