Jamelle Bouie: The Trayvon Martin Killing and the Myth of Black-on-Black Crime: Hoisted from Other People's Archives
Hoisted from Others' Archives from Two Years Ago:
Jamelle Bouie: The Trayvon Martin Killing and the Myth of Black-on-Black Crime: "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... angry over the perceived politicization of the Zimmerman trial... echoes many conservatives when he complains that... if [Zimmerman] 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....
But... there’s no such thing as “black-on-black” crime. Yes, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders, but that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime--86 percent were killed by white offenders.... Crime... Is driven by opportunism and proximity; If African-Americans are more likely to be robbed, or injured, or killed by other African-Americans, it’s because they tend to live in the same neighborhoods as each other....
Among black youth, rates of robbery and serious property offenses are at their lowest rates in 40 years, as are rates of violent crime and victimization. And while it’s true that young black men are a disproportionate share of the nation’s murder victims, it’s hard to disentangle this from the stew of hyper-segregation (often a result of deliberate policies), entrenched poverty, and nonexistent economic opportunities that characterizes a substantial number of black communities. Hence the countless inner-city anti-violence groups...
