I’m sick and tired of reading comments loaded with right-wing memes and myths.
Every time we try to deal with discussing racist murderers, whether its Micheal Dunn or George Zimmerman, and his defenders, someone steps into the conversation and brings up the tired trope of “black-on-black crime” as a tried and true method of derailing the conversation away from racism, Stand Your Ground laws as they affect black people, and racially biased jurors and prosecutors who don’t deliver justice-for us.
I see these unrelated stats thrown around willy-nilly, and not just on Fox.
This stuff is to be expected from Faux News, or folks over at Breitbart’s site.
Liberal/left/progressives need to stop.
Dopper made a comment:
That is why I try to get progressive to drop the (53+ / 0-)
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term “black on black crime”. The only major racial/ethnic group where the majority of crime committed against them are from people of a different ethnic/racial group are Native Americans. That’s it!
The term feeds a rightwing meme.
He made the comment in a diary about ‘fear of blacks’ on Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped people from continuing to do apples and oranges.
Let’s get this straight.
A racist who kills or maims a black person, latino (or any other person of color) is committing a hate crime. Most white people killing white people as simply violent crime, black people killing black people in the course of violent crime-aren’t doing murders because of how they feel about someone’s skin color.
Dopper’s comment was referencing the one major crime stat where inter-racial imbalance really does occur-the rape of Native American women, where 86% of the rapes are committed by non-Indian rapists (70% are white) which has been the subject of other pieces here, and elsewhere-see Aji’s post-“Sovereignty for Native Women: The Tribal Law and Order Act“-and one I did on VAWA.
Back to the subject at hand. If you have never read them, strongly suggest you read two pieces by Jamelle Bouie:
The Trayvon Martin Killing and the Myth of Black-on-Black Crime
and
Why “Black-on-Black Crime” is a Dangerous Idea
In the first he makes it clear “Crime is driven by proximity and opportunity-which is why 86 percent of white victims were killed by white offenders.”
He goes on to point out why right-wingers have shifted the subject:
Last week, in Chicago, 16-year-old Darryl Green was found dead in the yard of an abandoned home. He was killed, relatives reported, because he refused to join a gang. Unlike most tragedies, however-which remain local news-this one caught the attention of conservative activist Ben Shapiro, an editor for Breitbart News. Using the hashtag “#justicefordarryl,” Shaprio tweeted and publicized the details of Green’s murder. But this wasn’t a call for help and assistance for Green’s family, rather, it was his response to wide outrage over Saturday’s decision in the case of George Zimmerman, where a Florida jury judged him “not guilty” of second-degree murder or manslaughter in the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Shapiro, echoing many other conservatives, is angry over the perceived politicization of the Zimmerman trial, and believes that activists have “injected” race into the discussion, as if there’s nothing racial already within the criminal-justice system. Indeed, he echoes many conservatives when he complains that media attention had everything to do with Zimmerman’s race. If he were black, the argument goes, no one would care. And so, Shapiro found the sad story of Darryl Green, and promoted it as an example of the “black-on-black” crime that, he believes, goes ignored. Or, as he tweets, “49% of murder victims are black men. 93% of those are killed by other blacks. Media don’t care. Obama doesn’t care
In the second article Bouie wrote:
No one has said that crime between African Americans isn’t a problem. The point is that blackness has nothing to do with it. “Black-on-black crime” is a frame that presupposes black criminality-that there’s something inherent to blackness which makes intra-group crime more prevalent and more deadly. But that’s nonsense, and all it does is obscure the history that brought us to this point. After a century of anti-black violence and public policy-of manufactured ghettos, forced hyper-segregation, and state-supported peonage-is economic perilousness and heightened violence among the victims and descendants of those people really a shock? And if it isn’t, then why would talk about crime in these communities as a factor of blackness, and not of history and circumstance?
The only thing we accomplish by focusing on “black-on-black crime” as an independent phenomena-distinct from “white-on-white crime”-is justify universal suspicion of black men, and young black men, in particular. This is a problem. It’s absolutely true that “NYPD stats show that 96 percent of all shooting victims are black or Hispanic, and 97 percent of all shooters were black or Hispanic,” but it’s also true that the number of black and Latino offenders is a small fraction of all blacks and Latinos. But stop and frisk turns all blacks and all Latinos into potential offenders-it erases individual consideration and imposes collective suspicion.
To continue this refresher course go back and re-read (if you haven’t read it already) shanikka’s Hey America! Can you please stop killing our (usually) innocent Black male children now? in which she wrote:
Most Americans, especially the white ones, have been trained like Pavlov’s dogs at this point: all you have to do is push the right buttons, visually and rhetorically, and suddenly a lost young promising life is reduced to actual or potential yard waste: thug, hoodlum, gangbanger. Trash, to be thrown out. It may have been by the likes of law enforcement or it may have been by trigger-happy racists, but its still NBD.
Even when (thankfully) increasing numbers of people are becoming educated about the myth of Black criminality being just that, the cultural imperative demands that we not rest until we find some reason other than race to explain when an innocent dies. (As if any superficial explanation can excuse away the reality that when an innocent young Black man’s life has been taken unnecessarily by a knee-jerk reaction on the part of a white person to objectively reasonable behavior, almost always at least some racial thinking was in the mix somewhere.) Maybe this is why when the “Blacks shouldn’t commit so much crime” argument gets no play or is unsuccessful in quelling the legitimate outrage, the very next thing that the most obvious racists do when confronted with what would otherwise be an obvious slaughter of a human being for reasons due to behavior that is innocuous or which suggests that the slaughteree was actually himself afraid and trying to flee is to start harping on “why it is being ignored” that Black young men are killing other Black men.
Forget for a moment the obvious question (Dear racist white person who raises this stupid-ass argument: if Black-on-Black crime is being ignored, how come you know all about it although you probably haven’t actually talked to a Black person for more than 30 seconds or been in a neighborhood where Black-on-Black crime happens for more than 10 minutes EVER?) The important question is this: how on earth is this relevant to the discussion of a Black man dying at the hands of someone who isn’t Black too often and why this is a serious problem??? The fact that some stupid Black people kill other Black people within their own neighborhoods over real or perceived grievances with each other says absolutely nothing about whether strangers, usually white but not always, have good reason to conclude that they don’t have to judiciously exercise deadly force as a last, not first, resort when it comes to their interactions with unarmed young Black man, too often Black children. Two wrongs simply do not make a right.
I’ve witnessed crime and been a victim of it. I’ve interviewed hundreds of felons and former felons. Nobody sticking up the local dope spot did it ’cause the dealer was black or latino. They did it to get their hands on money and product. Most of the gangs I’ve worked with over the years are involved in turf wars and they’ll fight whoever threatens their little piece of ground irrespective of race or ethnicity.
But too many people are still overly defensive when discussions of racism are being held. And heaven forbid anyone brings up ‘white privilege’-automatic lodestone for deniers, and defenders of that privilege (and racism). They are tenaciously racist in their denialism, or try to wrap legal fig leaves around the discussion to threadjack, and obfuscate.
Time to stop allowing the threadjacks, and derailing and sailing on that “not a river in Egypt” (aka denial).
If you’d like to brush up on derailing-suggest you read Jenée Desmond-Harris: How not to derail the dialogue on race. Her point 9 reads:
9. Resist the urge to believe and regurgitate myths about black people, even when they’re promoted by black people (African-Americans are all more homophobic, black-on-black crime is uniquely bad, there are more black men in prison than in college, all black women love being fat, etc.). Take a minute to challenge the things you hear many say over and over. You’ll often find they don’t have a strong basis in reality.
Or go back to an older post by abagond “How to derail an argument about racism” who cites techniques from Derailing for Dummies:
If You Won’t Educate Me How Can I Learn
If You Cared About These Matters You’d Be Willing To Educate Me
You’re Being Hostile.
But That Happens To Me Too!
You’re Being Overemotional
You’re Taking Things Too Personally
You’re Not Being Intellectual Enough/You’re Being Overly Intellectual
You’re Arguing With Opinions Not Fact
Your Experience Is Not Representative Of Everyone
Unless You Can Prove Your Experience Is Widespread I Won’t Believe It
I Don’t Think You’re As Marginalized As You Claim
Well I Know Another Person From Your Group Who Disagrees!
A In B Situation Is Not Equivalent To X In Y Situation
Who Wins Gold in the Oppression Olympics?
You Have A False Consciousness
You’re Not Being A Team Player
You’ve Lost Your Temper So I Don’t Have To Listen To You Anymore
You Are Damaging Your Cause By Being Angry
Surprise! I Was Playing “Devil’s Advocate” All Along!
Okay. Rant over, but I’m not going to ignore folks who cite Fox not facts.
I have no problem with trying to educate, but there really is no good reason to tolerate repeated use of right wing tropes in what should be safe spaces.
Cross-posted from Black Kos
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