"But what about black on black crime??"

Politics and religion
1

While this is directly related to the “cop shooting thread” it deserves its own discussion so it can be discussed in isolation.

Let me break it down as clearly and simply as I can.

1) Black people are complaining about police responses to them

Here are the facts:

police_shooting_by_race.0.png1600×980

So quite clearly, black people are killed by police during arrest at far higher rates - proportionally - than white people or hispanic people.

This is uncontroversial. It’s simply a fact. If you dispute this fact as provided by the FBI, the burden of proof is on you to explain why it’s wrong, and correct FBI’s record

2) Black people have to deal with police responses far more often

This is so unbelievably obvious that I’m not even going to expand on it further.

3) Victims of police killings who are unarmed are far more likely to be black and other minorities

police_unarmed_victims.0.png868×650

4) "But don’t black people break the law more??"

No. One example is with drugs. Even though white people and black people use illegal drugs at similar rates, black people are proportionally arrested on drug charges far more often

drug_use_and_arrests.0.png1600×878

5) "Ok, but still what about black on black crime??"

Yeah, black people kill other black people a lot. That’s because black people are around other black people a lot.

You know what though? What about white on white crime?.

It shouldn’t be shocking that people kill other people of the same race more often in a society where races are mostly still segregated into different cities and neighborhoods.

The point is that it’s a distraction. “Black on black crime” is just a coded way for white people to absolve themselves of their guilt for assisting or ignoring police biases that overtly target black people.

(Primary source: Police shootings and brutality in the US)

2

Seems to me that the police are way behind in their killing of Hispanic people…

3

I still don’t quite get it. If we could discuss this in five more threads then I think I’ll be set!!

Also, I feel bad for anyone who feels guilt about the actions of a unionized, bureaucratic police force. That’s like feeling guilty because you haven’t smashed your head against a brick wall enough. Even a Catholic tiger mom would blush at the idea. No thanks!

4

Maybe, just maybe, we should hold the Police to a higher standard? After all, they are allegedly trained to serve and protect…

Or should we treat the Police like any other gang with guns?

5

To continue beating a drum, just remember that police are not legally obligated to carry out the Protect portion of the Serve and Protect.

Luckily, as a half-Guatemalan, half-American d00d who’s pale as shit, I appear to be preternaturally safe from cop-killing (just a step down from Asian, I suppose)!

6

I’m interested in this discussion, but I’m also interested in other viewpoints. Here is a contradictory article:

http://www.dailywire.com/news/7441/7-statistics-you-need-know-about-black-black-crime-aaron-bandler

Blacks committed 52 percent of homicides between 1980 and 2008, despite composing just 13 percent of the population. Across the same timeframe, whites committed 45 percent of homicides while composing 77% of the population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The more I read from both sides, the more confusing it gets. People cherry pick statistics to meet a narrative (much like the link the OP posted on “white on white crime” - read the comments and many people take the author to task on the stats w/out an author rebuttal).

The reason this gets so frustrating is because when you try to talk to someone about BLM and the disparity that blacks are treated far more harshly than whites, is the rebuttal always starts with “what about black on black crime” which is moving the goal-posts. There narrative is that “police have a reason to approach a young black-man more cautiously” when they commit so many of the murders / crimes, never minding that they are incarcerated at a much higher rate for similar crimes, just feeding a viscous circle.

Are there stats on % of blacks who are found guilty of crimes and serve time vs % of white defendants? I did dig up this article

Is race an indicator in the likelihood of being represented by public counsel?

At the state level, African-American and Hispanic inmates reported receiving publicly funded counsel about equally often – 77 percent and 73 percent, respectively. White state prison inmates reported having used publicly appointed counsel in 69 percent of cases.
In federal prison, African-American inmates are more likely than either Whites or Hispanics to have been defended by public counsel: The percentages break down this way: 65 percent for Blacks, 57 percent for Whites and 56 percent for Hispanics.

7

If you really wanted to know the answer (not that it would help anything) it seems like you’d have to control for poverty at the very least.

8

So first of all, The Daily Wire is a strictly conservative web site, so obviously their political motive is to scare white people into being afraid of black people, and convince white people that black people aren’t worth saving because black people commit homicides at a higher rate.

Conservative web sites love to tout those numbers without providing context. Usually it’s “WHAT LIBERALS DON’T WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT BLACK ON BLACK CRIME!!!”

When conservative web sites present those numbers without trying to analyze them, there is no clarification to be made: They’re being racist. It’s just another dog whistle. They’re not directly saying anything, they’re not trying to solve any problems, they’re not trying to think of ways to improve this or extraordinary factors which may have caused this to happen in the first place.

All they’re doing is scaring their readers into being afraid of black people. They’re dehumanizing them. They’re giving their readership an excuse for why their lives shouldn’t matter.

The context of those numbers is what matters:

What’s to blame for the alarming black homicide rate? The Violence
Policy Center, which favors more restrictive gun laws, focused on
firearms: “For homicides in which the weapon used could be identified,
84 percent of black victims (4,960 out of 5,891) were shot and killed
with guns. Of these, 73 percent (3,609 victims) were killed with
handguns. … In comparison, 65 percent of white victims and 74 percent of
victims of all races were killed with guns.”

The report concluded, “For black victims of homicide, like all
victims of homicide, guns — usually handguns — are far and away the
number-one murder tool. Successful efforts to reduce America’s black
homicide toll, like America’s homicide toll as a whole, must put a focus
on reducing access and exposure to firearms.”

There are, of course, other factors behind these high levels of
homicides, ranging from socioeconomic variables to urbanization to
alcohol consumption.

The more important point is that white Americans only bring up “black on black crime” as a reflexive response to excusing police abuse.

If people actually cared about solving “black on black crime”, then they’d focus on a number of things which would indisputably help:

  • Improving the social safety net to help bring more black people out of poverty
  • Training police forces in implicit bias, de-escalation, and other strategies which have been enormously helpful in cities like Dallas (and no, the one isolated shooter who tragically killed those officers shouldn’t undermine those strategies)
  • Improved gun control to make it harder for people to get guns when they shouldn’t have them (Again no, Chicago isn’t “proof” of anything here. While Chicago has strict gun control laws, cities and states immediately outside Chicago don’t, which makes it trivial to bring illegal weapons into Chicago)

But instead, when rapid police escalation is the only response, when it’s easy to get guns, and when poverty is as terrible as ever among black people, obviously that will lead to more black people committing more homicides on average.

And yet still, despite all of this, “black on black crime” is never an appropriate or legitimate response to police abuse of power.

9

I’m sorry, you can’t just dismiss what they say because they’re a conservative website. You’re the one who brought up black-on-black crime in the subject and you didn’t use any stats - instead pointing to a article on white-on-white where many of the stats used in that article were questioned in the comments - using more stats to refute them

The problem I’m having is having discussions with conservative people, I’d like to be able to refute or at least have a good conversation on it. You can’t dismiss them just because they are conservative.

People are responding to stats - so if you don’t like the stats, then at least point to where they are being misinterpreted or wrong. Don’t just hand-wave them away.

10

I’m always amused how many sweeping generalizations there are in threads about bigotry. Hehe.

I’m considerate through. I’m willing to write it off as emotional frustration. Everyone has their weak moments.

11

Though I don’t talk about politics in real life (what’s wrong with you people?) I still empathize with what you’re trying to do. I’ve always thought the best approach was to present it in a way they already agree with in order to outflank and disarm them.

For example, you could say the welfare system has destroyed the black family and the strength that comes from having a father. That ought to make their head spin! (Don’t tell them the War on Drugs has a huge impact on this too, since they probably love the War on Drugs.)

You’re already ahead of the game just by making an attempt to understand both sides.

12

I’m not dismissing them because they’re a conservative web site.

I’m criticizing what they’re saying by pointing out the fact that they’re presenting truthful statistics but without any effort of providing context for those specifics whatsoever.

That’s my entire point. I never said “black on black crime doesn’t exist”. Obviously it does, and it’s tragic. But the use of the phrase is what I object to, and the cause of the problem is never analyzed by those who are always so eager to bring it up.

13

I think they are trying to avoid a narrative. The VOX link you posted has a narrative of “guns are the problem” and frames the statistics around gun ownership. I could poke some holes in this. For example, how many lawful gun owners vs non-lawful are part of these? If a percentage of these are non-lawful, then no gun restriction law will prevent these.

Regardless, that’s really the problem - everyone wants a narrative. Sometimes facts just need to be facts and then you can try some things and see how it improves the data. Then you know you’ve got something.

My personal narrative that I’ve concocted around this is:

“We are in a viscous cycle of poor neighbor hoods continuing to degrade due to many socioeconomic issues focused on single family homes, where the parent is simply overwhelmed trying to provide for their children, resulting in low oversight of their education which begets high drop-out rates, begetting few opportunities resulting in higher crime which draws the attention of more police resulting in higher incarceration rates, making more single family homes”

Today we see this with blacks, but in my corner of the world, we’re starting to see more of this type of cycle in the latino culture. However, it’s being held at bay because of an abnormally high family unit where relatives step in and provide the oversight of children when things go wrong.

I’m frustrated with all these narratives around BLM however. I do see a disproportionate number of blacks being affected and due to the new technology, we’re seeing more of it highlighting that this is A REAL FUCKING PROBLEM.

It seems a week can’t go by without some poor person being affected due to an aggressive police and the purposeful sweeping under the rug of the police / DA / prosecutor so no one is being held accountable. In the end, I think that’s all we want. If people are held accountable for these atrocious acts, and police departments create some reasonable screening to weed out these trouble-makers, we’d hopefully see improvement.

The problem of course is it’s really hard to get into some discussion w/out someone bringing some stupid fact in from left field which really has so little tangential relationship to the topic (eg, Black on Black has so little to do with BLM).

14

Well that is not true; if the guns are not available legally they won’t be available illegally either. Of course the market is already flooded with guns so there is easy access whatever the case, but in a an alternate universe or far flung future where the guns have been drained out of the market, restricting or better controlling guns would also reduce the rate at which they pass into the black market/underworld.

15

So Black on Black crime is the result of the police?

I don’t see anything in the OP even talking about black on black crime. I thought I would learn something about how we could reduce the black dystopia.

16

I think what the OP should be focusing on is this: the existence of black on black crime does not (necessarily) explain excessive police shootings of blacks.

Where the OP gets controversial is that OP also appears to brush off the reality that black crime rates, particularly murder, are higher per capita, as Tman points out. While that is a fact, the reasons for that are obviously complicated and mult-variate. The key isssue is that one doesn’t excuse the other.

From a statistical perspective, the more relevant numbers for police shootings would be whether blacks tend to have a higher rate of armed resistance to arrest (on a per incident basis), etc. I don’t know if those numbers exist, what they would be if they did, or whether they’d even be trustworthy, admittedly.

Even working on the assumption that blacks demonstrate disproportional criminal activity, that wouldn’t explain higher shooting rates, on a per stop basis, unless certain other assumptions are made (e.g., higher armed resistance, as mentioned).

17

I think you need to read it again, unless he changed it

Black on black crime is about as relevant to other crimes as white on white crime. Every time a white person do you see an endless stream of people refusing to discuss the crime, those involved in the crime and potential solutions to said crime because no one will engage them about white on white crime?

18

[quote=“Tman, post:13, topic:120471, full:true”]My personal narrative that I’ve concocted around this is:

“We are in a viscous cycle of poor neighbor hoods continuing to degrade due to many socioeconomic issues focused on single family homes, where the parent is simply overwhelmed trying to provide for their children, resulting in low oversight of their education which begets high drop-out rates, begetting few opportunities resulting in higher crime which draws the attention of more police resulting in higher incarceration rates, making more single family homes”

Today we see this with blacks, but in my corner of the world, we’re starting to see more of this type of cycle in the latino culture. However, it’s being held at bay because of an abnormally high family unit where relatives step in and provide the oversight of children when things go wrong. [/quote]
Don’t worry, poor whites will get there soon too!

The chief of Dallas police pointed out that society has dumped all its ills on the police to take care of. He has a point. He mentioned Congress doing something about it. (If you asked why society has dumped all its ills on Congress to take care of, then you’re getting somewhere…)

19

20

This really needs to get into folks’ heads.

Dismissing a source because of your preconception of its bias, is exactly what leads to shit like Donald Trump.

It doesn’t MATTER if a source is liberal, or conservative. If its argument is bad, then make that case based on the merits of the argument. Not “That source is bad!”. Because arguing that the source is “too conservative” is exactly the same mentality of the folks who say that when the media publishes shit about how Donald Trump lies constantly, that it’s just “Mainstream Media lies!”