A Question of Poverty
GunPundit discovered some really telling maps showing the locations of murders in Baltimore. it turns out that you can break it down by type of murder and race of victim, interestingly enough. Here are the graphs I found for 2007:
Gun homicides resulting in dead white people:
Gun homicides resulting in dead hispanic people:
Gun homicides resulting in dead black people:
We can take one of two conclusions from this:
- Black people are inherently violent, and can’t stop from killing each other.
- Black people suffer from atrociously high murder rates because they suffer the most crushing poverty due to structural economic and political factors, and poverty is the primary motivator for crime of all sorts including murder.
Number 1 is blatantly racist and utterly ridiculous. That leaves number 2. It’s unfortunate that these maps don’t list anything like income level or social class of the victim, but I believe that race can be viewed as a proxy of it here. Clearly the violence suffered by black people is a function of the crushing poverty they live in, rather than the legal availability of weapons. studies show that 60% of guns used in crimes are stolen ((Guns used in Crime)), and about 65% of them are the same guns over and over again (( Armed and Considered Dangerous, available at JSTOR if you have access. Or, you can take a look through google books))–these guns tend to be 6-shot revolvers ((Armed and Considered Dangerous again)) which are not targeted by the most prominent efforts to control guns, such as the ineffective assault weapons ban (looks like it pays to understand the issue you’re regulating!).
Only 3.8% of felons are the ones who commit 55.5% of all gun-related homicides according to a recent California study ((Prevalence and Incidence of Arrest among Adult Males in California)). Felons are legally banned from buying guns, and the consequences for selling guns to them are severe, so it’s not law-abiding gun merchants who are the problem. They get their guns from illegal street dealers or just steal them. Either way, efforts to prevent hardened criminals from getting guns has clearly failed, as the Baltimore map so chillingly indicates.
Furthermore, it can’t be that the very presence of weapons is the reason because about 29% of black households own guns, compared to 44% of white ones. ((Targeting Guns)). If whites have more guns in their houses, why then were there only three whites killed by gun violence in 2007 in Baltimore? Something other than availability of guns must explain all the gun-related homicide suffered by black people.
In fact, handguns are completely banned in England, and the gun-related crime rate has in fact accelerated since the policy was instituted in 1997:
Generated from statistics found in Criminal Statistics, England and Wales.
In cases where they can’t get guns, UK gang members have resorted to killing each other with swords and street signs.
Here are the answers I personally have arrived at:
- Illegally acquired guns are the problem, not legally-acquired ones. We have to prevent felons and other dangerous people from getting guns, not law-abiding citizens. Existing efforts to prevent those not allowed to buy guns from acquiring them have failed, and something needs to be done about this.
- Presence and availability of guns is not the direct cause of gun violence, poverty is; among those with more guns and better lives, gun violence is almost nonexistent (the gun murder rate of non-black people in Baltimore in 2007 was 2.35 per 100,000, compared to 35 for overdose on prescription drugs).
These are my conclusions that I believe are supported by a battery of facts garnered from legitimate and official studies, rather than the raw emotion my prior position was based on. Restricting the type of guns that can be legally purchased is literally worthless; the people who are the ones committing all the murders steal their guns 60% of the time or buy them from illegal street dealers 39.2% of the time, meaning that only 0.8% of criminals legally buy their guns from corrupt or negligent gun merchants. In either event, they use concealable revolvers rather than the high-capacity guns most legislators feel inclined to regulate, such as “military-style” “assault rifles.” Criminals only use them 6.8 % of the time, preferring revolvers. Regulating handguns is stupid because despite the fact that 83.2% use them, next to no criminals follow the appropriate laws. Do we regulate how fast computers can be since the FBI estimates that cybercrime costs $400 billion per year?No, that’s ridiculous. A small minority (composed mostly of employees of the Russian Business Network) is the cause of the majority of the problems; we should go after the criminals, rather than use sledgehammer tactics that affect mostly law-abiding computer-users.
The same approach should be taken with guns. What we need are raids on known street dealers, and we need harsher penalties for committing a crime with a gun. But most of all, what we need are comprehensive poverty reduction programs. Crime in general–including gun violence–is symptomatic of systematic economic, political, and social deprivation; if we work on that problem, gun violence will dry up on its own, as it already has among those in Baltimore who don’t live under such horrific conditions.
Categorised as: Guns
I think a better data point would be to look at shootings vs. gun homicides. At spotcrime.com we map both events.
You failed to explain why #1 is invalid. Even if black poverty is 5x more common than white or hispanic poverty then why is their murder rate so much higher? You don’t see a comparable murder rate in dirt poor Appalachia, but you do see a similar rate among filthy rich rappers.
Comment?
Dirt poor Appalachia is rural, whereas Baltimore is urban, and urban poverty is the most oppressive type. People are packed in like sardines, forced to live meters away from obvious examples of crime, not to mention that since city living is more expensive, the urban poor have to work harder to get what the rural poor can afford more easily, leading to more unemployment. Finally, the drug trade operates mostly out of cities, and a great deal of urban crime is drug-related.
So let me get this strait…
- Drug sales, violence and addiction are not based on the choices the individuals make. Drig violence is like the weather. it just happens?
- Urban poverty is extra oppressive, so it leads to a difference in murder rate that makes blacks 6 to 7 times more likely to be murders than their representation in the population. Are you indulging in some fruits of the drug trade? A six to seven fold difference is pretty hard to explain with blacks living closer together than whites and are afflicted with a special industrial strength poverty that makes them kill each other.
Maybe the nhilistic culture and sense of victimhood and entitlement that permeates the inner city has something to do with it. You give murders a pass with such pap as your “it’s society’s fault” rant above.
Bad people are doing bad things and they are 6 to 7 times more likely for their demographic representation to be black. And 90% of their victims are black. Excusing it is immoral.
Drug, not drig for the spelling nazis.
Were blacks in the ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s murdering each other at 6 time the rate of whites? Or were they having 70% of their children out of wedlock?
The answer to both is no. I wonder if the two might be related?
Factor out black on black crime and we are about as violent a country as Belgium.
Rural and suburban white gun owners are not the problem, though they are the main targets of gun control.
Let’s say I agree with your stipulation that it’s a “nhilistic culture and sense of victimhood and entitlement” that makes bad people do bad things to each other. Okay, but we still haven’t figured out where it comes from, which is the interesting part of the equation. Since you claim that the situation wasn’t anywhere near this bad in the 1940s and 50s, then it can’t be that black people just inherently embody these qualities, can it?
So what caused this precipitous decline in the living conditions of poor urban black people? You seem to know an awful lot about this stuff, so why don’t you tell me?
A few issues are at the heart of the matter:
- Destruction of neighborhoods. Many perfectly good slums, poor materially but cohesive neighborhoods, were destroyed by “urban renewal” and many poor blacks were herded into housing projects, concentrating the misery. There is no sense of community in a 5 story vertical poverty concentrator with barbed wire around it.
- The decline of the black family. With almost 75% of black kids born out of wedlock, fathers are no longer a factor. Boys raised exclusively by mothers are not being instructed in the subtle art of being a man. Television, gangster rappers and older boys in the same boat are replacing dad. Fathers are not perfect, but are a damn sight better than the listed alternatives. A father can dicipline a son, show him the importance of getting up and going to work to earn a living and be a model of self respect. Hip hop artists do not provide that. The mothers do the best they can, but it is not enough.
- The war on drugs. Put half of all black men in prison for self-destructive but basically victimless behavior and put a huge economic incentive to get involved in the drug trade (both a direct effect of the war on drugs). Lack of fathers leads to the effect in the previous bullet point, and leads to wars over turf. Shooting your rival seems like a good idea if you are raised on gangster rap and black experience movies on BET.
- Government entitlement programs to replace the absent father. I was working a a security guard in “subsidized housing” (project)in college. I heard two kids talking. One was very proud of his dad, the long haul trucker. The other said his dad did “nothing”. The first kid asked how they got money. The second said “checks just come”. That had the makings of a Sociology master’s thesis in how the sense of entitlement is dooming generations.
- The collapse of the educational system. Public education sucks… period. My kids are homeschooled for about $1000 each. That is 1/8th of what is paid per pupil in the DC public schools, the worst in the nation. Some of the graduates of the DC system cannot read, at $8000 a year. Somewhere, the ghost of Nathan Bedford Forrest is laughing at what a fine job the public school system is doing completing his job. Burn it down and teach reading, math and basic science in tents with reading tutors recruited from the Marine Corps and test scores will jump 200 points in DC in 3 years.
A generic “poverty” as a cause of the out of control black murder rate, like blaming it on “guns” is intelectually dishonest and lazy. Poverty in the US of 2008 means cable TV, a car and free medical care. Poverty in 1932 meant starving to death. Blacks who shoot each other in the drug trade are not desperate to try to feed their families (the government does that, or their mother or grandmother who has a job does that), they are trying to make a big score to be like Tupac.
I am an Army officer, and I work with many black officers and non-comissioned officers. They are not likely to shoot each other over a perceived slight or dis, they are too busy being productive and trying to get ahead. I once sat in a meeting and watched 2 black bird colonels argue over a budget slide that required them to add a long list of 4 and 5 digit numbers in their heads from the powerpoint, a feat that left me in awe of their mental acuity. Are you saying if I dropped them in a project in Baltimore they would be selling crack next week? They respect themselves and that is one of the best defenses against a wasted life.
Bottom line, blacks have it tough. However, they are not required to participate in the cycle if they do not choose to. Crime, drug use and out of wedlock births are destroying their community. Take drugs, sell drugs, waste your life in a bottle, have your first kid a 14, shoot a classmate because he looked at you funny and you are screwed. Maybe Jessie Jackson can mention that while he is shaking down a business for not being generous enough.
Claiming that “Clearly the violence suffered by black people is a function of the crushing poverty they live in” is a very shallow analysis.
“With almost 75% of black kids born out of wedlock, fathers are no longer a factor. Boys raised exclusively by mothers are not being instructed in the subtle art of being a man. Television, gangster rappers and older boys in the same boat are replacing dad.”
Whether they have a father or not has very little to do with this. A majority of people I know and grew up with have single parents, myself included. Lacking a father figure certainly impacts development in terms of personality, but it in and of itself does not have an inherent effect in increasing violent tendencies in the child. It doesn’t matter which set of genitalia raises the kid, what matters how good of a parent they are and, most importantly, if they can be a good parent at all. If you simply can’t devote time to your children, that neglect will have consequences.
You correctly point out that for urban blacks, those consequences are leaving your children in the hands of black pop culture without being able to healthily filter everything with which the media bombards them. But tell me, what caused this urban black culture to arise?
“Put half of all black men in prison for self-destructive but basically victimless behavior and put a huge economic incentive to get involved in the drug trade (both a direct effect of the war on drugs). Lack of fathers leads to the effect in the previous bullet point, and leads to wars over turf. Shooting your rival seems like a good idea if you are raised on gangster rap and black experience movies on BET.”
Every gang has turf wars, it doesn’t matter what race. The economic incentive is there for anyone to take as well. Why is it, then, that urban blacks seem to suffer from this the most? Surely it can’t just be hip hop (practically everyone in the world listens to that) and BET (which is really sugar-coated and mainstream), and it sure as hell can’t be blamed on movies. If movies and music videos possessed an inherent ability to make people want to kill, then I’d be serial killer by now, what with all the violence, drugs, abuse, and glorification thereof I have been bombarded with in the media.
“Government entitlement programs to replace the absent father. I was working a a security guard in ‘subsidized housing’ (project)in college. I heard two kids talking. One was very proud of his dad, the long haul trucker. The other said his dad did ‘nothing’. The first kid asked how they got money. The second said ‘checks just come’. That had the makings of a Sociology master’s thesis in how the sense of entitlement is dooming generations.”
What does this have anything to do with gun violence? Hell, by your own logic, replacing the absent father should at the very least mitigate the problems caused by the father’s absence, not exacerbate. This point doesn’t seem to be relevant; explain?
“The collapse of the educational system. Public education sucks… period. My kids are homeschooled for about $1000 each. That is 1/8th of what is paid per pupil in the DC public schools, the worst in the nation. Some of the graduates of the DC system cannot read, at $8000 a year. Somewhere, the ghost of Nathan Bedford Forrest is laughing at what a fine job the public school system is doing completing his job. Burn it down and teach reading, math and basic science in tents with reading tutors recruited from the Marine Corps and test scores will jump 200 points in DC in 3 years.”
This is very true. The educational system in general is very poor, which is why so many children learn to hate learning when in reality children are biologically supposed to have an innate knack and desire to learn. That our educational system could turn off so many young minds to the idea of learning is terrifying. However, the abundant failures of the public school system are again experienced by all races.
So, once again, the question of why urban blacks experience and perpetuate so much more gun violence than any other ethnic group remains unaddressed, by your analysis. You point quite often to black urban culture as the problem, so it obviously just isn’t something innate to having black skin. But culture isn’t something that miracles itself into existence, it must have root causes.
I would say that the root causes are 1) poverty in cramped living situations, 2) a mindset sensitive to a history of oppression, 3) the drive to define one’s life success according to how much new stuff one possesses, which itself is symptomatic of American capitalism, and 4) our country’s focus on rugged individualism–again a result of a capitalistic philosophy. When you take a people who don’t have access to much, have grown up learning about how much their people have suffered at the hands of the privileged, and are constantly told by the very fabric of their country’s society that the mark of success is how much a single person has managed to own and gain through supreme individual effort, I think we can begin to make sense of the strange conglomeration of twisted ideas you often see on display in rap videos, where the only paths to quick individual success for the poor urban blacks are through climbing the drug trafficking hierarchy on your own and with the benefit of guns.
“I would say that the root causes are 1) poverty in cramped living situations,”
- See my first comment about the destruction of black neighborhoods through so called urban renewal.
“2) a mindset sensitive to a history of oppression,”
- More like a leadership obsessed with it, rather than interested in practical solutions (which of course will not pay the “reverends” big bucks). Did it happen yes. Was it evil yes. Will single minded obsession with it help the situation, you decide.
“3) the drive to define one’s life success according to how much new stuff one possesses, which itself is symptomatic of American capitalism,”
- That is a symptom of our evil nature as humans. Under communism, instead of getting more shiny new stuff because of the corrupt capitalist system, you got it by being a toady in the corrupt communist system. Capitalism, communism, Obamaism, people are still basically jerks. A new philosophy will just lead to new and interesting ways to subvert and screw it up, leading to people being just as big of jerks.
“4) our country’s focus on rugged individualism–again a result of a capitalistic philosophy.”
- See above. Individualism got one of my fellow officers (a black woman) out of the projects and into college. She knew she did not want to end up like her mother and sisters and put her considerable intelectual power to making sure it didn’t happen. She did not wait for someone to do it for her, a symptom of the culture of dependence she was escaping. Individualism is not a sin.
“When you take a people who don’t have access to much, have grown up learning about how much their people have suffered at the hands of the privileged, and are constantly told by the very fabric of their country’s society that the mark of success is how much a single person has managed to own and gain through supreme individual effort, I think we can begin to make sense of the strange conglomeration of twisted ideas you often see on display in rap videos, where the only paths to quick individual success for the poor urban blacks are through climbing the drug trafficking hierarchy on your own and with the benefit of guns.”
- That is a textbook excuse that says those poor people can’t do it. I pity them. Lets give them another program so we don’t have to feel bad.
Bottom line, Black culture (as defined by inner city blacks and the media that glorifies some of its worst offenders) is broken. It also sells, and both white media executives and liberal politicoes benefit from keeping the status quo. This culture teaches its adherents to behave badly and that to do otherwise is somehow betraying who you are (i.e. to do well in school is acting white). And whites who embrace it reap many of the negative consequences from it.
In the Army, officer housing is a United Nations of skin color, but as uniform as the Freemasons in culture. Teenage children of black officers (or enlisted men and women, for that matter) do not in general use drugs, get pregnant out of wedlock or hang out looking for trouble. If I were to hazard a guess, here are the reasons why:
- Two parent families with parents who care what happens to their kids
- An emphasis on success in all arenas (academic, social, personal), not just material possessions. A Lexus does not make you a star in the military. Your job performance does.
- A culture of accountability. Your kid vandalizes property, you are held responsible for your kids actions and he is as well. No “poor dear, we have oppressed you so, here’s a free pass”.
- Discipline of children and children who do not want to embarass or disappoint their parents.
And interestingly enough, many black enlisted men are poor enough to qualify for foodstamps and live in housing just a little better than the projects. But neither they, nor their kids, are anything but a benefit to society. Again, I wonder why.
Skin color is a side effect of survival traits involving skin melanin content assisting your competition in nature. It has no bearing on anything today (though there are certain traits, fairly or unfairly, that are associated with dark skin). Culture is the main concern. And you can decry me as a racist at the top of your lungs but it will not change the fact that adherents of black culture (specifically of the inner city) do not fare well in our society and those who reject it do better. You might as well claim blindness is not a hinderance and for me to say it is makes me intolerant and judgemental.
If my wife and I adopted a black infant from an inner city family tomorrow, in 15 years he would most likely be on the honor roll, enjoy sport pistol shooting and martial arts like his dad, and be interested in what college he would attend in a few years, regardless of his melanin content. Take a white infant and give him to a single mother with a crack or meth habit, and well, you get the picture.
“More like a leadership obsessed with it, rather than interested in practical solutions (which of course will not pay the “reverends” big bucks). Did it happen yes. Was it evil yes. Will single minded obsession with it help the situation, you decide.”
It doesn’t matter if it is an obsession or not. Obviously, focusing on it so much doesn’t do much towards “getting over it”, but you have to remember that entire populations of people often respond the way individual people do to trauma. The same way that a single person will remain scarred for life after having suffered rape, a culture can often remain scarred forever due to intense cultural trauma. The Jews are just as touchy about the Holocaust and Palestine as American urban blacks are to slavery and civil rights, and they aren’t going to “get over it” any time soon. New Yorkers are incredibly touchy about 9/11, and good luck trying to get them to get over it. The American Revolution made Americans have to find some way to look at every war they have engaged in since to be a matter of protecting American rights, and good luck getting Americans to fight a war if they can’t be convinced they’re doing it to protect America. It simply won’t fly to tell them we’re going to war to make America a glorious empire.
The point I’m trying to make here is that the mindset is there. People look at the world through a cultural lens, and if your cultural lens tells you people are out to subjugate you, then that’s they way you will see things regardless of the truth of the situation.
“That is a symptom of our evil nature as humans. Under communism, instead of getting more shiny new stuff because of the corrupt capitalist system, you got it by being a toady in the corrupt communist system. Capitalism, communism, Obamaism, people are still basically jerks. A new philosophy will just lead to new and interesting ways to subvert and screw it up, leading to people being just as big of jerks…. Individualism is not a sin.”
This is totally irrelevant. My argument is not a moral one, its a sociological one. Capitalism, regardless of how saintly or evil one may think it to be, is an ideological and economic system that encourages people to be all they can be as individuals, preferably through means of consumption. Success is in large part measured by what amazing products one can own, which is why so many poor families feel compelled to buy a big screen tv instead of food for their children.
I feel compelled to mention that a “culture of dependence” is partially a result of the culture of individualism. If you study anthropology and evolutionary biology, you find that the natural human social organization is that of a troop or tribe, which is in general a culture of mutual support. If you pursue an extreme of individualism, then of course you will also encourage the other extreme of dependence to arise. The balance of mutual support culture, for better or worse, is not encouraged by capitalism. That isn’t to say that it isn’t possible to have a culture of mutual support within capitalism, just that it isn’t encouraged.
“That is a textbook excuse that says those poor people can’t do it. I pity them. Lets give them another program so we don’t have to feel bad.”
Again, I’m not saying they can’t do it, I’m saying that other paths of success are not encouraged or simply denied to them. They’re partially discouraged by urban black culture, which glorifies crime. But they’re also partially discouraged by a society that simply doesn’t provide very many outlets.
Sure, you can join the armed forces as a grunt, but what if you don’t want to do that? Despite the fact that the armed forces do provide education opportunities, the downside is that you have to serve. Needless to say, serving in the military isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, the same way that playing sports isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. So what other options are there?
College? Too expensive. And high school degrees rarely allow anyone to get a good career job; high school grads who don’t go to college–hell, even college students at a prestigious university like me–are often forced to take jobs bagging groceries, which is barely enough to pay for food and rent, much less a path for success in the capitalistic sense of the word. Add to that the fact that most businesses are very reluctant to hire inner city people of any age, and you have limited options to get income.
So where do they turn? Some go in the military. Some resort to a life of crime–both because it may literally be their only alternative to get what they need or because they dream of making it big, and crime certainly dangles the promise of riches, sex, and glory beyond belief. Saying that anyone can make it clean if they try may be true, but it’s ignoring the level of difficulty that task can be compounded by the power of other temptations. If you look at all the people on Wall Street, I’d be impressed if you could find any of those self-made successes who came from an urban black setting.
“In the Army, officer housing is a United Nations of skin color, but as uniform as the Freemasons in culture. Teenage children of black officers (or enlisted men and women, for that matter) do not in general use drugs, get pregnant out of wedlock or hang out looking for trouble. If I were to hazard a guess, here are the reasons why:
- Two parent families with parents who care what happens to their kids
- An emphasis on success in all arenas (academic, social, personal), not just material possessions. A Lexus does not make you a star in the military. Your job performance does.
- A culture of accountability. Your kid vandalizes property, you are held responsible for your kids actions and he is as well. No “poor dear, we have oppressed you so, here’s a free pass”.
- Discipline of children and children who do not want to embarass or disappoint their parents.”
You forgot to mention that in the armed services, the government provides services and resources that aren’t available to the average citizen. In this case, the societal benefits of having well-behaved soldiers in a rigid power and moral structure are not merely the benefits of the military ideology alone. The government also provides the military with health insurance, education, housing, and pensions that it does not provide to low-income urban blacks. I’m not suggestion any sort of policy action here, all I’m saying is that servicemen have guaranteed access to a lot of necessary resources whereas the impoverished urban blacks do not, often times even if they do have a job.
I’m not denying that urban black culture helps to perpetuate the situation. But it wasn’t born out of nothing. It was born from several different elements. Some, like the traumatic scar of slavery and civil rights, probably can’t be eliminated. But others, like poverty, urban housing, and extremely limited pathways out of that lifestyle, can be alleviated, which in turn would begin to affect the cultural worldview. You can’t just jump in, tell someone, “You should really think this way instead”, and expect them to catch on smoothly. If you don’t change the circumstances which engendered that worldview, chances are you aren’t going to do much to affect it.
Does the government need to help? Maybe. Does it need to be non-profit organizations or other philanthropies helping from the outside? Maybe. Both? Probably. But one thing is for certain: the urban blacks can’t do it on their own. They have enough trouble trying to take care of themselves individually to have any sort of capacity to take care of the community as a whole.
Two things that can generally be agreed on are:
1. Melanin is not the issue, a negative culture, open to broad interpretation and debatable cause is the main issue. Blacks have no genetic factor that “causes” their murder rate to be 6-7 times higher than the white murder rate but may have (a) cultural factor(s) that does / do.
2. Guns are not the issue. If they were, then the housing area at Fort Bragg would be the murder capital of the United States, not utterly safe (except on the rare occasion when an SF guy back from Afghanistan and loses it).
You have an interesting blog. I am glad in the civilization vs chaos debate, you are marginally for the continuation of civilization, maybe.