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This article is one sided in that it assumes that White fear of Blacks is baseless, when in fact Blacks commit crimes at around 5x higher rate than Whites. Not

This article is one sided in that it assumes that White fear of Blacks is baseless, when in fact Blacks commit crimes at around 5x higher rate than Whites. Not all this difference can be explained by poverty, but even if it could, most White people are also afraid of White people who come from social classes with very high crime rates. I'm not saying that most or any of the attitudes of Whites described in the article were justified, but it's one sided to focus entirely on the police and White attitudes and ignore Black crime.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
arthurcolle 11y ago
The incarceration rate is 5x higher, not "the rate that Blacks commit crimes" as you falsely assert. Tone down the racism, it isn't very becoming of a member of the HN community. And the capitalization of the Whites/Blacks just makes you come across as Dylann Roof. Take a chill pill and try to find sources when you want to make assertions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_African-American_males https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_Afr...
- JesperRavn 11y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Crime_rate_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S... How is stating the truth racist? I think you are the one who needs to "take a chill pill". EDIT: You need to scroll down in the wiki article to get rates for specific crimes. E.g. from the Homocide section: the offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites. EDIT 2: And regarding capitalization, see http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/173974/are-white-and-black-ever-capitalized-when-referring-to-people http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/173974/are-white-... It's not just murderers who capitalize Black and White.
  - late2part 11y ago
    I think arthurcolle's point is that most people believe our justice system is inherently racist; poor minorities do not have access to the same financial means for legal resources, they are not given as many breaks as rich white people, etc. His concern seems to be that your stated source focuses on "offending" which implicitly infers that they are caught and charged by law enforcement. Your assertion was about "commit[ing] crimes" while your fact is about "offending" or charged or convicted with crimes.
    - ams6110 11y ago
      Access to legal resources is nearly exclusively related to wealth, not race. A black person will have pretty much the same access to legal resources as the equivalently wealthy white person. Poor people regardless of race don't have much access to anything.
    - JesperRavn 11y ago
      In that case you should check out the section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Prosecutorial_and_police_discrimination_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S... It seems clear to me given the evidence presented, that bias in the justice system does not account for the gap when it comes to serious crimes. Given this, in my opinion "Blacks commit crimes at around 5x higher rate than Whites" is a fair claim. I actually should have said 8x, I misremembered the article. One interesting thing to me is that within parts of academia, it is not controversial to claim that Black people commit more crimes. Such academics seek the causes of this difference in various sociological explanations. You can see the discussion in the rest of the wiki article. But outside of academia a very different story is told. I believe that academics think that ordinary people cannot be trusted not to draw "racist" conclusions from the statistics about crime. Therefore liberal academics do nothing to dispel the myth amongst mainstream liberals, that Black crime rates are mainly due to bias in the justice system.
    - r0naa 11y ago
      > I think arthurcolle's point is that most people believe our justice system is inherently racist; poor minorities do not have access to the same financial means for legal resources Class segregation isn't the same thing as racism.
- cb18 11y ago
  Whites probably are prosecuted less for minor things like pot or jaywalking or what have you. But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priority for a justice system, things like rape and murder, it is the simple, uncomfortable fact that blacks outpace all other races by a wide margin. If you think that demonstrating that blacks are incarcerated at higher rates than whites somehow disproves the above facts and somehow proves that whites commit more rapes and murders than blacks but are not caught/incarcerated, then for that to be the case, given the amount of rapes and murders that blacks commit, there would have to be a huge number unsolved rape and murder cases. Are there a huge number of unsolved rape and murder cases? No there aren't, the number of unsolved cases is probably not even 15% of the solved and prosecuted cases. Maybe you should develop a simple command of the facts before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism.
  - dang 11y ago
    > Maybe you should develop a simple command of the facts before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism This breaks the HN guidelines. Please comment civilly or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - onion2k 11y ago
    But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priority for a justice system, things like rape and murder, it is the simple, uncomfortable fact that blacks outpace all other races by a wide margin. That isn't really a function of skin colour though. Black people don't commit more murders because they're black - they commit more murders because they live in under-resourced, under-educated, poor communities that have been created by decades of racism by employers and authorities. A white person and a black person are equally likely to commit a murder given the same set of circumstances, but the way society works means black people are more likely to face those situations. Implying that blackness is a causal factor is both entirely wrong and hugely racist.
    - JesperRavn 11y ago
      This thread is about Black crime rates, not their causes. As I said in my post, even if poverty was the only cause, it would still be hard to expect Whites to ignore the racial crime gap, since White people also avoid lower SES Whites who are likely to commit crimes. In fact, poverty alone does not explain the crime rate gap. You can call this view "hugely racist" but I don't see how you can rule out a whole set of other causes a priori. And I'm not mainly referring to genetics, but rather other sociological causes as are discussed in[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Theories_of_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
- dang 11y ago
  > And the capitalization of the Whites/Blacks just makes you come across as Dylann Roof. Whoa, that's way out of line. > Take a chill pill and try to find sources when you want to make assertions. That's not ok either. Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. Please follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    He is correct that the incarceration rate has little to do with prevalence of criminality. It has to do with the "school to prison pipeline" and differences in enforcement, especially regarding drugs.
    - dang 11y ago
      Being correct has nothing to do with violating the HN guidelines. If anything it makes it worse.
  - arthurcolle 11y ago
    Thanks for the refresher dang. My apologies. I will think more carefully about posts. I was just so offended by his lack of consideration about race
bruceb 11y ago
It is a complex issue. I suggest reading this thread on reddit on the same topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3afjx1/murder_statistics_of_blacks_and_whites_in_the_us/csc6w2u https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3afjx1/mur...
- JesperRavn 11y ago
  Can you point to a specific post, or a point you were trying to make. I accept that explaining the Black White crime gap is complex, but if by "it's a complex issue" you are trying to cast doubt on my claim that Blacks commit much more crime than Whites, then I disagree. And I didn't see any comments disputing this from a quick look at the post.
  - bruceb 11y ago
    You right I should give a better answer than ists complex. But the thread goes in to look at factors such as segregation, density, and poverty. You have many poor people packed in to small places more violence is going to happen. These areas are more likely to have black people as opposed to white poor people who are more spread out, think Appalachia region. Do these factors explain everything, no but they do show it isn't as cut and dry as some try to make it. Because of time will have leave a that for now.
    - JesperRavn 11y ago
      But my claim was not that I know the causes of the higher Black crime rate, but rather that because of this higher crime rates, some White people have become fearful of Blacks. This would be the case regardless of the underlying causes. Also [0] is only able to explain half of the crime gap through "structural characteristics". Of course this article would be considered extremely racist by many people in this thread (not you) since it assumes the crime gap reflects actual higher rates of criminal behavior, and not just bias in the justice system. [0] http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/Courses/grstat502/phillipssp802.pdf http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/Courses/grstat502/phillipss...
underwater 11y ago
That's the textbook definition of racism. All white people aren't judged by the actions of white criminals. But all black people are.
- mnglkhn2 11y ago
  so why then don't you judge the actions of police on a case by case basis and choose tomassign them to all the white people? Does that make you racist?
- JesperRavn 11y ago
  More like Black victimization by police is considered a racial issue, but Black crime is not.
  - underwater 11y ago
    The two issues are distinct. Stop trying to justify racism.
    - JesperRavn 11y ago
      You'll have to explain that better. Stop trying to shut down debate with the R word.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

arthurcolle 11y ago

The incarceration rate is 5x higher, not "the rate that Blacks commit crimes" as you falsely assert. Tone down the racism, it isn't very becoming of a member of the HN community. And the capitalization of the Whites/Blacks just makes you come across as Dylann Roof. Take a chill pill and try to find sources when you want to make assertions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_African-American_males https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_Afr...

JesperRavn 11y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Crime_rate_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S... How is stating the truth racist? I think you are the one who needs to "take a chill pill". EDIT: You need to scroll down in the wiki article to get rates for specific crimes. E.g. from the Homocide section: the offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites. EDIT 2: And regarding capitalization, see http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/173974/are-white-and-black-ever-capitalized-when-referring-to-people http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/173974/are-white-... It's not just murderers who capitalize Black and White.
- late2part 11y ago
  I think arthurcolle's point is that most people believe our justice system is inherently racist; poor minorities do not have access to the same financial means for legal resources, they are not given as many breaks as rich white people, etc. His concern seems to be that your stated source focuses on "offending" which implicitly infers that they are caught and charged by law enforcement. Your assertion was about "commit[ing] crimes" while your fact is about "offending" or charged or convicted with crimes.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Access to legal resources is nearly exclusively related to wealth, not race. A black person will have pretty much the same access to legal resources as the equivalently wealthy white person. Poor people regardless of race don't have much access to anything.
  - JesperRavn 11y ago
    In that case you should check out the section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Prosecutorial_and_police_discrimination_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S... It seems clear to me given the evidence presented, that bias in the justice system does not account for the gap when it comes to serious crimes. Given this, in my opinion "Blacks commit crimes at around 5x higher rate than Whites" is a fair claim. I actually should have said 8x, I misremembered the article. One interesting thing to me is that within parts of academia, it is not controversial to claim that Black people commit more crimes. Such academics seek the causes of this difference in various sociological explanations. You can see the discussion in the rest of the wiki article. But outside of academia a very different story is told. I believe that academics think that ordinary people cannot be trusted not to draw "racist" conclusions from the statistics about crime. Therefore liberal academics do nothing to dispel the myth amongst mainstream liberals, that Black crime rates are mainly due to bias in the justice system.
  - r0naa 11y ago
    > I think arthurcolle's point is that most people believe our justice system is inherently racist; poor minorities do not have access to the same financial means for legal resources Class segregation isn't the same thing as racism.
cb18 11y ago
Whites probably are prosecuted less for minor things like pot or jaywalking or what have you. But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priority for a justice system, things like rape and murder, it is the simple, uncomfortable fact that blacks outpace all other races by a wide margin. If you think that demonstrating that blacks are incarcerated at higher rates than whites somehow disproves the above facts and somehow proves that whites commit more rapes and murders than blacks but are not caught/incarcerated, then for that to be the case, given the amount of rapes and murders that blacks commit, there would have to be a huge number unsolved rape and murder cases. Are there a huge number of unsolved rape and murder cases? No there aren't, the number of unsolved cases is probably not even 15% of the solved and prosecuted cases. Maybe you should develop a simple command of the facts before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism.
- dang 11y ago
  > Maybe you should develop a simple command of the facts before you literally compare someone to a mass-murderer in your grammar naziism This breaks the HN guidelines. Please comment civilly or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- onion2k 11y ago
  But for high-profile things i.e. the things that should be priority for a justice system, things like rape and murder, it is the simple, uncomfortable fact that blacks outpace all other races by a wide margin. That isn't really a function of skin colour though. Black people don't commit more murders because they're black - they commit more murders because they live in under-resourced, under-educated, poor communities that have been created by decades of racism by employers and authorities. A white person and a black person are equally likely to commit a murder given the same set of circumstances, but the way society works means black people are more likely to face those situations. Implying that blackness is a causal factor is both entirely wrong and hugely racist.
  - JesperRavn 11y ago
    This thread is about Black crime rates, not their causes. As I said in my post, even if poverty was the only cause, it would still be hard to expect Whites to ignore the racial crime gap, since White people also avoid lower SES Whites who are likely to commit crimes. In fact, poverty alone does not explain the crime rate gap. You can call this view "hugely racist" but I don't see how you can rule out a whole set of other causes a priori. And I'm not mainly referring to genetics, but rather other sociological causes as are discussed in[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Theories_of_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
dang 11y ago
> And the capitalization of the Whites/Blacks just makes you come across as Dylann Roof. Whoa, that's way out of line. > Take a chill pill and try to find sources when you want to make assertions. That's not ok either. Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. Please follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  He is correct that the incarceration rate has little to do with prevalence of criminality. It has to do with the "school to prison pipeline" and differences in enforcement, especially regarding drugs.
  - dang 11y ago
    Being correct has nothing to do with violating the HN guidelines. If anything it makes it worse.
- arthurcolle 11y ago
  Thanks for the refresher dang. My apologies. I will think more carefully about posts. I was just so offended by his lack of consideration about race

bruceb 11y ago

It is a complex issue. I suggest reading this thread on reddit on the same topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3afjx1/murder_statistics_of_blacks_and_whites_in_the_us/csc6w2u https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3afjx1/mur...

JesperRavn 11y ago
Can you point to a specific post, or a point you were trying to make. I accept that explaining the Black White crime gap is complex, but if by "it's a complex issue" you are trying to cast doubt on my claim that Blacks commit much more crime than Whites, then I disagree. And I didn't see any comments disputing this from a quick look at the post.
- bruceb 11y ago
  You right I should give a better answer than ists complex. But the thread goes in to look at factors such as segregation, density, and poverty. You have many poor people packed in to small places more violence is going to happen. These areas are more likely to have black people as opposed to white poor people who are more spread out, think Appalachia region. Do these factors explain everything, no but they do show it isn't as cut and dry as some try to make it. Because of time will have leave a that for now.
  - JesperRavn 11y ago
    But my claim was not that I know the causes of the higher Black crime rate, but rather that because of this higher crime rates, some White people have become fearful of Blacks. This would be the case regardless of the underlying causes. Also [0] is only able to explain half of the crime gap through "structural characteristics". Of course this article would be considered extremely racist by many people in this thread (not you) since it assumes the crime gap reflects actual higher rates of criminal behavior, and not just bias in the justice system. [0] http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/Courses/grstat502/phillipssp802.pdf http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/Courses/grstat502/phillipss...

underwater 11y ago

That's the textbook definition of racism. All white people aren't judged by the actions of white criminals. But all black people are.

mnglkhn2 11y ago
so why then don't you judge the actions of police on a case by case basis and choose tomassign them to all the white people? Does that make you racist?
JesperRavn 11y ago
More like Black victimization by police is considered a racial issue, but Black crime is not.
- underwater 11y ago
  The two issues are distinct. Stop trying to justify racism.
  - JesperRavn 11y ago
    You'll have to explain that better. Stop trying to shut down debate with the R word.