Black Racial Violence against Whites.

[Argus]

Ferguson is back in the news with an attempt to close a nearby highway as a protest against the 'racism' which saw violent offender Michael Brown shot by police. I thought I might post something somewhat contrary to that.

There's a chicken or egg discussion going on around here in RL about Black violence. And that is whether racism causes Black violence or Black violence causes racism.

There's no question that the original form of racism which saw Africans shipped abroad as slaves was 5he bedrock form, the kind which saw them as less than human. But I personally think that has largely fallen away in most of the world. I think racism towards Black people now is based upon how people feel towards the presumed value and culture of the Black community. And I don't believe that's based on beliefs in some sort of genetic inferiority but reported and observed behaviour.

The Black community, be in Canada,the US or UK, is inherently more crime-prone and more violence prone than any other community. Much of that crime and violence is directed towards is own members but much is not. As in what provokes this topic.

Everyone knows what a flash mob is. But in Nashville, the emphasis was on the term 'mob' the other day, as a flash mob of young blacks attacked and beat random whites at a local store.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/violent-teen-mob-attacks-shoppers-workers-tenn-grocery-store-video-article-1.1931987

This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened btw. While not something I've read or heard much about, it seems mobs of young blacks, anywhere up to a thousand of them, have done this sort of thing across America. And of course, we all know about the infamous 'knockout game', which generally is played by groups of Black men and against White victims. Rarely are these attacks termed racially motivated by the authorities, regardless of what the attackers say, and we certainly aren't hearing from Barrack Obama bemoaning Black attacks on White people, or 'polar bear attacks' as they seem to be termed (attacks on whites). In fact, in many of these cases the media refuses to identify the races of the people involved. They'll report a mob of 'teens' not a mob of 'black teens'. That's something we used to see routinely here in Ottawa when the media would report 'swarmings' where 5-10-15 blacks (generally Somalian) would attack a white person, and often beat and rob them.

That same year there were 142,000 multiple-offender violent crimes against “whites” by blacks–that is to say, a bunch of blacks got together and raped, robbed, and/or attacked a “white” person. What about group attacks by “whites” on blacks? The NCVS sample reported so few that the official figure was rounded down to zero. That’s right: a group attack by “whites” on blacks is so rare that the huge NCVS sample of 160,000 people came up dry.

http://www.amren.com/news/2013/12/liberals-and-the-knockout-game/

But now, less than 24 hours after a mob of 30 black people roamed through the city’s downtown Saturday, beating, laughing, destroying property, sending three seriously hurt people to the hospital and walking away laughing, outraged citizens in Louisville are asking two questions: Why is black mob violence such a problem? And when is local media going to start telling the truth about it?

http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/roving-black-mobs-too-many-to-ignore/

Consider these incidents:

• At the Wisconsin State fair, groups of black teens numbering anywhere from 25 to 100 “were targeting anyone who was white or appeared to look white,” and beating them, according to the local police chief. At least 18 people were injured, and 30 have been arrested.
• In Denver, couples leaving restaurants were being attacked by a group of black men with baseball bats.
• A young white man named Carter Strange had his skull fractured by a mob in South Carolina. He was attacked at random while jogging.
• A young white man named Dawid Strucinski was beaten into a coma by a mob in Bayonne, NJ.
• Anna Taylor, Emily Guendelsberger, and Thomas Fitzgerald were beaten to the ground and stomped in separate Philadelphia flash mobs.
• “Every weekend in July,” according to local news, “police have battled large, flash-mob beatings and vandalism” in Greensboro, NC.
• In a mostly-white suburb of Cleveland, witnesses reported large groups of young blacks walking through the streets, “shouting profanities and racial epithets,” and one man was viciously beaten while leaving a restaurant with his wife and friends.
• A young white lady named Shaina Perry was taunted and beaten by a black mob in Milwaukee who remarked “Oh, white girl bleeds a lot.”

http://www.aim.org/special-report/aim-exclusive-media-conceal-true-nature-of-%E2%80%9Cflash-mob%E2%80%9D-racial-violence/

http://mrconservative.com/2014/08/48104-race-hustlers-silent-after-black-mob-beats-and-kills-white-college-student/

[Moonlight Graham]

There's a chicken or egg discussion going on around here in RL about Black violence. And that is whether racism causes Black violence or Black violence causes racism.

Racism & slavery caused current black poverty, which in turn causes black crime & violence (the poor are almost always more likely to commit crime & violence in our society), which in turn perpetuates black racial stereotypes by whites & other non-blacks.

The Black community, be in Canada,the US or UK, is inherently more crime-prone and more violence prone than any other community. Much of that crime and violence is directed towards is own members but much is not.

In Canada, aboriginals take the cake over blacks if i'm not mistaken. Once again in great part due to very old legacies of mistreatment by whitey.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Moonlight Graham

[Bob Macadoo]

Race bait elsewhere...next.

[Bryan]

Nobody want to talk about it, that's why it still happens.

[Argus]

Racism & slavery caused current black poverty, which in turn causes black crime & violence (the poor are almost always more likely to commit crime & violence in our society), which in turn perpetuates black racial stereotypes by whites & other non-blacks.

There are TONS of poor whites in the US, Canada and UK. But they're not getting together in mobs to attack people at random.

And they haven't made punching Black people into a national sport.

[Moonlight Graham]

There are TONS of poor whites in the US, Canada and UK. But they're not getting together in mobs to attack people at random.

It's also pretty hard to find urban groups of ONLY poor white people because most poor areas aren't exclusively white by a long shot.

I highly doubt there's any link in Canada or the US between violence and race that isn't equally or better explained by the link between violence and poverty. Though I'm not saying some mob/gang attacks aren't racially motivated.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Moonlight Graham

[Argus]

Nobody want to talk about it, that's why it still happens.

I wonder how Al Sharpton would react if mobs of big white youths were regularly meeting up to kick the shit out of black people, or randomly attacking them in the street so they could video it and laugh uproariously later on as they watch the victim fall to the ground.

[Argus]

It's also pretty hard to find urban groups of ONLY poor white people because most poor areas aren't exclusively white by a long shot.

I highly doubt there's any link in Canada or the US between violence and race that isn't equally or better explained by the link between violence and poverty. Though I'm not saying some mob/gang attacks aren't racially motivated.

The point is these ARE racially motivated crimes, not crimes of greed. Whites are specifically targeted by mobs who come together through the same ways other flashmobs are organized. And these are not located in poor areas. We're talking about mobs getting together in a specific area to attack whites.

If you look at the hundreds of black youth who went on a rampage at the Wisconsin fair, for example, that wasn't exactly a bunch of poor people just happening to go wild.

And then there's this. You'll almost certainly remember the two cases cited below. They made national headlines for many days running.

Like Ahab's search for the Great White Whale, liberals' search for the Great White Defendant is relentless and never-ending. When, in 1988, Tawana Brawley's and Al Sharpton's then year-old spectacular charge that several white men including prosecutor Steven Pagones (whose name Brawley had picked out of a newspaper article) had abducted and raped the 15 year old was shown to be completely false, the Nation said it didn't matter, since the charges expressed the essential nature of white men's treatment of black women in this country. When the Duke University lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper last year, liberals everywhere treated the accusation as fact, because, just as with the Nation and Tawana Brawley, the rape charge seemed to the minds of liberals to reflect the true nature of oppressive racial and sexual relations in America.

To see the real truth of the matter, let us take a look at the Department of Justice document Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2005. (Go to the linked document, and under "Victims and Offenders" download the pdf file for 2005.)

In Table 42, entitled "Personal crimes of violence, 2005, percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, based on race of victims, by type of crime and perceived race of offender," we learn that there were 111,590 white victims and 36,620 black victims of rape or sexual assault in 2005. (The number of rapes is not distinguished from those of sexual assaults; it is maddening that sexual assault, an ill-defined category that covers various types of criminal acts ranging from penetration to inappropriate touching, is conflated with the more specific crime of rape.) In the 111,590 cases in which the victim of rape or sexual assault was white, 44.5 percent of the offenders were white, and 33.6 percent of the offenders were black. In the 36,620 cases in which the victim of rape or sexual assault was black, 100 percent of the offenders were black, and 0.0 percent of the offenders were white. The table explains that 0.0 percent means that there were under 10 incidents nationally.

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=26368

Edited September 12, 2014 by Argus

[Bonam]

It's interesting that while Argus has presented extensive data in this thread, his opponents present nothing but unsubstantiated opinion.

The reality is plain to see, but will be denied in the face of any amount of evidence by those whose minds are mired thick in the muck of political correctness. Much as we saw with the recent scandal in the UK.

[Peter F]

Much as we saw with the recent scandal in the UK

Really? So the state bureaucracy is looking the other way and refusing to investigate reports of rapes?

I don't think thats in any way supportable.

The point of this thread is Argus' typical spread the suspicion and hate of non-whites.

We are to distrust Blacks but not whitey. We gotta do something about blacks raping white folks and prison aint good enough. Never mind white folks raping white folks lets just get ourselves in a knot about blacks raping white folks. Rape in general? not worthy of our efforts. Its the Black guys we gotta worry about.

Even if his contentions are true - So Effin what? Are we to assume any black man is a probable rapist? Are we to deny employment to blacks for the safety of our white female employees? Is the race and race only to determine how we interact with others?

Thats what Argus is up to. Justifying his racism.

[Guest]

Well, I'm glad to hear that all that stuff Argus posted didn't actually happen.

Do you have any evidence that he made it all up?

You do, don't you?

[On Guard for Thee]

What's Agus' got by way of any suggerstions to alleviate this racist crap that he seems inevitibely bent on I wonder. Maybe get some ships and round up all the Blacks and send 'em back to Africa. Sounds about par for his type of course. I suppose if/when they do get hold of a video that shows Wilson blowing away Brown he'll suggest it was the n*****s fault for getting in the way of the rounds.

[bush_cheney2004]

....There's a chicken or egg discussion going on around here in RL about Black violence. And that is whether racism causes Black violence or Black violence causes racism.

There's no question that the original form of racism which saw Africans shipped abroad as slaves was 5he bedrock form, the kind which saw them as less than human.

What is RL..."Rupert's Land" ?

Slavery was more about economics than "racism", which wasn't even defined in the same context as today.

[On Guard for Thee]

So if it was about "economics" that makes it OK? Geezuz! I don't believe it. You and Argus should get together down there in "Alabams."

[bush_cheney2004]

Everybody knows that "White" Canadians are experts on "Black" Americans.

[Peter F]

What is RL..."Rupert's Land" ?

Slavery was more about economics than "racism", which wasn't even defined in the same context as today.

There's a chicken or egg discussion going on around here in RL about Black violence

hmmmm. Good catch....

[Black Dog]

It's interesting that while Argus has presented extensive data in this thread, his opponents present nothing but unsubstantiated opinion.

Because a lot of his links are bunk from people who attribute racial motivations to what are often regular incidents of random violence.

If you looked at this stuff as data, as opposed to cherry-picked anecdotes, it's a blip compared to overall violent crime (which, it should be repeated, is falling). So no, "black mob violence" isn't a problem or a trend in the same way systemic racial animus (as evidenced by the clear disparity in how blacks and whites are policed) is a problem.

Nor is it a significant problem, at least according to the FBI's hate crime statistics. certainly nowhere near continued white (or other) on black racially motivated crimes.

Among the single-bias hate crime incidents in 2012, there were 3,467 victims of racially motivated hate crime.

• 66.2 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-black bias.
• 22.0 percent were victims of an anti-white bias.

In 2011, law enforcement agencies reported that 3,465 single-bias hate crime offenses were racially motivated. Of these offenses:

• 72.0 percent were motivated by anti-black bias.
• 16.7 percent stemmed from anti-white bias.

In 2009, law enforcement agencies reported that 3,816 single-bias hate crime offenses were racially motivated. Of these offenses:

• 71.4 percent were motivated by anti-black bias
• 17.1 percent resulted from anti-white bias.

Obviously no one is denying that black on white crime exists or that it can be racially motivated. The question is: so what?

Argus would seem to suggest that black-on-white racial violence is a cause of anti-black racism. However, these types of moral panic stories have long been used to foster fear and distrust of blacks. It's old racist paranoid hysteria, not all that different from the antebellum fears of freed slaves running amock in a orgy of wanton violence, murder and rape that gave rise to the KKK.

[Argus]

Really? So the state bureaucracy is looking the other way and refusing to investigate reports of rapes?

Refusing to acknowledge the racial aspect.

I don't think thats in any way supportable.

The media agrees with you!

The point of this thread is Argus' typical spread the suspicion and hate of non-whites.

How is my reporting on this and pointing it out any different than Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson complaining about White racism?

Even if his contentions are true - So Effin what?

Why do I think you'd never in a million years say that if these cites were about mobs of whites attacking and killing blacks, or white rapes of black women?

[Argus]

What's Agus' got by way of any suggerstions to alleviate this racist crap that he seems inevitibely bent on I wonder. Maybe get some ships and round up all the Blacks and send 'em back to Africa. Sounds about par for his type of course. I suppose if/when they do get hold of a video that shows Wilson blowing away Brown he'll suggest it was the n*****s fault for getting in the way of the rounds.

Again, why is it all right for the media to focus breathlessly on any violent event which purportedly involves racism by White people against Black people, but it's racist of me to do the reverse? Why do we have an entire long topic on one cop shooting one Black thug in the US in a city nobody here has ever heard of?

A topic which, I might point out, has inspired a great deal of anger and outrage on the part of the usual suspects.

[Argus]

Because a lot of his links are bunk from people who attribute racial motivations to what are often regular incidents of random violence.

Oh, okay. A lot of them? Which ones? Name one. Yes, it's true that police often refuse to assign racial motivation to a crime when the victim is white and the perpetrator is black. For example, the black mob last week which beat people into unconsciousness, and where, if you watch the video, you can hear the giggling black girl saying "Ooo, they caught a white boy!' has not been classed as racial at all by the Black police chief. Almost none of the 'knockout game' attacks by Blacks on Whites has been classified as a hate crime or racial even though the perpetrators often admit they were looking for a white person to attack.

If you looked at this stuff as data, as opposed to cherry-picked anecdotes, it's a blip compared to overall violent crime

A third of rapes is a blip?

Nor is it a significant problem, at least according to the FBI's hate crime statistics. certainly nowhere near continued white (or other) on black racially motivated crimes.

Well, it's not going to be a statistical problem if you don't record black on white crime as racially motivated, no.

Argus would seem to suggest that black-on-white racial violence is a cause of anti-black racism.

There's no question it's the major cause today.

[bush_cheney2004]

There are lots of "hate crimes" in the U.S. by many groups against a very diverse victim population, including "whites" attacking "blacks".

[Argus]

There are lots of "hate crimes" in the U.S. by many groups against a very diverse victim population, including "whites" attacking "blacks".

Sure there is. You find asshole sin every racial and ethnic group. No question. Add in booze and it's worse.

What you only find in the Black community, however are huge mobs of racists attacking people because of their skin color.

[bush_cheney2004]

Sure there is. You find asshole sin every racial and ethnic group. No question. Add in booze and it's worse.

What you only find in the Black community, however are huge mobs of racists attacking people because of their skin color.

People get attacked by "mobs" for lots of reasons, not just skin colour. They can get attacked by a "mob" for being a Dodgers or Giants fan.

[Black Dog]

Oh, okay. A lot of them? Which ones? Name one.

Funny to hear such demands for specificity coming from someone who talks in broad terms about how "much of" violence is directed at whites by blacks and other generalities. The bunk in question is the premises upon which the paranoid race fears of your sources rests.

Yes, it's true that police often refuse to assign racial motivation to a crime when the victim is white and the perpetrator is black. For example, the black mob last week which beat people into unconsciousness, and where, if you watch the video, you can hear the giggling black girl saying "Ooo, they caught a white boy!' has not been classed as racial at all by the Black police chief.

Of course, in your example the mob in question attacked several non-whites as well: what was the racial motivation for that?

A third of rapes is a blip?

Edit: misread the original.

I'm not sure what rapes have to do with anything.

Well, it's not going to be a statistical problem if you don't record black on white crime as racially motivated, no.

But you can sure make it one if you decide that more crimes are racially motivated (even if they aren't: see above).

There's no question it's the major cause today.

There most certainly is "a question". Racism in the U.S. is a 300+ year old phenomenon: declaring one single thing to be the cause based on the last 60 or so years is simple ignorance or obfuscation.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Black Dog

[cybercoma]

The only post you're going to get from me in this thread is a reference to a conclusive study done years ago in the journal Social Forces. I'm copying the section on race and extreme disadvantage under the regulation for fair use for academic purposes. I will highlight the parts that explain most clearly the findings without the academic explanations that precede and expand on the statements, but I will leave the entire section here for those who understand the background and the methods.

Take away from this what you will, but the fact of the matter is that structural differences have a far greater influence on crime than racial differences, despite violent crime being somewhat higher in black communities (although not high enough to reach statistical significance in this study).

This is all old news. This research could stand to be duplicated with more current data, but researchers don't tend to get grants for duplicating past research. It's a problem with academia in general.

In any case, I'm sure people from both sides of the argument will read what they want into this data, but this is all I'm going to post on it. I cannot copy the tables, so you'll have to make do with the text explanations of them.

RACE AND EXTREME DISADVANTAGE

We now turn to the issue of whether widespread disadvantage explains blackwhite

differences in urban crime. 7 Wilson argues that the effects of disadvantage

on crime like those reported here are invariant across race; rather differences in

crime are explained by varying levels of disadvantage in black and white

communities. To test these ideas, we assess: (1) whether the effect of social

disadvantage on crime is the same in predominantly black and white communi-

lies; and (2) whether similarly disadvantaged black and white areas have the

same levels of crime. A dummy variable distinguishing predominantly black

(≥70%) from white (≥70%) tracts along with interactions between this variable

and the categorical disadvantage factors are included in models to test these

hypotheses. We use the dummy variable operationalizations of disadvantage

(rather than the dummy-slope specifications) for these interaction models for

parsimony in light of the relatively small number of predominantly black tracts.

The results of these interaction models are presented in Table 3. Consistent

with the argument that the structural conditions of disadvantage affect black and

white communities in the same manner, none of the interactions between

neighborhood racial composition and disadvantage is significant 8 To elaborate,

the main effects for the high and extreme disadvantage dummy variables

indicate that for white communities the differences in crime follow the patterns

observed in Table 2. Property crime rates are significantly greater in high and

extremely disadvantaged white communities than in their low disadvantage

counterparts; but these rates are not substantially greater in areas of extreme

than in those of high disadvantage. The differences in property crime for black

communities with different levels of disadvantage are somewhat smaller than

in white areas (the slopes of the interactions are generally negative). However,

the racial gaps in the effects of disadvantage on property crime are never

significant.

For violent crime, white tracts also have significantly higher rates in areas

of high and extreme than low disadvantage. Further, for poverty, female-headed

families, and the disadvantage index, violence is dramatically higher in white

tracts with extreme compared to high levels of disadvantage. Variation in rates

across black communities with differing levels of disadvantage are sometimes

smaller and sometimes larger than in white areas. But none of the effects of

disadvantage on violent crime differ significantly by race of community.

To explore differences in crime between similarly disadvantaged black and

white communities, we calculated predicted property and violent crime rates for

white and black tracts with low, high, and extreme levels of disadvantage from

the interaction models presented in Table 3. The results are shown in Figure 2.

The first half of this ligure presents the predicted property crime rates and the

second half those for violence. Similar to Figure 1, in calculating the predicted

rates, we hold vacancy, percent renters, and percent young males constant at

their mean tract levels. Comparing similarly disadvantaged white and black

tracts indicates that property crime rates tend to be somewhat lower in black

than white neighborhoods. However, this racial difference is significant only in

the context of communities that have an extremely low number of professionals. 9

The pattern of small differences favoring black communities is particularly

noteworthy given that property offenses comprise the bulk of crimes in both

types of communities.

The second half of Figure 2 shows that, in contrast, black neighborhoods

have somewhat higher violent crime rates than white tracts. However, it is

important to note that in most cases the differences are not statistically significant.

Out of 15 black-white comparisons, only four are substantial enough to

reach significance. And among these, only one involves extreme disadvantage.

Within black communities with an extremely low number of professionals, the

average violent crime rate is 27 compared to 15 for white neighborhoods, a

difference of 12 per 1,000 population. For the other disadvantage measures, the

black-white gap within extreme disadvantage is much narrower ranging from

à low of 1 for female-headed families to a high of 6 for poverty. Similarly, small

race differentials in violent crime are found within the low and high disadvantage

categories.

While these data show that some race differences in violent crime persist

even within levels of disadvantage, the most important finding shown in these

graphs is that race effects tend to be smaller than the effects of disadvantage.

This is seen in the fact that black-white gaps in violent crime within each

disadvantage category tend to be smaller than within race differences in violence

across levels of disadvantage. In fact, violent crime rates for extremely

disadvantaged white neighborhoods are more similar to rates for extremely

disadvantaged black areas than to rates for other types of white neighborhoods.

Comparing low to high disadvantage, and in turn high to extreme disadvantage,

the between-race versus within-race contrasts are not especially large. Yet the

black-white differences in violent crime within each level of disadvantage are,

with one exception, notably smaller than the crime gaps between low and

extremely disadvantaged communities for either blacks or whites. For example,

extremely poor black tracts have a violent crime rate that is 6 per 1,000 higher

than in white areas of extreme poverty. There are race gaps of 5 per 1,000 within

both high and low poverty areas. Yet among either white or black neighborhoods

the violent crime gap between low and extreme poverty is much larger

at 16 and 17 per 1,000 for white and black communities, respectively. Thus for

four of the five indicators, persons experience much lower levels of violent crime

living in black communities with low levels of disadvantage than in either black

or white communities with extreme levels of disadvantage.

These findings indicate that there is a complex relationship among race,

structure, and violent crime. On the one hand, Wilson (1987) and Sampson and

Wilson (1995) appear to be correct. A large part of the racial difference in crime

is due to the fact that whites and blacks often live in structurally distinct

communities. To the degree that whites are more likely to live in areas with

lower levels of disadvantage and blacks in communities with the highest levels

of disadvantage, then our results indicate that racial differences in violence are

attributed heavily to structural differences in the communities in which they live.

On the other hand, whether disadvantage is low, high, or extreme, rates of

violence for black areas exceed somewhat those for white communities.

Thus, the aspects of social disadvantage considered here are not the only

factors contributing to higher rates of black violence.

One possibility is that structural factors not explored here account for the

remaining differences. Our analysis does not incorporate direct measures of local

institutional supports such as churches, schools, and recreation centers. These are

some of the mechanisms that Wilson argues explain a large part of the effect of

disadvantage on crime. As he notes (Wilson 1987) "the presence of stable

working- and middle-class families in the ghetto provides mainstream role

models that reinforce mainstream values.... But in the final analysis, a far more

important effect is the institutional stability that these families are able to

provide in their neighborhoods" (144). To the best of our knowledge there is no

research indicating whether the prevalence of institutional support mechanisms

noted by Wilson differ between white and black communities net of differences

in the economie status of areas. However, a comprehensive evaluation of

community differences in crime rates should assess directly this argument.

Another structural condition that should be considered is the presence of

public housing. There is considerable evidence that family public housing was

developed systematically in only black neighborhoods (Bauman 1987; Bickford

& Massey 1991; Hirsch 1983; Massey & Denton 1993). Further previous research

shows higher levels of crime in and near public housing projects (Newman 1972;

Roncek, Bell & Francik 1981; cf., Farley 1982). Therefore, to the eitent that public

housing has a greater presence in African American communities than in similar

white neighborhoods, incorporating this factor into analyses could help account

for the remaining race effects found here.

An alternative explanation of the race difference in violent crime is the

spatial proximity of extremely disadvantaged tracts to one another. Given the

structure of racial residential segregation in U.S. cities, it is highly likely that

disadvantaged black neighborhoods are situated in close proximity to one

another forming a larger cluster of extreme disadvantage. By contrast, predominantly

white heavily disadvantaged communities may be more dispersed

throughout the city and hence be located amidst working and middle class

areas. The institutional benefits and resources of these socioeconomically more

advantaged communities might spillover to their less advantaged neighbors (e.g.,

Heitgerd & Bursik 1987). Indeed, this racially patterned geographic distribution

of extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods exists in Columbus (Figure 3).

Eighty-nine percent of the black tracts that are extremely disadvantaged on at

least one dimension form a continuous Black Belt similar to that described for

Chicago (Drake & Cayton 1945). White tracts with extreme concentrations of

disadvantage are more dispersed. There are several smaller clusters of such

white areas, but others are scattered across the city. In short, black and white

communities that are internally similar in their socioeconomic conditions are not

similarly situated within the urban environment. This difference may explain the

net race gap in violent crime.

Divergence in the types of crime that whites and blacks are victimized by

could also account for the residual race differential. Victimization data indicate

that, among violent crime, robberies are somewhat more likely to be reported

than assaults. They also show that a larger share of black than white victims of

violence are robbed (U.S. Department of Justice 1993). Thus it is possible that the

differentials in crime rates by race reflect, in part, blacks greater involvement in

the more heavily reported crimes.

Another possibility is that violent offenses

occurring in black neighborhoods are detected more commonly because of

greater deployment of and surveillance by officers. As some scholars have

argued, police actions may be affected by "ecological contamination' whereby

police view some areas as involving more crime, and therefore, watch, arrest and

take official actions more often (Bittner 1970; Irwin 1985; Sampson 1986; Smith

1986). Given the association between race and crime, such contamination may

be more likely in predominantly black than white neighborhoods. To date, there

is not much empirical evidence on this issue. However, Smith (1986) did find

that the likelihood of police officially reporting an incident increased as percent

nonwhite in the neighborhood increased.

Finally, differences in cultural orientations to violence may explain the net

black-white gap in violent crime shown in these data. Some have posed that the

relationship between the size of the black population and violent crime is due

to a black culture of violence where human life is devalued and persons resort

to violence as a way of dealing with those who offend them (Curtis 1975;

Messner 1983; Wolfgang & Ferracuti 1967). This perspective has been challenged

by proponents of structural explanations (e.g., Blau & Blau 1982; Braithwaite

1979; Hawkins 1986). In particular, Sampson and Wilson (1995) and Wilson

(1987, 1991) note that cultural differences are themselves adaptations to

structural inequity. Stil!, the persistent racial gap in violence that we have

observed while controlling for structural conditions raises the possibility that

cultural factors independently account for a portion of black violence. Therefore,

it is important to identify and examine the cultural features that may support

violence and explore whether these are more prevalent in black than white

communities.

Edited September 12, 2014 by cybercoma