Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

Hektore · 03-20-2008, 03:21 PM

Several times, I have had statistics about race and crime thrown around in front of me, usually showing that, blacks are far more likely than whites to end up in prison, be convicted of a violent crime, arrested, etc. In the several times that this has happened it has always been toward the aim of showing that racism in this country is not, or has not diminished and that it is very much alive and well. Now, I don't disagree that racism exists, but I was thinking about other variables that could heavily influence the trend. Things other than the canned racist 'it's just the way black people are' that I hear around home so often.

Well, I took an anthropology class, and in the class it was claimed that the best indicator for whether or not a person will end up in jail is not race, but socio-economic status. Specifically, household income of the house you grew up in and education completed were the top two. This started the gears turning in my head, and I immediately saw a connection. Slavery, forced a group of people into destitution. This treatment remained government sanctioned until very recently (much later than the end of slavery). The civil-rights movement, was a mere 30-60 years ago (depending on how you define the start/finish). That is only 2-3 generations, which is a very short period of time when you think about it. What our (American) history created was a class of citizens at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder that was easily identifiable by the color of their skin.

When examining the lowest class of people in this country (independently of race) I have had it shown to me that it is difficult to escape this class. Good schools, homes and communities are difficult to maintain without money. Money is exactly what poor, uneducated people don't have. It seems to me that if you were to take a large sample of lower class white people, and then look at their grandchildren, most of them will still be in the lower class. What our treatment of blacks has done is artificially placed an exceptionally high percentage of them in the lower class, and forcibly maintained them there until very recently. Also, consider that most blacks are still concentrated geographically in the mostly poor deep south, and the tendency for people to settle near where they grew up. These are confounding variables when you attempt to examine something like race and crime, and make me think that perhaps if you examined crime statistics for just the lower class, the lines between the races would disappear pr at least blur.

Now, I think about racism in general. Even if we somehow managed to become a society completely free of racial discrimination, wouldn't we still see the effects of practiced racism a mere 40 years later? Maybe it's unreasonable to expect total equality between races so soon? Maybe it's unreasonable to expect people brought up in a time when racism was proper to change their ways? Maybe we don't have a prayer for equality until all those alive then have passed? All questions I would like to have answers to, but simply don't.

So TFP, what say you?

03-20-2008, 03:21 PM	#1 (permalink)
Hektore Junkie Location: Greater Harrisburg Area	Race and Crime Several times, I have had statistics about race and crime thrown around in front of me, usually showing that, blacks are far more likely than whites to end up in prison, be convicted of a violent crime, arrested, etc. In the several times that this has happened it has always been toward the aim of showing that racism in this country is not, or has not diminished and that it is very much alive and well. Now, I don't disagree that racism exists, but I was thinking about other variables that could heavily influence the trend. Things other than the canned racist 'it's just the way black people are' that I hear around home so often. Well, I took an anthropology class, and in the class it was claimed that the best indicator for whether or not a person will end up in jail is not race, but socio-economic status. Specifically, household income of the house you grew up in and education completed were the top two. This started the gears turning in my head, and I immediately saw a connection. Slavery, forced a group of people into destitution. This treatment remained government sanctioned until very recently (much later than the end of slavery). The civil-rights movement, was a mere 30-60 years ago (depending on how you define the start/finish). That is only 2-3 generations, which is a very short period of time when you think about it. What our (American) history created was a class of citizens at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder that was easily identifiable by the color of their skin. When examining the lowest class of people in this country (independently of race) I have had it shown to me that it is difficult to escape this class. Good schools, homes and communities are difficult to maintain without money. Money is exactly what poor, uneducated people don't have. It seems to me that if you were to take a large sample of lower class white people, and then look at their grandchildren, most of them will still be in the lower class. What our treatment of blacks has done is artificially placed an exceptionally high percentage of them in the lower class, and forcibly maintained them there until very recently. Also, consider that most blacks are still concentrated geographically in the mostly poor deep south, and the tendency for people to settle near where they grew up. These are confounding variables when you attempt to examine something like race and crime, and make me think that perhaps if you examined crime statistics for just the lower class, the lines between the races would disappear pr at least blur. Now, I think about racism in general. Even if we somehow managed to become a society completely free of racial discrimination, wouldn't we still see the effects of practiced racism a mere 40 years later? Maybe it's unreasonable to expect total equality between races so soon? Maybe it's unreasonable to expect people brought up in a time when racism was proper to change their ways? Maybe we don't have a prayer for equality until all those alive then have passed? All questions I would like to have answers to, but simply don't. So TFP, what say you? __________________ The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.