#WhoIsBurningBlackChurches? Bring back the Church Arson Task Force
Wasn't paying attention to anything but my job back them, but I'm glad to know about it now.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/706/058/552/?z00m=25082078&redirectID=1733757037
Since the racist shooting in Charleston, SC, at least eight predominantly black churches — "a core institution of the black community" — have gone up in flames. Three have been confirmed arson.
If people aren't safe even at church, then where are they safe? Yet church arson is far too common: From 2007-2011, there was an average of five intentional church fires per week, and many were racially-motivated hate crimes. We cannot look the other way if we claim to believe in justice or civil rights.
These post-Charleston attacks show that we need to fight racism and bring back the National Church Arson Task Force from the '90s — will you sign the Care2 petition today? Let's send 25,000 more signatures to President Obama and Attorney General Lynch by Friday!
Racism is alive and well in the U.S. — and not just from individual terrorists like the Charleston shooter. Young white teenage males are 21 times less likely to be killed by police than their black counterparts. Black families are twice as likely to be denied a mortgage. Job seekers with "white" names are 50% more likely to be called back than those with "black" names.
It is past time to recognize and defeat racism. One small step is to save black churches by bringing back the National Church Arson Task Force, which investigated 827 church fires from 1995-1999. In its second report, it attributed a drop in fires to "increased vigilance, well publicized arrests, and proactive prevention efforts. Notwithstanding these results, we must remain vigilant." Bringing back the task force is one way to once again proactively increase that vigilance and publicity!
Take action today, and sign the Care2 petition urging President Obama and Attorney General Lynch to start a large-scale investigation into these church burnings!
= new reply since forum marked as read
They were spun, bit the spinning was a bit painful. Half of the arson in black churches was committed by blacks, and some committed by whites were patently not hate crimes. (Some arson of white churches was committed by blacks.) Most of the fires weren't arson. (And, yes, black churches had a higher rate of burning than white churches under *both* categories, arson and non-arson.)
And the race/motive of arson cases was with double the usual rate of solving the crime than is usual in arson.
Also glad to see somebody's getting closer to right with the job-seeker data. Job seekers with "white" names were more likely to get interviews (different from "called back"
than those with black names. This was true even if the line under the name spelled out the applicant's race: "Gail Smith, race: black" and "Gail Smith, race: white" were treated about the same; "Gail Smith, race: black" and "Jaela Smith, race: black" were not. Gail got more interviews than Jaela. The researchers had fun tap-dancing around that, because they ultimately had to show it was racism, meaning they had to ignore 80 years of research showing that race =/= culture by saying race is correlated to culture, and that "black" isn't a racial term but related to culture. Then they had to change definitions mid-stream.
