Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Thoughts from the "Other Side" - Are You Afraid?

"Other side" meaning from someone with a very different perspective than my own - but one I hope to learn from.

But there's a huge problem with attempt to shift the conversation: There's no such thing as "black-on-black" crime. Yes, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders, but that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime-86 percent were killed by white offenders. Indeed, for the large majority of crimes, you'll find that victims and offenders share a racial identity, or have some prior relationship to each other.

What Shapiro and others miss about crime, in general, is that it's driven by opportunism and proximity; If African-Americans are more likely to be robbed, or injured, or killed by other African-Americans, it's because they tend to live in the same neighborhoods as each other.

Nor are African-Americans especially criminal. If they were, you would still see high rates of crime among blacks, even as the nation sees a historic decline in criminal offenses. Instead, crime rates among African-Americans, and black youth in particular, have taken a sharp drop. In Washington, D.C., for example, fewer than 10 percent of black youth are in a gang, have sold drugs, have carried a gun, or have stolen more than $100 in goods.

[Statistics].. show that among black youth, rates of robbery and serious property offenses are at their lowest rates in 40 years, as are rates of violent crime and victimization. And while it's true that young black men are a disproportionate share of the nation's murder victims, it's hard to disentangle this from the stew of hyper-segregation (often a result of deliberate policies), entrenched poverty, and nonexistent economic opportunities that characterizes a substantial number of black communities.

Not to mention:
-Drug war
-Minimum wage
-SS/Medicare=FICA high cost to employ
-OSHA
-Davis Bacon
-Union's high wage

... the idea of "black-on-black crime" taps into specific fears around black masculinity and black criminality-the same fears that, in Florida, led George Zimmerman to focus his attention on Trayvon Martin, and in New York, continue to justify Michael Bloomberg's campaign of police harassment against young black men in New York City.
**Isn't that in large part because, for example in the case of GZ and TM, the residents of the neighborhood were experiencing young black men breaking into their homes and stealing things? And in that case, it would be irrational to think otherwise.

The author's conclusion:
America is afraid of black people, and that's especially true-it seems-when it thinks they might be angry.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/15/the-trayvon-martin-killing-and-the-myth-of-black-on-black-crime.html

Are you afraid of black people? I work with people of all ethnicities every day and I don't think this is real.  Maybe I'm wrong.  What do you think?

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