Gaslighter’s Attempts To Disprove The Existence of Systemic Racism Fall Flat
No, those statistics don’t actually indicate what you claim
One of the newest tribal markers to be making the rounds of discussions of systemic racism and police brutality is a statistic that indicates that more white people are killed by black people each year than the other way around. This is supposed to disprove that systemic racism is a problem or even a thing. One gaslighter actually ended his comment that put this forth with “Peace, Love, and Logic.”
While it’s clear that there isn’t any peace or love in denying the entirely obvious fact that systemic racism is a deeply troubling problem in our country, particularly as relates to police brutality and unnecessary use of force, there’s also no logic it in it either. Although the statistic itself is true, it’s also not the whole picture. It’s only one small slice that seems to make a good point but actually doesn’t. Typical gaslighting.
First off, not all interracial crime is related to race-based hatred, and when it is, it is overwhelmingly committed by whites.
In a 2018 reporting on hate crimes from the FBI, in the cases where the race of the perpetrator was known, whites were more than twice as likely to have committed them.
Of the 6,266 known offenders:
- 53.6% were White
- 24.0% were Black or African American
- 12.9% race unknown
Another way that the statistic about black-on-white violence doesn’t show the whole picture is that although more than twice as many black-on-white homicides occurred compared with white-on-black homicides in the year that was measured, “white-on-black killings spiked by 22.5 percent between 2014 and 2015 after years of mostly trending downward. Killings of whites by African Americans increased by 12.2 percent, while black-on-black and white-on-white killings increased only slightly — by just 7.9 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively — between 2014 and 2015, after mostly falling since 2008.” (1) (emphasis mine)
So, the increase in the incidence of white-on-black killings went up more than twice as much as black-on-white homicides. What percentage of those were racially motivated is unclear, and there are many other reasons that people (who may just happen to be of different races) kill each other. So unless you do know for sure what the motivations were in all of the black-on-white killings, it is not only an intentional misdirection to claim that they all are about racial hatred, but it also doesn’t disprove institutional and systemic racism, even if 100% of them were racially motivated.
Poverty and socio-economic class is a predictor of violent crime, although the wealthy are noticeably more likely to commit white-collar crimes. Most violent crime is committed by young, urban males who are poor.
“First, African Americans and Latinos are much poorer than whites on the average, and poverty contributes to higher crime rates. Second, they are also more likely to live in urban areas, which, as we have seen, also contribute to higher crime rates. Third, the racial and ethnic discrimination they experience leads to anger and frustration that in turn can promote criminal behavior. Although there is less research on Native Americans’ criminality, they, too, appear to have higher crime rates than whites because of their much greater poverty and experience of racial discrimination (McCarthy & Hagan, 2003).” (2)
And none of that speaks to police brutality, racial profiling or excessive use of force, which are all well-documented and largely unchecked issues.
Decades of research on police shootings and brutality reveal that officers with a history of shooting civilians, for example, are much more likely to do so in the future compared to other officers.
A similar pattern holds for misconduct complaints. Officers who are the subject of previous civilian complaints — regardless of whether those complaints are for excessive force, verbal abuse or unlawful searches — pose a higher risk of engaging in serious misconduct in the future.
A study published in the American Economic Journal reviewed 50,000 allegations of officer misconduct in Chicago and found that officers with extensive complaint histories were disproportionately more likely to be named subjects in civil rights lawsuits with extensive claims and large settlement payouts.
In spite of this research, many law enforcement agencies not only fail to adequately investigate misconduct allegations, they rarely sustain citizen complaints. Disciplinary sanctions are few and reserved for the most egregious cases.
Police Officers Accused Of Brutal Violence Often Have A History Of Complaints By Citizens
Another thing it doesn’t speak to is centuries of discrimination in education, housing, banking, healthcare, and hiring, etc., much of which are still very much in effect, even though the laws that used to support them are no longer on the books. According to a New York Times news briefing:
Why does the Twin Cities have especially deep racial problems? The region is in many ways a microcosm of the country, albeit a more extreme one. Decades of government policy and private-sector decisions have given benefits to white families that black families haven’t received. (A new article by John Eligon and Julie Bosman goes into more detail.)
When the region built an interstate highway in the 1950s, it spared white neighborhoods but tore up a black neighborhood, in the eastern part of the Rondo area in St. Paul, that was “rich with institutions, like churches, social centers, and clubs,” as Quartz reported.
Working-class white families were able to buy their first homes in the mid-20th century — and start building wealth — with help from federal loan programs that excluded black families, as Richard Rothstein explains in his book “The Color of Law.” More recently, banks have been more likely to turn down black loan applicants, Myers found, even after controlling for income and credit risk.
Consider this recent stat: About 76 percent of Twin Cities households headed by a white person own their home, compared with 24 percent of black households.
In The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein contends, “We have created a caste system in this country, with African-Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies,” he writes. “Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have never been remedied and their effects endure.”
Systemic racism is well-documented, from the end of slavery to the present day. It didn’t evaporate just because we once elected a biracial man to the presidency. It doesn’t go away because sometimes black people kill whites, or that some institutions have Affirmative Action programs. It is deeply entrenched in our culture and has been reinforced by both the government and by the policies and actions of private companies.
“Indeed, some of the worst offenses occurred with Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. One of his New Deal centerpieces, the Public Works Administration, built 47 public housing projects, all rigidly segregated, 17 for blacks, the rest for whites. His vaunted Tennessee Valley Authority put white employees in a “model village” of 500 homes, while blacks endured “shoddy barracks” far from their jobs. When war came, the Roosevelt administration provided housing for white defense plant workers, but only temporary, poorly constructed dwellings for black workers. The few protesters included Eleanor Roosevelt, whose pleas for fairness fell on deaf ears.” (3)
Sure, that was over 80 years ago, but if structural racism is indeed a thing of the past, then when exactly did it end? During Reconstruction? After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? When Barack Obama was elected President? When exactly did structural racism cease and what are the indicators that demonstrate that? Oh, right — these gaslighters don’t want to have to actually get that specific because it is historically and statistically self-evident that structural and institutional racism is very much alive and well.
(1) White On Black Crime vs. Black On White Crime
(3) A Powerful, Disturbing History of Residential Segregation in America
