It seems in the midst of any racially contentious event many love to trot out black crime statistics as a device to dog whistle to racist without providing a solution or explanation so let me explain. First it needs to be said, to attribute crime in black communities to nothing but poverty (as many do) is doing a huge disservice to the complexity and origin of this problem.
Let's be clear, these high crime communities represent the direct pipeline from slavery, to Jim crow, to ghettoization (and yes that's a real sociological term). For example Jew's were ghettoized (forced into segregated communities) by mandate, while blacks were ghettoized by policies and practices made to restrict movement, autonomy and contact with whites (specifically residential redlining, restrictive covenants, blockbusting, racial steering and secondary causes like white flight). Hence nearly every sizable american city has a ghetto(s). It was a successful campaign
Being trapped on an island of poverty combined with the effects of social isolation, concentrated poverty, generational wealth inequality and alienation, high crime is inevitable.
The mitigating factor that continues to fuel this fire is the drug war. We all know how disastrous prohibition was and the drug war = prohibition 2.0. Just like alcohol prohibition it promotes the development of organized crime, destabilizes communities and grows black markets. In many instances ghettoized black communities adapted to the restrictive, impoverished economic environment, and participation in the black market economy became mainstreamed and somewhat normative within many of these communities.
The difference between prohibition 1.0 and 2.0 is the secondary human cost of the drug war is exponentially higher but wasn't enough for the Gov't to stop waging the war unlike alcohol prohibition (presumably because the primary casualties are black Americans with minor collateral damage to white communities). The war being waged was fought mostly in impoverished black communities and the casualties of this "war" weren't/aren't attributed to a failed, broken, racially biased system but are wrongly attributed to failures In character and black culture.
Let's be clear, this phenomenon is a legacy/vestige of jim crow America and as long as we believe we can beat, arrest and imprison the problem away, nothing will change.
Let's be clear, these high crime communities represent the direct pipeline from slavery, to Jim crow, to ghettoization (and yes that's a real sociological term). For example Jew's were ghettoized (forced into segregated communities) by mandate, while blacks were ghettoized by policies and practices made to restrict movement, autonomy and contact with whites (specifically residential redlining, restrictive covenants, blockbusting, racial steering and secondary causes like white flight). Hence nearly every sizable american city has a ghetto(s). It was a successful campaign
Being trapped on an island of poverty combined with the effects of social isolation, concentrated poverty, generational wealth inequality and alienation, high crime is inevitable.
The mitigating factor that continues to fuel this fire is the drug war. We all know how disastrous prohibition was and the drug war = prohibition 2.0. Just like alcohol prohibition it promotes the development of organized crime, destabilizes communities and grows black markets. In many instances ghettoized black communities adapted to the restrictive, impoverished economic environment, and participation in the black market economy became mainstreamed and somewhat normative within many of these communities.
The difference between prohibition 1.0 and 2.0 is the secondary human cost of the drug war is exponentially higher but wasn't enough for the Gov't to stop waging the war unlike alcohol prohibition (presumably because the primary casualties are black Americans with minor collateral damage to white communities). The war being waged was fought mostly in impoverished black communities and the casualties of this "war" weren't/aren't attributed to a failed, broken, racially biased system but are wrongly attributed to failures In character and black culture.
Let's be clear, this phenomenon is a legacy/vestige of jim crow America and as long as we believe we can beat, arrest and imprison the problem away, nothing will change.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2zfoktw
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