The Color Of Crime and the Liberal Response

Several years ago, the New Century Foundation, called “White Nationalist” by supporters and “racist” by the Civil Rights Crusaders, published a study called “The Color Of Crime” on race and crime based on official government statistics. In response, Tim Wise penned an article that sought to counter the report. Whether you agree with the goals of the New Century Foundation, it is hard not to conclude that Mr. Wise‘s response (1) is meant to obfuscate the issue, while “The Color Of Crime” is a mostly honest account of what our own government states. Those who support affirmative action must be especially upset at the lying and false logic used by Mr. Wise.

The New Century Foundation report found that:

Blacks are much more dangerous than whites as evidenced by higher crime rates;

Crime statistics are backed not by arrests, but rather interviews with victims who have little reason to lie about their attackers’ identities;

Black criminals target whites more often than each other. Meanwhile white criminals almost always victimize each other. For that reason, a black man is 110 times more likely to rape a white woman than a white man is to rape a black woman. Likewise, blacks are 135 times more likely to commit a robbery against whites than the reverse. The trend of blacks overwhelmingly targeting whites in interracial crimes is consistent whether one looks at “regular” or “hate” crimes;

Black crime rates justify racial profiling, since it only makes sense to focus law enforcement attention on those who commit a disproportionate share of crime;

The report insinuates that interracial crime data makes fear of large young black men rational and logical response to the crime rates.

Now let’s take Wise’s response step by step:

“a close examination of these arguments proves that [Jared] Taylor [the head of the New Century Foundation] and his followers are either statistically illiterate, or knowingly deceive for political effect.”

So far, so good the readers must think. We are looking to see how numbers got manipulated by Jared Taylor in the report.

“According to several studies, when community and personal economic status is comparable between whites and blacks, there are no significant racial crime differences (1). In other words, the implicit message of Taylor’s report–that blacks are dangerous because they are black–is insupportable.”

There are two problems with what Mr. Wise has written. For one, there are no studies that show that poverty is responsible for all the difference in crime.

There are some studies that show that poor people are more violent and otherwise more prone to crime than the wealthy and middle class. However, even the wealthiest blacks commit several times more crime than the poorest whites, and the more violent the crime, the more likely blacks to commit it.

If poverty predicted crime, then we would expect the share of the violent crime rate to be the same as the share of the poor population. It doesn’t.

Blacks are 24% of the poor in the United States (2) At the same time, they commit 40% of violent crime in the country. (3)

Thus, we see that even amongst the poor, blacks are 60% more likely to commit more crime. Even the wealthiest blacks, such as hip-hop superstars and major league athletes, commit crime at rates significantly above that of even the poorest whites.

This is often interpreted by the politically correct media as a sign of a culture where celebrities can do what they please. Yet, we do not see the same behavior among the famous whites. True, Britney Spears can go outside without panties and spread her legs in front of photographers – but that is hardly the same as shooting your rival singer. And while athletes keep getting arrested, it is usually black athletes. When was the last time one saw a hockey player get arrested? That doesn’t happen even in Canada where hockey is the national sport and the celebrity-obsessed culture is just as bad as in the United States.

The second problem with blaming crime on poverty is the problem of “the chicken or the egg”. Did poverty cause increased crime or are the criminals dysfunctional individuals who cannot bring themselves up into the middle or upper class?

Evidence suggest that the criminals are poor because they are dysfunctional. After all, when the “ghetto youths” suddenly get multi-million dollar contracts as musicians and athletes, they continue to commit crime at tremendous levels. The crime rate among millionaire black athletes and rappers is much closer to those of the poor blacks living in the ghetto than to businessmen who made their millions using their brains.

Mr Wise continued: “Secondly, to claim that blacks are more dangerous than whites because of official crime rates, is to ignore that when it comes to everyday threats to personal well-being, whites far and away lead the pack in all kinds of destructive behaviors: corporate pollution, consumer fraud, violations of health and safety standards on the job, and launching wars on the basis of deceptive evidence, to name a few. Each year, far more people die because of corporate malfeasance, occupational health violations and pollution than all the street crime combined, let alone street crime committed by African Americans.”

Here Wise can’t argue with plain facts, so he just changes the topic. First of all, consumer fraud and pollution is not the same thing as gang rape with a gun in the victim’s face. When you are walking on the street at night, you aren’t thinking, “God, I hope nobody here puts up a sign with deceptive advertising.” Instead you are thinking, “This place is dark, it is known for its high crime and there’s nobody around. I need to get out of here as fast as possible before someone robs or rapes me.”

When people fear crime while walking on the street, they think of homicide, robbery, rape and other violence, not that some landlord forgot to install a fire detector. To compare violent crimes with failing to keep a clean restaurant kitchen – and then to suggest that the dirty kitchen is worse than murder – is the ultimate lie that can only be presented in vague terms meant to confuse the reader.

Second, blacks are several times more likely to commit white collar crimes than whites. They are less likely to commit fraud than violent crimes, whereas whites are less likely to commit violence than fraud. However, when comparing fraud among the two races, blacks still are responsible for far more crime than whites.

“Next, Taylor claims that most victims of black violent crime are white, and thus, that blacks are violently targeting whites. Furthermore, since only a small share of the victims of white criminals are black (only 4.4 percent in 2002, for example), this means that blacks are far more of a threat to whites than vice-versa. But there are several problems with these claims.”

The only problem here is that Wise does not want to admit basic facts. Unfortunately for him, the numbers are very clear-cut here.

“To begin with, the white victim totals in the Justice Department’s victimization data include those termed Hispanic by the Census, since nine in ten Latino/as are considered racially white by government record-keepers. Since Latino/as tend to live closer to blacks than non-Hispanic whites, this means that many “white” victims of “black crime” are Latino/a, and that in any given year, the majority of black crime victims would be people of color, not whites.”

This is yet another lie. Because of political correctness, the federal government counts Hispanic criminals as white, but Hispanic victims are … Hispanic! Some of the remaining 12% of victims who were neither white nor black are Latino. As we see, whites are not only targeted more often than blacks, they are targeted far more often than Latinos, even though they live farther away from the ghetto, as Wise admits.

“In 2002, whites, including Latinos, were about 81.5 percent of the population (3). That same year, whites (including Latinos) were 51 percent of the victims of violent crimes committed by blacks, meaning that whites were victimized by blacks less often than would have been expected by random chance, given the extent to which whites were available to be victimized (4).”

This statement directly contradicts what Wise said before. White people do not live in close proximity to blacks. Blacks who are poor and violent overwhelmingly live in a black ghetto where they see hardly any whites. Violent criminals usually do not have jobs outside the ghetto (if at all) and do not go to school outside the their neighborhood (if at all). Ghetto blacks can go for days or even weeks without seeing a white person in their neighborhood, and those blacks who are dysfunctional and have no job, do not venture out of their neighborhood as much as most people would.

The opportunity for dysfunctional blacks to victimize whites, therefore, is nowhere near 51%. To suggest that most of the people one would see in the black ghetto are white would be either a lie or a sign of incredible ignorance. Considering that the average ghetto youth sees even hundreds of times more blacks than whites, the only conclusion that can be drawn from the statistic that blacks commit 51% of the crime against whites is that whites are purposely being targeted.

Additionally, readers must realize that most of the black-on-black violence involves relatives (e.g., domestic violence by a husband against the wife), gang-on-gang warfare or disputes between criminals, pimps or drug dealers. White people, however, rarely “compete” with black criminals. Even white criminals, such as corporate tax evaders and Italian mobsters, very rarely fight with blacks for the same turf.

“As for the claim that blacks victimize whites at rates that are far higher than the reverse, though true, this statistic is meaningless, for a few obvious but overlooked reasons, first among them the simple truth that if whites are more available as potential victims, we would naturally expect black criminals to victimize whites more often than white criminals would victimize blacks.”

It’s fascinating to read that the targeting of whites by blacks is “meaningless” according to Wise. As is his usual routine (and done by all politically correct liberals), he states a vague conclusion without backing it up. What are the “few obvious” reasons why it is meaningless that blacks victimize whites at rates far higher than the reverse?

He again states that there are more whites. But the large number of whites in rural South Dakota and Salt Lake City has nothing to do with black ghettos in Detroit, Washington, New Orleans, Newark and other major cities. There are very few whites in black neighborhoods, and the 51% rate suggests that the odds are huge that the few whites living in a black neighborhood would fall victim to violent crime. What are the other “obvious reasons”? Wise does not say.

“From 1995-2000, blacks were 65 percent of racial and ethnic hate-crime victims, while whites were 21 percent of such victims”.

This is yet another case of Wise playing fast and loose with facts. Blacks and whites aren’t the only two races in the United States, so one should look at how often they commit hate crimes, not how often they are victimized. The reason is simple: a black victim of hate crime need not suffer at the hands of whites and may be victimized by Hispanics and others. In fact, several Mexican gangs have openly declared a war on blacks, especially those living inside or near Mexican neighborhoods. The vast majority of anti-black crime that is not committed by fellow blacks is committed by Latinos.

But now let’s look at hate crimes as committed by each race. Whites commit twice as many acts classified as hate-crimes. But whites outnumber blacks almost 6 to 1, meaning that blacks are about 3 times more likely per capita to commit a hate crime. Furthermore, due to political correctness, a white-on-black crime is much more likely to be classified as a hate crime than a black-on-white crime. Well over 95% of interracial crimes involving blacks and whites involve black criminals and white victims.

Mr. Wise then continues with his usual routine that blacks are more likely to see whites than the reverse because whites are the majority in this country. However, as I’ve pointed out, those blacks most likely to commit crime are usually not the sort to have jobs and schools outside the ghetto, and therefore see whites very rarely.

“White Fear of Blacks – The Height of Irrationality

Of course, above and beyond the mere statistical chicanery at the heart of Taylor’s report, the larger point is that for Taylor and other racists to claim that black-on-white crime data justifies white fear of African Americans, or racial profiling by police is sheer ignorance.”

Of course, even if blacks did not specifically targeted whites, considering that they are more crime prone and more likely to be violent and use weapons when they are committing a crime, it would be perfectly rational to fear them.

Considering that most victims of black crime are white, while they are only a tiny minority of the people that are “available as victims” to dysfunctional black youths in the ghetto, it would seem perfectly rational to fear blacks. This would be so even if blacks are more violent due to poverty, which they aren’t. After all, if you are getting raped, your suffering is not any less if someone tells you that the rapist has just received welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and government-subsidize housing in the projects.

But who needs basic statistics like “Blacks commit 8 times more crime and most of it is against whites” when you can come up with some ridiculous, vague explanations mean to confuse the reader so as to allow Mr. Wise to seem intelligent, while accusing anyone who disagrees with his position of being a racist.

“Since blacks committed roughly 1.2 million violent crimes in 2002, if seventy percent of these were committed by seven percent of the black offenders, this would mean that at most there were perhaps 390,000 individual black offenders that year (13). In a population of 29.3 million over the age of twelve, this would represent no more than 1.3 percent of the black population that committed a violent crime in 2002.”

That’s nice! So in 2002, 1.3% of all blacks over the age of 12 committed a violent crime. Not just a crime, but a violent crime.

Now consider that half of all blacks are women, who are about 10 times less likely to commit crime than men. That would mean that in just one year, 2.5% of black males over the age of 12 committed a violent crime.

Between the age of 12 and 72 when the average black man dies, 60 years go by. If 2.5% commit a violent crime in an average year of their life, over the course of 60 years, a staggering percentage of black men will commit a violent crime.

In fact, about a third of all blacks have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to a crime. Since at least some criminals get away with their acts and middle class blacks commit less crime than ghetto blacks, one must conclude that the odds that of a ghetto youth committing a crime at some point in his life are probably better than 50%. And as stated above, most of that crime will be against the few whites who had the misfortune to wind up in a poor black neighborhood.

Now consider that the majority of black males are either too young or too mature to commit much violent crime. Those between the ages of 16 and 25, the most dangerous demographic, make up about a quarter of the black population. Between the ages of 16 and 25, a black male has a better than 1 in 20 chance of committing a crime in that particular year. Given that ten years goes by between the age of 16 and 25, the odds of a black young man committing a violent crime during his youth are simply spectacular.

Now add to the violence committed by those under 16 and over 25, the non-violent crimes (such as stealing a car), as well as other anti-social behavior (such as “punking” white people just for fun), and the whites’ fear of large young black men becomes perfectly rational.

Even those numbers underestimate the dangers faced by whites in a black neighborhood. Not only are whites the majority of crime victims while being hardly ever seen in the ghetto, but the people in the ghetto are far more likely to be violent than middle class blacks who have moved out that neighborhood. The odds of a large black man living in the ghetto committing a crime (violent or not) at some point between the ages of 16 and 25 are probably at least 50-50.

Furthermore, consider what it would mean for a white person living in a black neighborhood to know that 2.5% of all males over the age of 12 will commit a violent crime this year.

2.5% is 1-in-40 chance. On any given day, a person sees probably hundreds of people. You see people on the bus, on the street, in the supermarket, in your building, everywhere you turn. To live in a place where 2.5% means that if you see 250 men in a given day (not a huge number at all for someone using public transportation to get to work or who lives in housing projects with thousands of people in several large buildings), it means that every day you will see 6-7 people who’ll commit a crime this year, plus non-violent criminals and plus the people who’ve committed crime in the past or will commit it in future years.

Blacks living in the ghetto have a crime rate that is at least 2-3 times higher than amongst middle-class blacks. Thus, a person living in a ghetto probably sees every day about 15 people who’ll commit a violent crime this year, and most of it against whites.

Now let’s do the math over the course of the year. There are 365 days times and at 15 criminals every day, one will have about 5,500 annual encounters with criminals. Now count that over the course of 3, 5, 10 years.

So should whites be afraid to live in black neighborhoods? If they have any common sense, they should be horrified.

Why is it safer for blacks? Because first of all, blacks are not targeted as much. Second, most blacks who are victims of violent crime are criminals themselves. Not all of them, obviously, but a clear majority.

What that means is that the ghetto is fairly safe for a decent black person living in a ghetto without joining a gang, pimping a prostitute or selling drugs.

This does it mean that all blacks are criminals or that whites should be afraid of all blacks. The point here is not whether whites should be afraid of all blacks, but rather that they should be scared to live in a black neighborhood.

Even if the vast majority of black people aren’t criminals, one is not concerned with the overall crime rate, but rather with the odds of one being victimized. Even if 97% of the people around you are not criminals, the other 3% are enough of a threat so that you can be assured of being a victim, sooner or later. If you are raped, you are raped – regardless of the liberal slogan that “most people are law-abiding”.

It does not matter that most people will not commit a crime. It just matters that you will almost certainly be a victim.

Of course, once you get to know a black person, you should judge him as an individual without regard for his race. But if you are in a neighborhood of 40,000 people and 1,000 of them will commit a violent crime this year, and most of those crimes will specifically target “your people”, you should flee before getting robbed, raped or even murdered.

In conclusion, Wise has gone out of his way to try to manipulate very clear statistics. Blacks are much more violent than whites, even when one takes poverty into consideration. In fact, a black man will probably commit a crime at some point in his life, probably between the ages of 16 and 25. Whites will be the majority of the victims of black crime and most black victims are usually “competition” – gangsters, drug dealers, pimps.

Few whites live in the ghetto, but if they do, they will almost certainly fall victim to crime, probably both violent and non-violent. Even a simple walk through the ghetto in a place without potential witnesses, especially at night, is highly dangerous for whites. In private we all know this. And if Wise doesn’t believe what I just wrote, why doesn’t he send his daughter, sister or mother to a black ghetto at night!

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REFERENCES

1. http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/2004-10/19wise.cfm

2. Population data from US Census Table 24 and poverty data from US Census Poverty Tables

3. FBI UCR, table 43