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Banned
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Originally Posted by roachboy
this presupposes total political incoherence on the part of the public, though: a purely reactive posture driven to action, such as it is, by the accumulation of a particular type of stimulation. it presupposes the absence of any co-ordinating mechanisms in how people think about politics---dimension is separated from dimension, linkages disappear with the result that each situation isolated--and so what counts as cumulative data, the sort of thing that would push someone to the point of thinking systematically or acting politically would rely on the operation of a kind of abstract family resemblance between isolated situations...it makes sense to argue, but is really depressing if you think about it----the fragmentary characteristics of information streams are internalized (for example) and their consequences acted out.
if that's true concerning the outline of political thinking that is being imputed to some public here, then maybe in such a context there is no tipping point at the collective level--the best one can hope for is something like peter finch's outburst in "network"--yelling out the window, trying to get others to yell out the window as well. if lots of people yell out their respective windows, then it is a political action. but that's also all a political action can be: yelling out your living room window into the street that you're snippy as hell and aren't going to take it any more.
meanwhile time passes, the yelling dissolves and everything continues as it had been.
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This is from eleven years ago, probably at the height of the after the fact "tipping point". This piece is authored by a professor who was described as "liberal". Five years later, in 2001, president Bush appointed John J. DiIulio, Jr. as the first head of his new "Office of Faith Based Initiatives":
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http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_2_my_black.html
Spring 1996
My Black Crime Problem, and Ours
John J. DiIulio, Jr.
....In 1993 the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA), an advocacy group that opposes mandatory sentencing and favors making a greater use of probation, parole, and rehabilitation programs, publicized its finding that “43 percent of all young black men in Washington, D.C.—and 56 percent in Baltimore—are firmly in the grip of the justice system.” The press broadcast the numbers far and wide. As was later revealed in an analysis by the American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities, the statistics were a bit inflated, but even after appropriate correction, the NCIA study would still have found about 35 percent of Washington’s young black men in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole. Indeed, in a highly publicized 1995 report, the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based counterpart of NCIA, found that nationwide about one in three black males age 20 to 29 was under some form of correctional supervision. As the Sentencing Project reported, in 1989 about 610,000 black males in their twenties—23 percent of the cohort—were in custody. But by 1995 that number had risen to over 827,000—32.2 percent of the nation’s twenty-something black males. One could quibble with the estimates, but the finding is valid; in fact, my own estimates would indicate that the number is already closer to 50 percent in some places, and that nationally it will be nearer to a half than a third by the year 2000.
As the Sentencing Project boasts, “the report has had a major impact in the media and among policymakers.” Oddly, however, its “major impact” has been to divert attention from the big truth that one in three young black males is under correctional supervision because young black male rates of serious crime are so high. Instead it has focused attention on the half-truths and outright distortions long purveyed by the Sentencing Project, other anti-incarceration advocacy groups, and their funders and allies in the drug legalization movement, the liberal foundations, the politically correct universities, and the elite media. The mantra goes like this: how shameful to America that one in three young black males is in custody . . . most of those in custody are in for petty drug crimes . . . revolving-door justice is a right-wing myth . . . the justice system is racist . . . America has been on an imprisonment binge . . . prisons don’t cut crime in the least . . . imprisonment is not only an ineffective response to crime but a racist one.
Predictably, the Sentencing Project and its turn-’em-loose comrades-in-arms have now begun to dig for more such racially polarizing pay dirt. For example, the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco recently “found” that 40 percent of black men in their twenties in California were under some form of correctional supervision. Representative Maxine Waters held a news conference in which she declared the study proof that in California the color of your skin dictates whether you will be arrested or not, prosecuted harshly or less harshly, or receive a stiff sentence or gain probation or entry into treatment. The report itself called for a moratorium on prison construction in California until the state’s penal code is “overhauled.” It also called for mandating “racial impact statements” in all new crime legislation, and for a state commission to study black “overrepresentation.” Except for a very few dissenting voices, including the nation’s leading crime-policy scholar, UCLA’s James Q. Wilson, virtually all the published and broadcast “expert” commentary on this report followed the radical-liberal party line.
The Sentencing Project and its supporters can pretend all they want that racism and the “war on drugs” have put too many harmless young black males in prison. But are racist drug laws responsible for the fact that weapons arrest rates during 1993 were five times greater for blacks than for whites? Do they explain the fact that 47 percent of all black men in prison in 1995 were in for a violent crime, and that most black state prisoners, like most state prisoners, have committed one or more violent crimes in the past? Do they explain the fact that the black men in prison for a drug crime were, like virtually all prisoners, repeat offenders with non-drug crimes on their rap sheets?
There are Washington monument-sized fallacies and contradictions in what the Sentencing Project and its allied spin doctors have argued about “1 in 3.” For example, the system is supposedly “racist” because it hammers black drug dealers. But who wants them hammered? Look at the survey data on decriminalizing or legalizing drugs. Without fail, blacks are every bit as opposed to weakening anti-drug enforcement efforts as whites. Only 30 percent of blacks would even consider legalizing marijuana; virtually none will even debate legalizing harder drugs. My dear friend and former colleague Ethan Nadelmann is director of the Lindesmith Center and the country’s leading proponent of turning down the volume on the drug war. His most vehement, unyielding critics are not middle-class whites led by right-wing Republicans. Rather, they are poor and working-class blacks led by folks like New York’s black Democratic Representative Charles Rangel.
What if, for argument’s sake, one swallows the notion that the system now “over-punishes” black drug dealers, and that most of these “drug dealers” are not, in fact, plea bargain–gorged persons with long adult and juvenile records of criminal mischief against persons and property? What then? Which drug-crime 911 calls from black neighborhoods are the police to ignore? Which black drug dealers should be released back to their communities tomorrow morning?
You can’t have it both ways—protesting that police are less responsive to black crime victims than to white ones in one breath, charging that “too many” black victimizers get caught, convicted, and sentenced, in the next; spinning out conspiratorial theories of white acquiescence in letting drugs flow into black communities in the morning, complaining that efforts to crack down on the drug trade are motivated by racism in the afternoon click to show .
Take a look at the chart on page 27. Based on its latest crime victimization surveys, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that in 1993 alone blacks committed 1.29 million violent crimes against other blacks—80 percent of all violent crimes against blacks. Blacks also committed 1.54 million violent crimes against whites—18 percent of all violent crimes against whites.
As a number of analysts have begun to notice, blacks are about 50 times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than whites are to commit violent crimes against blacks. Like the Sentencing Project’s “1 in 3” number, this “50 to 1” statistic is technically correct. If you divide the total number of black-on-white violent crimes in 1993 (1.29 million) by the number of black males age 20 to 29 in the population in 1993 (3.94 million), you get a ratio equal to 1,013 violent crimes against whites per 10,000 young black males. If you do the same calculation for the total number of white-on-black crimes (186,000) divided by the total number of twenty-something white males (22.9 million), you get a ratio of 17.6 violent crimes committed by whites against blacks for every 10,000 young white males. Thus, the incidence of interracial black-on-white violent crime by young black males (1,013) is 57.5 times the incidence of interracial white-on-black crime by young white males (17.6). Using different denominators (for example, white versus black males age 15 to 29) moves the statistic down a bit (in the example given, to 48 to 1). But it clusters around “50 to 1.”
In his recent essay in The New Republic, Glenn Loury explains that “there are roughly eight times as many whites as blacks; and there are about six times as many violent criminals per capita among blacks as among whites. So, if criminals chose their victims at random, without regard to race, one would expect the black-on-white victimization rate per black person to be 48 times as large as the white-on-black rate per white person. Thus, it does not appear that black criminals take affirmative action to find white victims.”
Loury is absolutely right, and he or I or any other competent analyst could fashion a half-dozen fancier ways of minimizing the “50 to 1” statistic. In the end, however, nothing we could produce would be other than cold comfort to white victims of black criminals. For every such “explanation” merely underlines the reality behind both “1 in 3” and “50 to 1”: namely, that young black males do commit serious crimes at a much higher rate than whites. Worse, where the growing problems of black juvenile and “wolf pack” crimes are concerned, it may well be that young black criminals really are targeting white victims. For example, as even OJJDP has noted, while about 95 percent of all violent crimes committed by white juveniles in 1991 were against whites, 57 percent of all violent crimes committed by black juveniles also were against whites.
The simple if unpalatable truth, therefore, is that even if we decriminalized black drug-dealing, there would still be racial “disproportionalities” in the justice system. Even if we also decriminalized all black crime save black-on-black violent crime, racial “disproportionalities” would persist.
Here’s a suggestive calculation. In 1991, 372,200 black men were in prison, along with 363,600 white men. About 60 percent of all prisoners in 1991 had committed one or more violent crimes in the past. Suppose that we released 40 percent of the black prisoners—the 40 percent, say, with either no official history of violence or the least severe records of it. That would leave 223,320 black men behind bars. Then, because slightly more than half of the violent crimes committed by blacks are committed against whites, let’s release, say, 55 percent of the remaining black violent male offenders. That would leave 100,494 black males in prison, 27 percent of 1991ís actual total. They would be doing time with 3.6 times as many white males. But since whites in the general population still would outnumber blacks by roughly 8 to 1, the racial “disproportionality” would persist. To make it disappear completely—to get an 8-to-1 white-black ratio in prison—we would have to release all but 45,450 of the 372,200 black men in prison in 1991.
Similarly, 605,062 black adults were on probation in 1993, compared with 1,132,092 white adults, and 240,767 black adults were on parole, compared with 236,083 white adults. Thus, the total black adult community-based corrections population (probation plus parole) numbered 845,829, compared with 1.36 million whites. Let’s say we believed that fully 70 percent of all black probationers and parolees, but none of the white ones, were innocent victims of a racist “war on drugs” and should never have been arrested. That would leave 253,749 black adults on probation and parole. We would still have only 5.3, not eight, times as many white adults as blacks “in custody” in the community. To eliminate entirely the racial “disproportionalities” in probation and parole, all but about 170,000 of the more than 800,000 black adults under community-based supervision in 1993 would have to be expunged from the rolls.
Even if, therefore, the justice system punished only those blacks who commit violent crimes—indeed, even if it punished only black violent criminals whose victims were themselves black—blacks would still be “overrepresented” in prison, in jail, on probation, and on parole. Thus, instead of all the ideological nonsense about “1 in 3” and the like, we should begin to focus in common on how revolving-door justice harms all Americans, most especially blacks. As the bipartisan Council on Crime in America has reported: “America’s violent crime problem, especially the rage of homicidal and near-homicidal violence, is extremely concentrated among young urban minority males. . . . A study of murders committed in the nation’s 75 most populous counties found that blacks were 52 percent of all murder victims and 62 percent of all murder defendants,” but “they were only 20 percent of the general population in these metropolitan jurisdictions. . . . Between 1985 and 1992 the rate at which males ages 14 through 17 committed murder increased by about 50 percent for whites and over 300 percent for blacks. Between 1973 and 1992 the rate of violent victimizations of black males ages 12 to 24 increased about 25 percent; for example, black males ages 16 to 19 sustained one violent crime for 11 persons in 1973 versus one for every six in 1992.”
For God’s sake, let’s be truthful. Especially in urban America, white fears of black crime—like black fears of black crime—are rational far more than reactionary or racist. If Americans are to learn how to deal in common with black crime as a problem of “sin, not skin,” as Glenn Loury puts it—as a correctable moral defect of individuals, not some ineradicable racial fate—then we must hear and heed those leaders, black and white, liberal and conservative, who are speaking and doing something about it.
Hear Robert L. Woodson Sr., leader of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. A veteran of the civil rights movement and an organizer of community- and faith-based groups that reach poor blacks and their children, Woodson speaks not of white racism but of “moral vagrants” in the black community who prey upon their disadvantaged neighbors.
Hear John W. Gillis, another prominent black, who heads California’s parole board and is a member of the Council on Crime in America. On the day the council’s first report was released to the press, Gillis stared into the cameras and implored responsible journalists to remember who normally puts black convicted criminals where they are, and why: black victims, black witnesses, and black communities—in order to do justice and to protect themselves from murder, mayhem, and deadly drug dealing.
Hear the grief-stricken family of Philadelphia police officer Lauretha Vaird, the city’s first female cop—and first black woman—to be killed in the line of duty. Officer Vaird was murdered in cold blood, execution-style. Two of her three alleged killers are 26-year-old local black “gangsta” rappers who apparently practice the hate they sing. Vaird’s family members are calling for justice—life in prison or the electric chair for the killers.
Hear Debra Dickerson, the self-described liberal black sister of a young black man paralyzed from the waist down in a drive-by shooting. Read her intensely gripping, highly personal essay published in The New Republic, “Who Shot Johnny?” Therein she rages at the black assailant who shot her brother and left him for dead. His “crime”? Waving hello at a car full of boys whom he mistakenly thought he knew. The assailant stood over his bleeding, barely conscious body and said, “Betch’ou won’t be doin’ nomo’ wavin’, motha’fucker.” The vicious attacker was never caught.
Hear Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, who in a 1994 Wall Street Journal op-ed described as “dangerous” the response “that cries ‘racism’ as part of an all-out defense of any black accused of wrongdoing by ‘white’ authorities, regardless of the facts of the case,” and as “troubling” the “position of some blacks that they will refuse to help send any black person to prison.”
Hear the Reverend Jesse Jackson. For over a decade, no national black leader has argued more eloquently against policies that offer blacks jails instead of jobs—and none was quicker to make hay of the Sentencing Project’s “1 in 3” finding. But recall Jackson’s own tortured words on November 27, 1993: “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage of my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved. How humiliating.” ....
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Can you imagine, a "tipping point" being passed that would trigger sentiment sufficient for an article like the one above to be written about the crimes of police, prosecutors, and the judiciary?
I suspect that the crimes of these official institutions are doing even more damage to society as a whole, today, than "black crime" could ever do. Much of the crime is official indifference to actually proving who is guilty, while protecting the innocent accused. What is the cost and impact of a system that turns a blind eye towards official corruption even as it is busily framing actually innocent defendants, or failing to disclose to defendants, exculpatory evidence obtained by prosecutorial investigators and police?
I think part of the problem is that police and prosecutors, just by indifference or lax attitude about their sworn duties and responsibilities, become accustomed to committing relatively minor crimes of omission or selectivity.
"I know this guy is as guilty as sin, so I'm going to overlook the exculpatory evidence in the case....I'm not going to tell the defense attorney about it.
They start to play judge and jury, instead of letting the evidence lead in whatever direction it should properly go.
Ustwo, it helps my conviction that we are in a corruption crisis, now that you have weighed in with your take that there is only a "small" problem. Your advocacy for the death penalty remaind unshaken, I presume?
Last edited by host; 12-28-2007 at 02:33 PM..
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