I am from Michigan, lived here all my life. My family on my mother’s side got here in 1813. My dad’s people were from Canada or England. Growing up here, this made me a minority. Most of the people I grew up with were 1st or 2nd generation southerners, black and white. It seems from my experience that folks from the south were much more likely to get into trouble. This something that I think of, but I am not sure it has any validity. Any input?
Is this a serious question? Michigan has both Detroit and Flint. They are well known to be some of the most crime riddled hellholes in the developed world. You have some of the highest crime rates in the U.S. (especially violent crime). I am from rural Louisiana (aka the Deep South). We had plenty of crime there too but we consistently lose our claim to a violent crime capitol to Detroit, Washington D.C., Miami and Chicago. The South has periodic outbreaks of violent crime almost always associated with isolated gang activity but the vast majority of it is very safe.
A social psychology course I took last year tried to teach us that hot weather increases violent crime. Maybe it does - there’s little violent crime in NH or VT or ME where it seldom gets hot. But then, we’re huddled in our houses, shivering and halfway hoping for merciful death to save us from any more mother loving snow 4 months or more of the year.
ETA: Are you asking whether or not black Southerners made parts of Michigan a Hellhole? The answer to that is no. Lots of black Southerners fled to the North when they were actively prevented from making a good life for themselves in the South. They thought that places like Michigan were a good place to do that but they were wrong at least in the long term. When Detroit was booming, blacks of Southern heritage came and produced the Motown sound among many other things. However, they never thrived collectively as a whole. Many of them did a reverse migration back to the South where their families were when they failed to thrive in their new northern home. After the auto industry failed and outsourced most of its labor overseas, the only people left were the ones that could not move and that meant the poorest and the most degenerate. That desperate recipe will generate crime no matter who you are talking about.
I am not an expert on Michigan but I still know a fair bit about it at the macro level. It is a classic case of a state being supported by a one industry city combined with horrible government corruption. I am not sure what the long term prognosis is but it will never be what it once was again. Migrating blacks from the South have little to do with it. Their current plight is simply the result of many bad decisions built up over decades.
Where in Michigan?
South Michigan.
I don’t know about crime generally, but violent crime is indeed more common in the south.
Have you never heard of the Mafia? They may settle as far south as Miami but doubt seriously they’re growing peanuts in Georgia.
Crime is a “people” thing.
OMG, you’re absolutely right! Even the US census bureau discriminates against Canadian and English ancestry by completely ignoring them. Those racist bastards!
Well, it’s true that the South Side of Chicago has more crime than the North Side (which is largely underwater).
This is only anecdotal evidence, but I am from Philadelphia, where no crimes have ever been committed, and one time I spent a weekend in Savannah and I lost my sunglasses but I’m really pretty sure that I just left them in my hotel room therefore the Southerner maid who cleaned my room must have stolen my sunglasses. There’s just no other explanation.
So, yes, crime is a Southern thing. I have proved it.
Indeed, I am reliably informed that the south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town, although I understand things have improved now that Leroy Brown is gone.
Well, I am from Boston. I remember when those guys bombed the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The finish line, on Boylston St., was actually north of the starting line in Hopkinton, MA. So this disproves your theory.
In general crime rates tend to be higher in the souththen in other parts of the country.
Glad a couple of people are actually discussing this seriously. Do you have any sources on whether the violent crime rates correlate in any way with the poverty/income rates?
I’ve always thought it was in part because southern miscreants and ne’er-do-wells have 12 months out of the year to do their thing. In climates further north, there are several months during which you’d freeze to death if you lurked in an alley or outside someone’s house while waiting for a victim.
Also, ice and snow on the ground complicate a fast getaway.
(That’s a total SWAG, BTW.)
It is blindingly obvious that murder rates are higher in the South if one just looks at a table of murder rates by state. The top ten in 2013:
Louisiana
Alabama
Mississippi
Maryland
Michigan
South Carolina
Missouri
New Mexico
Nevada
Georgia
Most southern; the only truly northern state is the OP’s home state, which does make one wonder what he hasn’t noticed. Michigan is the Northern outlier, really. Southern states are almost all above the national average; Virginia and Texas sneak in just below it.
Louisiana is absolutely a huge outlier; it is #1 in murders every year, year after year, by an absolutely gigantic margin. I am not sure why that is. It is poorer than average but not the poorest. It’s hot, and that does cause crime, but so is Texas. It has a large black population, who are likelier to be poor and caught up in cyclical crime, but other states with similarly high black populations have murder rates nowhere near Louisiana’s. Louisiana is just way, way out of whack, like it’s a different country.
The lowest ten:
Iowa
Hawaii
Vermont
Utah
New Hampshire
Idaho
Maine
Oregon
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Hawaii is very southern in geography but I don’t think it’s considered part of the “South.”
I have heard that hot weather tends to make people commit more crimes, but I don’t know if there is any scientific validity to it. It is true, however, that it is harder to go breaking into cars or whatever when it’s cold, and tempers do rise in the heat.
But I know that the south has no monopoly on crime. Hell I live in NY. I live upstate, and it’s peaceful here, but we have lovely old NYC not three hours south.
Maybe you could read the OP again and notice he is talking about Southerners in general, both black and white, instead of pretending he is only talking about blacks.