From: dem@engin.umich.edu (Darryle E Merlette)
Subject: Re: Violent crime stats from a reliable source
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 11:17:07 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

I should have known an attempt at constructive discourse would fail with
frankli@seq.uncwil.edu (william carter franklin) who writes:

>dem@engin.umich.edu (Darryle E Merlette) writes:
>>Black neighborhoods are "occupied" by police while white neighborhoods
>>are patrolled. There's a big difference, and it is in part responsible
>>for the skewed crime stats when race is taken into account.
>
>Oh, I see, so the fact that the crimes occur has nothing to do with
>the stats? You seem like you have already made up your mind that all
>whites oppress all blacks, and that the 80 percent of the murders in
>my city committed by Blacks last year were just because that our police
>had "occupied" their neighborhoods. Bull.

The fact that the crimes occur is only part of the story. You seem like
you've already made up your mind that the relatively high reports of
crime among Blacks is due to some innate predisposition, since you've
ruled out the possibility of environment, the history of deprivation,
and institutionalized prejudice/racism as causal factors. 

>>Maybe that's true in your limited corner of the world but I can
>>assure you that it's not true in the rest of America. How many
>>white Yusef Hawkins' have there been? Reginald Denny doesn't count --
>>for one, he's still alive, and for two, there's some evidence that
>>his attack wasn't entirely unprovoked (he was "selling wolf tickets"
>>from what he thought was the safety of his truck according to some
>>accounts).
>
>
>LIMITED CORNER? Wilmington North Carolina? Your education seems limited.
>(At least on this subject)

Once again, you're very wrong. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt
when I said "limited corner" -- what I meant was "limited thinking".

>Wilmington has many programs that revitalize black neighborhoods with
>thousands of hours of volunteer efforts.

Good for Wilmington.

>Also, this year, the city passed a multi_million dollar plan to 
>revitalize ONE of our black neighborhoods. 

Probably targeted for gentrification no doubt.

>So it seems like your source has it COMPLETELY backwards.

Think again (or perhaps for the first time).

>And the police go where the crime is.
>What is so prejudiced about that?

Crime is everywhere. People tend to find something as ubiquitous as
crime wherever they look. If they only look in certain places (like
Black neighborhoods) then not only do they miss it when it occurs
elsewhere (like white neighborhoods), they begin to believe that it
only occurs where they've been looking. It's a self-reinforcing 
practice. The police overwhelmingly target Black individuals and
Black neighborhoods and that's what's so prejudiced. In fact, the
whole law enforcement system from apprehension to conviction to
sentencing suffers from institutionalized racism -- this fact is
well documented with respect to sentencing. In particular, several
studies from the 1940's to the present have shown that punishments
from most severe to least severe occur in the following sequence:
Blacks killing whites, whites killing whites, Blacks killing Blacks,
whites killing Blacks.

	Darryle

"...the colonists certainly seemed to take other sex scandals in
stride. William Franklin, for example, had become governor of New
Jersey despite that fact that he was an illegitimate child. His
father, the immortal Benjamin Franklin, politically survived many
such scandals..." Shelly Ross, _Fall From Grace_, pg. 7
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american