Summary: The most difficult problems for a nation are those that we pretend not to see. Such as the high crime rate of Black Americans, with Blacks as the victims. We either ignore it – focusing instead on the tiny number of mass murders – or respond with police and prisons. Both “solutions” have failed. Eventually, we will have to deal with our problems or they will accumulate and overwhelm us. (This is reposted from the archives.) Update: the answer to the title appears to be “no.” This post is getting 1/3 of average pageviews.
“Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State’s failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.”
— From H. G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia(1905).
In 2017 there were ~433 mass shooting deaths (estimates vary). There were 17,251 homicides, of which aprox 8,970 (52%) were of Blacks. Of those, 11,883 had an identified killer – and 6,444 (54%) of those murders were committed by Blacks. Aprox. 13% of the US population are Black.
Twenty-one Black Americans died in 2017 for every American death from a mass shooter. But journalists tell us that mass shooters are the big problem, and that the annual tide of dead Black Americans does not matter. They tell us that so many Black Americans are killed is not a problem. They tell us that the problem is that criminals are treated too poorly.
Yet again we see that problem identification is the first and most difficult stage in social reform. We cannot fix what we refuse to see, especially when other problems are more politically useful to our ruling elites. And, after all, why should we expect anything else? America is ClownWorld.
The unspeakable problem.
Breitbart is not the kind of news service I rely on, but occasionally even a blind squirrel finds a nut, as in this November 2015 story by Jerome Hudson: “5 Devastating Facts About Black-on-Black Crime.”
“In 2012, white males were 38% of the population and committed 4,582 murders. That same year, black males were just 6.6% of the population but committed a staggering 5,531 murders. In other words: black people -– at just a fifth of the size — committed almost 1,000 more murders than their white counterparts.
“The figures above highlight a horrific truth that black racialists and white liberals routinely ignore: Lawbreaking black Americans, young black males particularly, put themselves in close proximity to (mostly white male) police officers at rates sometimes five to 10 times higher than whites. …
“There have been almost as many deaths in one American city as there have been in the two major wars carried out by the U.S. military this century. Chicago’s death toll from 2001 to 26 November 2015 stands at 7,401. The combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815) and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506) are only 8,321.”
See more disturbing evidence in “Guns and race: The different worlds of black and white Americans” by Richard V. Reeves and Sarah Holmes of Brookings, December 2015. The bottom line is grim.
Even the major news media occasionally report these sad numbers, such as in “Race and Homicide in America, by the Numbers” by Matthew Cella and Alan Neuhauser in US News and World Report, September 2016 – “New federal statistics have some interesting things to say about interracial killings and ‘black-on-black’ homicides.”
Conclusions
“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
— Daniel Patrick Moynihan in Family and Nationfrom the 1985 Godkin Lectures at Harvard University.
Centuries of racism – baked into America’s soul at the beginning – have put African-Americans in a difficult situation. But their actions do not seem to be helping. Their leaders have little interest in addressing their communities’ incredible crime rates – with Blacks the worst affected. Instead, they state Black Live Matter protests about police’s street executions (mostly of long-time criminals) and demand that today’s Americans pay reparations to descendants of slaves (although many Americans didn’t even have ancestors in America before the Civil War). Their priorities are unlikely to reduce the flow of blood in our cities.
In a sane America, this would be a high priority public policy crisis. In ClownWorld America few even care.
This contributes to another problem: we are washing away decades of the progress after WWII, as the tide of racism rises again. I have no ideas about ways to stop this. I have not seen any ideas that look promising.
My guess – emphasis on guess – is that addressing urban crime levels is the first step with the most potential. The rest of America can help, but the initiative must start in the communities of our inner cities. Conditions can easily get worse in the future, so let’s start now.
“When the murder rate ebbs, control efforts get relaxed, thus creating the multiple conditions causing the next upswing.”
— Eric H. Monkkonen in Murder in New York City(2001).
For More information
Others have pointed to these facts, such as Michael David White in “Black Deaths by Black Killers Matter More” at The Right Track, 7 May 2019.
It is important to understand what life is like for those living with America’s history of racism, baked as it was into America at the start. For example, see “What It’s Like to Be Black in the Criminal Justice System” by Andrew Kahn and Chris Kirk at Slate, August 2015 — “These eight charts suggest there are racial disparities at every phase of the justice system.”
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about crime, about racism, about police violence, and especially these…
- Congress did a great thing 50 years ago, but rot from that day has spread and taken root.
- Warning: the income gap between races is widening in America.
- Our prisons are a mirror showing the soul of America. It’s not a pretty picture.
- More about the collapse of the American Criminal Justice System.
- Final thoughts about America’s Criminal Justice System.
- The Disgrace of Our Criminal {in}Justice System, and hints of reform in the air.
- Can We Fix Our Shameful Prisons? Why they should be, and why we might not do so.
- Since 9-11 we have less crime but more fear of crime. A win-win for our rulers!
- America’s unspeakable problem: African-American’s crime rates.
- Harsh truths about mass incarceration in America.
- A resolution for 2018: reform our criminal injustice system.
- Fury at new mass shootings. Disinterest in the daily killings.
About our criminal injustice system
Our system is not built to handle the high rates of crime occurring in our inner cities since the 1960s. It is slowly collapsing under the load. Reformers want to treat the criminals more gently, with more bureaucracy and broader rights. I doubt that will help.
Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration – and How to Achieve Real Reform
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
