[Dorrin79]

this article is absolutely fascinating. I came across it while perusing William Quick's excellent blog, Daily Pundit (http://www.dailypundit.com/)

the article can be found Here (http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000220.html)

Warning - it doesn't pull any punches. Leftists would probably call it racist. I don't personally believe that stating fact, even uncomfortable facts, is racist. YMMV

I had heard some of these statistics and factoids before, but seeing them all in one place was something of a surprise. Good ammo for use against those that claim gun-free Euro nations are safer than our own country.

[Iain]

Have you read the responses posted at the bottom of the article?

I shall reproduce them here:

1) "Inner city blacks are not representative of our culture."
Who's culture is "our" culture to which you are referring here? Rich folks? White folks? "Inner city blacks" are as representative of our culture as the next group of ten million people. There are about 35 million African-American US residents, and this population is concentrated in large cities and in the South. We created this segment of "our" culture and it is dead wrong to claim that this is not a part of the American culture.

2) "Thus if you remove homicides committed by blacks, you get a US homicide rate of only 2.3/100,000, lower than Germany (3.27) and France (3.91)."
Take the time to now remove from Germany and France's statistics whichever ethnic group has the highest homicide rate and compare those new numbers. Otherwise, this is a meaningless statistic which compares apples to oranges.

2) "Many, including myself, blame the high inner city crime rate on several factors:
- Misguided welfare policies, which have helped to create a culture of irresponsibility.
- The ideology of racial separatism (black power, etc.) and its relative, multiculturalism and the cult of victimology.
- Centuries of slavery and oppression, which really only came to an end in the 1960-current time period."
Wow... centuries of slavery and oppression came in third place! I'm impressed that you were able to grudgingly put it that high on the list of reasons behind it. I'm surprised that "baggy jeans and sideways hats" didn't sneak in ahead of it.

[Dorrin79]

yes, I did. I thought they were legitimate criticisms.

The culture comment is controversial. I think the broader point he was trying to make is that the vast majority of this country is not South Central LA, not some sort of "white culture" party line. I could be wrong.

As for the minority crime in those other countries, it would be informative to see that as well. The author of the piece responds to the criticisms himself, and states that he couldn't determine those things because the Interpol statistics do not have that level of detail. I think it would lower the rates of France and England (France, especially, has a big problem with unassimilated Arab ghettoes) but probably not Germany (fairly homogenous society). this is just my intuition.

As for the third point, he's just carping. The reasons for why blacks are more prone to crime are debatable. Agree or disagree with the ones the author gives, it has no bearing on the main point, which is that blacks statistically commit vastly more violent crimes per capita, and removing them from the sample puts US crime rates on par with European.

Hope this helps (and to see the author's responses, see the comments Here (http://www.dailypundit.com/archives/010699.php#010699)

[Drjones]

I found this article interesting and am curious if it is accurate: http://www.amren.com/sheehan.htm

[gustnado]

I am the original author of the article, which appears in my blog Useful Fools ( http://www.tinyvital.com/blog/ ).

I am not a multiculturalist! I believe that a nation needs a core common set of values in order to exist, and there has long been a well understood set of those values in the US. This does not mean uniformity, and doesn't mean that we can't have a Saint Patrick's day parade or a Cinco del Mayo celebration, but rather that we share common values and a common alliegance to the USA (and that we at least have our children speak English).

Only in the last 30 years has the radical left been successful in convincing people that values are relative, that judgement of others is wrong, and that we should have separate cultures within our country.

In the context of the post, I mean that too many inner city blacks have a distinct set of values which is not consistent with traditional or even current american values, and that a number of those values are damaging.

As far as the third point... "just carping?" No, trying to explain to a European leftist who clearly did not understand. Check out the amazing exchange following the article at http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000091.html which was what caused me to do the research and post the crime statistics. I was rather surprised at how dramatic they were. I knew that blacks had a higher crime rate, but these numbers are astounding. I wasn't originally planning on pulling out the black numbers at all, but when I calculated their effect on the overall crime rate, I felt it would be incomplete to leave them out.

Regarding Europe... their crime rates are increasing rapidly. Amusingly for us who believe in the firearms rights, England's violent street crime rate is going up and so is their gun crime rate, just as they have made possession of any weapon illegal!

France and England have ethnic ghettos, although England has a large amount of non-ethnic "lower class" criminals (read Theodore Dalrymple's many articles for anecdotes). Germany, as mentioned before, is more homogenous, although I don't know how long that will last.

If you have other arguments with the post, you can leave comments on the blog itself (or references there to comments here), since I don't normally read this board. I just found it through my blog access logs.

John

[Hkmp5sd]

Nice board. I especially like the Oops.. A Better Idea on the Uday/Qusay Corpses article.

[gustnado]

Thanks,
It lets me get out some of the frustrations that occur when exposed to the idiocy of the left and the lunacy and danger of the Islamists and others.

[Standing Wolf]

Only in the last 30 years has the radical left been successful in convincing people that values are relative, that judgement of others is wrong, and that we should have separate cultures within our country.

That's a.k.a. "cultural suicide," I'd say.

[bad_dad_brad]

The beauty of statistics is that anyone can slant them for their own opinion - the stats in the posted site are maybe close to truth, but are subjective and therefore questionable.

In 2002:

Chicago ended 2002 with 646 murders, second to Los Angeles, which had 653. New York was third with 580. Chicago's per capita murder rate was the nation's highest among big cities.

These are facts not stats. Look it up.

Curious that far more Americans died in our big cities in 2002 than did our soldiers in our last two wars in the Gulf. Something is wrong with this picture. Shameful even. Would an American soldier rather serve in Bagdad or Chicago?

At least an American soldier in Iraq has an M16 for protection. The average joe in Chicago has his keychain. Gee whiz.

[Dorrin79]

Gustnado (or should I say John)

I was referring to YGB's third point as "just carping", not yours.

I thought your article was well reasoned and very informative.

[MicroBalrog]

Gustnado: I think you made some beautiful points there.

[Sean Smith]

These are facts not stats. Look it up.

Actually, those are statistics too, dictated to a large extent by how "murder" is defined in those cases. Some of the disparity in various murder statistics you read are a result of definition of terms. For instance, the Brady Bunch include suicides and justified self-defense shootings in the "facts" they use to prove how dangerous handguns are.

[Mikul]

Talk to blacks who live in high crime areas. If they see two unknown black men hanging out on the street, they go inside for protection. If those two people are white, they don't really care. On a practical level, the people who live in high crime areas know which color skin is more likely to be indicitive of violence.

[Jim March]

I just added the following to that blog entry (which I otherwise agree with, I simply don't think he went far enough analyzing root causes):

-----------------------

The violence levels are massively concentrated in a few urban areas.

Ever asked why that is?

Gun control in the US has always been directed primarily at minorities, especially blacks. Until fairly recently (1950s forward and even then spotty), black-on-black crime wasn't taken seriously at all; so long as no white bodies turned up, racist inner-city cops didn't care. The actual police slang term for violence in the black areas of town circa 1890 to well into the 20th century was "just another ******town Saturday night" which is where the gun-banners get the term "Saturday night special" for low-end handguns. NOT an accident, that.

While gun control laws appeared to be written in a race-neutral fashion after the passage of the 14th Amendment of 1868, the reality was different. As Justice Buford of the Florida Supreme Court noted in a 1941 case involving a white guy *freed* despite packing without a carry permit put it:

"I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied." ó Watson v. Stone, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941) from Clayton CramerÃ*s ìRacist Roots Of Gun Controlî:

(Note: Buford partially lied. What happened in 1893 was that a Klan raiding party tried to hit a black township just outside of Gainsville. The "brothas" shot the bejeezus out of 'em with leverguns and revolvers (yea!). Guess which guns were specifically targeted for permits in Florida in 1893? Yup. Leverguns and revolvers.)

So here's what's happening today: the cities with the highest black populations also have the heaviest gun control: New York, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles and similar, and until very recently (2001) Detroit. The cities with the least gun control such as Dallas, Seattle, Portland OR and similar have the lowest minority populations.

You think this is an *accident*?

When gun control is enforced in a poverty-stricken area, the result is to provide criminals with easy LOCAL access to unarmed victims. When Florida reformed their gun control in 1987 and allowed anybody able to pass a background check and training to pack on the street, the state average percent of such "packers" was the typical 3% or so, but in inner-city Miami people locked'n'loaded at a greater rate, up to about 15% in some areas. That drove the criminals out and for a while they preyed on tourists until renta-car bumper stickers and other insignia was outlawed. (Got that? They protected the tourists by blending them in with the armed population. Other than that one issue, crime has dropped steadily in FL since '87.)

Want hard stats? Here's a breakdown of the number of gun carry permits issued in each California county in 1997, and a racial breakdown of the counties. The data is crystal clear: if you live in a county with less than the state average black population (6.7%), your odds of having a permit in your pocket and a gun legally concealed is FIVE TIMES HIGHER than the residents of the "blacker counties" (regardless of your race). A five to one disparity ain't accidental:

http://www.equalccw.com/ccwdata.html

Or take Fresno County: in 1995, the Fresno Bee newspaper got ahold of the list of all 2,500 permitholders. They sorted out what percent had Latino surnames: 3%. The county is FOURTY FOUR PERCENT HISPANIC per US census data!!! The unedited article:

http://www.equalccw.com/fresno.html

Gun control isn't the solution. IT'S THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM. Well, admittedly, one core - the other is the idiotic "drug war", see also the movie "Traffic" for all that needs to be said on that one. The various drug bans ALSO started out as "minority control" in the 1930s plus they needed to give the former Revenuers something to do (sheesh).

End the drug war, you yank the money to the gangs and remove the "greed factor" (turf wars, etc.). End gun control, you allow the honest people still in the "hood" to complain about crime, work with the police and in general help restore order as responsible adults, instead of the "I didn't see 'nuthin" of scared sheeple.

[Dorrin79]

Jim -

excellent points made.

One would think, given the practical effects of gun control and the war on (some) Drugs, that the urban centers would be in favor of ending both.

It seems sad to me that their response to their problems is to cry out for more of the causes of their problems.

a third cause (slightly less causality, but certainly a lot of correlation) is the welfare state. Urban crime and 'ghettofication" only really started after the welfare state came about with LBJ's Great Society.

[Jim March]

Right, but I *think* the black-on-black murder rates pre-date the rise of the welfare state.

Black-on-black murder was in part a response to the lack of police attention on such crimes. And THAT goes way back - 1870's and prior.

[Atticus]

"However, the homicide rates have been dropping dramatically as we have been increasing penalties:

Homicide Offender Rate/100,000 by Date in US:

1980 - 57.6
2000 - 32.4"
__________________________________________________________

I'm curious about that stat.

Is the reduction in homicides due to harsher penalties, or because of the increased ability of Trauma Centers to effectively treat gunshot (and other) wounds? No dead body = no homicide charge.

How do the the homicide rates compare to the number of deadly assaults that occured over the same time period?

[gustnado]

Darn good question. Why don't you google up the answer? That's where I got the statistics in the first place... a bit of googling and reading what came back.

I would be interested to know... I never thought of that.

But given that most possible fatal gunshot wounds cause death by bleeding, good EMS systems with rapid response can save many of these folks. This is one reason that in Iraq, a wounded soldier who makes it ot a field hospital has a very high chance of survival.

[Iain]

Are penalties harsher now?

Less states use capital punishment I think, is Georgia's moratorium (sp) still in effect?

Of course you could be talking about more usual penalties - genuine life sentences etc.

[MicroBalrog]

Are penalties harsher now?

Does "Minimum mandatory sentence" ring a bell?

Also CCW - wouldn't getting shot full of holes by a potential victim sound "harsh"?:evil:

[Langenator]

Add the Three-Strikes laws that many states now have to the harsher penalties...and how many potential future murders get locked away for three lesser felonies before they kill anyone?

[Iain]

thanks for the replies, capital punishment for another day if/when it ever comes up.

[bad_dad_brad]

My thoughts this evening as I rehash this thread is that race is not an issue at all in the murder rates described - nor is culture.

The issue is class - the lower class no matter what the race, creates the most street crime.

Personally I find the word "race" out of date. Within the world there is the economics of the lower class, the middle class, and the upper.

Countries dominated by a strong middle class with a benevolent upper class are clearly the most successful. A guy with a full belly that can also feed his family isn't going on a crime spree.

The goal of the upper class is the status quo.

The goal of the middle is to strive higher.

The goal of the lower class is to make everyone equal; i.e. drag everyone else down to their level.

Want world peace? Work on making the middle class the dominant one everywhere.

[gustnado]

Over half of all murderers in the US are black (see the statistics I updated on the original post on the blog). Blacks murder at a rate 7 times that of whites.

That is not merely an effect of social class. It is a combination of that, and of a very dysfunctional inner city black culture.

There is certainly a correlation between social "class" and crime rate, but not that strong. Also, in the US there is a high level of mobility between income levels, so people go in and out of different "classes" at different times. I doubt their propensity to murder follows that transition very accurately.

Since hispanics outnumber blacks in the US, and also suffer a high poverty rate, your explanation would assign a similar murder rate to them. But if that were the case, we would have a dramatically higher murder rate - about 50% higher than it is.

Things are a lot more complex than just class. That's just recycled Marxist thinking, which originated in a truly class oriented country: England.

[Jim March]

Gustnado is correct.

Oakland (Calif) gave up holding rap concerts at the main stadium. Every single one turned into a riot.

Sigh.

[Iain]

I would point out that America is not much less class orientated than the UK, there is a definite ''political class'' or ''political aristocracy'' in the US.

Socio-economics cannot be dismissed in favour of some racial theory of violence, there is no evidence other than those of statistics for this. Anecdotes are all well and good. Your ''explanation'' of race and crime is as simplistic as a basic socio-economic explanation.

If there is this ''social fluidity'' that you describe, then why not carry out an investigation into murder rates amongst more affluent black persons, I am willing to hazard a guess it is no worse than any other comparable group. Stick a bunch of any ethnic group into areas like Compton and watch them commit crimes after a time.

[MicroBalrog]

St. Johns, you're perfectly right, but the UK was, in fact, very class-divided during the time "Das Kapital" was written.

[MicroBalrog]

If there is this ''social fluidity'' that you describe, then why not carry out an investigation into murder rates amongst more affluent black persons, I am willing to hazard a guess it is no worse than any other comparable group. Stick a bunch of any ethnic group into areas like Compton and watch them commit crimes after a time.


You don't see the point, I see. The point is not about blacks being inferior/superior, God forbid! The American Blacks were incredibly and terribly victimised for most of their history, and media and NAACP-type groups promoted "victim mentality" among them (see Jim March's posts on this thread). Most nations treated like this for that long ended up in pretty bad conditions, look at Russia, a country which has virtually never had a democracy before 1991.

[Iain]

There is certainly a correlation between social "class" and crime rate, but not that strong. Also, in the US there is a high level of mobility between income levels, so people go in and out of different "classes" at different times. I doubt their propensity to murder follows that transition very accurately.

Is what I was referring to MicroBalrog.

[gustnado]

St. Johns,
You are still missing the point. Did you read the entire original blog article that started this thread at http://www.tinyvital.com/blog/#000220.

If you did, you would see that I consistently refer to "inner-city" blacks, not all blacks. This is not some racial theory of crime (although so far, this is the the closest I have experienced to being called a racist on this subject, which actually has surprised me - I thought some multiculturalist would find my blog and go after me. Oh well, they will eventually. It took the German lawyer who started this thing 7 months to find the post he objected to).

My assertion is that black inner city culture is badly damaged, and this is a significant cause of the excess crime rate. That assertion is hardly debatable... that subculture is obvoiusly and demonstrably really screwed up... for example, 85% illegitimacy rate (before the rise of norther black inner city slums and the welfare state, the rate was 25% among blacks, about what it is now among whites if I remember correctly). High drug usage. High welfare participation. Multigenerational welfare families (although I should point out that whites constitute a majority of welfare families, even though they do NOT consitute a majority of murderers). A glorification of victimhood is common in that culture, and is used as an excuse by suggestible young people to commit all sorts of misbehavior. Hatred of "whitey" was initially injected into the culture by the "black power" marxists and radicals of the late '60s and early '70s and has festered. Just listen to a bit of classic rap music if you don't believe me about the culture. There are many other pathologies among that subculture. It would hardly be surprising that a culture with that many problems would have a high murder rate.

So no, I am not blaming the race, I am blaming the particular subculture. Furthermore, since I don't have a week to research all of this (I have a real job), I haven't been able to dig out the sort of statistics I would really like to have (for example, crime rate among inner city blacks, inner city whites, inner city hispanics, christians, Arabs, muslims, males, females, etc... ditto among middle class, etc).

[Iain]

I must admit I am confused by your argument.

I am not calling you a racist and admit there is a lot truth to what you are saying, I will also admit that due to illness I have not slept properly for about three nights, so possibly lucidity is not my strongest suit right now. I did read the original article, but that was just before the insomnia.

My assertion is that black inner city culture is badly damaged, and this is a significant cause of the excess crime rate. That assertion is hardly debatable... that subculture is obvoiusly and demonstrably really screwed up...

I don't disagree, I took issue with your ''that is not our culture'' because that was an implication that we are in no way responsible. I also see as much portrayal of hispanic ''thug culture'' these days, any thoughts about that?

If you do get chance to look up those statistics please do. I am interested, many of these stats do not exist unfortunately as it is often politically expedient not to record uncomfortable facts. I do believe you about the culture, being a Brit I don't see it over here.

There is also the argument that blacks are over-represented in the penal system as a whole due to the likelihood of their crimes being reported, sent to trial and convicted. Any thoughts on this?

[gustnado]

<i>"I don't disagree, I took issue with your ''that is not our culture'' because that was an implication that we are in no way responsible."</i>

I have not addressed responsibility. I certainly don't feel personally responsible!

<i>"I also see as much portrayal of hispanic ''thug culture'' these days, any thoughts about that?"</i>

Yes. I am puzzled why that doesn't show up in the homicide statistics. I have monitored police radios for many decades, and the rise in Hispanic shootings here in the Phoenix, Arizona area is quite pronounced. On the other hand, they seem to be lousy shots or try to miss a lot, because the number of shooting incidents is vastly higher than the number of incidents involving death or injury.

There is a phenomenon where Hispanics move here from Mexico. The original immigrants tend to bring with them a pretty healthy culture. However, too often their kids get into the gang culture. So we may see that rate rise. However, the black inner city culture, even in this metro area where only 1% of the total population is black, seems to have worse problems. I have no explanation.


<i>If you do get chance to look up those statistics please do. I am interested, many of these stats do not exist unfortunately as it is often politically expedient not to record uncomfortable facts. I do believe you about the culture, being a Brit I don't see it over here.</i>

I have read that there is a more general, less race specific criminal culture in Britain, but I really don't know.

I don't think it is a matter of politics that keeps these facts down, although the left-wing politically correct may suppress studies that might show blacks in a bad light. I suspect that studies do exist in this area, but I just haven't found them. I really don't have time to do much other than a few google searches.


<i>There is also the argument that blacks are over-represented in the penal system as a whole due to the likelihood of their crimes being reported, sent to trial and convicted. Any thoughts on this?</i>

Yes. Homicides are almost always reported. The high correlation of black homicide convictions to black homicide victims would tend to discredit the idea that blacks are overrepresented in the homicide convictions due to distortions in the justice system.

Blacks usually kill blacks, and whites usually kill whites. Basically, people usually kill those around them. Furthermore, the anti-police culture of the black inner city would tend to cause many crimes by blacks to be unreported, and witnesses to be uncooperative or intimidated. That effect definitely exists.

I think blacks are over-represented in the penal system because they commit significantly more crimes on average. After all, they commit homicide at about 7 times the rate of whites!

As far as other crimes go, again I think that the penal system is unlikely to overrepresent blacks compared to their actual offense rate. However, keep in mind that in the US a large part of the penal population is there for drug-related crimes, which biases everything.

[bad_dad_brad]

Let us put race where it belongs. In the garbage can.

It is always about economics.

Honestly, if a man can feed himself and his family, and he has the freedom to better himself and his children's future, then, what has race to do with anything? There is no race! There are only human beings.

The world of homo sapiens is truly one people. Our gene's natural selection might decide how we look because of the climate our ancestors grew up in, but our brains are all just the same.

Strive to make every man and woman a stock holder in the world's economics of life, and there is no limit to what mankind can achieve.

Concepts about race are primitive tribal emotions. Are we not better than that?

[Mark Tyson]

I don't think they're saying race itself is the cause of high black crime rate. I think they're saying it's environment.

[Rangerover]

It is always about economics.

That's what the left would have you believe. I personally don't believe crack dealers, rapists, murderers, and thieves commit thier crimes in order to feed and clothe their "underpriveledged" children or families.

Moral values have nothing to do with economics. If they did 60% of the town I grew up in would have been mass murderers by the time we turned 15.

Poverty doesn't "cause" crime.

Crime causes poverty.

[Jim March]

bad_dad_brad: No, it's not class. It's not race either. It's culture.

An entire culture can become "warped". In my opinion, the current middle east Arab culture as found in Egypt, Syria, "Palestine", Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and others is "warped". Quite badly so, and NOT by Islam, but by Arabic cultural attitudes towards authority and female sexuality as two obvious examples. See also:

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33637

On a "warpage scale" of zero to ten, I'd call 'em about a 5 or 6 in terms of "overall dysfunction" (and that's an average across several nations, Egypt isn't as bad, Saudi Arabia's internal violence levels are more "potential" than "actual" as the whole place is wildly unstable). German culture of 1942ish was just about a "perfect 10" :barf:, ditto Japanese culture of about that time. US culture around the time of the Indian Wars (1875ish) was at least a 5+ and you can make a case for more; Southern US culture prior to the Civil War probably hit 6+...see also Clayton Cramer's research on the violence levels of the Mississippi River Valley area circa 1840ish.

Black inner city culture today is at least a 4.

What am I judging by?

Needless, stupid and/or cruel deaths.

Cultural sickness does show itself in other ways, including other types of crime, riots, a tendency to support rotten governments, and similar. But the best indicator is the dead bodies.

Oh, and mainstream American culture isn't zero. It's at least one, arguably two, based on idiotic gun control laws that kill people, and moronic drug laws that probably kill more.

[Gordon Fink]

Strive to make every man and woman a stock holder in the world’s economics of life, and there is no limit to what mankind can achieve.

But how can we achieve this, if the very people we are trying to help reject the opportunities we provide?

Jim, and others, have a very good point about culture. Take public education, for example. In the U.S., we provide it freely for all children, but many inner-city blacks reject this opportunity. Why? Because a culture of ignorance has developed, where education is not “cool� and going to school is seen as deferring to the “white folks.�

How do we solve this problem? First, end the unconstitutional “war� on drugs. Second, break the power of the gangs (whatever remains after they lose the profits of the illicit drug trade) by any means necessary. Third, end the welfare state or at least reduce it to a safety net instead of a way of life.

~G. Fink