Nationally, blacks account for 86 percent of those convicted of crack-cocaine offenses, according to a report produced by President Clinton's advisory board on race. In Columbus, blacks made up 86 percent of all adults arrested for cocaine sales and 80 percent of those arrested for possession over the past six years. Accounting for poverty Rhonda Madison lives in Poindexter Village, a public-housing project on the East Side among the areas that bore the brunt of crack wars in the early part of this decade. Without question, she said, her neighborhood is safer now. Old people aren't so afraid to go outside.
Gunshots ring out less often.
And yet, it is not at all a nice place, said Madison, whose son was Emmett Williams' best friend. She wonders whether suburban Franklin County residents have any idea how different their worlds are. She also would like for people to understand that crime happens in places not just where residents are black but also where they are poor and undereducated. Using 1990 census data, sociologists Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo studied both predominantly white and black neighborhoods in Columbus with similarly high poverty rates. They found nearly identical rates of violent crime.