Wow. That goes beyond colorblind to just plain blind.

And on the other side of it, can you imagine how many prisons we'd have to build if we convicted white people for drug crimes at the same proportional rate as blacks and hispanics?

Yes, it's "systemic", and therefore no one's fault. Whew!

My neighbor is a public defender in our inner-city L.A. neighborhood. We were talking last night and told me that she felt the justice system in CA was broken in two ways. The first being that judges have had a lot of their discretion taken away by Three Strikes laws and direct filing. Basically if someone over 16 shows up in the system, it is the prosecutor that decides whether or not to charge them as an adult. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand how this plays out. Blacks commit more crime, prosecutors respond by taking crimes by Blacks more seriously, and are less likely to view young criminals as children. Crimes by underage Whites are seen as out of the norm, so the offenders are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt.

The second issue she brought up was the fact that gangs have responded to these laws by pushing younger and younger kids to commit crime. She told me that on several occasions, she's had to defend bank robbery suspects as young as 12 and 13 years old. It's a vicious cycle that can't be directly tied to white racism, but depends on racism to keep it going.

The correct term is "institutional racism". And Dr. Stuntz should already know this.

I wonder why he narrowed his definition to mean individual bigotry only?

I live in Honolulu, where the African-American population is about 4% of the city's total, a relatively negligible percentage that is further dispersed within the mainstream generally. However, the problems described by Dr. Stuntz are widespread in the Hawaiian, Samoan, Micronesian and Filipino communities.

Further, when I was in college, I spent an entire summer during my junior year studying in Belfast, Northern Ireland. While there, I witnessed these same problems afflicting the working-class Catholic communities, which also suffered the general indignity of often being literally walled off from Protestant neighborhoods through the construction of physical barriers.

These personal experiences, while entirely anecdotal, have led me to conclude that such problems are inherently due to widespread disparities in economic class, and that it is a mistake to lay them entirely upon the doorstep of racism. Racial, ethnic and religious bigotry are underlying sociological phenomena that become easily exacerbated if not downright inflamed during times of rising economic discord and dislocation.

While I'm under no illusion that addressing comprehensively the issues of economic inequity and wealth disparity woould somehow rid our society entirely of those problems commonly associated with bigotry, certainly a serious effort in that direction would contribute significantly to their general mitigation.

Thanks Dr. Morpheus, I was about to post the same thing.

Kevin, it's interesting that you note that this definition of racism is far too narrow, but don't see that much of the public at large works with the same definition, and that this definition rests on the "fairytale" about civil rights being largely accomplished (with the downfall of legal segregation)that you claimed on Friday didn't have a hold on our culture. I'm glad to catch you early on in comments, where i'm pretty sure that you're still reading, because i was curious if the volume of well thought out disagreement that you got on Friday made any impact on what you thought about the issue.

Institutional racism, if it isn't written into law with explicit words about race, is largely invisible to people who don't suffer from it themselves. These things (you mention Black migration to northern cities, white flight to the suburbs, underfunded urban police forces, and drug laws that are far harsher toward blacks than whites) are the result of racism: not necessarily racial hostility, but the way that racial difference is articulated in public policy & the way our physical and economic environments are still shaped by past policies.

"These personal experiences, while entirely anecdotal, have led me to conclude that such problems are inherently due to widespread disparities in economic class, and that it is a mistake to lay them entirely upon the doorstep of racism. Racial, ethnic and religious bigotry are underlying sociological phenomena that become easily exacerbated if not downright inflamed during times of rising economic discord and dislocation."

Donald, i think the point is that you can't separate the economic bigotry form the racism and still have any coherent picture of what's going on. Others, those marginalized by society and funneled into the underclass lack the political and economic power to control their representations in society and those representations justify their continued marginalization. it's circular. in a (small m) marxist sense the economic disparities "produce" race (the idea of what "racial" differences mean, but i think we're too far down the road to effectively winnow one out form the other.

I'm with Donald. In my school of public health, we use the term Socio-Economic Status (SES). Those with lots of it live the longest, are more healthy, are less likely to be injured, etc. It's works on a relative scale, so that the amount of SES you have is based on how you compare to your neighbors. And it has a gradient effect, where societies with a huge rich/poor disparity have huge outcome disparities compared with societies that are more egalitarian. E.g., it's better to be poor in Cuba/Sweden/etc than in the USA/Liberia/etc.

Bill Stuntz wrote:

According to the best available data, blacks are 20% more likely than whites to use illegal drugs. But blacks are an incredible thirteen times more likely to be imprisoned for drug crime.

Ok, these sentences deserves to be re-written:

According to the best available data, blacks are 1.2 times as likely as whites to use illegal drugs. But blacks are an incredible thirteen times more likely to be imprisoned for drug crime.

Fight like a master, not like a lame-brain.

Then there's this:

The bottom line is as simple as it is awful: When whites are robbed, raped, beaten, and killed, their victimizers are usually punished. When the same crimes happen to blacks, the usual result is: nothing. No arrest, no prosecution, no conviction.

A racist might look at the drug crime imprisonment / drug use stats and argue that white crooks just don't get caught for drug crimes because they're smarter than black crooks. But if that was the real explanation for the drug crime imprisonment discrepancy, and not racism, then why are the cops so good at putting away the violent victimizers of white people, but are all but nowhere to be found when the same happens to black people?

Stuntz wrote:

Here's point #1: policing in urban neighborhoods is underfunded.

Um, then why doesn't he show this by giving us statistics about law enforcement funding and how it relates to crime prevention- instead of giving the stats about imprisonment discrepancy between white and black crooks and victimizers of white and black victims- and then just come out of nowhere making a claim about those discrepancies?

Swan:

I think Stuntz, in his attempts, to gloss over the historical racism/institutional racisim that is the hallmark of the relationship between the police and African-Americans misses a rather simple explanation: African-Americans are complicit in these crimes remaining unsolved or unprosecuted. Complicit in the sense that they don't trust the police to do the right thing and either refuse to testify against the perpetraitor or even report the crimes. Some call it keeping it real and not snitching--I'd say it's cutting your nose off to spite your face. My personal distrust of the police, stems in large part, from my personal interactions with them that underscores the arbitrary manner in which African-Americans of all socio-economic levels interact with the police (e.g., DWB, Terry-stops, etc.).

Either way, I suspect a great deal could be learned by examining the dysfunctional and historical relationship between the African-American community and the police.

This post gives new meaning to the classic: "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics."

From a cursory look at the methodology behind the drug use data, that "blacks are 20% more likely than whites to use illegal drugs" comes from the following:

"Current illicit drug use was associated with race/ethnicity in 2005. The rate was lowest among Asians (3.1 percent). Rates were 12.8 percent for American Indians or Alaska Natives, 12.2 percent for persons reporting two or more races, 9.7 percent for blacks, 8.7 percent for Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders, 8.1 percent for whites, and 7.6 percent for Hispanics."

Definition of "illicit drugs" used for this study: "Illicit drugs include marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, or prescription-type psychotherapeutics used nonmedically."

The numbers on marijuana use: "Marijuana was the most commonly used illicit drug (14.6 million past month users). Among persons aged 12 or older, the rate of past month marijuana use was about the same in 2005 (6.0 percent) as in 2004 (6.1 percent), 2003 (6.2 percent), and 2002 (6.2 percent)."

In other words, marijuana is the main determinant of the numbers used by Bill Stuntz. However, I very much doubt that the blacks in prison were prosecuted for smoking pot. I couldn't quickly find the numbers for crack/cocaine by race, which would probably be more useful in determining who goes to prison. But I did find the numbers for meth (major drug for which whites get sent to prison): "The rates for past month and past year methamphetamine use did not change between 2004 and 2005, but the lifetime rate declined from 4.9 to 4.3 percent. From 2002 to 2005, decreases were seen in lifetime (5.3 to 4.3 percent) and past year (0.7 to 0.5 percent) use, but not past month use (0.3 percent in 2002 vs. 0.2 percent in 2005)."

So, while ~8% of people currently use illicit drugs, only 0.3-0.7% use meth currently. I'd presume that crack, cocaine, and heroin numbers are similar, and an order of magnitude lower than numbers for pot. Therefore, that 20% difference, mostly based on numbers for pot (and probably prescription drugs) is essentially meaningless for figuring out incarceration rates. Way to do statistics, Harvard professor Bill Stuntz.

Urk: Yes, a lot of the pushback I got on Friday's post was thoughtful and certainly had an impact. Partly, of course, the criticism goes to show how hard it is to write about this stuff. Mainly, I wanted to make a point about "the media" and how they treat race, which I think Ezra mischaracterized. In general, I think it's a myth that the media portrays racism as something that's a closed book. At the same time, I wasn't trying to minimize the continuing effects of institutional racism or its hold on many Americans.

As always, though, it's hard to strike the right balance, which is one of the reasons Obama's speech was so good. Especially in a short blog post, you're always going to slight one (or several) legitimate sides of this issue, but Obama did a pretty good job of airing nearly all of them.

To illustrate how some whites see black crime, I offer a personal anecdote.

Many years ago, during an economic downturn, I got a temp job in data entry. Most of the workers were new and we did not know each other. One day a white woman walked up to a black woman and told her that her boyfriend had some tools stolen out of his pickup truck the night before and asked the black woman if she knew who stole them.

(To give you some background, there are about 1,000,000 people in our metro area, of which blacks are a tiny fraction. The white woman lived in a suburb far from the traditional black area of town.)

Of course, the black woman was insulted and angered by the question, and the multiple assumptions underlying it. Incredibly enough, the white woman couldn’t figure out why.

A contrarian view on part of this:

The "omerta" of inner city black neighborhoods is an increasing reason as to why violent crime is underprosecuted in many black communities. You can't try a case without someone being arrested first.

Urk... agreed on the economics.

One thing Kevin HAS blogged about here in the past once or twice is trying to, at least in part, move from race-based affirmative action to socioeconomic affirmative action.

The problem is the charge of racism brings the conversation with the average white person to a standstill. It derails the topic at hand and makes the whole thing a excercise in rationalization and name calling.

And of course, if we blame something on racism, the only cure is to end racism. And how do you do that? Teach-ins? Black History month and a half? Elected Black Officials?

So as he breaks it down into fairly easy pragmatic solutions
1) Increase Police Department budgets in Black Areas.
2) Increase local control.

These are two things that everybody can agree upon without having to discuss race. I mean, other than unwashed Hippies and Gun Nuts, who doesn't want more police walking the beat arresting the violent criminals?

Racism is practiced in many ways. The most devastating and long lasting are the social institutions of criminal justice that have long been used to incarcerate huge proportions of the male Black community. Pointing this out with any emotion of condemnation opens up Black religious leaders to denunciations of reverse racism. European Americans need to continue to make the argument about how racism is practiced throughout society to rebut the distressed sensibilities of those who take exception to the hostility of American racism's victims.

I know the injustice against black man, especially for drug offenses, is extreme. But I think I, probably like a lot of (white, etc.) people have been the beneficiary of that injustice in cases where a draconian attitude toward drug offenses leads, however, to justice where it would not otherwise be gotten. (Somewhat akin to Al Capone being taken down for a tax offense.)

CASE #1: My new upstairs neighbor in an historic (and scummy) old hotel building on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan just happens to be a musician. He tortures me by playing loud bass--coming, in fact, from live guitars and drums and huge amps. This forces me to leave my apartment for hours on end (3-6 hours at time maybe) in the evenings. No one else in the building has the guts to complain to him, although you'd think they would think "gee, I'm living on the inside of a very loud stereo speaker."

One Sunday morning he's playing music on his stereo or CD player and I go upstairs to complain. Regarding turning down his music, he tells me "Just this once, I'll turn it down. Just as a f-a-v-o-r. But next time, I dunno." Afterwards, if he does turn it down, he doesn't do it adequately.

But the shocking thing to me was that while he was speaking to me his whole body was moving, shaking, flailing around like he was made of rubber. I've never seen anything like it before or since, but I understand there's some medical term for that kind of movement among drug takers--dyskinesia? (I see the term "crack dancing" online.) So when I call the police to complain, I discuss this and that the guy must be on drugs.

The policemen don't go to his apartment, they go to my apartment and I'm shocked to get to open the door and find they're standing away from it like they're going to jump me (although maybe they just want to avoid all of the, like, possible gun play and shooting). They tell me they weren't told the situation, just to go to MY apartment.

So I repeat the story, and I believe I never again have to put up with my upstairs neighbor, who disappears. Did they cart him off? Did he decide he was better off elsewhere? I dunno, but THANK GOD HE WAS GONE.

Maybe he became some famous musician or murdered rap star.

CASE #2: Our last neighborhood in a midwestern city, a scummy house in a rotten part of my town: People half a block away are doing the whole open the trunk and set the neighboring square mile of territory to listening to your music thing. So NATURALLY I go to complain. I'm essentially threatened with death or bodily mayhem ("You open your mouth ONE MORE TIME....") And the guy follows up by walking along our backyard property line glowering at us threateningly as we are in our kitchen.

So the next time, the thug and his friends are even farther away down the block, parked on a lawn on a corner. I go down to that area, I don't speak to them, but I can smell marijuana. I call the police, and the creep and his friends are too lackadaisical to promptly go elsewhere, so when the police get there the thugs are still there and they get arrested.

The thug down the block ends up, I believe, doing jail time. A thoroughly nasty character who was, in fact, involved with numerous previous cases involving murders and major drug dealing but who had always escaped justice by turning rat and informing on his friends.

Good riddance.

CONCLUSION:

Well, I certainly hope the days of having neighbors this bad are BEHIND me. In ANOTHER city, I had the joy (I think) of hired killers (or "roughers up"?) coming to my door in the middle of the night. When I didn't open the door to their knocking (I'm not a fool and you shouldn't be, too--never open a door unless you know what's on the other side) they said to each other, after expressing the idea that I was in: "Somebody musta TOLE him." "YEAH, somebody musta TOLE him."

SO, RAH TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA! Let's have black people who look up to him, who join society, and who are NOT COMMITTING CRIMES OR ANNOYING THEIR NEIGHBORS!

"Socratic Gadfly" wrote:

The "omerta" of inner city black neighborhoods is an increasing reason as to why violent crime is underprosecuted in many black communities. You can't try a case without someone being arrested first.

Come on. If black omerta really existed, it would protect black drug offenders and not just black violent criminals. Cops don't have x-ray vision that allows them to see inside people's houses or pockets, and if omerta was so airtight, drug dealers would have become almost impervious to prosecution long ago.

There are plenty of black people in those black neighborhoods who want to see those crimes prosecuted. If there is an omerta phenomenon worth speaking of among blacks (I doubt it) it's nothing compared to omerta among, for example, cops. I've been living in New Jersey for my whole life. We have our share of crime-ridden communities with large black neighborhoods. I've read about crime, been involved with these cities, talked to people from them, and heard about black crime and investigations of crime in these cities my whole life, and I've never heard of anybody claiming that it's a law-enforcement-stopping phenomenon like you are. Nor have I heard anybody claim that about any place outside of New Jersey as regards black communities today.

I have heard of cases where criminals tried to intimidate black witnesses against testifying (but I've heard of just as many where the black witnesses testified despite the threats, and perhaps even got police protection to facilitate that). And, I've heard of the "Stop snitching" T-shirts. But I always looked at the shirts as a very minor phenomenon, and I've never heard anyone suggest otherwise. As someone who keeps an ear open about crime, I find your claim about black omerta really inplausible. It just doesn't exist on that scale and you're just guessing that it does.

Urk: "Donald, [I] think the point is that you can't separate the economic bigotry [from] the racism and still have any coherent picture of what's going on."

I agree entirely. I believe that also explains in large part why the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination sent shudders through the entire political establishment, because he advocated that very point.

Jackson's campaign that year was predicated upon the concept of economic justice for all Americans. To that effect, his arguments resonated especially powerfully amongst disaffected white working-class union types coping with the decaying economies of the so-called "Rust Belt," and with white farmers throughout the rural midwest who felt beseiged by corporate America in their own corn and soybean fields.

As such, the Rev. Jackson's political success in our nation's agro-industrial heartland, -- i.e., his near-misses in Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, and his stunning upset victory over frontrunner Michael Dukakis in Michigan -- couldn't necessarily be explained away as merely race-based, the way his earlier victories down south had been until then.

I distinctly remember that following Michigan, where Jackson outperformed Dukakis in nearly every demographic, TIME magazine featured him on its cover -- albeit with the patronizing caption, "What Does Jesse Want?" of course, then as now, they really didn't want to know the answer, let alone properly acknowledge that he had made his case.

EB,
"Way to do statistics, Harvard professor Bill Stuntz."
Thank you very much.
I’m afraid that after this elections, Harvard brand will be damaged beyond repair. First Orlando Patterson shamed himself and now Bill Stuntz demonstrated the lack of basic scientific skills.

To imagine that biased prosecutions and imprisonment in the US are the result of a rich-poor gap instead of a racial divide ignores the extent to which a rich-poor gap has been created by racial discrimination.

At every step of the road, black people in American have received less than they paid for, and given more than they were paid for.

This has been blindingly obvious. City utilities that provided better service to white parts of town employed white people and shut out blacks. Blacks get paid less for the same jobs than whites and have traditionally been last hired and first fired. Redlining of mortgages was not about shaky credit or shaky buildings, as any well-employed white person who bought a nice home in a black neighborhood could tell you- redlining is about racial discrimination, and collecting more interest and fees by making it harder to get a loan in certain sections of town, regardless of the condition of the building or your own personal credit.

Of course, as Dylan observed, "The white politician he preaches to the poor white man, you got more than the black, don't complain".

Yes, it would be very philosophical to suggest that we all pay the price of racism, but more realistic to observe that the drug laws are segregation in another form, and have been stunningly successful in disenfranchising the black community and destroying the black family.

To me, it looks, smells, and feels like racism. I'm tired of it.

Swan, SocraticGadfly has it right. We live in gang territory and work with rap artists in the community. The pressure to not be a "snitch" is pervasive. I'm not saying there isn't some racism involved on the law enforcement end as well, but "snitching" is a good way to bring down a heap of trouble on yourself in gang territories and it is widely understood.

If our law enforcement would spend less time worrying about drugs and more time locking up and prosecuting violent offenders, we would all be safer.

Before one tries to address crime in "urban black communities", first one has to address why "urban black communities" exist in the first place.

Much of this concentration was created by actual Sundown Town laws that existed from the 1890s to late 1960s all over the US. Basically a community would declare that no Blacks (or maybe Chinese or Jews or Catholics) could live there - any found after sundown would be escorted away.

Blacks essentially had no place to live other than the few areas where they were allowed to live.

Sundown laws were not a hick phenomena. For example the rich town of Garden City on Long Island got its first black homeowner I believe in 1970 when some famous retired baseball player was allowed to buy a house there.

As for EB, wot the hell was that? I've got less respect for a Harvard degree than the next guy, but EB goes one step beyond by imagining that blacks don't go to jail for pot, that cocaine sentencing is equivalent to meth sentencing, and that all of this is supposed to mean something- but what?

I get the sense that EB is trying to thimblerig the game to say that actually blacks use a lot more drugs than whites because marijuana isn't really a drug. Presumable EB would say that cocaine is really evil while marijuana is benign.

In actuality, coca use is no more harmful than marijuana use, which is to say, not harmful at all when it's not illegal. This is essentially true of all of the big bad drugs, with the exception of home-made methedrine. Almost all of the problems associated with these drugs come from the illegality, so any system of partial and biased enforcement, such as we have in the US, will exacerbate the evil effects among those who are discriminated against.

Anon on March 23, 2008 at 5:07:

Consider yourself fortunate to have never had annoying and/or scary white neighbors.

unsigned commenter at 7:52 was thersites.

Drug usage and drug crimes are two different things.
Wouldn't drug crimes include selling and transporting drugs also not just using them? The conclusion is false.

"Cops don't have x-ray vision that allows them to see inside people's houses or pockets"
no, but there is no longer any real fourth amendment protection. Anytime cops feel like searching anyone they can. If you're trying to victimize a community, drugs are a easier in terms of finding people to lock up than violent crime.

I think Orcinus had a long post on sundown towns and how they were utterly pervasive everywhere, including throughout the supposedly non-Jim Crow north.

Arteclectic, you've got it wrong. You are working to perpetuate a myth here. There are loads of black guys in jail, and any busy criminal prosecutor will tell you that he gets criminals to turn informer against their friends all the time (to save their own skins). Many-- in fact, most-- of these guys are black.

Diana, first of all, you're wrong that there is no longer any Fourth Amendment protection at all (if their weren't, cops could basically grope women and not get sued- the fact that you don't hear about this happening all the time should inform you that there's something more than just all the cops good intentions guarding people against being mistreated), but beyond that, your comment in response to me is besides the point. All I was trying to say is that the cops don't know what's going on all the time, and if people didn't talk to them, they would have almost no information on the drug trade with which to investigate it.

All that said-- that 13x v. 1.2x discrepancy between how more likely blacks are to be imprisoned for drugs than whites and how more likely they are to actually use drugs than whites is pretty big, and I think it's big enough that there has to be more than one reason contributing to the discrepancy.

Here's one I'll suggest: white cops, prosecuting lawyers, and criminal court judges-- even the most liberal of these cops, lawyers, and judges-- are often at least just enough racist that when they consider taking action against a white guy for a drug crime that they know they can hurt, they feel really bad about putting that guy who they can kind of identify with in danger of getting butt-raped by a bunch of lower-class black guys in prison. But when a young black guy who comes from a rougher neighborhood-- who has grown up around plenty of people who have been put away all his life, and who has had plenty of opportunity to observe that and consider what it means-- comes before the same officials and under their power, that young black man is just that much more likely not to feel their pity that it contributes to a racial discrepancy in the stats.

...that young black man is just that much more likely not to feel their pity that it contributes to a racial discrepancy in the stats.

That is to say, he's a little less likley to be pitied by them.

And that's wrong. It's not his fault he's black and grew up in a neighborhood they don't relate to. And in neighborhoods like that, there are a lot more pressures on people to become dope dealers instead of college students and Best Buy employees. And those pressures are the results of racism that has never been adequately addressed in the hundreds of years it has been taking a heavy toll on this county.

Prisons should be safer. No man or woman, black or white, who has not committed a rape or absolutely heinous violent crime should be put in danger of being raped in prison. All the people who complain about the TVs the prisoners get should stop complaining. It seems the prisoners get just enough luxuries to make the guards' jobs safer for the guards, but not enough protection to stop the rapes. It seems if giving the prisoners free daily prostitutes would make a guard less likely to get stabbed with a toothbrush, the prisoners would get it, but as soon as people start talking about making the prisoners safer the guards and the "law-and-order" types start bitching about it. It shouldn't matter if a convict id black or white- if prison was not as dangerous it would be better for the dugnity of the prisoners and it would help them reform, and make our whole society (and the prison guards) safer.

On a practical note, is fixing racist policy while declaring "this fix has nothing to do with racism" all that bad?

Maybe Orwellian doublethink *can* work for progress...

Kevin,

The explanation is obvious if you stop and think about it -- it's the old Capone-went-to-jail-for-tax-evasion syndrome. A lot of the blacks in prison for drug crimes are drug dealers who committed the violence that this article claims is underpoliced. Putting these criminals away on drug possessions charges requires only physical evidence, which is easier for prosecutors than getting terrified witnesses (if any are left alive) to testify against these gang members.

Steve

The funny thing is that nobody thinks like Stuntz, Drum, and most of the commenters here when looking for a place to live or a school to your kids to. When people are thinking about their own self-interest, they think logically and insightfully. When blogging and commenting on blogs or writing Harvard papers, they engage in massive amounts of wishful thinking and status posturing.

Steve Sailer: "A lot of the blacks in prison for drug crimes are drug dealers who committed the violence that this article claims is underpoliced."

Yikes.

Are you offering any documentary evidence to support that outrageously sweeping assertion?

No, I didn't think so.

But then, I can't say I'm surprised, being as I can't expect too much in that regard from someone who once nonsensically opined: "The plain fact is that [blacks] tend to possess poorer native judgement than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society."

Well, Mr. Sailer, let me offer a sweeping assertion of my own, by stating that I think I can speak for most posters here, when I tell you that you are one twisted fuck.

Aloha means goodbye, asshole.

Swan, when was the last time you were in the 'hood?
When was the last time you had a former gang member who's done prison time in your home?

MonkeyBoy... not denying sundown towns exist, and have their effects today. In fact, I read Loewen's book.

BUT... after LBJ managed to get the fair housing law passed, many middle-class blacks "fled," too... they weren't able to flee as far, perhaps, but flee they did. So, you have black underclass inner-city areas, ringed, in our biggest areas, by first-ring black middle class suburbs (getting south Asians and other minorities in them now as well), and whiter suburbs the farther out you go.

Self-identification: I live in a black-majority suburb in Dallas.

Of course, Peak Oil will exacerbate this.

Anon No 1: It's "tardive dyskinesia."

One possible reason that conviction rates are so much lower for crimes committed against blacks is the fact that when the crime involves gang members, prosecutors cannot get anyone to testify for fear of retribution.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of gang-related crimes out there where the prosecutors know who did it but cannot hope to gain a conviction due to lack of witness testimony.

tardive dyskinesia

Sounds kinky.

"Come on. If black omerta really existed, it would protect black drug offenders and not just black violent criminals. Cops don't have x-ray vision that allows them to see inside people's houses or pockets, and if omerta was so airtight, drug dealers would have become almost impervious to prosecution long ago."

Violent crime investigations usually require witnesses, in absence of a smoking gun or video evidence.

Drug cases are prosecuted based on catching someone red handed, and dont rely as much on witnesses.

If a woman crosses the street to avoid a man is she sexist?

If she crosses the street to meet a man she's a slut.

Blacks could start being more law abiding and stop smoking crack. Slavery was 150 years and many generations ago. Time for libs to stop making excuses and for blacks to put up or shut up.

Is believing that there's always been an element of racism in US drug policy make you a tinfoil hatter? Or is the fact that Nixon hated on the blacks even as he created the DEA not relevant?

At this point though, 35 years later...the drug war is a self-feeding beast.

arteclecitc,

Don't be so hard on Swan. There was a colored guy on the ward once. When Swan saw him he had to change his underwear. We had to double his meds for a month afterwards.

Oh god. Is this what we should expect with an Obama presidency? Will every explanation to every social or economic ill in our country be a priori racism? I'm sick of it already, because an answer of racism offers no workable solution to any of our present problems.

Secondly, many of the urban black neighborhoods are not significantly underfunded in police presence compared to equally poor white neighborhoods. The cause of the overall funding disparity is mainly economic: black neighborhoods are on average poorer than white ones. The reason for the high drug incarceration rates can be attributed partly to what EB said above (marijuana versus cocaine) and partly to the no-snitching rules imposed by the black neighborhoods themselves. The reason the Harvard prof doesn't blame racism is because he likely focused on racism variables to begin with and found them to be statistically insignificant.

One revealing test is to compare imprisonment rates by race across states. Is the black to white imprisonment ratio highest in the Republican-ruled Old South as the racism theory would imply?

No, it's actually below the national average in the South. By far the highest black to white imprisonment ratio is in black-run, ultra-liberal Washington D.C., where blacks are 56 times more likely to be imprisoned than whites are. The next highest ratios are in the moderately liberal Old Northwest: Minnesota (31 to 1), Wisconsin, and Iowa.

For maps of imprisonment rates by race by state, see:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050213_mapping.htm

Luther: "Blacks could start being more law abiding and stop smoking crack."

And you, Luther, could start by pulling your own head out of yours.

(Sigh!) You know, if Kevin were an entymologist, I'd have to accuse him of neglecting to screw on tightly the lids to his specimen jars ...

Stuntz's conclusions are logical, that racism is not at the root of the problem; while you Kevin make mere assumptions, that it must be about racism. Of course one would expect that from an Obama supporter. Lilly white left wing cat blogging intellectuals may want to relive the 60s, nobody else does though. Too many people of all stripes have it too hard these days: Asians don't care about the black problem, Hispanics definitely don't care, and your basic WASP? Well, make this election about race and you'll find out how much they don't care. Talking heads on the left seem unable to understand this though which is why they thought Obama's speech was so good - it wasn't, it sophistry, or as your basic 'racist' WASP might put it - bullshit.

All the cops I know or see are black.

Unless I missed it, I didn't see the biggest reason why black on black crime is not prosecuted. It's that the neighbors won't "snitch". They won't help police identify who committed the crimes out of fear of retribution and other reasons I'm sure.

Jon on March 24, 2008 at 2:03 AM:

Will every explanation to every social or economic ill in our country be a priori racism?

More like, "Every explanation of racism in our country be social or economic ills", which isn't entirely true - you can read folks like Steve Sailer to get an idea about the non-institutional and non-economic racism that still exists - but a helluva lot closer to what's going on.

Steve Sailer on March 24, 2008 at 2:18 AM:

One revealing test is to compare imprisonment rates by race across states...By far the highest black to white imprisonment ratio is in black-run, ultra-liberal Washington D.C., where blacks are 56 times more likely to be imprisoned than whites are.

Another revealing test, Steve, would be to look at the demographics of the area in question...

When 60% of your population are Americans of African descent, yeah, you probably should expect some form of disparity in incarceration rates. Even then, you could say that the incarceration rate is a symptom of other factors, such as:

The per capita income for the city was $28,659. About 16.7% of families and 20.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.1% of those under age 18 and 16.4% of those over age 65.

and

..about one-third of Washington residents are functionally illiterate, compared to a national rate of about one in five.

but no, you and the good folks over at VDare would rather state that the reason is genetics and a lack of morals and discipline. You'd rather sit smugly within your concept of racial superiority and try justify it using a few cherry-picked observations.

Pathetic.

olive on March 24, 2008 at 7:40 AM:

..make this election about race and you'll find out how much they don't care. Talking heads on the left seem unable to understand this though which is why they thought Obama's speech was so good - it wasn't, it sophistry..

Eeesh, olive...you missed the point of that speech by about a mile...like down towards the end:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news...We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children...This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care...

and so on. The point was that this election doesn't have to be about race - a point that I agree with - unless we want it to be.

Some random observations:
As someone who lives in a city neighborhood that's "gentrifying", it seems many of the poor black neighbors don't complain when city services aren't up to snuff, probably because it never did any good. The white upper middle class types now moving in have no qualms about complaining, lobbying and getting things done. That's an illustration of disenfranchisement of the poor, black urbanites.

The whole drug war thing hit home for me when I was volunteering at a poor school one evening. It was my first trip there and I got lost and turned down the wrong street. In front of me were a Jag and a Beemer, both driven by well-coiffed white guys, stopping to buy drugs from the black dealers. The dealers banged on the hood of my battered Honda Civic because I was a white girl in a black neighborhood and there could be only one reason for that -- drugs. My feeling is, like with prostitution, if police put as much effort into catching the white buyers as the black sellers, we would have a much reduced drug problem in this country.

Even with moderation eliminating the N word in comments, it cannot prevent racists from explaining their irrational prejudices against the most oppressed people in America.

One thing that really bothers me about American Christians and their religious holiday of Easter is that they think Jesus' self-sacrifice to forgive their sins entitles them to a heavenly reward. Jesus' self-sacrifice may mean American Christians receive a heavenly reward from the undue grace of their god, but their wickedness deserves damnation. They could be a lot more humble about their wretched, sinful lives.

Who wants to go to a heaven filled with these racists fucks?

Alright, people in the so-called "'hood" do marches to stop the violence. I've heard of at least a half-dozen of these over the course of my life in New Jersey alone, and I'm sure there probably were at least a few more I didn't hear about.

People have been doing this for years- it's not an extremely recent phenomenon.

A bunch of law abiding people- dozens at least- show their faces in broad daylight in the "'hood," and have a big march-rally about standing up to crime and stopping violence, especially against innocent people. The people in those neighborhoods want the violent crime to stop. And I have never once heard of a wave of retribution or even a single incident of retribution against people for taking part in these marches.

I am sure that in some specific cases, people are scared to be a witness against someone. But the fact is, people are most likely not scared enough to explain the entire discrepancy with that explanation alone, and black people from tough neighborhoods are witnesses or informers against black violent criminals all the time.

That's why there are so many black people in prison. Black people don't even commit a lot of violent felonies against white, relative to how much blacks commit against other blacks.

If you really want to make the country a better place, start locking up white criminals, too.

A RACIST is someone who feels that there are innate differences between the races other than minor superficial differences such as skin color.
So as per this definition, the Vdare types (Sailer etc) and the "race realist" scholars (Jensen, Lynn, Rushton, Gottfredson, Harpending, Levin, Kanazawa etc.) are all bona fide racists because they all believe that an important difference between races and ethnic groups is variation in IQ (the measure of general mental ability or "intelligence") due in large part to genetic differences.

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM is when public schools, colleges, government agencies, and businesses discriminate on the basis of IQ-type intelligence, which of course is unfair to lower-IQ minority groups like blacks and Hispanics. Thus INSTITUTIONAL RACISM is evident when the public schools tend to give blacks and Hispanics lower test scores just because they tend to have lower intelligence and academic ability, or conversely when they give Jews and Chinese students higher scores just because they tend to have higher intelligence and academic ability. As a result elite schools and professions tend to show an excess of Jews and Asians and on the other end of the spectrum the population of high school dropouts, low level professions and prisons tend to show an excess of blacks and Hispanics. Consequently we have the well known racial/ethnic disparities that result from INSTITUTIONAL RACISM.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?? Luckily there is a potential remedy for INSTITUTIONAL RACISM. What we liberals should propose is to institute discrimination on the basis of IQ. Everyone should be IQ tested at age 12. Then the the lower IQ students (IQs 65 to 100 which includes the vast majority of black and Hispanic students and about half of gentile white students) will be awarded the best teachers, the best schools, and more hours per day of instruction. Conversely the higher IQ people (IQs 101 to 135 which includes the vast majority of Jewish and East Asian students and about half of gentile white students) will get the worst teachers and the worst schools and only a few hours per day of instruction. The students with IQs of greater than 135 will be given the usual gifted curriculum so that we will have some students that are prepared for elite colleges like Harvard and Berkeley; this is important because these elite college grads are needed inorder to perpetuate and refill the ranks of our elite liberal intellectual establishment. In this way everyone in our society can rest assured that everyone (except for us, the highly educated liberal elites) is equal and INSTITUTIONAL RACISM has been banished from our fair land!

*

There are certainly many people who have a closer relationship or involvement in violent-crime-ridden cities or neighborhoods than I do. But in my teenaged years, I've known plenty of drug-world, underworld characters; my friends and acquaintances have included guys who have pistol-whipped people, served time in regular prison, survived having someone cut their throat, etc. Granted, I grew up in suburban NJ, but especially in geographically small places like NJ, the drug trade in the suburbs is closely connected to the drug trade in the cities. I haven't always been the one who is hanging out in a city with a lot of minorities and crime at least a couple times a week, but I've also always been close to people who were working, professionally or as activists/organizers, in such places. Also, I did an internship for a couple of years with a public interest, not-for-profit legal advocacy group in Manhattan that represented NY state prisoners in cases related to their incarceration. Also, I've known a few criminal court judges and attorneys (both prosecutors and defenders). I've also taken a lot of courses about the criminal justice system in law school and in undergraduate college. Since I care about racial justice and I care about the criminal justice system, I've always kept my ears open about such matters.

I've never once heard (or heard of) anyone, whether a criminal, a lawyer, a community organizer,or someone who just lives in one of those neighborhoods (or had friends or relatives there) state that there was some big problem where prosecutors can prosecute white violent offenders because whites rat each other out, but that black people are significantly harder to prosecute because blacks are far more likely to keep their mouths shut. People want violent criminals to be put away because they know they're a danger to the community. And when you arrest or interrogate a person and they have a chance to save themselves from a big prison sentence it's all the same no matter what their skin color is. This comment thread is the first time/place I've heard anybody make this claim and I'd frankly be astonished if it were true.

I think just a quick look at the statistics will show you that many blacks get put away for violent crimes against blacks, and any prosecutor in those areas will tell you that probably his main source of putting those people away is testimony from other people in the community.

Also, as a lower-middle-class white person, I think I have a little better insight into the white cops who police those ghettoes than a lot of minorities who live in or are involved in those communities might, who tend not to have grown up around white people, or to have seen the sides of themselves that whites have tried to hide. Therefore I may be a little less idealistic about how much racism can contribute than some people who see when the witnesses are afraid, and who thereby assume that that's all there is to it. White cops who just don't want to work too hard at questioning people because they don't care when a black person gets shot may be part of the problem, and minorities who are alien to that community just don't know about it and think that racism is when someone doesn't look at you or seems curt with you.

The mostly white cops, judges, and prosecutors feel sorry for the white criminal defendants because of the terrifying, horrible prison-rape problem. The same cops, judges, and prosecutors don't identify with the black defendants as much, so they are more zealous against the black defendants and suspects than the white defendants. That's it.

Similarly, when a violent crime is committed against white people, the white cops/prosecutors/judges identify with them and work hard to make sure someone gets caught and put away. The criminal justice professionals see similar crime in a black neighborhood as a different problem and not as a problem of the white neighborhood.

Even with moderation eliminating the N word in comments, it cannot prevent racists from explaining their irrational prejudices against the most oppressed people in America. Posted by: Brojo on March 24, 2008 at 12:06 PM

But let one of that oppressed people speak out in truth...and see what the media and the nation has done with it. Used those words to skewer an agent of change, out of fear, from their vantage points.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.� Paster Jeremiah Wright.

EB: Very good point.

From the FPP: "Black migration to northern cities, white flight to the suburbs, underfunded urban police forces, and drug laws that are far harsher toward blacks than whites — if these things aren't at least partly the result of white racism, surely the term has lost all meaning?"

Hey, Drum, I forget, which majority-black urban neighborhood are you blogging from?

More evidence following up on EB's post:

No racial disparities in Federal Courts, after controlling for offence: http://books.google.com/books?id=Wvd0YZcvwrgC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=imprisonment+rates+cocaine+marijuana&source=web&ots=q-85rNGvj4&sig=2nGgLvoYOuR4S4oF4miWQTx1viU&hl=en#PPA1,M1

Most drug incarcerations are for distribution, and the overwhelming majority involve cocaine or crack: http://cad.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/52/4/619

Sure, Kevin could have looked this up and made a nuanced, insightful post, but then he couldn't have called people racist, and what fun is that?

It's perfectly understandable that Prof. Stuntz didn't use either the language of "institutional racism" or the implicit moral and causal theories behind it. That stuff's all mainstream in fields that have been taken over by postmodern theory (English, Sociology) or created and constituted by it (area studies) but is definitely not well-accepted in the rest of the academy, including law schools. So relying on it will either (a) get your work ignored on the grounds that you're really only participating in the internal discourse of the sub-discipline of "critical legal studies" or (b) provoke people to overtly disagree with the assumptions behind that concept of racism, with added hostility because people don't like being called racists. If you want your work taken seriously outside CLS you're best off sticking to the more neutral-sounding term "disparate impact".

As for the commenter who called this guy "Dr. Stuntz", Prof. Stuntz isn't a doctor of anything. Most law professors aren't: they're usually just J.D.'s, which is not a doctorate despite the name.

absent observer said: "E.g., it's better to be poor in Cuba/Sweden/etc than in the USA/Liberia/etc."

How is Cuba even mentioned here? For one thing, Cuba is not egalitarian at all. It is lorded over by a family of hereditary pseudo-monarchs who are among the very richest men in the world, and poverty is the law there. You can be shot and killed for trying to earn a decent living there.

Lets see what the poor say about it? The poor in Cuba risk their lives to flee to the United States. 2007 was a record year for this. When one single person person of ANY economic level flees from the US to Cuba, it is so rare that it makes news. There is no indicator underwhich the 30% or so in poverty in the US have it worse than the vast majority of Cubans who are not related the dictator there. Not one.