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

[Bill Effros]

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.”