Crimes in America

Are blacks stopped by police more than whites? Are cops and policing tactics unconsciously racist?

Heather MacDonald, a scholar who has studied and written about these issues, weighs in.

The first balloon she punctures is the myth that blacks are stopped more than whites:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics regularly polls tens of thousands of civilians about their contacts with the police. Virtually identical proportions of white, black, and Hispanic drivers — 9 percent — report being stopped by the police, though in 2005, the self-reported black stop rate — 8.1 percent — was nearly a percentage point lower than the self-reported white stop rate (8.9 percent). The stop rate for blacks is lower during the day, when officers can more readily see a driver’s race.

Next, she compares urban stops (where police are looking for suspects) against population percentages and finds blacks are indeed overrepresented. But when you compare stops against the crime rate of African Americans, they are under-stopped

As for urban policing — where the police have victim identifications and contextual and behavioral cues to work with — blacks are stopped more, but only in comparison with their proportion of the entire population. Measured against their crime rate, they are understopped.

New York City is perfectly typical of the black police-stop and crime rates. In the first three months of 2009, 52 percent of all people stopped for questioning by the police in New York City were black, though blacks are just 24 percent of the population. But according to the victims of and witnesses to crime, blacks commit about 68 percent of all violent crime in the city. Blacks commit 82 percent of all shootings and 72 percent of all robberies, whereas whites, who make up 35 percent of the city's population, commit about 5 percent of all violent crimes, 1 percent of shootings, and about 4 percent of robberies.

She then turns our attention to national crime rates. Young black males commit more crimes, so they're going to get more attention.

National crime patterns are the same. Black males between the ages of 18 and 24 commit homicide at ten times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. Such vastly disproportionate crime rates must lead, if the police are going after crime in a color-blind fashion, to disproportionate stop and arrest rates. To criticize the police for crime-determined enforcement activity is to blame the messenger.

There are two sides to every story--Does white crime get overlooked?--And the motives for urban crime are numerous and well-cataloged. Liberal rhetoric in defense of minorities can get so overblown it disconnects us from all reality.

Racial profiling happens, and we still have discrimination. This unfairness should not blind us to the facts. For only from the firm basis of reality can we proceed to finding solutions.

NRO - Heather MacDonald

Can't We All Just Get Along? The Joy of High Dudgeon

This Professor Gates vs. Officer Crowley hullabaloo is not going away

That woman of mine she ain't happy, 'till she finds something wrong and there's someone to blame... (Waylon Jennings, Rainy Day Woman)

It's almost as if some people enjoy getting all stirred up...

Bob Sommer writes:

Gates failed to cooperate as a black man should, as Sidney Poitier’s character did when he was arrested in The Heat of the Night, showing respect and deference. If this hadn’t been the most pre-eminent scholar of African-American Studies in the country, we never would have known about this incident—but that was partly Gates’s point.

To which a reader named Clement Knorr riposted:

To describe Henry Gates as "the most pre-eminent scholar of African American Studies in the country" should carry less prestige than being "the third most successful used car salesman in Reno". There is no recorded instance of any minority "studies" program, be it lesbian, Irish, left-handed or one-eyed, contributing in any way to our economy or national well-being.

John Edwards is right. There really are two Americas.

Ta-Nehisi Coats, in a semi-coherent snit, writes

The rest of us are left with a country where, by all appearances, officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them. Which is where we started. I can't explain why, but this is the sort of thing that makes you reflect on your own precarious citizenship. I mean, the end of all of this scares the hell out of me.

When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that.

At least she warned us at the beginning of her post that she's not using logic, just feelings.

A policeman is the frontline of justice. You can't sass a judge in her courtroom, and no, Ms. Coats, you can't sass a police officer either. In fact, even sassing a fellow citizen could land you in jail if your actions fit the category of disorderly conduct. And you can even get arrested for doing this in your own home.

What's wrong with showing a cop respect and deference?
I understand the black-white history here, and it's not pretty. But what it the conclusion? Since blacks at one time were forced to be respectful and deferential to ugly white people who despised them, they should now legally be allowed to treat everyone, including law enforcement, with contempt?

Precarious Citizenship?
Police don't "disappear" people in this country, dissidents don't molder away in hidden dungeons. Such verbal histrionics make a mockery the truth that there are countries where this really does happen. Homosexuals have no rights in any Middle Eastern country and therefor don't exist, Castro has reporters locked away for telling the truth about him, and in some African countries, people really are killed for the shade of their skin.

Law enforcement is called the Thin Blue Line because it "prevents society from descending into chaos." Where would we end up if we enfeebled this line?

That scares the hell out of me.

Atlantic - Coates
KC Star - Voices