An award-winning criminologist says black on black crime isn’t real.
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Since the execution of Mike Brown, I’ve encountered several well meaning, concerned black citizens who’ve responded to the nightly protests—both in Ferguson and in cities around the country—with questions like “how come we aren’t as outraged about the black-on-black crime in our neighborhoods?”
And while that’s a semi-legitimate question—whereas (gun) violence in black communities is certainly something that happens—it’s woefully out of context to compare unarmed Black citizens being murdered by White police with impunity, to violence that takes place in neighborhoods by people who, in most cases, know each other. Furthermore, black-on-black crime is not the epidemic that it’s depicted as; in fact it doesn’t really exist.
“There’s no such thing as black-on-black crime,” says Temple University Ph.D student and B.O.L.D member Juwan Z. Bennett, who in the fall will be teaching three classes – The Nature of Crime, Criminal Behavior, and Victims in the Criminal Justice System—at the famed Philadelphia institution north of City Hall. Mr. Bennett, 21, well-educated on the routine activity theory—which basically states that if you have a motivated offender, a suitable target, and nobody around, or the absence of a capable guardian, then a crime will likely occur—argues that the real problem is racial segregation and the fact that blacks are clustered together with no real chance for upward mobility. “Criminologist don’t believe in black-on-black crime … crime is crime,” he says, assuring me that people of all races are more often than not killed by people of the same race.
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According to FBI homicide data, a White person is almost six times more likely to be killed by another White person than by a Black person. Additionally, in 2011, there were more cases of Whites killing Whites than there were Blacks killing Blacks.
So what’s the media’s motivation for overstating the black-on-black crime narrative? Mr. Bennett says its about framing an enemy.
“The public has a general fear of crime and the media plays on that and makes it worse than what it is. They have to identify a target, so they choose the black man; but we can’t let the media and the public dictate crime prevention policies, that should be left up to criminologist and police commissioners.”
When the blatantly biased mainstream media and misguided active citizens advocate for public safety policies, laws like stop-‘and-frisk are implemented and perpetuated.
“If black-on-black crime is such a real thing, how come all the blacks who are disproportionately stopped by police never have guns or drugs on them? Police and criminologist—because the public is demanding action based on false information or small, random occurrences—are on the street every day trying to solve something that doesn’t exist!”
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
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Photo: takomabibelot/Flickr