4 ms·
That link seems suspect to me. India is rife with crime. Daily life, even for rich people, involves lots of activities that would be crimes in a Western country
by neilk 16y ago
That link seems suspect to me. India is rife with crime. Daily life, even for rich people, involves lots of activities that would be crimes in a Western country, particularly official corruption.
Anyway, you spoke in terms of "criminality in some American cultures", which sounds like a euphemism, since you neglected to name them. Although you followed it up with your hetereogenity thesis I (like many readers) was already lost.
I do agree that it is the rifts between groups that ultimately cause all the problems. However, who's really to blame for that? America's slave-descended population have been in the country for over 500 years. By any normal expectations, their original culture should have been completely blended with the mainstream culture hundreds of years ago. And a large extent this is true of those blacks that enter the middle class and beyond. But for those that are trapped in a ghetto lifestyle -- with ghetto attitudes -- I don't think you can attribute that up to cultural differences. That's circular reasoning again. Something else is keeping the cultures separate.
I think we should be open to the idea that the forces keeping the cultures separate are both external and internal to the black community in America. Still, anecdotally speaking, as a Canadian I find the racism in America to be pretty breathtaking. White Americans, whether liberal or conservative, take it as a given that there's always some part of the city dominated by blacks where gunfire is heard at night and the cops are afraid to go. If you probe even a little bit you find that most white Americans, even nominally liberal ones, think blacks have lower capacities than they do. This seems to me, with my Canadian attitudes, like a shocking abandonment of a large part of your citizenry.
In any case, heterogenity doesn't always lead to a higher crime rate. Toronto is over 38% immigrant [1] and yet has a low crime rate. Montreal has been riven by cultural heterogenity (between English, French, and others) ever since the 1700s, and yet has an even lower crime rate. [2] I'm not saying Canada is perfect in this regard, and it is a pretty universal rule that the newest immigrant population has a higher rate of crime and organized crime. But, unscientifically, it seems to me that the availability of better social services, less inequality, more equitable law enforcement, plus a very strong tradition that the norm of "Canadian" isn't any particular race [3], must all be factors in mitigating this.
[1] http://www.mta.ca/about_canada/multi/ http://www.mta.ca/about_canada/multi/
[2] http://www.toronto.ca/quality_of_life/safety.htm http://www.toronto.ca/quality_of_life/safety.htm
[3] Even the gangs in Canada are sometimes multiracial: the "United Nations" gang is famous for this. http://www.vancouversun.com/Gallery+gang/1350012/story.html http://www.vancouversun.com/Gallery+gang/1350012/story.html
- defen 16y ago> White Americans, whether liberal or conservative, take it as a given that there's always some part of the city dominated by blacks where gunfire is heard at night and the cops are afraid to go. This place exists in just about every major American city. Not sure about gunfire every night, but places where police presence is minimal and you just don't go there, unless you live there.
- matwood 16y agoStill, anecdotally speaking, as a Canadian I find the racism in America to be pretty breathtaking. White Americans, whether liberal or conservative, take it as a given that there's always some part of the city dominated by blacks where gunfire is heard at night and the cops are afraid to go. If you probe even a little bit you find that most white Americans, even nominally liberal ones, think blacks have lower capacities than they do. This seems to me, with my Canadian attitudes, like a shocking abandonment of a large part of your citizenry. Wow, so you just did what Americans are always accused of doing - paint large groups of people with one giant brush. True racism in America I think has shrunk considerably. The problem is that racism is now commonly used to label any not so nice statistics about any given group of people. Years ago when Bill Cosby pointed out that strong families raised better kids he was called racist. He was just looking at the facts that over 1/2 of the single parent families out there are black[1], and kids from single parent families generally don't do as well as those from a 2 parent family. When it comes to bad areas in large cities nearly every city has at least one such area, although racial groups may differ. There used to be places in LA where simply wearing a blue or red shirt will get you shot. This is not something made up or in the minds of white people. Even when I lived in a smallish city it had streets or areas that even police avoided. Heck, even my black friends avoided the area. I also strongly disagree that 'most white Americans' think blacks have lower capacities than they do. That's complete BS. I don't know anyone who thinks that, and I certainly don't think that is true. [1] http://family.jrank.org/pages/1574/Single-Parent-Families-Demographic-Trends.html http://family.jrank.org/pages/1574/Single-Parent-Families-De...
- cullenking 16y agoI hear gunshots in my North Portland neighborhood - in one weekend 3 people were shot and killed this last summer. My neighborhood is the predominant black neighborhood in Portland. Now, I don't believe it's black/white but driven instead by poverty and lack of education, however these areas exist. Granted, even though I have heard gunshots and people have been shot I still consider this neighborhood relatively safe. I don't live in the "real hood" like you'll find in Chicago, LA etc, and the cops certainly aren't afraid to be here (they dropped a precinct a few blocks away to help with the crime rate).