15 Things You Should Know About "The Race"

[Touch Of Death]

By your reasoning here, there is no hope for a solution. I have no way to know, and no way to understand, or recognize a problem unless I may directly experience it. I cannot help a person who has been raped, since I have not been raped. I cannot recognize that a woman may have faced different challenges than I have, since I'm male. How pessimistic and dreary and selfish a view that is... "You can't possibly understand 'cause you're not..."



I think this is a very important key. One thing that I have noticed in discussing this sort of issue with people is that, very often, people choose to only perceive events through a particular lens. No matter if there might be alternative explanations -- once they've bought into that lens or that identification, that's the reason. In truth, things are seldom that easy.

(By the way... there was once a time when a black man would have been hired long before my Irish immigrant ancestors...)



In a paragraph, I describe an actual AFFIRMATIVE action program, rather than an approach that essentially says "you aren't quite equal, so we'll give you a bit of an advantage." True; I didn't address every element, and most definitely, reaching more deeply into the home life and popular perception is needed. Perhaps you noted that I said it was definitely NOT a quick and easy solution? Perhaps you have something else to offer?



Again -- this is much to simplistic. Is the predominance of minority members charged and convicted of offenses an artifact of bias in policing, or in the the judicial system, or is it something else? There's a lot to examine; enough for several people to have already achieved doctorates providing unique thesis papers on the subject -- and reaching drastically different conclusions! The fact is that most crime is NOT interracial; it's committed by members of the same race upon each other. There are, I'm sure many reasons for this, and I'm not even going to try to guess at more than the simplest: proximity.

Is it black youths that are branded -- or is it those who cannot afford an attorney?

The problem stems from the way we police the inner city. The better job the police do the worse the problem gets. Out in the suburbs, white kids are dealing dope and robbing eachother blind, but the police are not around every corner so the ratio of crimes committed to being caught are naturaly different than in the inner city.
Sean

 

[Touch Of Death]

if the two groups comitted crimes at the same rate, this would be true

Look at it like this... A mall security guard follows the most likely suspects for shop lifting. While they do catch the suspicious looking black kid in the act, they missed the white kid and her mother. The store still gets robbed.
Sean

 

[Touch Of Death]

Where are all the white robbers, and violent criminals that are getting away with it?

The white robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs get away with crime for longer per capita than do black robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs. Blacks commit crimes predominantly on blacks and whites victimize whites. Rarely does anybody make special trips in to the other's community.
Sean

 

[Sukerkin]

Whilst I agree with your last sentence, the earlier bits stun me. You surely can't be basing your views on a blatant supposition like that?

I don't mean to sound so scornful, so please forgive me; I really am that shocked. Noone will ever convince you otherwise if that's what you believe.

 

[jks9199]

The problem stems from the way we police the inner city. The better job the police do the worse the problem gets. Out in the suburbs, white kids are dealing dope and robbing eachother blind, but the police are not around every corner so the ratio of crimes committed to being caught are naturaly different than in the inner city.
Sean

Actually, arrest rates and crime rates are different questions, answered through different measures. If you have the perfect solution to policing ANY community, please, enlighten us.

Look at it like this... A mall security guard follows the most likely suspects for shop lifting. While they do catch the suspicious looking black kid in the act, they missed the white kid and her mother. The store still gets robbed.
Sean

Of course, I could also pose this as the security guard follows the white couple, and the black kid robs the store. Both scenarios are equally plausible.

The white robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs get away with crime for longer per capita than do black robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs. Blacks commit crimes predominantly on blacks and whites victimize whites. Rarely does anybody make special trips in to the other's community.
Sean

Bluntly, support any of this. Do you actually know what goes into the various crime rates?

 

[Archangel M]

First off hes confusing larceny with robbery, second hes making it up as he goes along. White people get arrested for violent crimes all the time.

If people knew how "bad" someone has to be (in severity of crime or in repeated arrests) to even see the inside of a prison..most courts bend over backwards to put people on probation, reduce charges and place people in to programs to avoid imprisonment. If most people could sit in a court room and see a "score card" of arrest records as people go before the judge, most would be sickened and shocked.

 

[Touch Of Death]

Whilst I agree with your last sentence, the earlier bits stun me. You surely can't be basing your views on a blatant supposition like that?

I don't mean to sound so scornful, so please forgive me; I really am that shocked. Noone will ever convince you otherwise if that's what you believe.

Look at it like this where I it wasn't long ago that there was a meth lab on every corner (seriously) The government has been real good about cutting off the supply of effedrine to the people and "SEAT BELT CHECKS" have helped as well; however There are meth labs out in the hills the police will never find, but they can sure concentrate on cleaning up the inner cities; hence, the big labs stay open, the little ones get busted. Whats a bit misleading here is that its mainly only white people that do meth here. Black people are more likely to do cocaine.
Sean

 

[Sukerkin]

I can accept how you can point to examples like that and make a statement on it. It's something that is, at core, investigateable and explainable. What knocked me back a bit was this:

"The white robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs get away with crime for longer per capita than do black robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs."

because there is no way anyone can ever provide evidence to either disprove or prove it as it's based on an absence of data.

With your further response (thankyou), I'm guessing either the words on the screen weren't what you meant or I read them incorrectly.

 

[Touch Of Death]

Actually, arrest rates and crime rates are different questions, answered through different measures. If you have the perfect solution to policing ANY community, please, enlighten us.



Of course, I could also pose this as the security guard follows the white couple, and the black kid robs the store. Both scenarios are equally plausible.



Bluntly, support any of this. Do you actually know what goes into the various crime rates?

I didn't say i had a better system I am telling you why innercity youths are arrested at a higher rate than kids in the suburbs. And I have taken enough criminal justice courses to argue this all day.
Sean

 

[Touch Of Death]

I can accept how you can point to examples like that and make a statement on it. It's something that is, at core, investigateable and explainable. What knocked me back a bit was this:

"The white robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs get away with crime for longer per capita than do black robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs."

because there is no way anyone can ever provide evidence to either disprove or prove it as it's based on an absence of data.

With your further response (thankyou), I'm guessing either the words on the screen weren't what you meant or read them incorrectly.

Look Im saying there is an anonimity to being white in a prodominantly white community.
Sean

 

[Archangel M]

Rarely is the argument that African Americans are WRONGLY imprisoned, only that the proportion is wrong. Perhaps we should have a "criminal affirmative action" program where we make sure the balance is even. :uhyeah:

Look..at least for violent crimes, a victim comes forward (or is found dead) and a description of the offender given. Suspects are then either identified by the victim and/or physical evidence proves guilt. As I stated upthread, numerous studies have shown that offender descriptions and those arrested match. If you are saying that the cops dont go out looking for criminals described as white. PROVE IT!

And since the consensus of most cop bashers is that they never catch criminals in the act, only clean up after the mess, I dont see where they can be falsely locking up so many people.

 

[Sukerkin]

I really don't want to be drawn into this because it has the making of an argument when there is no need for one.

I am, however, from far away and there may be obvious things I'm missing by not having the same background, so, the inevitable "But" is, how does "there is an anonimity to being white in a prodominantly white community" differ appreciably from being black in a black community?

 

[Archangel M]

I really don't want to be drawn into this because it has the making of an argument when there is no need for one.

I am, however, from far away and there may be obvious things I'm missing by not having the same background, so, the inevitable "But" is, how does "there is an anonimity to being white in a prodominantly white community" differ appreciably from being black in a black community?

There isnt. What typically happens is after a spate of violence in black communities a hue and cry of "the police just let the violence happen to us and do nothing" goes out. The police "crack down" on the area to stop the violence and a lot of arrests are made. At the proper behest of the residents. If there was the same violence in a white community, you would see a similar result.

I also want to add that the problem of crime in the black community has nothing to do with race. And anybody who argues that blacks commit more crime due to their race IS a racist. The problem is historic, cultural (black AND white cultures), economic, educational and political. NOT race.

 

[jks9199]

There isnt. What typically happens is after a spate of violence in black communities a hue and cry of "the police just let the violence happen to us and do nothing" goes out. The police "crack down" on the area to stop the violence and a lot of arrests are made. At the proper behest of the residents. If there was the same violence in a white community, you would see a similar result.

I also want to add that the problem of crime in the black community has nothing to do with race. And anybody who argues that blacks commit more crime due to their race IS a racist. The problem is historic, cultural (black AND white cultures), economic, educational and political. NOT race.

Great point! Race is really a distraction. The truth is that people of all races and all socio-economic statuses commit crimes. Those that prey on others tend to prey on people of an equivalent status, because that's where they are. CEOs bilk corporations while street grifters hit people on the street; both run confidence games (often, variants of the same games!).

 

[Archangel M]

I know its George Will so some folks will probably not even read it but he has some interesting points on this topic.

Last July, Obama said "more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities." Actually, more than twice as many black men 18-24 are in college as there are in jail.

Last September he said, "We have a system that locks away too many young, first-time, nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives."

But Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, writing in the institute's City Journal, notes that from 1999 to 2004, violent offenders accounted for all of the increase in the prison population. Furthermore, Mac Donald cites data indicating that: "In the overwhelming majority of cases, prison remains a lifetime achievement award for persistence in criminal offending. Absent recidivism or a violent crime, the criminal-justice system will do everything it can to keep you out of the state or federal slammer."
Obama sees racism in the incarceration rate: "We have certain sentences that are based less on the kind of crime you commit than on what you look like and where you come from."

Indeed, in 2006, blacks, who are less than 13 percent of the population, were 37.5 percent of all state and federal prisoners. About one in 33 black men was in prison, compared with one in 79 Hispanic men and one in 205 white men.

But Mac Donald cites studies of charging and sentencing that demonstrate that the reason more blacks are disproportionately in prison, and for longer terms, is not racism but racial differences in patterns of criminal offenses: "In 2005 the black homicide rate was over seven times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined. ... From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders."

Do police excessively arrest blacks? "The race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data."

As for the charge that the incarceration rate of blacks is substantially explained by more severe federal sentences for crack as opposed to powder-cocaine defendants (only 13 states distinguish between the two substances, and these states have small sentence differentials), Mac Donald says:

"It's going to take a lot more than 5,000 or so (federal) crack defendants a year to account for the 562,000 black prisoners in state and federal facilities at the end of 2006 — or the 858,000 black prisoners in custody overall, if one includes the population of county and city jails."

James Q. Wilson, America's premier social scientist, notes that "the typical criminal commits from 12 to 16 crimes a year (not counting drug offenses)" and Wilson says that 10 years of scholarly studies "have shown that states that sent a higher fraction of convicts to prison had lower rates of crime, even after controlling for all of the other ways — poverty, urbanization, and the proportion of young men in the population — that the states differed. A high risk of punishment reduces crime. Deterrence works." It works especially on behalf of blacks, who are disproportionately the victims of crimes by black men.

Its the victims I care about. Black, white, yellow, red, brown, etc.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

The white robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs get away with crime for longer per capita than do black robbers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and thugs. Blacks commit crimes predominantly on blacks and whites victimize whites. Rarely does anybody make special trips in to the other's community.
Sean

The problem stems from the way we police the inner city. The better job the police do the worse the problem gets. Out in the suburbs, white kids are dealing dope and robbing eachother blind, but the police are not around every corner so the ratio of crimes committed to being caught are naturaly different than in the inner city.
Sean

Look at it like this where I it wasn't long ago that there was a meth lab on every corner (seriously) The government has been real good about cutting off the supply of effedrine to the people and "SEAT BELT CHECKS" have helped as well; however There are meth labs out in the hills the police will never find, but they can sure concentrate on cleaning up the inner cities; hence, the big labs stay open, the little ones get busted. Whats a bit misleading here is that its mainly only white people that do meth here. Black people are more likely to do cocaine.
Sean

Please, show me where you get your information from. And dont tell me your criminal justice classes. I have been a police officer for 8 years, and completely disagree with you. Can I simply use that as a reference to get you to agree with me? I should hope not, and that the trustworthy criteria would be higher than that.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

Here is what I am going to say about all this stuff about cops pulling people over, and mall security following people around.

There is such a thing as statistical profiling. That means that given a segment of the population in a particular community, people that exhibit certain (not necessarily race based) characteristics are more likely to commit crimes then others. That being said, do you think that those responsible for public safety / crime prevention should concentrate on those factors.

Quite frankly, very few white people come into the community that I serve to commit crimes. How do I know? Because I read the reports, I look at who we have in custody. Very few white folks commit crimes there. If your only answer to this is that we are letting them get away with it, then there is nothing that I can do to help you, and you will only believe what people tell you when they already fit your preconcieved notions.

Now, I could spend my time on the people who are actually victimizing others, or I could waste my time stopping people who are more likely to NOT be doing any criminal activity.

And understand, all of the above are generalities, and do not speak to individuals.

I am so sick of hearing sympathetic white people talk about how bad black people have it when it comes to being stopped by the police. In a lot of communities (not all), it is deserved. You come to the city I serve and tell me that I shouldnt do it. Then only the Hispanics would get arrested, and a lot of innocent people would be hurt.

Now, on to this whole white people gained from slavery issue. Quite frankly, every person alive in the U.S. has gained from slavery. Even those who are first generation immigrants. Slavery helped make this nation what it is. There is no way around that. It may still have become something similar, but you cannot prove a negative. So this also means that the economic progress of this country is partly the consequence of slavery.

But dont misunderstand. That is not to say that slavery was a good thing. Merely a factor in the development of the current state of the U.S.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

The simple fact is that the current practice of "affirmative action" in the US is neither affirmative, nor active. It passively awards preference based on race, gender, or other "disadvantaged criteria" to a candidate, without regard to qualifications. In short, it's a case of trying to make two wrongs equal a right. It doesn't work; discrimination remains discrimination, no matter what you call it or who you use it on.

I would actually love to see TRUE affirmative action. Since police departments are a prime area for affirmative action to "balance the department composition to reflect the community", allow me to describe one approach that I would consider to be both affirmative, and active. Go out and actively recruit in the target populations. (Note that I am not denying the existence of prejudices or biases; people remain people. I've seen a very enlightening sketch by Bill Cosby on the subject...) Start young; make the kids think positively about being a cop; make sure that the cops in the area are good examples. Work with them overt time to ensure that they remain eligible, keeping them out of gangs, away from drugs, in school, and so on. Provide, open to all potential candidates, coaching sessions for the written and physical tests, and so on. This is an approach that I consider to be truly affirmative (as in it's building up everyone involved, rather than artifically "leveling" the field) and active. The problem is that it's not a quick and easy solution. But then, fairness is seldom quickly nor easily achieved.

Forgot to mention this, but this is already being done.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, they have a Magnet program run by (or should I say, with the assistance of) the LAPD. Of all the school programs within this district, this is the only one that has a 100% rate of all graduating students go on to college. And, having looked into the program, it is because they do not take any crap from the students. If you mess up, you are out.

How about that. Holding people to a standard, including minorities, and finding that they will often rise to the level of your challenge. But, if as a lot of people do here, we continue to make excuses for poor and negative behavior, people will also fall to the level of your expectations. It works both ways, although there are exceptions.

 

[Archangel M]

Indeed, in 2006, blacks, who are less than 13 percent of the population, were 37.5 percent of all state and federal prisoners. About one in 33 black men was in prison, compared with one in 79 Hispanic men and one in 205 white men.

Any math wizards out there that can translate those numbers to show the proportionality of arrests to race. If you look at the size of each population in this country what would the rate have to be to show a consistency?

 

[Sukerkin]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking for here, Archangel.

Do you mean what proportions of each racial morphology are in prison as compared to the percentage of overall population which that racial morphology represents?

That would be fairly easy with the right statistics on hand but aren't we then straying towards just focussing on such-and-such a racial type commits more crime without taking in the 'why's' of the numbers?

Just doing the basic maths from the figures above, which I think are supposed to be from the entire racial population of the country:

1 in 33 = just over 3%,
1 in 79 = just over 1 1/4 percent
1 in 205 = less than half a percent

It's important to hold in mind that tho' one figure is six times another it still means that 97% of that group are not imprisioned. Also, it means that, with just those there typologies taken into account, nearly 5% of America's total population is incarcerated.

That can't be right, surely?!