[Rhodes22-list] Politics: Murders by Black Teenagers Rise, Bucking a Trend

[Brad Haslett]

Bill,

Did you read the news that Tina Fey won some "Entertainer of the Year"
award for her parody skits of Sarah Palin?  I'm not sure her
performances were worthy of any "of the Year" awards, but they were
pretty funny.  Sarah Palin thought so.  Even Fey was surprised by
Palin's graciousness of offering her daughters to babysit for Fey's
child. What was/is disturbing is the high percentage of the electorate
who couldn't differentiate between what Fey said in her act versus
Palin's own record.  People get the government they deserve.

I thought the Sharpton parody was funny.  If people are so prejudiced
by their own bias not to see the humor, then they are the ones with a
problem.

Brad

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 9:16 AM, Bill Effros <bill at effros.com> wrote:
> Ben, Rummy, Slim,
>
> Here's the problem.
>
> Following is a story from today's NYT.
>
> Is it racist to notice that murder trends are different based on age and
> skin color?
>
> Is it important to note this difference?
>
> If this study had focused on employment rather than skin color, using
> the same data, I'm sure it would have come up with the conclusion that
> young people without jobs are more likely to commit murder than old
> people with jobs.
>
> But casting the issue in black and white sells more newspapers; gets
> more government grants; inflames more racial hatred--so here's what
> we've got.
>
> Obama won the Presidency by pointing out that he was a non-threatening
> person with darker skin than that of most Americans. He was never a
> young person without a job. He proudly became "The First Black
> President!" -- a historic moment.
>
> Now his supporters become apoplectic whenever someone notes that his
> skin is darker than that of most Americans. It has become racist to so
> much as notice this if you do not support Mr. Obama.
>
> The following story and study IS racist. By definition. Are you going to
> say something about it? Are you going to do something about it?
>
> Or do you reserve your opprobrium for your friends noting the internet
> location of political jokes that clearly are NOT racist.
>
> Bill Effros
>
>
> Murders by Black Teenagers Rise, Bucking a Trend
>
>
> December 29, 2008
>
> By ERIK ECKHOLM
> (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/erik_eckholm/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
>
> The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as
> murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places,
> according to a new report.
>
> The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a
> "worrisome divergence," said James Alan Fox
> (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/james_alan_fox/index.html?inline=nyt-per),
> a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University
> (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/northeastern_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org)
> who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And
> there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without
> countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and
> creating social programs for poor youths.
>
> The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14 to 17. In 2000,
> 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an
> analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites,
> 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142, up 34 percent.
>
> The increase coincided with a rise in the number of murders involving
> guns, Dr. Fox said. The number of young blacks who were victims of
> murder also rose in this period.
>
> Murder rates around the country are far below the record highs of the
> late 1980s and early 1990s, when a crack epidemic spawned violent turf
> battles.
>
> "Regrettably, as the nation celebrated the successful fight against
> violent crime in the 1990s, we grew complacent and eased up on our
> crime-fighting efforts," the authors said.
>
> The report primarily blames cutbacks in federal support for community
> policing and juvenile crime prevention, reduced support for after-school
> and other social programs, and a weakening of gun laws. Cuts in these
> areas have been felt most deeply in poor, black urban areas, helping to
> explain the growing racial disparity in violent crime, Dr. Fox said.
>
> But Bruce Western, a sociologist at Harvard, cautioned that the change
> in murder rates was not large and did not yet show a clear trend. Dr.
> Western also said that the impact of the reduction in government
> spending on crime control would have to be studied on a city-by-city
> basis, and that many other changes, including a sagging economy, could
> have affected murder rates.
>
> Conservative criminologists place greater emphasis on the breakdown of
> black families, rather than cuts in government programs, in explaining
> the travails of black youths.
>
> Much of the increase, experts say, is a product of gang activity, in
> midsize and large cities.
>
> "The aggregate national murder rate since 2000 has been impressively
> flat — not to say there haven't been fluctuations in individual cities,"
> said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University
> (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/carnegie_mellon_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org).
> "But when you see a spike in a city," he said, as in Chicago recently,
> "it very often involves young black males shooting other young black males."
>
> Dr. Blumstein said that while federal cuts might have contributed to the
> rise in murders by black teenagers, "I think there are much more endemic
> problems going on."
>
> "In the inner city, you have large numbers of kids with no future,
> hanging out together with a great emphasis on their street credibility,"
> he said. "They'll go to great lengths to avenge an insult." Many of
> these teenagers do not stay in school, let alone join the Boys Clubs or
> other after-school programs.
>
> The heightened attention to security after the 9/11 attacks might,
> paradoxically, have contributed to a decline in crime-fighting.
>
> "One problem we faced was a disinvestment in policing in the post-2001
> environment," said Chief Edward A. Flynn of the Milwaukee police, who
> served from 2003 to 2006 as secretary of public safety in Massachusetts.
> "I witnessed homeland security become the monster that ate criminal
> justice," Chief Flynn said, as money went to security equipment and
> communications and the number of police officers fell.
>
> To fight violent crime, Chief Flynn said, the police must be a visible
> presence in neighborhoods with high crime rates.
>
>  From 2000 to 2007, according to the report, murders in Milwaukee by
> whites ages 14 to 24 rose by 4 percent, while those by blacks rose by 62
> percent.
>
> This year, Chief Flynn's first leading the department, he deployed new
> teams of officers to the most violent neighborhoods, having them patrol
> on foot and bicycles, while federal agencies helped bring down some
> large gangs. The number of murders this year — 70 as of last Friday — is
> down one-third from last year and is the lowest since 1985.
>
> Still, Chief Flynn said, "any improvements will be temporary unless
> there's more investment in the futures of our young people."
>
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