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Because (at least in part) they commit crime at far higher rates per capita. Black men commit about half of all murders in the USA, despite being about 13% of t

by Pyxl101 11y ago

Because (at least in part) they commit crime at far higher rates per capita. Black men commit about half of all murders in the USA, despite being about 13% of the population. The statistics are similar for many other crimes. 39% of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black from 2011-2013 per FBI statistics [1] [3]. In 2010, 62,593 blacks were victims of white violence, while 320,082 whites were victims of black violence. (Bureau of Justice Statistics). 2013 FBI homicide numbers show a similar ratio, with blacks being about 12 times more likely to kill a white person than whites were to kill a black person [2] (~10 blacks per 100k population kill a white, while ~1 white per 100k kill a black). Some studies have shown that crime is correlated primarily with poverty, while other studies have found that being black correlates to criminality while controlling for other factors [4]: "As a means to assess these possibilities, I estimate separate regression equations for the black and white block groups in Atlanta. [...] Consistent with previous research, percent black retains a strong, significant effect on violent crime net of the effects of other controls. [...]" "[...] Although this finding appears to provide partial support for the racial invariance assumption, the fact remains that for a large proportion of the black neighborhoods, the effect of disadvantage on violence is weaker than is the effect evident among all of the white neighborhoods in the analysis" (However this paper is largely inconclusive on the issue overall, and predominately suggests that previous research into the topic is inadequate to understand it) Why this is the case is an interesting problem that I hope we can tackle, better understand, and attempt to solve as a society (by solve I mean bring violent crime down to zero generally, across all groups) [1] FBI crime statistics by race for 2010: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/table-43/10tbl43a.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/... [2] FBI homicide statistics by race for 2013: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/... [3] http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime/19439 http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-american... has additional details and citations. [4] http://www.udel.edu/soc/faculty/parker/SOCI836_S08_files/McNulty_Crim01.pdf http://www.udel.edu/soc/faculty/parker/SOCI836_S08_files/McN...

flopto 11y ago
Policing perpetuates poverty and thus crime by forcing poor, black men to deal with the criminal justice system from an early age. Court fees, court appearances, civil asset forfeiture, jail time, and property damage from police searches are all burdens that poor, black, law-abiding people bear, not to mention wrongful conviction. Edit: missed this line in your comment before: > Why this is the case is an interesting problem that I hope we can tackle, better understand, and attempt to solve as a society This is what Black Lives Matter is about. They understand the problem (often by living through it) and are focused on tackling it. Because they don't focus too much on helping other people to understand the problem, this might not be clear to you. Edit: I was about to respond to your reply, but it looks like you deleted it. > too many topics seem taboo to reason about objectively I think the disagreement is about where this reasoning can/should happen. From the perspective of the BLM movement, it is not their job to educate people about race. I think this reasoning has already happened at an academic level and has concluded that (to summarize very broadly) white people have a whole lot of privilege. > Do we have that evidence? Yes, I believe so. [1] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bobo/files/2010_racialized_mass_incarceration_doing_race.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bobo/files/2010_racialized_... [2] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [3] Alice Goffman, On the Run (this is an ethnography, so you may need to have an understanding of ethnographic methods to accept the evidence here as "data")
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lukeschlather 11y ago
It's important to note the distinction between "blacks commit 50% of the murders in the US" and "50% of the murder convictions in the US are black people." It's well-documented that 40 years ago a white person could openly kill a black person and they would not be convicted. I've read a lot of studies, reviews of court cases, and court judgements about the subject, and it is clear that prosecutors are far less likely to charge a white person with a crime than a black person. Prosecution figures are simply unreliable as a metric for judging how many crimes are committed by whites vs. blacks. There are many interesting cases that show this. The most interesting one is McCleskey v. Kemp. It's not my favorite in terms of the specifics of the case, but it is my favorite because in the intervening years it has become pretty clearly a bad ruling, to the point that the justice who wrote the majority opinion wishes he could reverse his own vote. The unfortunate thing being that he cannot, and his vote has made it effectively impossible to detect and address racial bias in prosecution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCleskey_v._Kemp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCleskey_v._Kemp

by Pyxl101 11y ago

flopto 11y ago

Policing perpetuates poverty and thus crime by forcing poor, black men to deal with the criminal justice system from an early age. Court fees, court appearances, civil asset forfeiture, jail time, and property damage from police searches are all burdens that poor, black, law-abiding people bear, not to mention wrongful conviction. Edit: missed this line in your comment before: > Why this is the case is an interesting problem that I hope we can tackle, better understand, and attempt to solve as a society This is what Black Lives Matter is about. They understand the problem (often by living through it) and are focused on tackling it. Because they don't focus too much on helping other people to understand the problem, this might not be clear to you. Edit: I was about to respond to your reply, but it looks like you deleted it. > too many topics seem taboo to reason about objectively I think the disagreement is about where this reasoning can/should happen. From the perspective of the BLM movement, it is not their job to educate people about race. I think this reasoning has already happened at an academic level and has concluded that (to summarize very broadly) white people have a whole lot of privilege. > Do we have that evidence? Yes, I believe so. [1] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bobo/files/2010_racialized_mass_incarceration_doing_race.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bobo/files/2010_racialized_... [2] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [3] Alice Goffman, On the Run (this is an ethnography, so you may need to have an understanding of ethnographic methods to accept the evidence here as "data")

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

lukeschlather 11y ago

It's important to note the distinction between "blacks commit 50% of the murders in the US" and "50% of the murder convictions in the US are black people." It's well-documented that 40 years ago a white person could openly kill a black person and they would not be convicted. I've read a lot of studies, reviews of court cases, and court judgements about the subject, and it is clear that prosecutors are far less likely to charge a white person with a crime than a black person. Prosecution figures are simply unreliable as a metric for judging how many crimes are committed by whites vs. blacks. There are many interesting cases that show this. The most interesting one is McCleskey v. Kemp. It's not my favorite in terms of the specifics of the case, but it is my favorite because in the intervening years it has become pretty clearly a bad ruling, to the point that the justice who wrote the majority opinion wishes he could reverse his own vote. The unfortunate thing being that he cannot, and his vote has made it effectively impossible to detect and address racial bias in prosecution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCleskey_v._Kemp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCleskey_v._Kemp