The myth of black crime

In an article that appeared on the Useless Knowledge website on August 11, titled “Correlating Blackness and Crime in American Cities,” the author hints that the high crime rates of blacks are due to the predisposition of blacks. to that behavior. He bases this premise on the correlation between cities that have large black populations and also have high crime rates. In fact, in his own words he says: “This is absolute proof that there is an infallible correlation between how black a city is and how high its crime rate is, at least in the United States.” I found his theory to be simplistic and superficial, but then I asked myself, “What if this same level of pseudoscientific analysis were applied in reverse, to whites?”

First let me say that if your theory were true, such numbers would be reflected around the world. Blacks in America are descended from Black Africans, so wouldn’t African countries have ridiculously high crime rates?

The high crime rates in the city center can be attributed to many things, but not to a cultural predisposition. Still, this wrong assumption has been around for decades and is not necessarily racist. The idea that blacks are more prone to violent and criminal tendencies “is one of the most easily invoked contemporary stereotypes about blacks … and, unlike racial attitudes towards the principle of equal treatment, there is evidence of that the association of blackness and criminality … is deeply ingrained in the collective conscience of Americans, regardless of the level of prejudice or personal beliefs. ” (1)

Using population figures, it can be assumed that the victims of this “black crime wave” are black. FBI data shows that so-called “black-on-black crime” is no more prevalent than white-on-white crime. Crimes committed by whites (in the suburbs, rural areas, or otherwise) tend to have white victims. Why? Because most crimes are committed near the offending party’s home, which means that people from black communities are more likely to take advantage of their black neighbors.

So, taking the author’s assumptions about race and criminality and applying them in reverse, I can conclude that white people are predisposed not only to random acts of violence, but also to crimes that affect large numbers of people and trespass. racial boundaries. For example, the vast majority of white collar criminals are WHITE. The Enron, Tyco and Dynergy scandals, which not only misled shareholders but in some cases looted their employees’ pension funds, were not planned by blacks. None of the Keating 7s were black. But these crimes have a far greater impact than a black man robbing a liquor store.

Worse still, the Government Accountability Office reports that these white-collar thieves avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution. They transfer assets to relatives, give businesses to their minor children and then hire them as salaried employees, transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars into a trust fund for their minor children, or give up a home to a relative and then rent it out (all of which constitute fraud, another crime). “The GAO studied five unidentified federal cases in which executives and business owners found guilty of fraud were ordered to pay a total of $ 568 million to investors and shareholders. Only about $ 40 million was raised, or 7 % of what is owed. “(2) In addition, 43% of those accused of fraud are never prosecuted (3), so not only do white people commit these crimes, but they get away with it! !

Still, some critics argue that the sentences for white-collar crimes are exceeded because the punishment is more severe than for some drug-related crimes and murders. But while the latter are undoubtedly heinous, white collar crimes can involve hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars. This has repercussions on the current living situation of the victims, and in the case of Enron, where the pensions were lost, on their future.

I know what you’re thinking, such far-reaching cases are rare, and on that point I agree. But most of the more common and minor financial crimes (involving banking, computers, and identity theft) are also perpetrated by white people (4).

Now let’s deal with a more common crime: murder: The estimated murder rate in this country, excluding all those committed by blacks, is more than three times higher than the murder rate in the other six major industrialized nations. (5) Therefore, anything that forces white Americans to kill other people causes blacks to kill at a much higher rate. (6) But at an extreme level, whites make up the vast majority of serial and baby killers. Gacy, Bundy, Dennis Rader (The BTK Killer), The Green River Killer, et al. They weren’t black. And in the last group, who can forget Charles Stuart and Susan Smith? Both blamed the black attackers for their children’s deaths. And Andrea Yates, the Houston woman who drowned her five children? As for other crimes against children, look at internet pornmeisters and booty bandits, child rapists in the Catholic Church. How many of their faces are black?

And who are these right-wing fanatics (terrorists) bombing abortion clinics and murdering doctors for performing a legal act? And wasn’t the insane terrorist / baby killer Timothy McVeigh targeted? Weren’t the inventors of organized crime bosses and other organized crime bosses white? Who was behind the lynchings of the 19th and 20th centuries? Who commits the most hate crimes?

Here’s another crime that’s the domain of whites: TREASON. These FBI, CIA and military agents who sell secrets to the Russian and Chinese governments are not black? What about the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh? These are men who will compromise the security of the country for a few dollars.

Do you see how dangerous it is to play with facts?

The author of “Correlating” probably won’t, because he wrote: “What I don’t like, though, is being lied to. For decades, I’ve heard people deny, minimize, justify, and mitigate black crime.” Then he says that poverty is no excuse.

To begin with, I have never heard anyone justify criminality on any level. But whether you want to admit it or not, high crime rates can be correlated with high poverty rates. This is not the only reason for such behavior. You emphatically state that “… there is very little real poverty in the United States. Anyone who thinks there is should visit the slums of Cairo, Rio de Janeiro or Bangkok. Then he will see what poverty really is.” Compared to what? While poor people in this country may not sleep in mud huts, go days and days without food or clean water, that doesn’t make their poverty any less “real,” especially when compared to America’s immense wealth.

White bias from police officers, prosecutors, and courts also influences crime rates for blacks, as do character weaknesses (caused by the lack of a strong social organization, such as a church), households single parents and the residual effects of slavery (Wilson). Other factors include “the ecological concentration of ghetto poverty, racial segregation, population turnover and unemployment … the profound changes in the urban structure of minority communities in the 1970s may be the key to understanding recent increases in violence. ” (7)

This article was written for two reasons: (1) To offer some reasons for the concentration of crime in particular areas, not just in the black community. In fact, both the author of “Correlating” and my own argument about racial predisposition to criminal behavior can be dismissed. (2) To paraphrase an old saying, sometimes numbers are used in the same way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support rather than lighting. My point is that anyone can do calculations to suit their own needs and “validate” a stereotype. This is what I believe the author was guilty of. I wanted to show you that such a knife can cut both ways and is therefore a very dangerous implement.

Sources:

(1) Devine, PG and AJ Elliot. 1995. “Are Racial Stereotypes Really Fading? The Princeton Trilogy Revisited”. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21 (11): 1139-50

(2) Richard Willing, “Study: White Collar Criminals Dodging Fines”, Richard Willing, USA TODAY, March 3, 2005

(3) Howard Gleckman, BusinessWeek, “Where White-Collar Criminals Belong: Jail Careers,” January 2, 2002

(4) Randall Kennedy, “Race, Crime, and the Law”, (New York: Pantheon), 1997, p. 145

(5) James Q. Wilson, The Hoover Institute, “Crime”, (Hoover Press), p. 115

(6) Neil Weinberg Mary Ellen Egan, “Does Sentence for White Collar Crimes Go Overboard?” Fornes.com and MSNBC.com, April 21, 2004

(7) Robert J. Sampson and William J. Wilson. 1995. “Toward a Theory in Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality” in Crime and Inequality, J. Hagan and R. Peterson (eds.), (Palo Alto. CA: Stanford University Press), pp. 37-54.

Uniform Crime Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2003

Lincoln Quillian and Devan Pager, “Black Neighborhoods, Higher Crime? The Role of Racial Stereotypes in Neighborhood Crime Assessments,” American Journal of Sociology, November 2001, p. 717

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