Why the Phrase "Black-on-Black Crime" Suggests Inherent Criminality
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-phrase-black-black-crime-suggests-inherent-criminality
I’ve written here, and elsewhere, that “black-on-black crime” as a specific phenomena isn’t a thing. Yes, the vast majority of crimes against African Americans are committed by other African Americans, and yes, black men face a higher murder rate than any other group in the country. But those facts are easily explained by residential segregation and proximity—people commit crimes against those closest to them—and the particular circumstances of many black communities, which are marred by concentrated poverty and nonexistent economic opportunities.
“But what’s the big deal?”, you might ask. “Why can’t we use ‘black-on-black crime’ as a shorthand for these particular problems?” The answer isn’t difficult. Violent crime in hyper-segregated neighborhoods doesn’t happenbecause the residents are black. Their race isn’t incidental—the whole reason these neighborhoods exist is racial policymaking by white lawmakers—but there is nothing about blackness that makes violence more likely. Focusing on the “black” part of the equation takes this violence out of the realm of policy, and into the world of cultural ills. “Black-on-black crime” describes apathology—a social abnormality—that can’t be fixed by political action. “Those people are just that way,” and as such, we should leave them to their devices, and defend ourselves if necessary.
Indeed, if criminality is inherent to African Americans, then it doesn’t matter who you’re defending yourself against. At any and all times, you’re stopping someone who is, or could become, a criminal. It’s how you get policymakers like Michael Bloomberg and policies like “stop and frisk,” which says, in effect, that if you are black and male, New York City is justified in treating you as a potential offender.
Now, you could try— as Richard Cohen attempts in the Washington Post—to put limits on this suspicion. We only have to worry about urban African Americans, he argues. They are the criminal threat:
I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.
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If you want one classification, you get the rest. Consider it an application of the free-ride principle in action.
The question is, Why do we want that classification?
Well, because a disproportionate number of WonB murders, for example, are perceived to be hate crimes. If you want to go from the occasional symbolic act to show it's a pervasive kind of thing, you need numbers, and for that you need classifications.
As soon as you have WonB, though, you have W as a classification and B as a classification. Surely Asian (A), Latino (L), and NA (Native American) count as people, too?
However, another reason is to be able to study and understand the rates. You obviously got mileage out of the classification of BonB crime. If you don't have the classification, you can't say it's higher for any reason because you can't say it's higher. You can't say where it's restricted to. You can't propose explanations for it, you can't monitor its increase or decrease, and you can't take action to reduce it. Same for all the other duplets. BonB gives us WonB, AonB, LonB, BonW, BonA, BonL ...
That allows us to say that most whites are murdered by whites and most blacks are murdered by blacks. It allows us to say that the BonB murder rate is higher than the WonW murder rate. Heck, last time I checked, it allowed us to say that the WonB murder rate was lower than the BonW murder rate.
(But it's always been unclear to me why "poverty" is seen as a explanation for "murder."
