4 ms·
I think it's reasonable to remember that Blacks (and especially young Black men) commit proportionally more violent crimes; it is also useful to remember that b
by stvswn 10y ago
I think it's reasonable to remember that Blacks (and especially young Black men) commit proportionally more violent crimes; it is also useful to remember that black people in general are much more likely to be the victims of crime. The latter point is a much more reasonable way to view the experience of being black in America -- constantly in danger of crime, and then being treated like a criminal by the people who are supposed to protect you from crime.
The police -- and I do believe that the vast majority are well intentioned -- too often think that aggressive tactics are the answer, because the way to reduce crime must be to catch more criminals, right? So, when a police officer is assigned to a rough area with lots of crime, he tends to treat the citizens like criminals instead of victims. Maybe not everyone is treated this way -- but young, poor, black men certainly are in many cases, especially when they're involved in petty criminal activity like selling bootleg CDs that leads to tense interactions with police.
It's a really tough problem, and I don't have a good idea about what could be done to solve it -- but local governments are failing these communities, and we should demand something better from our leadership.
- marcoperaza 10y agoThe leadership that's failing them most is the leadership of the black community. They're laser focused on selling a victimhood narrative that reduces all problems to racism and oppression by the white man. Meanwhile, black children are raised in single-parent homes in record numbers, are joining gangs due to poor parental supervision, and very often grow up in an environment that frowns upon success as some kind of racial betrayal ("acting white"). Blacks who speak out about the social and cultural problems within the black community are labeled Uncle Toms and ignored (see Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas, for example). Second to that is the leadership and elite of the country, that accepts this victimhood narrative out of misinformation, political correctness, and political expedience. There's no better way to get 90% of a population to vote for you than to convince them that the other side is the mortal enemy that hates them for the color of their skin and wants to keep them down.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoIt's much easier to sell such a narrative when the entire history of your country backs it up. When a close advisor of a previous President admits they started the war on drugs to target hippies and negroes, for example. Oh, that same president was strongly anti-abortion except in extreme circumstances. His example of such a case when abortion was warranted? Mixed-race babies. He also reset the fundamental strategy one of your political parties for the last few decades to appealing to racists with "the southern strategy". Which Trump, with his flirting with white supremacist groups continues to this day.
- marcoperaza 10y agoBelieve what you want. Even if everything you say is true, which I seriously doubt, it doesn't change the fact that victimhood politics is the road to continued ruin.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoUnfortunately it is true: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-r... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105832640 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1058326... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy Why shouldn't a victim acknowledge the reality of being targeted? What other groups do you expect to follow this bizarre recommendation? Thus is a nice historical overview that ties a lot of this stuff together: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/is-america-repeating-the-mistakes-of-1968/490568/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/is-ameri...
- marcoperaza 10y agoI don't buy that America is a substantially racist country today. I especially don't buy that racism is even in the top-ten list of problems facing black people. History sucks. It landed my grandparents in America, having fled Cuba, with the clothes on their backs. They had built lives for themselves and had it all pulled from under them. Somehow, the Cuban-American community has done phenomenally well for itself. Definitely not by blaming the past for their lot and demanding nebulous reparations.