From what I understand, violent crime correlates more strongly with class than race -- poor people of any race commit more violent crime than rich peopel. I don't have the data at my fingertips but that's my recollection and that would mean we need to be looking at poverty and economic inequality as key drivers of civilian and police violence. What do you think, Steve?
From what I understand, violent crime correlates more strongly with class than race -- poor people of any race commit more violent crime than rich peopel. I don't have the data at my fingertips but that's my recollection and that would mean we need to be looking at poverty and economic inequality as key drivers of civilian and police violence. What do you think, Steve?
Oof, this is a big topic. I could easily write, not just an article, but a book about it. But yeah, absolutely, poverty is a big factor. Not just the lack of income in a particular family, but the lack of wealth in terms of property, assets, things that can be handed down to future generations. How many people find themselves in situations where they're starting adult life from scratch?
Then there are things like the wealth of the community, an issue that obviously particularly affects black communities after redlining and segregation. Schooling, crime rates, job opportunities. How realistic is it that the people in a particular community have paths to well-paid, fulfilling jobs? What is available in terms of extra-curricular activity?
A huge factor is peer group. I watched a documentary a little while ago about a guy, who was a pimp, whose entire family when he was a kid was involved in pimping or gang-banging or drug dealing. He was involved by the time he was 9-years-old. The same was true for everybody he knew. Once a community is win a bad enough spot, if there is no deliberate, well-funded and sustained effort to fix those problems, the kids who grow up in those environments have next to no chance of coming out unscathed.
As I've touched on in a couple of articles recently, there's the social messaging in movies and TV and music that normalises black criminality in a way that isn't true for people of any other skin colour. Imagine if there were a young white artist who made songs about school shootings or about date rape in frat houses. A couple of years ago, a black rapper made a song about killing white people in the same way black people were killed during slavery. The song was removed from YouTube, he was taken to court, and fined for the violent messaging. Rick Ross was dropped by sponsors for one line in a song where he taks about slipping something into his date's drink.
We understand that there are certain topics that are unacceptable in music. Advertisers understand that there are certain topics that they can't place their brands alongside, it's just that black people killing black people or committing crimes aren't considered to be among those topics.
And lastly, there's just good old-fashioned disenfranchisement. African Americans are constantly drip-fed a message that the system is against them. That they're never going to get a fair shot, That they have to work three times as hard to get to the same place in life. The history of oppression in America has left a deep scar in the psyche of many black people. For some this acts as a motivator. But for others it leaves them asking what the point of even trying is. Or at least, leads them to look for shortcuts that inevitably include crime in some cases. There's an underdog mentality that is drilled into many black people that is less and less a reflection of reality all the time, but is hugely disempowering.
There's more, but I think these are the main issues. All of these issues stack up significantly disproportionately against black people but would obviously increase the crime rate in any group of people they impacted. Some of them come from without the black community and some within. Far too little is being done about any of them.
From what I understand, violent crime correlates more strongly with class than race -- poor people of any race commit more violent crime than rich peopel. I don't have the data at my fingertips but that's my recollection and that would mean we need to be looking at poverty and economic inequality as key drivers of civilian and police violence. What do you think, Steve?
Oof, this is a big topic. I could easily write, not just an article, but a book about it. But yeah, absolutely, poverty is a big factor. Not just the lack of income in a particular family, but the lack of wealth in terms of property, assets, things that can be handed down to future generations. How many people find themselves in situations where they're starting adult life from scratch?
Then there are things like the wealth of the community, an issue that obviously particularly affects black communities after redlining and segregation. Schooling, crime rates, job opportunities. How realistic is it that the people in a particular community have paths to well-paid, fulfilling jobs? What is available in terms of extra-curricular activity?
A huge factor is peer group. I watched a documentary a little while ago about a guy, who was a pimp, whose entire family when he was a kid was involved in pimping or gang-banging or drug dealing. He was involved by the time he was 9-years-old. The same was true for everybody he knew. Once a community is win a bad enough spot, if there is no deliberate, well-funded and sustained effort to fix those problems, the kids who grow up in those environments have next to no chance of coming out unscathed.
As I've touched on in a couple of articles recently, there's the social messaging in movies and TV and music that normalises black criminality in a way that isn't true for people of any other skin colour. Imagine if there were a young white artist who made songs about school shootings or about date rape in frat houses. A couple of years ago, a black rapper made a song about killing white people in the same way black people were killed during slavery. The song was removed from YouTube, he was taken to court, and fined for the violent messaging. Rick Ross was dropped by sponsors for one line in a song where he taks about slipping something into his date's drink.
We understand that there are certain topics that are unacceptable in music. Advertisers understand that there are certain topics that they can't place their brands alongside, it's just that black people killing black people or committing crimes aren't considered to be among those topics.
And lastly, there's just good old-fashioned disenfranchisement. African Americans are constantly drip-fed a message that the system is against them. That they're never going to get a fair shot, That they have to work three times as hard to get to the same place in life. The history of oppression in America has left a deep scar in the psyche of many black people. For some this acts as a motivator. But for others it leaves them asking what the point of even trying is. Or at least, leads them to look for shortcuts that inevitably include crime in some cases. There's an underdog mentality that is drilled into many black people that is less and less a reflection of reality all the time, but is hugely disempowering.
There's more, but I think these are the main issues. All of these issues stack up significantly disproportionately against black people but would obviously increase the crime rate in any group of people they impacted. Some of them come from without the black community and some within. Far too little is being done about any of them.