Criminalized minorities

[spot]

I have two observations.

The number of people brought to mainland North America from Africa and sold as slaves is of the order of three million. [1]

More than one in ten of the entire world prison population today is a direct descendant of these slaves. [2]

Is this a reflection on the nature of slavery? Is it a coincidence?



[1] http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/slave04.htm

[2] 2005 US prison pop. 2,186,230

world prison population 9 million http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf

4,682 per 100000 male 347 female http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/pjim05.pdf

12.8% of 296,410,404 = 38 million

19m = 890,000 male 66000 female (non-hispanic)

956000 total black prison population http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

[K.Snyder]

Nature of slavery not so much as the civil rights.

Coincidence - not hardly.

My opinion of course

[spot]

K.Snyder wrote: Nature of slavery not so much as the civil rights.You're the first person not to have thrown his hands up in the air and refused point-blank to believe the possibility that the statistic might be true. Congratulations.

For how many years have full civil rights been enforced by law in all areas of life in the USA?

How many more years of such enforcement will it take to remove the race element from US prison statistics?

Is there now something beyond civil rights involved in the continuation of the imbalance?

[K.Snyder]

What is coincidence, is that I actually live in Dayton.

[spot]

Well, I went googling for an academic site that knew about these matters and that one shrieked at me, it has a lot there. It's Professor Vernellia Randall's website on "Race and Racism in American Law". I spent an hour reading there, she's taught me things.

[K.Snyder]

spot wrote:



Is there now something beyond civil rights involved in the continuation of the imbalance?


Perhaps will, and determination?

[K.Snyder]

spot wrote:

How many more years of such enforcement will it take to remove the race element from US prison statistics?




You find someone who can answer this you have found a genius, pshychic, one.

[anastrophe]

so what's the excuse for the other 90% who aren't black?

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: so what's the excuse for the other 90% who aren't black?And you're the second person not to have thrown his hands up in the air and refused point-blank to believe the possibility that the statistic might be true.

All I've done so far is to observe two facts, to see what reaction I get. I haven't said blame or guilt or right or wrong and I have especially not said excuse. Perhaps we can jointly suggest a cause. I did ask a few questions which you've chosen to ignore.

Is the correlation a reflection on the nature of slavery?

Is it a coincidence?

[buttercup]

does it matter?

[spot]

buttercup wrote: does it matter?It matters if there's mass injustice involved. It doesn't matter at all if it's justice that an adult male is 20 times more likely to be in jail today than the world average adult male if he lives in the USA and he's descended from those three million slaves. Is it just?

Perhaps the choice of people to kidnap or sell to the slavers on the African coast was made on the basis of accumulating the most evil criminal scum of the earth, whose inherited criminal characteristics would necessitate their locking up at such a disproportionate rate two or three hundred years later. Would such a cause be capable of increasing the chance of a US black adult male being in prison today, compared to world adult males, by a factor of over 20? It's possible, perhaps. So, there's a proposed mechanism to explain the correlation. I'm sure it's testable, and I find it absolutely unlikely.

I find it far more likely to assume that the people kidnapped or sold to the slavers were typical average people, with neither more nor less criminal tendency than anyone else on the planet.

What changed for them?

Can we think of any alternative reason for the correlation?



http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp02/wp-02.pdf

World population aged 0-14 29%

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SA ... _2&_sse=on

11.9m US black male 18+

2310m world adult male

1 : 194 of world adult male population is US black

1 : 9.4 of of world prison population is US black

20.6 time more likely

[buttercup]

what do you intend to do about it spot?

[spot]

Diuretic wrote: Where is the mass injustice? If someone, regardless of racial or ethnic background, receives a fair trial and is sentenced in accord with prevailing judicial standards there is no injustice - at least in a jurisprudential sense.I think injustice has an ethical sense too. That's what I'm exploring. I agree with you entirely that there is no "jurisprudential" injustice implied by my question.

buttercup wrote: what do you intend to do about it spot?Talk it over in the thread, see where it leads.

Is anyone going to vote in favor of the initial slaves being the most evil criminal scum of the earth, so bad that they inevitably passed on criminal propensities to their descendants? That would solve the puzzle.

[koan]

Ralph Nader composed a letter to the Attorney General asking for more attention towards corporate crime. From this letter:

Certainly, as attorney general of the United States, you should understand the problem of corporate crime. After all, in a September 27, 2002 address to the Corporate Fraud/Responsibility Conference, you said that "the malignancy of corporate corruption threatens more than the future of a few companies -- it destroys workers' incomes, decimates families' savings and casts a shadow on the health, integrity and good name of business itself." You warned that "We cannot -- we will not -- surrender freedom for all to the tyranny of greed for the few." You told prosecutors that "with each act of justice, you send the unmistakable message that no board room is beyond the law, no executive is above the law."

...

Using conservative numbers issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for instance, criminologist Jeffrey Reiman, a professor at American University, estimated that the total cost of white-collar crime in 1997 was $338 billion. The actual cost is probably much greater. For instance, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimates that health-care fraud alone costs up to $100 billion each year. Another estimate (by University of Cincinnati Criminal Justice Professor Francis T. Cullen) suggests that the annual cost of antitrust or trade violations is at least $250 billion. By comparison, the FBI estimated that in 2002, the nation's total loss from robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson was less than $18 billion - less than a third of the estimated $60 billion Enron alone cost investors, pensioners and employees.


Corporate crime steals from the population increasing poverty and worsening the conditions that many criminals are struggling to cope with. I wonder what the ratio of rich to poor is in the jail system right now.

[spot]

koan wrote: Corporate crime steals from the population increasing poverty and worsening the conditions that many criminals are struggling to cope with. I wonder what the ratio of rich to poor is in the jail system right now.The idea of the oligarchs' own media constantly focusing public attention on street crime, while their own class steals at ten times the rate of the investigated and prosecuted sector, is the first attempt at an answer to my question which sounds sensible to me. If you select who to put under the spotlight you get a different prison demographic, that stands scrutiny. If you choose what behavior to criminalize and which categories of crime to resource the investigation of, you change the prison demographic. This is class-based rather than race-based, so far (though racism's heritage is still a class divide in US society, hence the relevance).

What has been criminalized within the last hundred years which could be made legal without any net damage to society at large, but which would more than halve prosecutions in the USA? Any offers?

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: And you're the second person not to have thrown his hands up in the air and refused point-blank to believe the possibility that the statistic might be true.



All I've done so far is to observe two facts, to see what reaction I get. I haven't said blame or guilt or right or wrong and I have especially not said excuse. Perhaps we can jointly suggest a cause. I did ask a few questions which you've chosen to ignore.



Is the correlation a reflection on the nature of slavery?



Is it a coincidence?


cum hoc, ergo propter hoc



chasing logical fallacies accomplishes nothing of value.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: cum hoc, ergo propter hoc



chasing logical fallacies accomplishes nothing of value.Perhaps you could comment first on the logical fallacy of the original post. That would be very welcome and productive.

Edit: I did, after all, ask in that first post whether this was a coincidence. By all means drop the latin and just say yes, if that's your opinion. I believe there's an association between my two assertions. Why don't you? To be a coincidence would be, in my eyes, astonishing. Would you like me to find corroboration?

What benefit does the latin carry, in your mind, anyway? You must know that anyone wanting to know what you're implying has to look it up - as I had to just now. You can convey the same opinion in English far more informatively.

I ask - and I had to look up to check - because I'd thought my two events had a temporal link more usually described as a Post hoc fallacy. The two are distinguished in these descriptions from Wikipedia:

• Correlation implies causation, also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "with this, therefore because of this") and false cause, is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are prematurely claimed to be cause and effect.Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for "after this, therefore because of this." It is often shortened to simply post hoc. Some philosophy books translate the Latin to simply: "If after, then therefore, because." Post hoc, also known as "coincidental correlation" or "false cause," is a logical fallacy which assumes or asserts that if one event happens after another, then the first must be the cause of the second. It is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence is integral to causality ” it is true that a cause always happens before its effect. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based only on the order of events, which is not an accurate indicator. That is to say, it is not always true that the first event caused the second event.Sticking to English would be so much more sensible, in my opinion.

[spot]

Diuretic wrote: I think I just made an offer. Did I?From my perspective you hit the nail on the head. I'm wondering whether we might widen the consensus or meet dissention.

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: Perhaps you could comment first on the logical fallacy of the original post. That would be very welcome and productive.


you're attempting to demonstrate a causal relationship based on correlation. i shouldn't have to spell it out spot, you're a bright chap.



by your measure, perhaps you should be asking 'what quality of being transported across the ocean in the lower decks of wooden ships could be responsible for this - can evidence be shown that those slaves who were forced to work above deck might have lower decendents with lower rates of incarceration?'





Edit: I did, after all, ask in that first post whether this was a coincidence. By all means drop the latin and just say yes, if that's your opinion.


the latin is widely known; anyone who has taken first year logic should be familiar with it as a specific term within the field. as above, you're a bright fellow, i assumed you'd be familiar with it.





What benefit does the latin carry, in your mind, anyway? You must know that anyone wanting to know what you're implying has to look it up - as I had to just now. You can convey the same opinion in English far more informatively.


as above. i apologize for assuming greater sophistication. you're throwing out statistics and suggesting conclusions that may be derived from same. it seemed, uh, logical, to assume that when at play within the fields of logic, one would have familiarity with them.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: The latin is widely known; anyone who has taken first year logic should be familiar with it as a specific term within the field. as above, you're a bright fellow, i assumed you'd be familiar with it.I thought we were writing a thread for the board users, not having a private conversation. I hope my Edit comment on Post hoc didn't cross with your post. I did have to look the term up because again (as last year) I wondered why you'd used the wrong one.

Very well, you'd like me to find corroborative evidence that being a population with restricted rights (in this case intergenerational slavery) results in subsequent generations having increased imprisonment rates compared to the wider society in which they live. That's a reasonable thing to look for. I'll report back.

[anastrophe]

i see you've modified your post significantly since i replied to it.



cum hoc ergo propter hoc is appropriate. you asked "Is this a reflection on the nature of slavery? Is it a coincidence?"



your inquiry is cum hoc ergo propter hoc. if you said that slavery itself was the cause of current incarceration rates, then it would be post hoc ergo propter hoc.

[anastrophe]

anastrophe wrote: can evidence be shown that those slaves who were forced to work above deck might have lower decendents with lower rates of incarceration?'


drop the first 'lower'.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: i see you've modified your post significantly since i replied to it.



cum hoc ergo propter hoc is appropriate. you asked "Is this a reflection on the nature of slavery? Is it a coincidence?"



your inquiry is cum hoc ergo propter hoc. if you said that slavery itself was the cause of current incarceration rates, then it would be post hoc ergo propter hoc.If you can't see the temporal causality in my original post then I can only apologise for not spelling it out more explicitly. To my mind it's blatantly implied by the two statements.

And no, of course I didn't change it after you replied - look at how close these timestamps are. I'm quite sure they crossed as we were writing.

[koan]

spot wrote:

What has been criminalized within the last hundred years which could be made legal without any net damage to society at large, but which would more than halve prosecutions in the USA? Any offers?


I'd say drugs.

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: If you can't see the temporal causality in my original post then I can only apologise for not spelling it out more explicitly. To my mind it's blatantly implied by the two statements.


okay, so you *are* saying that the reason blacks of today have high incarceration rates is because their ancestors were slaves, not inquiring on the nature of slavery itself. regardless, it's a logical fallacy. please, if you would, explain why my suggested correlation is any less accurate than yours.



have you investigated incarceration rates for descendents of slaves in the carribean? are they higher or lower? if they are not exactly identical to those of the united states, then you can rest your mind at ease, as your inquiry will have easily been tested false.





And no, of course I didn't change it after you replied - look at how close these timestamps are. I'm quite sure they crossed as we were writing.


yes, that's correct. i wasn't implying you were attempting subterfuge, i was frustrated at replying to a post since modified. it's generally better - in my mere opinion as just another member of forumgarden - that any significant changes much beyond correcting typos or formatting really belong in a new post, in order to avoid that inconvenience.

[koan]

The question arose in my mind as to whether slavery is over. Upon looking for definitions of slavery it can be found that anthropologist debate the definitive definition. One site enters this as the most thought provoking attempt:

...a preliminary definition of slavery on the level of personal relations: slavery is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons. Orlando Patterson, 1982 Slavery and Social Death


The opposite of slavery is generally thought to be "freedom", which of course causes problems as a definition. There is the legal term "slavery" and the general concept. I question if the class of people historically refered to as slaves have been released from the legal bondage into the general state of slavery. The main difference being the small chance of release from bondage.

[koan]

I'm pretty sure this article directly addresses the question of the OP.

excerpt:

It is not an accident that the low social capital is very clearly associated with the depth of slavery in the nineteenth century, and that is because slavery as a system and the post-slavery reconstruction period were institutionally designed to destroy social capital. This is what slavery was about; it was about destroying social capital, because social capital, among Blacks at least, and later in post-slavery, social connection between Blacks and poor Whites, would have threatened the structure of power. I am sure it is not an accident that there is a strong correlation between past slavery and current levels of social capital.


It is a paper in pdf format. Found here.

Social Capital: Measurement and Consequences

Robert Putnam

[anastrophe]

some things to ponder. while this thread is about criminalized minorities, focusing on the incarceration byproduct of same, i think crimes themselves - whether resulting in incarceration or not - are worth examining.



in terms of murder, the majority of same are young black males killing other young black males. many possible reasons for this have been proposed (i'm relying on memory, which may be faulty). some have suggested that the 'explosion' of black on black crime in the last thirty years is due to the 'Great Society' era, where government handouts to the poor were greatly increased. this sometimes led to poor women having additional children to increase the handouts. as well, with basic support of the family taken care of by welfare, many families lacked a male head of household. the lack of masculine contribution in developing boys can have (i'm not saying *does* have) a detrimental effect. young men without male role models can resort to violence more easily than otherwise. others would argue that the lack of testosterone influence should have a lessening effect on violence.



still others argue that the real explosion began in the 1980's, when crack cocaine arrived on the scene. the trade in this extremely habituating illicit drug was incredibly profitable, leading to violent turf wars (turf wars always accompany trade in illicit drugs - see prohibition).



yet others suggest that this black on black crime is - going back further than spots inquiry regarding slavery - an expression of ancient tribal hostilities, which were carried over from those who came from tribal backgrounds. violence as a rite of passage among young males is common in many cultures, and crosses racial boundaries.



going back to the slave trade, one can ask whether there were selective influences at work. most of the slave gatherers on african soil were black themselves, essentially the middlemen for the slave traders. in 'catching' slaves, one can argue that a form of natural selection was at work - only the slower, less physically capable would be caught. this would suggest that weaker africans were the larger population of the slaves sent to america. on the other hand, the ride across the atlantic acted as a secondary selective influence. illness, starvation, ran rampant through the slave stock shackled below deck - this would tend to favor the *stronger* among those taken to be the ones that would survive. perhaps one could argue that those with the tenacity to survive through capture, passage, and life as a slave, could have an inate, inherent strength of will - of inner rebellion, to push on even under the most horrible of living circumstances. perhaps that rebellious nature is behind the increased violence.



thinking in terms of incarceration, there may well also been negative buffering factors in the past that artificially *lowered* the representation of blacks in the prison population. before the 20th century, black on white crime was rare; black on black crime was ignored. no prosecution, no conviction, no incarceration. black on white crime was dealt with summarily; lynching or summary execution without trial, jury, etc.. this carried over into the twentieth century, where crime within black neighborhoods was neglected in terms of enforcement; the term 'niggertown saturday night' was common vernacular within police forces, and from it is derived the term to describe a cheap pistol, the saturday night special.



the purpose of this lengthy rambling? perhaps to suggest that attempting to derive simple answers from simplistic correlations - whether to suggest directly or to imply other causation - accomplishes almost nothing. the above ramblings are intellectual masturbation.



almost half of those incarcerated in the united states are non-minority, non-violent drug offenders. you want to halve the prison population? take off the race blinders. decriminalize pot usage, sell it over the counter like cigarettes and tax it like cigarettes. work on release of those current non-violent offenders crowding the prisons. lower prison crowding means lower prison violence. tax revenue can be applied to law enforcement, and though generally in vain, can be used to attempt reform of violent offenders.

[K.Snyder]

Heres an interesting read I had read last night, as this issue had sparked my interest. From Manning Marable - Columbia University

http://www.afsc.org/pwork/1200/122k05.htm

[Accountable]

I don't see the point in this exercise. I don't see the point in Spot researching statistics then showing surprise that those statistics are accepted. I don't see the point of going back 200 years to find an excuse for an individual's bad behavior today. It's no more valid - even less, actually- than blaming a person's alcoholism on his Irish ancestry or violent temper on a Scottish surname.



Here's another correlation. Likely less than one percent of these criminals worked for AT&T at the time of their crime. Do we blame AT&T for not employing them?



Let's find a meaningful correlation, shall we? What about the other 90% of the criminals? (Note that I avoid the word 'criminalized' because it sounds like they haven't really broken any laws. I believe criminals should be criminalized. I'm kind of bigotted that way.) What do they have in common with this smaller group Spot's culled from the larger population? Might we find something more valid than ancestry? Income perhaps? Types of people the criminal associated with? Parental involvement?



Purely inferrence on my part: It seems that some want to forgive the sins of the sons because of the sufferings of the fathers. Spot isn't concerned with the crimes these people committed so much as the bigotry of the people that put them in prison. Maybe if we ("they" in Spot's case, since he's far more interested in cleaning up America than sweeping his own back yard) could just stop our racial hatred, they wouldn't commit any more crimes.



The problem is, ethnic groups don't commit crimes, individuals do.

[K.Snyder]

Accountable wrote: I don't see the point in this exercise. I don't see the point in Spot researching statistics then showing surprise that those statistics are accepted. I don't see the point of going back 200 years to find an excuse for an individuals bad behavior today. It's no more valid - even less, actually- than blaming a person's alcoholism on his Irish ancestry or violent temper on a Scottish surname.



Here's another correlation. Likely less than one percent of these criminals worked for AT&T at the time of their crime. Do we blame AT&T for not employing them?



Let's find a meaningful correlation, shall we? What about the other 90% of the criminals? (Note that I avoid the word 'criminalized' because it sounds like they haven't really broken any laws. I believe criminals should be criminalized. I'm kind of bigotted that way.) What do they have in common with this smaller group Spot's culled from the larger population? Might we find something more valid than ancestry? Income perhaps? Types of people the criminal associated with? Parental involvement?



Purely inferrence on my part: It seems that some want to forgive the sins of the sons because of the sufferings of the fathers. Spot isn't concerned with the crimes these people committed so much as the bigotry of the people that put them in prison. Maybe if we ("they" in Spot's case, since he's far more interested in cleaning up America than sweeping his own back yard) could just stop our racial hatred, they wouldn't commit any more crimes.



The problem is, ethnic groups don't commit crimes, individuals do.








Im not so sure seeking insight can be correlated with such an accusation.

Are you to suggest such a question is illogical?

From the dawn of man kind we have known the truths of criminalised behavior to be evident with that of the man forced into poverty. Poverty has been and always will be a key factor in the amount of crimes being committed on a daily basis. Having said that, without justifying the means of such behaviour, while at the same time showing empathy as opposed to judgemental forkitude, one has to wonder why a people being Labeled as a minority are the ones actually being incarcerated.

Is it due to the fact of racial profiling limiting the success of the enthusiastic mindset of the peoples in question, or pure coincidence?

Why should such a question be intolerable?

Seems like a ligitamate one to me.

[Bryn Mawr]

spot wrote: I thought we were writing a thread for the board users, not having a private conversation. I hope my Edit comment on Post hoc didn't cross with your post. I did have to look the term up because again (as last year) I wondered why you'd used the wrong one.

Very well, you'd like me to find corroborative evidence that being a population with restricted rights (in this case intergenerational slavery) results in subsequent generations having increased imprisonment rates compared to the wider society in which they live. That's a reasonable thing to look for. I'll report back.


You might just as well be suggesting that, being a population with extended rights and for many generations being conditioned to arresting a given section of the community, the police are continuing the practices formed during the period of slavery.

[spot]

Bryn Mawr wrote: [...] the practices formed during the period of slavery.Jim Crow, though the focus and nature of what's legal and what isn't is a key to this (as it was then) - I don'th think you can reach back to pre-Civil War law enforcement, things are just too different in that area. Between now and the fifties, definitely.

[Bryn Mawr]

spot wrote: Jim Crow, though the focus and nature of what's legal and what isn't is a key to this (as it was then) - I don'th think you can reach back to pre-Civil War law enforcement, things are just too different in that area. Between now and the fifties, definitely.


My mistake - I still confuse the apartheid practiced in the south until recently with slavery.

[anastrophe]

K.Snyder wrote: Im not so sure seeking insight can be correlated with such an accusation.



Are you to suggest such a question is illogical?



From the dawn of man kind we have known the truths of criminalised behavior to be evident with that of the man forced into poverty. Poverty has been and always will be a key factor in the amount of crimes being committed on a daily basis.


actually, that's not a key factor at all. most crime is about power, not poverty. when you suggest that poverty is a key factor, you affront the vast and overwhelming majority of poor people, as they do not commit crimes.

[anastrophe]

anastrophe wrote: actually, that's not a key factor at all. most crime is about power, not poverty. when you suggest that poverty is a key factor, you affront the vast and overwhelming majority of poor people, as they do not commit crimes.


correction, silly conflation. most violent crime is about power, not poverty.

[K.Snyder]

anastrophe wrote: correction, silly conflation. most violent crime is about power, not poverty.


Where I live, on the west end of the inner city, murder runs rampant related to the selling and buying of crack cocaine and other various drugs. I dont see too many middle class kids growing up hooked on crack and heroin, and killing people in cold blood while they sit in their vehicles in the middle of the street.

I dont buy how anyone can say that poverty isnt a key factor in crime, whether its violent or not. Besides, were talking about incarceration, not just violent crimes.

[Accountable]

K.Snyder wrote: Im not so sure seeking insight can be correlated with such an accusation.



Are you to suggest such a question is illogical?



From the dawn of man kind we have known the truths of criminalised behavior to be evident with that of the man forced into poverty. Poverty has been and always will be a key factor in the amount of crimes being committed on a daily basis. Having said that, without justifying the means of such behaviour, while at the same time showing empathy as opposed to judgemental forkitude, one has to wonder why a people being Labeled as a minority are the ones actually being incarcerated.



Is it due to the fact of racial profiling limiting the success of the enthusiastic mindset of the peoples in question, or pure coincidence?



Why should such a question be intolerable?



Seems like a ligitamate one to me.I never called it intolerable, only that I don't see the point.



Only a small number of "a people being Labeled as a minority" are committing crimes. The vast majority pursue the American Dream as they see it, or at least obey the law while living their lives as they see fit. The ones "actually being incarcerated" as you put it are the ones convicted of committing crimes - criminals.

[Accountable]

K.Snyder wrote: Where I live, on the west end of the inner city, murder runs rampant related to the selling and buying of crack cocaine and other various drugs. I dont see too many middle class kids growing up hooked on crack and heroin, and killing people in cold blood while they sit in their vehicles in the middle of the street.



I dont buy how anyone can say that poverty isnt a key factor in crime, whether its violent or not. Besides, were talking about incarceration, not just violent crimes.Assuming for the sake of the conversation that you're right. How are poverty-stricken descendents of slaves different from any other poverty-stricken people?

[K.Snyder]

Accountable wrote: Assuming for the sake of the conversation that you're right. How are poverty-stricken descendents of slaves different from any other poverty-stricken people?


My point in this goes back to my first post in this thread. Which, I believe, is largely due to the civil rights restricting the opportunities these people could have had, which in turn would result in better housing, better living conditions, and an end result of not nearly as many crimes being committed by these people forced into poverty. Am I justifying their criminalistic behavior? no. well all but the stealing aspect. I mean come on. If bread were only made for whites only wouldnt you try and steal a loaf to survive?

I suppose to sum it all up, what makes them different is racial profiling.

How could one deny this?

[Accountable]

K.Snyder wrote: My point in this goes back to my first post in this thread. Which, I believe, is largely due to the civil rights restricting the opportunities these people could have had, which in turn would result in better housing, better living conditions, and an end result of not nearly as many crimes being committed by these people forced into poverty. Am I justifying their criminalistic behavior? no. well all but the stealing aspect. I mean come on. If bread were only made for whites only wouldnt you try and steal a loaf to survive?



I suppose to sum it all up, what makes them different is racial profiling.



How could one deny this?

[Accountable]

Diuretic wrote: You're defining "crime" far too narrowly. The late Ken Lay was a criminal, so was Michael Millken, so is Bernard Ebbers, so is Dennis Kozlowsk, so is Randy Cunningham....and so on.



But that wasn't what spot was on about.
Any descendent of American slaves has a tougher row to hoe than most other Americans. I don't dispute that. It seems that contrubutors to this thread are using that ancestral history to give current criminals some kind of pass.



Let's see some meaningful statistics. What's the percentage of this group that don't go to prison, that finish high school, further their education or get jobs, that raise responsible children, that contribute to society?



But be careful that you don't take statistics about inner-city denizens and try to claim it fairly represents what we call African-Americans.

[anastrophe]

Accountable wrote: Any descendent of American slaves has a tougher row to hoe than most other Americans. I don't dispute that.


i do. we're generations out from the last living actual slaves from the south. the last person who claimed to have been born into slavery died in 1979 - also claiming he was 137 years old, which strains credulity. Nevertheless, the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863. setting aside the century of racism and segregation in the intervening hundred years - and focusing again on the specifics of the claim - that a descendent of a slave has a tougher row to hoe - doesn't sway me.



John H. Johnson:



Born January 19, 1918 in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas, John H. Johnson was the grandson of slaves. His father Leroy Johnson was killed in a sawmill accident when "young Johnny" was eight years of age. His mother Gertrude Jenkins Johnson further impoverished did not give hope and her faith they could have more than what Arkansas offered. She saved her meager earnings as a cook and washerwoman for years until she could afford to move her family to Chicago.(1)



Born in Arkansas City, Arkansas, in 1918, Johnson began his publishing career in 1942 as editor and publisher of Negro Digest, later Black World, according to a biography published on his company's Web site.

Three years later, he began publishing Ebony, which the company describes as "the No. 1 African-American magazine in the world."

And in 1951 he founded Jet, which the company calls "the world's No. 1 African-American newsweekly magazine."(2)

He had an estimated worth of $500 million US when he died.



(1)http://www.nathanielturner.com/johnhjohnson.htm

(2)http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/08/johnso ... index.html



am i citing an 'exception' to the implied rule that some here are suggesting that blacks are more prone to be "criminalized" than whites? well, no. i'm citing an extreme. but the reality is that the majority of african americans don't commit crimes. just like the majority of whites and other "races". are blacks incarcerated at a higher rate than other "races"? yes. it's certainly a combination of racism, opportunity, and (sub)culture.



but really, the issue here is, why is spot not providing statistics for descendents of slaves in the carribean? why does spot, who lives in the UK, not have anything to say about incarceration rates amongst minorities in the UK? are we to understand that incarceration rates in the UK are color-blind, so to speak? that would be interesting. more interesting than the bimonthly "here's what's wrong with america" posts we see regularly.