O'Reilly Called Racist for Remarks

[William Joyce]

Actually Federal hiring laws only apply to companies that do business with the Government.

No, wrong. You need to acquaint yourself with civil rights laws in America, man. Federal hiring laws apply to most private businesses.

http://www.discriminationlawtoday.com/

So does federal anti-discrimination law in housing.

 

[William Joyce]

Now you will assert that zoological thinking is realistic thinking. And it is. But we are capable of doing a lot better than that, of constructing a higher kind of reality, since, uniquely among animals, we have an advanced rational capacity. A serial rapist is following a certain kind of biological logic, maximizing his chances of replicating his genes, but so what?

This is some of the most perfect reasoning I've ever seen on this board. Hat tip.

I don't think I'm that far from what you're saying. I would absolutely concede that Nazism, Zionism, etc. are manifestations of nationalist extremes. And as natural as sex and food are, we rightly condemn rape and gluttony. So it is for racialism... but on that topic, we are today on the "starvation" end of the food spectrum analogy, if you will. Our current thinking and systems of government (in the West, anyway) are torturously wrong --- and if you'll allow me, inhumane. Human races are inherently different on so many levels, yet we insist at the point of a gun otherwise. Happy, healthy, yea progressive human existence, I say, calls for measures of separation. I wouldn't prohibit you from the freedoms you seek - to have contact with all races and ethnicities. But like I say, the world's a big place, and whites are entitled in their zones to that hardest of rights, the right of exclusion. Nations are one such platform... pretty much every one "arbitrarily" keeps out others with at least a passport restriction. Except the U.S.

James Q. Wilson has a good quote: the great achievement of the West has been to encourage us to look over the wall at "other" and appreciate it. But its great failure, he says, is to deny that that wall is important, even necessary.

Or this: a little diversity is a tonic. Too much is a poison. In the U.S., we are being poisoned.

If wisdom is about maintaining balance, on race, we are imbalanced. And we as whites are the most imbalanced, I believe. The lot of us are terrified of these issues to the point of paralysis. We will have to get over that.

 

[actsnoblemartin]

Jillian, I like you but i gotta disagree. You have to take in to consideration the context. Also, I must ask if you read the whole unedited transcipt.

He was talking about how many whites fear blacks, and that they shouldnt because they are just like us, civilized.

Once again, you're a shining beacon of ignorance.

O'Reilly sounded like a racist jerk because he was shocked that black people were well-dressed and acted "civilized'.

You have to have spent your life in a cave, or among people like you, to think like that. You, of course, thinking blacks are a subspecies, wouldn't understand that.

 

[Doug]

William Joyce: Perhaps our differences are these: I think Western civilization is probably finished, and will not see out the century, even in North America. There is an enormous amount of pessimism-inducing evidence to that effect. But no one can know the future, and we must keep fighting.

So what should we fight for? If we could just remake the world to our liking, then arbitrary mixing of the peoples would only be done by a madman or a sadist. And when history has mixed them -- Hutus and Tutsis, Greeks and Turks, Turks and Armenians, Shi'as and Sunnis, Serbs and Croats, Hindus and Muslims, Germans and Poles, Sinhalese and Tamils, and on and on ... then they have often unmixed themselves, usually with liberal helpings of good slippery blood to lubricate the going of the unwanted other.

However, here we all are in the USA, together. I suppose we could imagine some social and political cataclysm that would see the races in the United States convulsively separate, with long lines of cars piled with household goods on top passing each other along the interstates as Blacks, whites and Hispanics withdraw into their own homelands, sniping at the people on the opposite lane as they go -- a sort of Freedom at Midnight scenario. But you have to admit, it is exceedingly unlikely.

So we have to live with each other. And people who appreciate and want to preserve the civilization that the Europeans built have got to convince enough of the non-Europeans living amongst us that it has a place for them.

That's what I really object to in your views -- that they don't leave any room for real politics. It consigns nearly half of the American population, without a fight, to the Leftist enemy. No Blacks, no Hispanics, no Jews, and I assume no Orientals either. (Since I am a fraction -- one-sixteenth or one-thirty-second -- Choctaw Indian, I too am excluded from your white reservation. But I suppose I could pass.) And it leaves the whites with literally nothing to do, except, I suppose to try to emulate the Free State libertarians and move to a state in the hopes, someday, of succession. (My ancestors tried that and it didn't work.) It leaves us just shrugging at the interesting statistic that more Blacks consider themselves conservative, than consider themselves liberal, instead of thinking about how we can take advantage of this fact.

There is another topic we should debate at some point: to what extent are the characteristics of a particular genetically-related tribe, caused by its genes? For instance, is the high Black crime rate and low average IQ a direct or indirect result of some particular genetic configuration, maybe expressed malignly in modern civilization, such that we cannot hope to alter it? And in any case, what does it mean for our attempts to build a common, racially-inclusive civilized order?

 

[007]

I doubt that blacks commit more crimes than white...

You need to do a little internet research then, because blacks are by far the most violent people in America...

Black Americans have murdered 10 times as many American Whites as Osama bin Ladin.

Homicide

The presence of blacks and Hispanics in the US caused the murder of an extra 762,759 Americans in the 20th Century alone.

Blacks are 23 times more likely than Whites to be murderers.

Contrary to the assertion by organizations like sistahspace that "The Problems Are Real And Solveable", the data shows that the problems with American blacks are real and permanent. Over the last three decades, the murder rate in states like Iowa, Maine, and North Dakota have averaged 1.4 per 100,000 population, which is one tenth that of states like Illinois, Lousiana, Maryland, or Mississippi, whose murder rates average 16. The most obvious distinguishing difference between these states is the higher percentage of blacks in those latter states.


If this were the only factor, which it's not, then the state to state data shows that the murder rate increases by one murder per 100,000 population for each 2% increase in the percentage of the population who are blacks. Where there was one murder in the state of North Dakota in 1994, a state with a black population of 4,001, there were 579 murders in Maryland which has a black population of 1,428,207. If Maryland had had a murder rate equivalent to North Dakota, then there would have been only 10 murders that year, which makes those blacks responsible for 569 of those murders, which is 41 murders per 100,000 blacks.

This 30 fold higher murder rate of blacks than Whites is consistent with the "FBI, Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976-98", which shows that 55% of the homicides in the US are perpetrated by the 12% of the population who are blacks. If the 30 million blacks in the US in 1994 committed 55% of the 24,926 murders in 1994, or 13,709 of them, then blacks committed a nationwide average of 46 murders per 100,000 blacks.

A distinguishing feature of this murder data is the consistently high rate of both murder and blacks in Washington, DC. Even though the population of our capitol city is only 517,206, it's the undisputed murder capitol of the world, with a murder rate 350 times higher than the mostly White North Dakota. The 399 murders committed in 1992 by only 325,840 blacks is 122 murders per 100,000 blacks.

Illinois is another state with a high murder rate, with 1,378 murders in 1994 alone, which is 1,354 more murders than if they'd had a rate equivalent to North Dakota. With 1,839,744 blacks in Illinois, this is 74 murders per 100,000 blacks.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/datast.htm

Is murder by blacks a fact of life which American Whites must accept as the penalty for permitting blacks to live in our midst, or is it something that must be avoided at all costs? Over the last 4 decades, blacks have murdered almost 400,000 fellow Americans, and the fact that 64,400 of the people they murdered were Whites means that black Americans are 10 times more deadly to us than Osama Bin Ladin has been in his lifetime, IF he's 100% guilty as charged.

...and I do believe that blacks get caught more often because cops...

Correct, because they commit more crime.

... do not want to arrest white people but have no problem when arresting a black person.

White, black, yellow, green, purple. If you commit a crime and get caught, you're going to get arrested.

 

[Doug]

Larkinn: I'm going to assume that your belief that the Black crime rate is the same as the white crime rate is not a beyond-the-possibility-of-refutation quasi-religious belief, but is something you might change your mind on, if given evidence that you are wrong.

So let's start with official crime statistics, collected by the FBI and published as the Uniform Crime Statistics. The best one to use is the murder rate -- different legal systems can define other crimes somewhat differently, and there are plenty of other crimes which are never reported, but the murder rate is a relatively robust stastistic. Not perfect, but pretty good as social statistics go. (The FBI goes to a lot of trouble to eliminate statistical noise from their data: read their essays here and
here if you are interested in the topic of stastistical validity.)

Now the data for murderers, last year, by age, sex and race is here .

This data is quite interesting. Note that although there are roughly equal numbers of men and women in the United States, men commit murder at about ten times the rate that women do. (Of course, I suppose you could say, no, male/female murder rates are equal, men are just victims of a prejudiced legal system.)

White...Black...Other...Unknown
5,339...6,843...295.....4,922

Now look at the figures for race. Blacks are about 13% of the population. Yet this 13% commits more murders than whites and 'others' added together! (Of course, you might try to argue that the 5000 or so unknown murderers are all white, but this is very unlikely. But assume it is true. Then we still have 13% of the population that is Black contributing nearly one-third of the murderers.)

In fact, no serious person denies that the Black violent crime rate is far in excess of the white rate -- the difference is enormous, and far too great to be put down to prejudicial law enforcement. The latter no doubt exists, and for sex as well as race: men are more likely to be suspected of murder than women, and in this or that case, they may be unjustly accused. But the enormous difference between male and female murder rates cannot be put down to anti-male prejudice, nor can the enormous difference between Black and white murder (and other violent crime) rates.

What Lefties who are faced with this uncomfortable fact usually do is to say this: most of these crimes are Black-on-Black. Most murder victims are killed by someone of their own race. And this is true.

And they also say: it's the white man's fault. The legacy of slavery, the effects of poverty which is caused by racism, etc etc. I don't want to argue tthis here, because it is a complicated question. (I am not entirely unsympathetic to the "it's the white man's fault" argument, although I am not sympathetic to the motives of the Leftist guilt-mongers who use it.)

I think we can accept these statistics as authentic, as all serious criminologists, left or right, do. If we wanted more corroboration, we could look at the testimony of (non-murder) victims about the race of their attacker: unless you believe that someone mugged or robbed or raped by a white man would lie about the race of their attacker, then these statistics again confirm what everyone knows: the Black violent crime rate is far higher than the white.

Here are statistics for 2005, presented as a graph. Note that Blacks commit homicide at a rate that is seven times higher than the rate for whites.

Anyone looking at these statistics who continues to maintain that Black/white crime rate is the same is simply impervious to reality. You can argue that "it's society's fault" -- the standard argument of liberal academics -- but you cannot deny the terrible reality.

 

[Larkinn]

From my previous post...

I don't have a conviction on the matter. I don't see any way to test it, so I withhold judgement...although my suspicion is that it is that the system treats them differently.

Meaning that I don't know what the cause of the discrepancy between blacks and whites in the crime stats are. However, I asserted two possible causes other than genetic traits for the difference. You don't seen to have addressed either in any significant fashion. Most of your previous post is addressing that black crime is more prevalent than white crime. I've acknowledged that, yes, that is the case. The question now is WHY...and dismissing it because:

far too great to be put down to prejudicial law enforcement. The latter no doubt exists, and for sex as well as race: men are more likely to be suspected of murder than women, and in this or that case, they may be unjustly accused. But the enormous difference between male and female murder rates cannot be put down to anti-male prejudice, nor can the enormous difference between Black and white murder (and other violent crime) rates.

All you've done is assert that you think that prejudicial law enforcement is not the case because the gap is too high. Why is this the case? As for the comparison between men and women, the analogy is specious. Your argument is essentially that because the correlation between gender and crime is causally related, the link between race and crime must also be causally related. There is no reason to think this is the case.

Oh...and you did not address class at all. Besides the fact that if you are interested in having a serious discussion, I'd advise you to leave out the generalizations. It makes your argumentative skills look much weaker than I suspect they actually are.

 

[doniston]

You need to do a little internet research then, because blacks are by far the most violent people in America...






Correct, because they commit more crime.


White, black, yellow, green, purple. If you commit a crime and get caught, you're going to get arrested.

that is true, but Edward has a valid point also. (even tho you tried to spin it by splitting his statement in two.)

 

[Doug]

Larkinn: Okay, then we agree that, on a per capita basis, Blacks commit far more violent crimes than whites. It's not that their actual crime rate is the same, and that prejudiced law enforcement just makes it appear to be higher. No, it is higher. Even if every policeman, judge, and juror were a perfect angel of impartiallity, the Black crime rate would be far higher than the white one. You, and Edward, did not appear to agree to that, but perhaps it was just a misunderstanding.

Now, we can talk about why it is higher.

You say:

All you've done is assert that you think that prejudicial law enforcement is not the case because the gap is too high. Why is this the case? As for the comparison between men and women, the analogy is specious. Your argument is essentially that because the correlation between gender and crime is causally related, the link between race and crime must also be causally related. There is no reason to think this is the case.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. I didn't say that "the correlation between gender and crime is causally related". In fact, I don't even know what that statement means.

Oh...and you did not address class at all. Besides the fact that if you are interested in having a serious discussion, I'd advise you to leave out the generalizations. It makes your argumentative skills look much weaker than I suspect they actually are.

You are right, I did not discuss class, nor did I discuss genetics. In fact, I did not discuss "causes" at all.

By the way: if you mean by "class", that the Black crime rate correlates with the crime rate for people of any color but of the same economic status, I am afraid that this is not true either. I can promise you that liberal criminologists and sociologists (there are no other kind, with one or two exceptions) have tried that angle and found it, to their disappointment, lacking.

There is some correlation, but if we look at the crime rate for whites who have the same income level as Blacks, we find that is still much lower. Another way to put it: if all Blacks were replaced by whites of the same level of income and personal wealth, the crime rate would drop dramatically. If all whites on lower incomes were replaced by Blacks, the crime rate would increase dramatically. If you are interested in the dismal details I can try to find the exact studies for you.

Perhaps the cause is white racist prejudice. Perhaps it is the "legacy of slavery" (a wonderfully vague phrase that liberals like to invoke when they cannot think of any other excuse). Perhaps its the you-are-a=victim indoctrination which Blacks have been hearing from white liberals for decades. Perhaps it is genetics.

Or it may be some combination of complex, subtle factors of which we are not aware.

I actually don't have an answer as to why it is so astonishingly high.

It is one of the fundamental prejudices of conservatism that human society is too complex, too subtly-interconnected, too self-aware, too path-dependent, and that human observers are themselves too much influenced by their own position and history within society, for humans to have much success in understanding how it works, in the way that we can understand complex physical systems.

Because, with a few years of study, a reasonably intelligent person can tell you how a color TV works -- double the resistance of that component and you will get this effect, cut that conducting path and you will get that effect -- we tend to think that we can analyze and control society in a similar way. Not so.

This is why we are highly sceptical of Leftist efforts to deconstruct societies and re-assemble them according to some abstract set of ideals. (Or of neo-conservative efforts to do the same thing, as in Iraq.) Social systems are not Mecanno sets.

This does not mean we cannot use our human reason and try to understand a bit more about society, and to tweak it here and there hoping to improve it. Of course we can, and we should. The "broken windows" theory was an interesting hypothesis about the causes of crime (and not just Black crime), and one which could be tested. But even here, the evidence is not clear.

Human societies, and human behavior, are changeable over time. Anyone who is familiar with history knows that. But what makes them change, exactly, is difficult to pin down, and in any case may be beyond our intervention, except to make things worse. Making things worse is usually easy to do.

But before we can do anything, we have to be clear about the facts. And the fact is that the Black violent crime rate is far in excess of the white violent crime rate.

 

[Larkinn]

Larkinn: Okay, then we agree that, on a per capita basis, Blacks commit far more violent crimes than whites. It's not that their actual crime rate is the same, and that prejudiced law enforcement just makes it appear to be higher. No, it is higher. Even if every policeman, judge, and juror were a perfect angel of impartiallity, the Black crime rate would be far higher than the white one. You, and Edward, did not appear to agree to that, but perhaps it was just a misunderstanding.

Per capita is not the reason for the disagreement. As I said before you've asserted that the prejudicial affects of the cops aren't enough to make up the difference. You've provided no evidence for this assertion except for your own opinion. Sorry, but thats not really enough to settle the issue for me. I understand the assertion, but you asserting something is true is not enough for me to believe it.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. I didn't say that "the correlation between gender and crime is causally related". In fact, I don't even know what that statement means.

Gender and crime are correlated. Why? Because they are casually connected...that is one is actually more likely to commit crimes than the other. This does not mean that because race and crime are correlated, then one is more likely to commit crimes than the other.

By the way: if you mean by "class", that the Black crime rate correlates with the crime rate for people of any color but of the same economic status, I am afraid that this is not true either. I can promise you that liberal criminologists and sociologists (there are no other kind, with one or two exceptions) have tried that angle and found it, to their disappointment, lacking.

There is some correlation, but if we look at the crime rate for whites who have the same income level as Blacks, we find that is still much lower. Another way to put it: if all Blacks were replaced by whites of the same level of income and personal wealth, the crime rate would drop dramatically. If all whites on lower incomes were replaced by Blacks, the crime rate would increase dramatically. If you are interested in the dismal details I can try to find the exact studies for you.

Nice flaw here. You've taken two alternate explanations and said that each solely can't be responsible for the problem and hence neither are responsible. It could, of course, be that some combination of the two are made up of the problem.

BTW...my law prof. is a criminologist. He is also a staunch opposer of gun control. His other political beliefs aren't quite liberal either. Don't fall into the asinine trap of assuming that anyone who doesn't agree with you is a liberal.

But before we can do anything, we have to be clear about the facts. And the fact is that the Black violent crime rate is far in excess of the white violent crime rate.

Yes we've agreed about that fact several times now. It'd be nice if we could move past it.

 

[Doug]

Larkinn: I appreciate your civil replies, and I am not trying to be snotty, but I think you don't really understand what words like "causation" and "correlation" and "rate" actually mean. You seem to use these words in a very fluid way.

I don't know why men commit far more violent crimes than women. I just know that they do. Perhaps the cause has something to do with the innate biology of the two sexes. Perhaps it is due to enculturation. Or both. Or something else.

I don't know why Blacks commit far more violent crimes than whites. I just know that they do. I know that liberals cannot deal with this fact, and invent all sorts of really lame, fantastic excuses for it, all of which come down to saying "It's the White Man's fault." I suspect that their providing alibis for Black criminality and irresponsibility is actually one of the causes of the latter.

What we need to do is to support all those within the Black community who are calling for self-discipline, hard work, familiy values, etc. In other words, the Blacks who are promulgating conservative values. At the same time, we must of course attack any racial oppression of Blacks. For example, policemen who cannot be professional in their attitude towards Black people should be sacked. We need to do whatever we can to promote a prosperous Black middle class and skilled working class, consonant with our commitment to equal treatment before the law for everyone.

No one really understands how society works, and no one really understands how to change it for the better, except marginally. What we can do we should, and that includes keeping violent criminals locked up for as long as we possibly can.

 

[Larkinn]

Larkinn: I appreciate your civil replies, and I am not trying to be snotty, but I think you don't really understand what words like "causation" and "correlation" and "rate" actually mean. You seem to use these words in a very fluid way.

I do know what they mean and they apply here. Correlation applies perfectly. Causation less perfectly, but as long as you take the view that things can have multiple causes, then yes gender is a partial cause of crime. That is your gender can be one of the reasons why you commit, or don't commit, a particular crime.

I don't know why men commit far more violent crimes than women. I just know that they do. Perhaps the cause has something to do with the innate biology of the two sexes. Perhaps it is due to enculturation. Or both. Or something else.

Here there is little reason to doubt that the stats are an accurate representation of the reality. Whereas the black crime rate there is.

I don't know why Blacks commit far more violent crimes than whites. I just know that they do. I know that liberals cannot deal with this fact, and invent all sorts of really lame, fantastic excuses for it, all of which come down to saying "It's the White Man's fault." I suspect that their providing alibis for Black criminality and irresponsibility is actually one of the causes of the latter.

No you don't know that they do. You know that they get arrested far more often. You claim, with no evidence, that this cannot be because of racism. Why not? Because you find that an uncomfortable claim?

And you seem to be unable to argue without making idiotic generalizations. Liberals argue a great deal of different things. We are not all the same. Besides the fact that blaming liberals for the increased crime stats of blacks is part of the moronic mentality that many people have (NB...I did not, unlike you, take this opportunity to foolishly generalize the opposing political party) of blaming liberals for all the worlds problems. Once you get past that disability perhaps you can see things from a more reasoned, logical perspective.

What we need to do is to support all those within the Black community who are calling for self-discipline, hard work, familiy values, etc. In other words, the Blacks who are promulgating conservative values.

Since when did self-discipline and hard work become conservative values? As for family values, liberals have those as well...they just don't believe that the traditional family is the only way to go. My family was not at all traditional and I think by pretty much any standard of success in this country I've done pretty damn well for myself at the tender age of 23.

At the same time, we must of course attack any racial oppression of Blacks. For example, policemen who cannot be professional in their attitude towards Black people should be sacked. We need to do whatever we can to promote a prosperous Black middle class and skilled working class, consonant with our commitment to equal treatment before the law for everyone.

No one really understands how society works, and no one really understands how to change it for the better, except marginally. What we can do we should, and that includes keeping violent criminals locked up for as long as we possibly can.

But yet you seem to feel that liberals are responsible for societies problems? How can you reconcile saying that "no one really understands how society works...but its liberals fault that its not working"?

 

[jillian]

Larkinn: I appreciate your civil replies, and I am not trying to be snotty, but I think you don't really understand what words like "causation" and "correlation" and "rate" actually mean. You seem to use these words in a very fluid way.

I don't know why men commit far more violent crimes than women. I just know that they do. Perhaps the cause has something to do with the innate biology of the two sexes. Perhaps it is due to enculturation. Or both. Or something else.

I don't know why Blacks commit far more violent crimes than whites. I just know that they do. I know that liberals cannot deal with this fact, and invent all sorts of really lame, fantastic excuses for it, all of which come down to saying "It's the White Man's fault." I suspect that their providing alibis for Black criminality and irresponsibility is actually one of the causes of the latter.

What we need to do is to support all those within the Black community who are calling for self-discipline, hard work, familiy values, etc. In other words, the Blacks who are promulgating conservative values. At the same time, we must of course attack any racial oppression of Blacks. For example, policemen who cannot be professional in their attitude towards Black people should be sacked. We need to do whatever we can to promote a prosperous Black middle class and skilled working class, consonant with our commitment to equal treatment before the law for everyone.

No one really understands how society works, and no one really understands how to change it for the better, except marginally. What we can do we should, and that includes keeping violent criminals locked up for as long as we possibly can.

I hope you don't mind, but I think I'll jump in here. I'd suggest that it is not so much "color" that is causative, but, rather, poverty. I'd suggest that regardless of race or ethnicity, populations in which there is a greater rate of poverty, will evidence higher rates of criminal activity.

I would also suggest that, perhaps, you are ignoring the cyclic nature of poverty and criminality. There is no "liberal" consensus on this (as if all people to the left, if put in one room, would reach agreement). There have been studies which show that programs like Head Start, which get to root educational causes DO have a positive effect. Ignoring the disparities in opportunity for rich versus poor is simply ignoring root causes of the problem. It also should be noted, if it hasn't been already, that a) there is a fairly large black bourgeoisie in urban centers, the resurgance of Harlem and other areas being evidence of this; and b) in impoverished areas, there has been a fractionalized society, particularly among blacks, where a large proportion of black males have been incarcerated, thus leaving adolescent males without positive role models. Nor can we ignore disparate enforcement between blacks and whites (though, again, the disparity, I think is more haves versus have-nots).

Is that an excuse? Well, it certainly has some causal relationship. Do we ignore the causal relationship and simply continue to spend a fortune on our prisons?

The answer to that should certainly be addressed -- or we can continue to write off huge segments of our population.

 

[Doug]

Jillian: A good post. You say, in effect, poverty causes crime, and we can reduce poverty by government programs like Head Start. The very high violent Black crime rate is due to Black poverty. With more government programs like Head Start, we can reduce [or eliminate?] Black poverty and reduce [or bring close to zero?] the Black crime rate.

Is that a fair summary of your argument?

 

[jillian]

Jillian: A good post. You say, in effect, poverty causes crime, and we can reduce poverty by government programs like Head Start. The very high violent Black crime rate is due to Black poverty. With more government programs like Head Start, we can reduce [or eliminate?] Black poverty and reduce [or bring close to zero?] the Black crime rate.

Is that a fair summary of your argument?

Thank you.

It's a fair summary to the extent that I think all things being equal, crime rate should be fairly constant and occur at a certain frequency in the general population. I think those programs aimed at all impoverished communities should bring crime rate down to the rate of occurrence found in pretty much every ethnic/racial group. I am also mindful that not ALL crime is committed by people who are, in fact, impoverished. I'd draw your attention to crimes committed by well-to-do white kids from Leopold and Loeb to Columbine to VA Tech to organized crime to white collar crime.

I'm also a believer in legalizing drugs, taxing them and putting them under government control so that gangs don't have any impetus to fight for drug territory.

The problem isn't simple or capable of simplistic solutions. I was addressing one aspect, that being what I see as a disparity among the white and black communities in terms of crime rate. I don't think addressing poverty alone zeros it out. I do think it addresses certain endemic problems in our society.

And, let's face it, sometimes there are just bad, messed up people... whether they've been abused or hurt or suffer from asocial or anti-social tendencies.... well, they'll still be there in any event, as will child abusers, spouse abusers, thieves, etc., etc, etc

 

[Doug]

Jillian. Thank you for your very clear response. (Why can't more people on this board be rational and civil?)

I would agree with a lot of what you say, including legalizing all drugs (although I would leave it to the free market to manufacture and advertise and sell them).

Clearly, poverty is a "risk factor" for crime. And clearly, criminal behavior -- including violent crime -- is not confined to poor people, or to Blacks, by any means.

However, I don't think that "poverty" is much of an explanation, at least not by itself.

Consider these examples:

(1) In the old South, lynchings of Blacks were not uncommon. And they were brutal, disgusting things -- burning people alive, cutting off their extremities and passing them around as souvenirs. Now ... was the bestial behavior of these whites caused by poverty? I don't think so, in any substantive sense. Poor whites in the North did not do such things, except perhaps during race riots when law and order broke down. But in the South, law and order condoned lynchings. Approval of lynching was part of the popular (white) culture. Giving more money to poor Southern whites would not have had any effect on their behavior towards Blacks. Or so it seems to me.

Similarly, when we find brutal genocidal behavior around the world, I don't think it tells us much to say, "Well, it was the poverty ..." when Serbs massacre Muslims or when Croats massacred Serbs, when Hutus butchered Tutsis, etc.

Now you could say, poverty in these cases is a marker for a social system that is defective in some way or other. And so it would be, but there would be many other markers too.

(2) Black crime has, I believe, gone up significantly in the last few decades, tracking the Black illegitimacy rate. But Black poverty has gone down. I don't have the figures to hand at the moment, unfortunately, but I can get them.

(3) There are other communities, racial minorities in fact, which have been very poor when they have arrived here. For instance, Vietnamese refugees, or Russian Jews at the turn of the century. We did not see violent crime from these groups, commensurate with their poverty.

(4) Consider this possibility: crime breeds poverty. If I want to start a factory which hires low-wage unskilled labor, and if I knew nothing about the Black crime rate, I might consider locating it in a Black area: rents would be low, and my workers would be nearby. But no one in their right mind would do such a thing as soon as they learned about the crime rate.

(5) There are plenty of jobs in America for unskilled workers. People risk arid death to cross the border deserts to get here to take those jobs; they seal themselves into containers and cross the Pacific Ocean to get those jobs. If you went to the most rabidly anti-American country in the world and offered free citizenship and transport to America, with only the right to hunt for a job once you got there, you would be trampled in the rush.

The problem is not the lack of jobs, it's the deep-seated self-destructive culture among Blacks, which sees teenager girls getting pregnant without a husband, and young men scorning the "chump change" of the many jobs which are available to them. (I agree that the insane drug laws play a large part here.)

How do we change that culture? Beats me, but I suspect the change mainly has to come from within the Black community. Outside forces which try to change them will be as successful as they have been in bringing democratic culture to Iraq.

(6) There actually have been literally hundreds -- probably thousands -- of government programs aimed at combatting poverty. These run from simple second-chance educational schemes, to job-retraining, to lifeskill teaching ... none of them have much impact. They are similar to efforts to rehabilitate violent criminals in prison: you can find a little effect here and there, but when you control for the fact that the people who volunteer to take part in these schemes are a motivated minority, some of whom would have succeeded on their own, you are not left with much to be optimistic about. Of course, the social scientists who run these schemes don't like to trumpet these facts, for obvious reasons.

Even Head Start, which you mentioned (and which I was a teacher in, in Harlem in the mid-60s) has very, very modest results. The evidence for any lasting serious improvement, once the child has been out of the scheme for a year or two, is very weak. (I know there are some studies which show some small improvement, and others which show none. But the reality is, for the money and effort, you don't get much return at all.)

The billions spent on the so-called War on Poverty were money down the drain. In fact, they were billions spent to make things worse, due to the idiotic approach at the time of "empowering local communities of poor people," which just meant subsidizing agitators and outright criminals like the Black Panthers.

Now these are not facts to be happy about. I am sure even the most leather-hearted conservative could be convinced to support a tax hike to fund a government program to seriously reduce poverty and crime in America, if evidence could be produced showing that it would work.

By the way, many conservatives really believe, secretly, that people can be easily motivated by money, and that human behavior is not difficult to change. This is why they supported cutting off welfare benefits for single mothers who kept having children while on welfare. But in fact, cutting off benefits made little difference. Peoples' behavior has complex, subtle causes, which we do not understand.

One thing which many conservatives would support would be a system of school choice for Black children's parents, so that the more ambitious can escape the dead hand of the state school system. Where this has tried it has had some success, although so far as I can see, the results have not been overwhelming. (As in the case of Head Start, or rehabilitation schemes, the evidence is mixed, and often the people conducting the research have an emotional and even financial stake in finding certain results. So I take the studies that have been done here, even those which support my side, with a grain of salt.)

It would be wonderful if sensible liberals and non-ideologue conservatives could agree on some set of measures to address the problems of American Blacks. It is a pleasure to discuss this question with you.

 

[jillian]

Jillian. Thank you for your very clear response. (Why can't more people on this board be rational and civil?)

Awwwwwwwwwww.... shucks... backatcha. But you haven't seen me when I get angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. *to paraphrase Clint Eastwood* ;o)

I would agree with a lot of what you say, including legalizing all drugs (although I would leave it to the free market to manufacture and advertise and sell them).

Well, I'm not much on the pharmaceutical companies that charge us through the nose for prescriptions while selling them cheaper elsewhere. I think perhaps under strict government controls, we might have a compromise. But any oversight agency would have to be well-funded and have adequate enforcement personnel to do their job.

Clearly, poverty is a "risk factor" for crime. And clearly, criminal behavior -- including violent crime -- is not confined to poor people, or to Blacks, by any means.

Agreed.

However, I don't think that "poverty" is much of an explanation, at least not by itself.

Also agreed.

Consider these examples:

(1) In the old South, lynchings of Blacks were not uncommon. And they were brutal, disgusting things -- burning people alive, cutting off their extremities and passing them around as souvenirs. Now ... was the bestial behavior of these whites caused by poverty? I don't think so, in any substantive sense. Poor whites in the North did not do such things, except perhaps during race riots when law and order broke down. But in the South, law and order condoned lynchings. Approval of lynching was part of the popular (white) culture. Giving more money to poor Southern whites would not have had any effect on their behavior towards Blacks. Or so it seems to me.

There you address the issue of culture of violence...something which surely exists in terms of black on black crime and gang culture. It also exists among hate groups who see violence against their preferred target(s) of hate as acceptable behavior as you illustrated.

Similarly, when we find brutal genocidal behavior around the world, I don't think it tells us much to say, "Well, it was the poverty ..." when Serbs massacre Muslims or when Croats massacred Serbs, when Hutus butchered Tutsis, etc.

Again... a culture of violence which de-humanizes the objects of their hatred. It's why the Neuremberg Laws designated Jews as verminskeit (I hope the spelling is correct). Once the target is de-humanized, it is much easier to justify violence.

Now you could say, poverty in these cases is a marker for a social system that is defective in some way or other. And so it would be, but there would be many other markers too.

Yes. But we were talking about black crime rates, which DOES seem to correlate with poverty. There may be increased rates of crime, but those tend to occur in impoverished areas, probably with greater frequency. One wouldn't find it among black gentry.

(2) Black crime has, I believe, gone up significantly in the last few decades, tracking the Black illegitimacy rate. But Black poverty has gone down. I don't have the figures to hand at the moment, unfortunately, but I can get them.

See above. I think this fits perfectly with the cycle of crime and poverty and the lack of male influence in much of poor black culture. That feeds into a lack of money, a lack of structure, girls getting pregnant because there are no strong parental controls. They then have no knowledge to pass on to THEIR children because they didn't learn any better from their own mothers.

What is amazing is that there are people who are able to overcome these deficits. They are able to break the cycle. I am not a sociologist, so can't say with any certainty WHY some people are able to do this. It does exist though.

I have also noted in conversation with others that poverty breeds strange role models. To a poor child, who doesn't see the value of education or effort, or thinks that no matter what he does, he will be discriminated against or have no opportunities, the role models are the people with money and girls. Who are those people? Drug dealers, gang members and criminals.

(3) There are other communities, racial minorities in fact, which have been very poor when they have arrived here. For instance, Vietnamese refugees, or Russian Jews at the turn of the century. We did not see violent crime from these groups, commensurate with their poverty.

But those groups have always been upwardly mobile. They came here TO BE upwardly mobile. That was already pre-programmed into the culture. There is always the sense of sacrifice so the next generation can do better. I don't like to play the slave card because I think at some point, people need to go beyond their history. However, it should be noted that blacks are the one group who didn't come here willingly and didn't benefit from the fruits of their labor when they did. Perhaps there is a part of black culture that stands in the way. As I said, though, there are so many who have overcome this, that it may be silly to make note of it. I do, however, think there is a lack of value placed on education and upward mobility in parts of the black community as well as a lack of knowledge about what it takes to BE upwardly mobile.

I'm not sure what we do about it. I think we do a disservice when we toss money at it because we create a culture of dependence. What I do believe is that it would be better for us as a society to fund job training programs, daycare for the kids of single moms so they can go to work and limits on welfare. We've already done much of this. We just haven't funded the training programs and daycare as we should.

(4) Consider this possibility: crime breeds poverty. If I want to start a factory which hires low-wage unskilled labor, and if I knew nothing about the Black crime rate, I might consider locating it in a Black area: rents would be low, and my workers would be nearby. But no one in their right mind would do such a thing as soon as they learned about the crime rate.

That's only partially true. Often, we find businesses NOT participating in poorer neighborhoods, leaving them ecomonically stagnant. For example, they just came out with a study showing that banks were not moving branches into minority communities. This is not because those communities have no working people. It's because the "big money" may be elsewhere. Again, it's a chicken and egg situation. The question is, where do we intervene and how do we break the cycle.

Again, I'd point out that most black crime is "black on black" and really shouldn't be an issue in terms of establishing economic development zones.

(5) There are plenty of jobs in America for unskilled workers. People risk arid death to cross the border deserts to get here to take those jobs; they seal themselves into containers and cross the Pacific Ocean to get those jobs. If you went to the most rabidly anti-American country in the world and offered free citizenship and transport to America, with only the right to hunt for a job once you got there, you would be trampled in the rush.

Well, yes... but Americans don't take those jobs. Perhaps if minimum wage were a living wage, there would be incentives to do so. As it is, assistance often lets people live better than those jobs. Hence my assertion that we should be elevating wages and training people better.

The problem is not the lack of jobs, it's the deep-seated self-destructive culture among Blacks, which sees teenager girls getting pregnant without a husband, and young men scorning the "chump change" of the many jobs which are available to them. (I agree that the insane drug laws play a large part here.)

I don't know that I'd call it self-destructive or deep-seated. I think given the great gentrification that's occurred in black communities, this isn't the case. There is no question, however, that the Rockefeller Drug Laws have done terrible things to minority communities and it's time for legislators to get the cojones to repeal them.

How do we change that culture? Beats me, but I suspect the change mainly has to come from within the Black community. Outside forces which try to change them will be as successful as they have been in bringing democratic culture to Iraq.

I see where you draw your analogy, but again, I disagree, in part,with your basic premise.

(6) There actually have been literally hundreds -- probably thousands -- of government programs aimed at combatting poverty. These run from simple second-chance educational schemes, to job-retraining, to lifeskill teaching ... none of them have much impact. They are similar to efforts to rehabilitate violent criminals in prison: you can find a little effect here and there, but when you control for the fact that the people who volunteer to take part in these schemes are a motivated minority, some of whom would have succeeded on their own, you are not left with much to be optimistic about. Of course, the social scientists who run these schemes don't like to trumpet these facts, for obvious reasons.

I'm not certain it's a "motivated minority" and not the majority. You are always going to hear the horror stories rather than the success stories. So, I don't know how much of that factors in here.

Even Head Start, which you mentioned (and which I was a teacher in, in Harlem in the mid-60s) has very, very modest results. The evidence for any lasting serious improvement, once the child has been out of the scheme for a year or two, is very weak. (I know there are some studies which show some small improvement, and others which show none. But the reality is, for the money and effort, you don't get much return at all.)

Perhaps the answer is tracking "at risk" students and making sure they don't end up "out of the scheme". I think part of what happens when kids are mainstreamed is that they succumb to peer pressure. Parents who are education oriented remove their children from the worst schools, leaving the rest to be surrounded by other kids for whom success is something to be ridiculed. Perhaps that is a good part of the problem... hence, we should maybe be more careful about not having social promotion and really weeding out the kids who have no business being in school.

I also think we need to go back to a concept of education which tracks academic and trade-oriented kids differently, like they did when my parents were kids. Not every child should go to college. But getting even a job as a federal express delivery person now requires a college degree. So perhaps we need to re-evaluate some of that and actually train kids who are never going to be research scientists for trades in which they can earn a living.

The billions spent on the so-called War on Poverty were money down the drain. In fact, they were billions spent to make things worse, due to the idiotic approach at the time of "empowering local communities of poor people," which just meant subsidizing agitators and outright criminals like the Black Panthers.

Well, I hate all that "war on..." garbage.. the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war on poverty, ... a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.. to quote Will Shakespeare. I think those are usually electioneering terms and have no real resonance and solve no real problems.

Now these are not facts to be happy about. I am sure even the most leather-hearted conservative could be convinced to support a tax hike to fund a government program to seriously reduce poverty and crime in America, if evidence could be produced showing that it would work.

I'd bet against that.

By the way, many conservatives really believe, secretly, that people can be easily motivated by money, and that human behavior is not difficult to change. This is why they supported cutting off welfare benefits for single mothers who kept having children while on welfare. But in fact, cutting off benefits made little difference. Peoples' behavior has complex, subtle causes, which we do not understand.

Yes... but the money used to motivate people to do good, has to be more than the money they can make doing bad. Hence my concept of getting rid of the whole illegal drug culture which is a financial windfall to the people on the sales end.

One thing which many conservatives would support would be a system of school choice for Black children's parents, so that the more ambitious can escape the dead hand of the state school system. Where this has tried it has had some success, although so far as I can see, the results have not been overwhelming. (As in the case of Head Start, or rehabilitation schemes, the evidence is mixed, and often the people conducting the research have an emotional and even financial stake in finding certain results. So I take the studies that have been done here, even those which support my side, with a grain of salt.)

I don't believe in school choice. I think we should make all our schools good enough where your kid goes to the school down the block like we used to. And I say this as a mother who drives her kid a mile away from his zoned school every day because the zoned school isn't as good. (Through a series of acts by a former mayor of ours that I won't go into right now).

I do know there are many members of the black community who have fought very hard to get funding for their local schools so the schools can offer more to their students than metal detectors and "mainstreaming" special ed kids with regular students. (which I think benefits neither, btw).

It would be wonderful if sensible liberals and non-ideologue conservatives could agree on some set of measures to address the problems of American Blacks. It is a pleasure to discuss this question with you.

It would be wonderful... I think it would certainly be worth the effort. But what do you think the chances are of it happening in this political climate?

Pleasure discussing this with you, too.

 

[Doug]

Jillian: Okay, we have both fired our best shots. There is only a bit that you have said which I really disagree with strongly, and for those parts, argument can wait.

What might be useful -- maybe on a new thread -- is to examine various government programs aimed at behavior modification (which is what we are talking about, in part) and at providing opportunities for advancement for disadvantaged people, both those which have worked -- if any! -- and those which have not. Or rather, trying to find academic and near-academic studies of such programs. I've already been doing a bit of amateur research on this myself.

As for some conservative-liberal co-operation. Well, you are probably right. In fact, I fear it is more going to be like conservatives in the wilderness making suggestions to liberals in power, since I suspect the Republicans have managed to drive millions of centrist voters into the liberal camp for a generation.

And I will remember to try very hard not to get you angry.

 

[RightWingSpirit]

what O'Reilly said was not racist. Poorly worded? Perhaps, but we all have moments like that.

Now someone get the man SPF 200.
He might burst out in flames!!!

 

[William Joyce]

I hope you don't mind, but I think I'll jump in here. I'd suggest that it is not so much "color" that is causative, but, rather, poverty. I'd suggest that regardless of race or ethnicity, populations in which there is a greater rate of poverty, will evidence higher rates of criminal activity.

Then Jews of Central Europe a century ago would have become and remained criminals at the rate of American blacks today.

But they didn't.

You're putting the cart before the horse.

The mental explanation is easy: it's much more comforting to believe that an intangible llike "poverty" causes problems. But intangibles don't cause problems. People do. A people who are for shit, will be shit. You can dress it up at the edges. But the hard truth is that blacks just don't have it. A few get ahead, and everyone points to them as the "rule." But the truth is much more painful.