This is bullshit. Is there some epidemic of white-on-black murder, assault, burglary, etc.? No. Not just no, fuck no, there isn't. As Shelby Steele says:
The civil rights community and the liberal media live by the poetic truth that America is still a reflexively racist society, and that this remains the great barrier to black equality. But this "truth" has a lot of lie in it. America has greatly evolved since the 1960s. There are no longer any respectable advocates of racial segregation. And blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites. If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this-a call "to turn the moment into a movement"-it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
By sidetracking this and pretending there's an epidemic of white-on-black crime, what these people are really doing is ensuring that the black-on-black crime, the real epidemic, never gets addressed. And this is the best way to destroy the black community -- mass imprisonment of black males and making sure those who don't get imprisoned are always in danger of being killed. That's the real institutionalized racism in America.
I find it hard to take seriously a source that thinks that a person can't be white because of having a parent from a Hispanic nation. The fact that the US considers there to be some huge gulf between 'White people' and people who have any sort of Hispanic ancestry tends to strike me as very telling about American attitudes towards race.
I'd also note that what the woman in this video is saying is far more profound than just addressing the issue of white people murdering black people. She's talking about how western culture presents black men as threatening. Zimmerman took that message to an extreme but it's not just Zimmerman whose attitudes she'd like to see change.
Wait a sec. Are you seriously saying that Western Culture presents black men as threatening, but the reality is that black men are no more dangerous than, say, Asian men or White men? Is this what you're saying? That the stereotype is not born out by the statistics on violent crime?
Suppose every white person's attitude changed and not a single white person on the planet viewed black males as threatening. How would this even begin to address the real threat to blacks???
While African Americans comprise 13.5% of the U.S. Population, 43% of all murder victims in 2007 were African American, 93.1% of whom were killed by African Americans.
Victimizations of African Americans from violent crime which include the following; rape/sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple Assault was 24.3% in 2007, with the highest percentages of victimizations within the age ranges of 15-24 totaling a percentage greater than 38%.
White attitudes toward blacks are IRRELEVANT for the purposes of keeping blacks alive. That's the point.
"Are you seriously saying that Western Culture presents black men as threatening, but the reality is that black men are no more dangerous than, say, Asian men or White men"
Before I address anything specific, perhaps it's best that we clarify your position explicitly.
Your position is that black men are more dangerous and violent than other men? You also presumably don't find this generalisation at all problematic?
It depends on what we're talking about. In terms of day-to-day violent crime in the United States, black men are orders-of-magnitude more dangerous and violent than other men. This is backed up with every single crime statistic there is.
If we're talking about government-sactioned murder, White and Asian men are clearly more dangerous. 20th Century Asia and Western Europe resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths by governments and their appointed thugs. White men used 2 nuclear weapons on civilian populations. And so on. As nasty as Africa has been with tribal warfare and warlordism, they're amateurs when it comes to mass-slaughter.
I find everything I just said to be non-problematic.
Okay, to circle back to my initial statement that you found questionable.
Do you think that the statistics you just cited are a good basis to perceive black people you might see in the street as threatening and potentially violent?
That's like asking if you think that crime statistics are a good reason to lock the doors of your house or not leave a laptop computer on the seat of your car? Of course we still put locks on our doors and don't leave our valuables in plain view in our cars despite the fact that any one person's risk of being a victim of crime is relatively low.
What we're dealing with is a problem known in economics as "asymmetry of information". You know that black men in the United States are dangerous at a much higher rate than non-black men. But you also know that the majority of black men in the United States are not dangerous. But you don't know which particular black men are. Suppose we were talking about STDs. You know you don't have gonorrhea and you know the infection rate is like 1% or less, but you still only have protected sex.
Now, back to your question. If you are a black teenager, is it racist for you to be more nervous if you see a black male approaching than a white male approaching you, given that black males kill blacks at a rate 9 times greater than white males kill blacks?
You didn't explicitly answer the question but what you seem to be saying is 'yes, it is reasonable to treat black strangers in the street as suspicious because of these statistics'.
However, I don't think your reasoning is sound. I think the problem is reflected in your choice of examples.
For instance, if we're to talk about STD prevention then we need to compare two types of sex that can transmit STDs at different rates. Unprotected anal sex is a number of times more likely to transmit an STD than unprotected vaginal sex; that would be a more relevant statistic. It's also quite revealing.
Clearly, a person should avoid unprotected sex in general in order to avoid STD transmission. However, even though there is a significant differences to be seen in a direct comparison between transmission with anal and vaginal sex, that shouldn't translate into a difference of attitude; you should wear a condom regardless of whether you are engaging in vaginal or anal sex. A person that gets nervous about the fear of STD transmission when having unprotected anal sex yet doesn't get nervous about STD transmission when having unprotected vaginal sex is an idiot.
Let's take a look at your question: "If you are a black teenager, is it racist for you to be more nervous if you see a black male approaching than a white male approaching you, given that black males kill blacks at a rate 9 times greater than white males kill blacks?"
Ignoring whether your statistic is accurate, let's just focus on what you've not told us; you haven't told us what proportion of black people and what proportion of white people commit murders. That's the statistic we need to see to know whether it's a significant risk.
My searches on the Internet tell me that the homicide rate for the US in 2010 was 4.7 per 100,000. link. Even assuming each homicide was committed by a different person, that still leaves us with 0.0047% of people committing homicides.
That strikes me as quite a small statistic personally; I certainly don't think that it's the kind of statistic that ought to get us feeling scared of strangers in the street.
Now to tie ethnicity into this; even assuming that all murders are committed by either black or white people, that still leaves us with only 13240 homicides being performed by around 39,125,000 black people, which is 0.0338% of black people performing homicides, which I'd say is still a rather small statistic to be getting scared of complete strangers.
The problem is that you've tried to spin this 'nine times the number' statistic to create the impression that homicide is sufficiently common amongst black people that it warrants us making assumptions about complete strangers who happen to be black. The problem with that reasoning is that nine times a very small number is still a very small number; a statistic doesn't get larger or smaller just because you put it next to a larger or smaller statistic for another group.
Just in case this isn't clear; let's go back into hypothetical land. Let's suppose we live in a world where one in a hundred million people will take being looked at in the street as motivation to pull out a knife and stab you. Those are pretty long odds that I think could be safely disregarded. If I was then to tell you that people in hats are ten times more likely to behave this way then that would be a remarkable statistical truth worthy of investigation but still leaves the odds of people in hats randomly stabbing you at one in ten million people. It would still not be the kind of statistic that would justify regarding every person in a hat with suspicion.
This is all without addressing the other problems and complexities in assessing crime statistics.
What you have suggested is not equivalent to locking your doors when you leave your house, It's only equivalent to leaving your house unlocked except when you see a black person in the neighbourhood.
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The civil rights community and the liberal media live by the poetic truth that America is still a reflexively racist society, and that this remains the great barrier to black equality. But this "truth" has a lot of lie in it. America has greatly evolved since the 1960s. There are no longer any respectable advocates of racial segregation. And blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites. If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this-a call "to turn the moment into a movement"-it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
More: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin
By sidetracking this and pretending there's an epidemic of white-on-black crime, what these people are really doing is ensuring that the black-on-black crime, the real epidemic, never gets addressed. And this is the best way to destroy the black community -- mass imprisonment of black males and making sure those who don't get imprisoned are always in danger of being killed. That's the real institutionalized racism in America.
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I'd also note that what the woman in this video is saying is far more profound than just addressing the issue of white people murdering black people. She's talking about how western culture presents black men as threatening. Zimmerman took that message to an extreme but it's not just Zimmerman whose attitudes she'd like to see change.
Reply
Suppose every white person's attitude changed and not a single white person on the planet viewed black males as threatening. How would this even begin to address the real threat to blacks???
While African Americans comprise 13.5% of the U.S. Population, 43% of all murder victims in 2007 were African American, 93.1% of whom were killed by African Americans.
Victimizations of African Americans from violent crime which include the following; rape/sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple Assault was 24.3% in 2007, with the highest percentages of victimizations within the age ranges of 15-24 totaling a percentage greater than 38%.
White attitudes toward blacks are IRRELEVANT for the purposes of keeping blacks alive. That's the point.
Reply
Before I address anything specific, perhaps it's best that we clarify your position explicitly.
Your position is that black men are more dangerous and violent than other men? You also presumably don't find this generalisation at all problematic?
Reply
If we're talking about government-sactioned murder, White and Asian men are clearly more dangerous. 20th Century Asia and Western Europe resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths by governments and their appointed thugs. White men used 2 nuclear weapons on civilian populations. And so on. As nasty as Africa has been with tribal warfare and warlordism, they're amateurs when it comes to mass-slaughter.
I find everything I just said to be non-problematic.
Reply
Do you think that the statistics you just cited are a good basis to perceive black people you might see in the street as threatening and potentially violent?
Reply
What we're dealing with is a problem known in economics as "asymmetry of information". You know that black men in the United States are dangerous at a much higher rate than non-black men. But you also know that the majority of black men in the United States are not dangerous. But you don't know which particular black men are. Suppose we were talking about STDs. You know you don't have gonorrhea and you know the infection rate is like 1% or less, but you still only have protected sex.
Now, back to your question. If you are a black teenager, is it racist for you to be more nervous if you see a black male approaching than a white male approaching you, given that black males kill blacks at a rate 9 times greater than white males kill blacks?
Reply
However, I don't think your reasoning is sound. I think the problem is reflected in your choice of examples.
For instance, if we're to talk about STD prevention then we need to compare two types of sex that can transmit STDs at different rates. Unprotected anal sex is a number of times more likely to transmit an STD than unprotected vaginal sex; that would be a more relevant statistic. It's also quite revealing.
Clearly, a person should avoid unprotected sex in general in order to avoid STD transmission. However, even though there is a significant differences to be seen in a direct comparison between transmission with anal and vaginal sex, that shouldn't translate into a difference of attitude; you should wear a condom regardless of whether you are engaging in vaginal or anal sex. A person that gets nervous about the fear of STD transmission when having unprotected anal sex yet doesn't get nervous about STD transmission when having unprotected vaginal sex is an idiot.
Let's take a look at your question: "If you are a black teenager, is it racist for you to be more nervous if you see a black male approaching than a white male approaching you, given that black males kill blacks at a rate 9 times greater than white males kill blacks?"
Ignoring whether your statistic is accurate, let's just focus on what you've not told us; you haven't told us what proportion of black people and what proportion of white people commit murders. That's the statistic we need to see to know whether it's a significant risk.
My searches on the Internet tell me that the homicide rate for the US in 2010 was 4.7 per 100,000. link. Even assuming each homicide was committed by a different person, that still leaves us with 0.0047% of people committing homicides.
That strikes me as quite a small statistic personally; I certainly don't think that it's the kind of statistic that ought to get us feeling scared of strangers in the street.
Now to tie ethnicity into this; even assuming that all murders are committed by either black or white people, that still leaves us with only 13240 homicides being performed by around 39,125,000 black people, which is 0.0338% of black people performing homicides, which I'd say is still a rather small statistic to be getting scared of complete strangers.
The problem is that you've tried to spin this 'nine times the number' statistic to create the impression that homicide is sufficiently common amongst black people that it warrants us making assumptions about complete strangers who happen to be black. The problem with that reasoning is that nine times a very small number is still a very small number; a statistic doesn't get larger or smaller just because you put it next to a larger or smaller statistic for another group.
Just in case this isn't clear; let's go back into hypothetical land. Let's suppose we live in a world where one in a hundred million people will take being looked at in the street as motivation to pull out a knife and stab you. Those are pretty long odds that I think could be safely disregarded. If I was then to tell you that people in hats are ten times more likely to behave this way then that would be a remarkable statistical truth worthy of investigation but still leaves the odds of people in hats randomly stabbing you at one in ten million people. It would still not be the kind of statistic that would justify regarding every person in a hat with suspicion.
This is all without addressing the other problems and complexities in assessing crime statistics.
Reply
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What you have suggested is not equivalent to locking your doors when you leave your house, It's only equivalent to leaving your house unlocked except when you see a black person in the neighbourhood.
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