Yes, you’re right. Right now we are engaged in a huge national argle-bargle over whether to ban assault weapons to prevent mass shootings- but Mass shootings account for only 1% of murders and assault weapons are only used in about 10% of those- thus banning assault weapons is a 1/1000 issue. Ceasefire is a great idea.
But it’s not racism… well not much. It’s a few things, among which that fact is = it* is *a good idea and no one really opposes it. Thus no debate.
And, next most of those deaths of young black men are due to them being engaged in gangster ism and drugs. In other words, “they made their choice and they died for it.” I dont care for that reasoning but it’s there. Thirdly, there is the “No snitching” meme prevalent in those neighborhoods, where is more wrong to “snitch” than it is to get a killer stopped. So, in the words of a couple cop I know “Screw them”. Again, not happy with this, but understandable.
Police in SF largely ignored those types of killings for just those reasons.
This, on the other hand, is where I think some of the racism comes into play. People assume that the black victims are predominantly composed of violent criminals. But that’s not actually true. When you look into the details of this violence, a lot of it is petty community feuds over minor theft or relationships or the other ordinary grist of human conflict. The difference seems to be that in places without a functioning police-community relationship, things easily escalate to violence and then you see a series of reprisals. Sometimes the reprisals hit earlier perpetrators, but just as often they hit their friends and families.
A lot of the victims are quite sympathetic even by traditional standards that don’t require any larger examination of the context of this violence. But they too don’t get much attention for reasons that are hard to articulate fully. Some of the reasons have to do with the kind of empathy (or lack thereof) that John Mace describes. But, that too is tied up in race.
Sure. But more Americans belong to the classes who live in places like Camden than belong to the classes who live in places like Newtown. So I think the “it’s a problem, but it won’t ever happen to me”–which definitely plays a role–has as much to do with race as class.
As noted by the OP, the majority of homicides happen in our largest metropolitan cities. Why don’t the people in these cities or states initiate these types of programs within their locales? These cities are large enough to raise funding for these programs, look at the mega sports palaces they build for their multiple professional sports franchises. Why does this need to be a Federally funded program passed by Congress?
Is it hard to think that progressives in New York, California and Illinois would have a hard time getting such measures passed in their local governments?
This too is a good example of how racism shapes our perception of this. Jill Leovy has a great history of “no snitching” in Ghettoside. The upshot of it is that “no snitching” is a pretty common attitude among criminals for obvious reasons. And it is more powerful when the violence tends to be among members inside the community. But people can and do ignore that if (and only if) the police spend the time and resources to keep witnesses safe. When they don’t, then witnesses don’t come forward. What academics find is that when police departments spend more money on witness protection, they get more witnesses. Pretty obvious, when you think about it. But its one of the many subtle ways in which the fact that more money is spent in and owned by white communities leads to unintended consequences.
They have. But it’s been slow. And word about their successes has been slow to spread. Which is why my question is about why there isn’t more focus on this. I’m not necessarily saying the federal government ought to get involved. It just seems to me that given how much time and attention we spend on preventing gun violence, it’s odd that we don’t talk more about one of the few things that seems to work.
Yes. I think a lot of folks think like my father does-- that it’s mostly black-on-black violence and why can’t “those people” root out that violence from their own communities.
To answer the OP directly, I think it’s more accurate to say that the racial component prevents us from addressing the problem in many ways. There certainly is a strong racial component, but pointing that out sparks cries of racism. And politicians don’t want that accusation.
I agree that a black politician would be in a much better place to make the point, but if he/she is on the right, you here cries of “Uncle Tom”. And I can’t think of anyone on the left whose more interested in solving the problem than they are in keeping the grievance industry flush by being able to point to the disparity in crime statistics.
As far as paying people to not commit gun violence, or any other strain of violence, it is morally reprehensible and a very bad idea. You move the default position from “you shouldn’t shoot people” to “you shouldn’t shoot people if you’re in some way compensated to not do so”. Perhaps next we can pay people to not rape. And then the line will move. “Well, if you don’t want me to do X, $Y isn’t really enough to sway me.”
magellan01: Suppose there was a program that identified prostitutes and told them that they could either receive counseling, substance abuse treatment, and a small stipend, or they could face doubled penalties. Or, instead, a program that does the same thing for IV drug users. Would you say those programs amount to “paying people not to commit crimes”? And would that be a good reason, in your mind, not to do it?
If not, what makes that different, in your view?
(I find it hard to accept that “moral hazard” is what keeps us from discussing these policies, given that in lots of areas of policymaking we don’t give a shit about moral hazard, and in this circumstance it’s actually relatively difficult to inadvertently incentivize people to do the things that would make them eligible for the program.)
They targeted folks that were likely to commit violent crimes. Yes, the program worked, but I don’t think it’s necessarily racist to not support groups that engage in criminal behavior. That’s the folks that Ceasefire targeted right? The other victims, like family or friends that get caught in litteral crossfire - they deserve all the support that can be thrown their way. But people actually perpetrating crime and violence - they don’t deserve any. To me that’s independent of race.
This. I think if anything, our debate is somewhat clouded by a deliberate refusal to event take race/class into account.
The fact is that in the US, something like 80% of white gun deaths are suicides, and only 20% are due to gun violence, while in the black community, that statistic is flipped over. And in an odd bit of coincidence, the numbers of black people killed by gun violence and the number of white people killed by gun violence is very similar (~2500-3000/yr - source: FBI 2014 statistics)
So from the perspective of the black community, gun violence is a HUGE thing, but from the perspective of the white community, it’s a trivial thing. I mean, if you’re a white middle class person, it’s unlikely to an extreme that you’ll actually either be the victim of a non-suicide shooting, or even know one firsthand, but it’s also likely that you’ll probably either know, or know of someone who shot themselves.
When you combine those things with a certain amount of classism, and you get the situation where gun control seems like a rather pointless thing that only has the potential to mess with the perceived good status quo. Meanwhile, the other side of the argument is approaching it from the other perspective and assuming it’s racism and insanity, which isn’t accurate either.
And that’s a separate question, I think, from the question of why there isn’t much more concern about their thousands of victims as compared to the dozens of people killed in mass shootings each year.
The same can be said of murder victims of any other SIRE - most of them are morally innocent. Some of them got killed in a dispute over ownership of a particular area for drug dealing, or because some other factor of that sort.
Police sometimes talk about “public service homicides”, where some notorious creep gets his ass shot by some other creep. Sure, that’s illegal, as well it should be, and the shooter should be arrested and prosecuted and executed. But it is not the same thing morally as going out to a dance club and getting shot by some Islamic terrorist in the throes of homosexual panic.
There is a difference between saying “those who live by the sword die by the sword” and saying “who cares if the black folks shoot each other”.
This seems quite contradictory to me. Are you saying that white people are literally unaware of the black murder victims? If not, aren’t you saying they don’t care about those victims because they are not white?
For me it’s the risk of changing the default position, as I mentioned. That’s very scary territory.
To encourage or minimize behavior they’re are two possibilities: the carrot and the stick. Paying someone a stipend is a carrot, and one I really think is morally reprehensible and societally suicidal. It’s simply a protection racket. And like the dons of old, if they think they deserve more $, who are you to argue. And on what ethical undergirding?
I’m all for neighborhood programs, boys and girls clubs, mentoring programs, etc.—mainly to make up for the poor education some get in poor are schools and homes—but I’d never want to make a payment to an individual. Really, the best answer for this, and just about anything affecting high-risk young people is a better education. And for that, we should be encouraging more charter schools and not undermining them like the nitwit Mayor of NYC.
As far as your question about prostitutes and drug users, again, I’d point to education and community programs; no money to individuals. While their is a difference in that they are more victimless crimes, no one should expect payment to do the right thing. It contorts the very notion of the existence of “the right thing”.
I guess I just don’t share the intuition that this is likely to happen, because few people want to intentionally put themselves in the position of facing this choice.
Most sex workers leave sex work when they get sufficient resources. Generally speaking, it sucks to be a sex worker. No one would choose to do it just because the government offers resources to help you leave it. Most IV drug users want to get clean and would stay that way if they could. Generally speaking, it sucks to be an IV drug user. No one would choose to do it just because the government offers resources to help you leave it.
And the same is true for most of the young men stuck in these cycles of violence. They don’t choose it. If they could get out of it, they would. And they certainly wouldn’t choose it or go back to it if they escaped just to get a few hundred bucks from the government.
I remember back during the debate on all the educational experimentation that as going on around here. They were paying some DC students to get good grades and they were paying other DC students to simply show up to class and not cause trouble (paying for attendance works better than paying for grades). it bothered a LOT of people but in the end it gave the students some skin in the game and they graduated at higher rates and went to college at higher rates. I would point to the ipad their kid just got for getting good grades in school.
Getting an iPad for good grades means the kid has achieved more than would normally be expected of him. (If not, the carrot has been poorly designed.) But there is a base level of performance that should not be rewarded—it should be expected.
For the record, I find that program well-intoned but morally reprehensible, as well.