The issue I brought up has nothing to do with anyone "materially object(ing) to murder and violent crime rate”…
Well, you yourself just began your premise here on a false assumption of what I proffered as my initial position.
So I’m not going to quote ladder here - there’s too much; but I am going to deal with all of the general points your making.
My post is based on your words: “white guilt liberals and democrats deny these [crime stat] truths”. That’s the premise of the post title, and the central theme of the op. Almost straight after you say your point has nothing to do with people rejecting the data, you explain that your point is, in no small part, that everyone is rejecting the data. You go on in your reply to profoundly assert the data doesn’t lie, and talk about the data and statistics - seemingly with the implication that I’m rejecting the data.
That is indeed your premise - both explicit and implicit, your reply here is underpinned by it, your original post stated it. And it’s inherently untrue as I outlined.
There is nothing subtle about it. I call it like I see it and the criminological data doesn't lie.
Data doesn’t generally lie. Data is just data. Interpretation of the data, the choice of datasets you include, the conclusions and causal links inferred from them, and the value judgements you make, and the tone you use when conveying them - those lie. Those can lie an awful lot.
And this is the issue, you seem to be unable to draw a distinction between the data you are using, and all the things you’re piling onto it. Your argument here appears to treat those both as the same thing - that if the data is accurate, then your speculative assertions about cause, the implicit value judgements you appear to be baking in with all the negative tone and language - are also accurate and valid. They are not.
Sure, the data is largely - but not entirely accurate - no one contests that a great deal. But what you’re concluding from it, the subtle negative blame laden language, and other subtleties - that’s all from you, not from the data.
There is no white supremacy or racism in presenting fact based objective truth.
Racism, broadly speaking, is the belief or opinion that one race is inferior to another in some respect. White supremacy, broadly speaking, is where racism is used in some fashion to justify specific racist policy and dominance of white people. That’s my own words, it doesn’t catch everything - but it’s what I mean when I am talking about racism and white supremacy in this context.
Now, your issue is the same as before - you keep conflating the validity of data with the validity of the opinions you inelegantly draw from it.
In this respect, you can indeed show the “truth” of some statistic or data point - and draw racist or white supremacist conclusions from it by injecting a bunch of value inferences that don’t appear in that data point.
For example, when you suggest black people “don’t have pride any more”, that blacks no longer want to succeed; or implying that the current plight is down to their own choice - that’s not supported at all by the data. Again, that’s all you. That sort of negative tone, and language is drawing subtle broad inferences, and implying broad value or moral judgements
Those last bits, are what can make opinions based on accurate data racist; if that is then used to justify policy that, say, maintains the race gap, and is used to justify the idea that it’s okay that whites are at the top and blacks are not because of something inherent to them - that then migrates into white supremacy.
And nowhere in any proposition or follow-up comment have I asserted there is some genetic factor involved making blacks lesser than whites, or any other race.
If you pay attention. I am laying out options; not specifically accusing you of holding one position or other. The choices really are an issue of believing that there is an innate cause or an external cause: and with the former, genetics is typically all there is, whether you like it or not.
For example, given what we know of human genetics, there is every reason to expect that white people were in the exact reversed positions; with whites having been enslaved, a black racist government that enacted racist laws, lynching of whites, segregation etc, all in identical conditions - we’d be talking about white violent crime in this thread.
That’s kind of the point I’m making; we all have to take individual responsibility for our actions, we all have to be held properly accountable for our misdeeds; but it is an absolute and undeniable fact that our thinking, behaviour and our decision making are hugely influenced and shaped by external factors outside our control. When there are trends in external factors - there are associated trends in the population.
My framing of the potential causes is to highlight hie various positions end up falling down into types particular claims, that end up falling down onto personal prejudice. Many individuals attempt to hide this inherent prejudice through making higher level or indirect claims that obfuscate the inherent basis for the position: when politicians do it, for example, it’s called a dog whistle.
“Before civil rights black Americans had pride, self-respect, and determination to succeed in America…. <snip> …. Blacks wanted to succeed then, but after civil rights, everything changed”
I try and be charitable in text, not always successfully - as it’s often easy to misread context and tone. But this is fairly cut and dry.
Pride, self respect, determination; are personal attributes associated with positive value. Self-respect, determination, pride - that doesn’t come from data - its not practically possible to measure the subjective nature of things like self-respect in broad population statistics.
No, this is you looking at the data and inferring - due to your own biases and prejudice - a negative value trait in a group of people. It involves asserting broad stereotypes about parents, and individuals, their motivations (or lack thereof) that are broadly negative and again, not supported by the data.
If people are painting you as racist for statements like this, that’s why - it’s not rejecting the data, it’s rejecting your implicit broad value statements.
“[LBJ welfare programs] forcing unwed black girls and women to marry the government if they wanted money to raise their children. This forced the fatherlessness upon a segment of the black community”
There are broad correlations in unemployment, poverty, welfare, incarceration rates, and a few others, with rise of single family homes. That’s the data. Your reply is inferring causation from that correlation, and then completely speculating an underlying cause; it’s not even a particularly good inference; given man in the house rules (which forced unwed women to not have a man in the house) were state level, and ended in 68; and that the welfare rules otherwise didn’t promote fatherlessness as much as promoting not getting married (rules for married couples, and rules for unmarried or unrelated individuals were different), and would not necessarily have had little impact on people already unwed. So this assessment seems largely speculative, driven by correlation = causation.
Ignoring all the huge variety of specific economic factors here; it doesn’t even make sense with respect to what you said mere sentences before:
You stated, that black people in the 1960s had strong families, had pride, wanted to be successful, and had determination - despite being victims of racism; but this assessment is very much at odds with the suggestion that these exact same people would happily give up, break up their families, and live on handouts when offered.
So it seems your argument doesn’t fully believe in the positive attributes you assigned to blacks in the 1960s; given that your follow up implies they leapt at the opportunity for handouts, and instead serve only to imply negative attributes in blacks today.
I can follow up, the same welfare was also available to whites up for arguably longer; who also had stable families structure - one set of stable families with pride and determination deteriorate into mass incarceration because of welfare but the others didn’t?
These sort of statistical comparison shows that the data you’re using is incomplete given the conclusion - or your conclusion is inherently based on an inherent bias that somehow one is better at dealing with things than others.
“I am so tired of hearing about the crack epidemic as an excuse for the failures of a segment of the black community. People CHOOSE…”
Let’s ignore that I mentioned a dozen or so things; and you simply picked one; and let’s ignore that you just blamed the underlying cause on LBJ - let’s say it slowly and clearly - attributing the underlying cause of social trends, is not excusing individual behaviour.
You’re right - crack is a drug, using drugs is a choice. However - social trends are clear, poverty and economic factors are indeed associated with high level of drug use, and substance abuse - so redlining, and racial inequality raised unemployment and increases poverty disproportionately in black communities; that alone puts those communities at higher risk for substance abuse.
When a new, super cheap drug, comes out on the market, and is sold to them; it’s reasonable to expect areas with higher unemployment and economic hardship to be worst affected.
So you have a drug problem, how does society deal with it. Take opioids as an example, you recognize the issue with substance abuse is a health issue, you see the deaths, homelessness and harm done to individuals having issues with opioid addiction, and you focus health resources - addiction treatment - government policy is compassionate, and drug abuse is recognized: as a socioeconomic issue due to long standing economic and social problems in various communities.
Imagine, if instead of that; opioid abuse is viewed as a crime problem, painted as criminals that were damaging the country - laws were changed to make inordinately steep penalties for possession or supply of opioids were meted out, and three strikes policy means that you could go to prison for decades for it. In locales with high poverty and high drug use - this would destroy families, increase poverty more, increase police involvement, increase arrests, and lead to overwhelming mass incarceration - for a health problem.
That was all external, and racially disproportionate reactions to poor and economically insecure people choosing drug, and that racist reaction significantly harmed the environment as compared to if it had been treated like opioids are now.
“Mass incarceration was a direct result of the 72% out of wedlock birth rates leading to the home to prison pipeline. The family structure was already collapsed prior to incarceration due to the lack of a nuclear family.
Mass incarceration began in the mid 1970s, this is when incarceration went from stable, and began increasing. The 72% out of wedlock number has only been hit in the last decade. Kids born out of wedlock did get a bit worse, but actually collapsed in the mid 1970s, coinciding with mass incarceration and obviously. You also don’t see equivalent mass incarceration levels snowballing with whites despite equivalent levels of single parent homes today vs blacks in the late 1960. The wedlock birthrates for all races today are at all time lows - despite violent crime halving in the last few decades and incarceration rates largely levelling. If this was the actual issue and actual cause - there would be a correlation here too.
This is what I mean by cherry picking - you’re only using the data that confirms the prejudicial conclusion you wish to make; when you look more broadly at wider data to support the correlation - the correlation falls apart.
