This attitude as expressed by Shodan is, I sadly suspect, as common as it is false.
Many people have used black murder rates as a racial attack, or as if it is some kind of counter-argument to criticism of police. It is correct to call out those people as racists.
It does not follow that anyone who identifies black murder rates as a big social problem is a racist, or is labeled as such. In fact, that’s false. I can point to dozens of examples of prominent people addressing high black murder rates, who do so in humane and non-racist ways, who are not painted as racists.
The problem is that any rational assessment of the causes of black murder rates concludes that at least part (if not the whole) cause is white racism. That conclusion is anathema to the kind of people who think Rush Limbaugh is a reasonable truth-teller, and so they throw up their hands and conclude that there’s nothing that can be done.
It is very common among black people and white liberals to believe that it is justified to criticize white people, individually or collectively, for various alleged racism-related ills, including “black-on-black crime” in your most recent post to this very thread. It would follow from what you’re saying that on any kind of close analysis, this belief that such criticism is warranted treats white people as different and inferior to black people.
Well, gosh, *of course *white people are going to have an opinion about those things, especially white people living in/near communities with high rates of such crime.
I’d like to point out there’s a difference between “That shooting and murder rate is appalling, why is it happening and what can be done to reduce/stop it?” and “why are those black people always shooting each other?” One centers around the human tragedy and the other even talks about those people which is a way of distancing the speaker from the problem.
Chicago is an outlier. Overall, murder and violent crime rates are down in the nation.
So… why is Chicago the exception? And why is this hitting certain groups disproportionately? It’s not just that the shooters and victims are largely black, they are also largely living in the same few areas as well. A wealthy black family living in, say, a Loop highrise is at a markedly different risk than a poor black family in, say, North Lawndale. It’s not just race, class is part of it as well and until we own that and face that the problem is not going away.
You should also be asking why Chicago, which still has very stringent gun laws, has so much higher a gun crime rate than, say, neighboring Lake County, Indiana, which has very loose gun laws. You can’t even blame that on “something in the water” because we’re drinking out of the same Lake.
The violent crime rate in Chicago is appalling, what causes that and what can be done about it? vs. Why are Chicagoans always shooting each other, what the hell is wrong with those people?
Funny - black folks in Lake County, Indiana aren’t killing each other every weekend at anything near a similar rate even though a lot of them are from Chicago originally. Can’t put it down to the availability of guns (MUCH more available in Indiana), job opportunities (about the same), availability of drugs (much the same)… For that matter, black people in the Chicago suburbs are not subjected to or committing these same levels of violent crime even though a lot of them are from Chicago originally. So… I don’t think it’s the racial/ethic background of perpetrators and victims that is the key factor here, it’s something else, and it’s something about the City of Chicago itself.
^ And there we have it, folks. One big factor in the weekly Chicago death and shooting numbers. Which is not to say every white person in Chicago, or in the city government, or on the police force is a frothing bigot but I personally hold the opinion that that is a major factor in the whole mess.
But getting back to the OP’s original question - it CAN be racially insensitive, but it doesn’t have to be.
I don’t think it makes you racist, but it might make you a bit racially insensitive.
Almost every criticism that whites have of the black community (usually to explain why blacks are doing so poorly in America) can be levelled by chopstick Asians at Whites:
Why do whites kill each other at such high levels?
Why is the high school drop out rate among whites so high?
What’s with all the teen pregnancy among whites?
Why do whites have such high rates of criminality?
Why are there so many broken homes in the white community?
Where are all the white fathers?
Why do white children have such poor attitudes?
Why do whites bitch so much about their kids losing out to Asian kids?
Why do whites bitch so much about not getting jobs that are going to Asians?
Why don’t whites realize that their sense of entitlement is actually making them weaker?
Literally almost everything.
You are basically saying :“hose guys need to fix their shit” and you turn down the volume on their other complaints because you think that they are bringing their problems on themselves to some extent. Asians don’t have the luxury of doing that because when whites start complaining about Asian over-achievement in school, they start dumbing down tests so that everyone can get a a good score (heaven forbid their kid doesn’t get a trophy for coasting through school). If scores are still too lopsided, they de-emphasize things that Asians do well and make admissions more subjective (my white kid is a snowflake, while all those Asian kids are more or less fungible). They can tailor make society to work well for them and their families.
In order to fix it don’t you first have to ask why it is occuring?
The answer to the OP is that it is racist for whites to not discuss problems in black communities. We are one country and if a significant part of our country is having a problem then our country has a problem. Getting to the bottom of a problem is the first step to fixing that problem and that needs honesty and courage.
Crime has gotten alot better than it was but it is still killing thousands and terrorizing hundreds of thousands. If we ignore the victims of crime just because of their race and the race of the criminals, that is saying that political correctness is more important than the lives of our fellow citizens.
Look at** iiandyiii’s **last example. Pay attention to how it is worded.
Emphasis added. Language like “you black people” and “always” imply that all blacks are always inherently violent. This is all kinds of racist.
If I say: “Black communities experience a higher rate of violence than the national average,” that is a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven quantitatively. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but at least it is testable.
If I say: “All black people do is kill each other,” or “Black people are always violent,” those are racist notions and are demonstrably false.
I think you meant “as expressed by Richard Parker”. I don’t know how common it is, but it is certainly false.
If it is a racial attack, then yes. As a counter-argument to most of the recent criticism of various police shootings, the thing is that it is a pretty good counter-argument. Because nearly all the shootings of blacks by police have nothing to do with “institutional racism” or any other kind of racism.
This is, of course, quite straightforwardly false. Or perhaps framed, consciously, as un-falsifiable, or at least circular argument.
‘Black murders are caused by racism. Any assessment that finds any other cause besides racism is therefore non-rational. And thus, racist.’
But at least your position is clear. Any assessment of black murder rates that does not blame it on white racism is invalid, in your opinion. And until white society admits this, nothing can be done.
Unfortunately, it isn’t caused by white racism. So nothing is going to be done, at least nothing effective. We can’t solve a problem if we won’t admit what causes it.
This is mostly unsupportable opinion, since we have almost no independent data on the majority of police shootings of black people. But even so I’ll ask this: when do you believe that this started to be true? At what point in our history do you believe that the majority of police shootings (and I’ll throw in beatings out of curiosity) of black people had nothing to do with any kind of racism?
If you edit that slightly to “Any assessment of black murder rates that does not blame it at least in part on white racism is incorrect based on my view of the empirical evidence” then you have accurately stated my position.
But the point I was making is not to defend that thesis, which I do not expect you to accept. My point was that racism as an explanation is a non-starter for certain swathes of the conservative movement just on principle, having nothing to do with where the empirical evidence leads.
I suspect a lot of it has to do more with how it’s presented, rather than the basic message.
For example, if someone (of any race) were to say that there are certain attitudes, norms and mores about criminality ,violence, poverty and the rule of law within the black community that are counterproductive, and to a large extent exacerbating a vicious circle of violence, poverty and criminality, that wouldn’t be seen as racist.
But someone could very easily say that in a way that implies some sort of moral and/or intellectual deficiency is inherent in that community either causing or as a result of those attittudes, norms and mores, and doing so would most certainly be racist.
And for a large swathe of the black/liberal community, any other explanation except white racism is rejected out of hand, and triggers immediate cries of racism. And it is more common for blacktivists to reject empirical fact - witness the constant and continuing complaints about cases like Trayvon Martin and Jamar Clarke and Michael Brown, which are cases of police shootings having nothing to do with white racism, and which are used as rallying cries against racism nonetheless. BLM and other groups are doing exactly what you accuse conservatives of doing - rejecting empirical fact in favor of crying racism.
For example, it’s true that there’s a culture of “no snitching” in some subsets of some black communities. That notion contributes to the difficulty in solving murders in these neighborhoods–though just how much is a matter of some debate. Acknowledging that fact is not racist.
But there are racist (and incorrect) explanations for why such a culture exists, and they get trotted out so often that identifying this issue is often a signal of prejudicial ideas. Some people believe it was a culture invented in late 90s rap music, for example, and have no deeper (or more factually accurate) explanation than that. Or they attribute it to a desire among black residents to protect criminals. Or they attribute it to black residents being brainwashed by white liberals. All of those are, at their core, racist explanations that do not give full agency and equality to the people in the communities where this is prominent, and are generally inconsistent with the actual history and work of people who study these issues.
Strawman solution. Nice distortion of my position.
First of all, Lake County, Indiana does, in fact, have gun laws and gun control - they’re just a lot less strict than the city of Chicago. Arguably, this allows the average citizen to arm themselves against the bad guys, but proving that’s the case, or useful, is difficult to impossible.
The point is that you can’t just blame it on “guns are in the neighborhood”. There are neighborhoods with even more guns than the worst places in Chicago but are NOT cesspits of murder and violence. Therefore, although guns make murder easier they aren’t the cause of the murders and concentrating on guns is treating a symptom, not a root cause of the problem.
There was a time when gun laws in Chicago were more liberal. There even used to be a gun club on the shores of the lake in Lincoln Park. Then the crime rate went up and outlawing guns was proposed as a solution. But it didn’t work. The crime rate just kept going up. It’s because the symptom was being treated and not the cause.
My solution would be to take an unflinching look at the root causes of the problem and then find a way to address them. But it will not be done because that would reveal ugly truths about the Chicago city government and city institutions. It’s more important to keep the reputations of the city’s elite than to save lives in the streets - at least according to the elite, but then, they aren’t the ones bleeding and dying.
You speak in confident extremes about truths that are actually more mixed and subtle.
Trayvon Martin is a good example. No one but George Zimmerman knows what happened in that grass between the apartments. Maybe Trayvon Martin really did overpower him and slam his head on the sidewalk. Maybe not. That is why it was appropriate to acquit him–as I argued on this board at the time. But you speak like you know why Zimmerman thought he needed to confront Martin, and like you know what happened in their struggle. You actually don’t know those things. You just believe George Zimmerman’s testimony, despite George Zimmerman’s own conduct and statements in the intervening years suggesting that he is, in fact, quite a hot-headed racist.
Everything you said is also irrelevant to my point. We could stipulate that BLM makes up a bunch of facts, and we can stipulate that many activists reject explanations for high black murder rates that attribute it to something other than white racism, but that doesn’t change anything I said.
If white racism caused black crime then we would expect that crime would be greater in areas and times where racism is greater. However, compare the crime rate in the 1960s with Chicago now. Crime rates skyrocketed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Did racism skyrocket during this time too? Has racism had a sudden upswing in certain major cities this past year? What is the evidence that racism causes crime?