Males in a wide range of mammal species are the more aggressive and competitive sex, do you really think that’s due to ‘culture’? Even if you do, we know that within males, prenatal testosterone exposure (of which 2D:4D ratio is a sort of index) correlates with physical aggression, so it’s likely that the male-female difference in aggression is also a result of differences in prenatal testosterone exposure.
Which is why I brought up males and females. I don’t know what ‘causes’ the higher rates of violent crime among one racial group compared to another. (There are of course countries with a significant Black population, e.g. Cuba, with very low crime rates). Even if it was due to genetics or physiology, though, it would still be wrong to judge a person by the traits of other people with the same skin colour, just like it’s wrong to assume that a given man is likely to be a violent criminal because violent crime is more common among men. People have the right to be treated as distinct individuals and to be judged on their own behavior, and presumed innocent in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary.
I totally agree, however any debate about race and crime (or educational achievement, etc) is hopeless polluted by the notion that if we ever admitted a genetic cause, even a partial cause, everyone in the race deemed more genetically prone to violent crime (or to having a lower proportion of people extremely highly skilled at math, etc.) would be tarred with the same brush and a racial caste system resurrected.
And I’m not dismissing that kind of sentiment as having no practical foundation. But it does make a lot of such conversations shams. One side is convinced that (racial) genetic explanations have to be rejected categorically as a matter of ‘common decency’. There can’t be scientific inquiry in the face of such a belief.
And it’s also revealed at least indirectly in any argument about the violent proclivities of men v women. Indeed we don’t absolutely know if that has any genetic basis (I don’t at least), but I think a lot of people who question it are just keeping one move ahead of the inevitable question (if you admit there’s a genetic basis for the much higher rate of violent crime by men, why won’t you entertain any possibility it’s genetic for races?).
On some specifics, Cuba might have a low crime rate, but who says the relative propensity for crime isn’t also much higher for black Cubans? (I doubt figures exist for this). But then again typical Latin American claims that that their societies are color blind are also questionable, so a higher rate of crime by Afro-Cubans wouldn’t prove anything we don’t know from US statistics: a group that’s a different ‘race’ (insofar as we can define that) but also historically treated differently and comprises a different subculture has a higher rate of violent crime.
In the US, one interesting aspect of the big drop in violent crime in the last 20 yrs or so is that the rate has dropped considerably more for blacks than whites. It’s still several times higher for blacks now, but the ratio was higher still at the height of the 1960’s-90’s rise in crime in the US. So there’s nothing immutable about a particular rate or ratio of crimes between blacks and whites in the US. Roth’s book ‘American Homicide’ also showed that black and white murder rates have long but not always been appreciably different. However, when the rates were similar there was a strong racial caste system inhibiting black behavior, in many unjust ways, but it also may have affected crime rates.
But some recent examples given (eg. ‘whites’ have a much higher violent crime rate than Asians in the US’) are probably using FBI statistics which include most Hispanic people as ‘white’ in ‘race’. Whatever debate one might have on the technicalities of ‘ethnicity’ v ‘race’, counting MS13 gang members’ hit jobs as committed by ‘whites’ is at odds with the general social definition of ‘white’ that most Americans assume. Per CDC figures for 2007 the ‘white non-Hispanic’ murder rate in the US was 2.7, Asian and Pacific Islander rate only slightly lower at 2.4, Hispanic (‘black Hispanic’ and ‘white Hispanic’) 6.7, ‘black non-Hispanic’ 23.1, all per 100,000 per year.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a14.htm
I agree with a number of statements that attacking such figures as ‘unreliable’ is escapism. There might be more minor crimes where blacks are arrested or convicted at much higher rates despite committing the crimes (or different but comparable ones) at significantly less elevated rates, but there’s no reason to believe that’s a major factor in serious violent crime statistics.