Racist White People or Criminal Black People?
Who is to blame for the real or perceived problems of black people in America & the West today?
Who is to blame for the real or perceived problems of black people in America & the West today? Is it racist white people or criminal black people? The answer to this question depends on who you ask, but the one that’s true in 2022 and that’s also most helpful to black people is the one that requires them to take responsibility - and this means pointing the finger at black people.
This might sound an unfair or even racist thing to say (not that the word ‘racist’ means much anymore) but it is neither: it is simply truth. Accepting this truth will benefit both black and white people - denying it will continue to hurt both. It is the purpose of this piece then to succinctly but decisively answer the question of who is to blame, because that’s the starting point for improving the situation and for taking us off the path to inevitable conflict that intellectuals, the media, woke activists, and Black Lives Matter are leading the West toward.
This is also the first piece in a multi part series on race. Each piece will deal with a specific aspect of this divisive subject. The series will culminate with a solution, as well as a warning on if we fail to change course.
Let’s start by examining the problems in so called black communities in America and the West.
1- The Problems in Black Communities
Let me start by saying that the term ‘the black community’ has its issues (similar to if I were to refer to ‘the white community’). Terms like these suggest we are lumping a large number of individuals and sub-groups - which may differ in their beliefs, values, and practices - into one monolithic or generic group based on skin colour alone. However since the issue of race and racism is usually treated as a generic group matter, that is how we will address it here (whilst still accounting for any meaningful exceptions - the kind that are ignored by those whose loyalty is to an agenda, instead of to the facts.)
So, the black community faces lots of problems, many of which are backed up by cold hard statistics. Let’s look at some of these:
Crime
Black people make up roughly 12.5% of the US population,1 however according to the latest FBI data on arrests nationwide,2 black people were 51% of those arrested for murder and intentional manslaughter, 53% of those arrested for robbery, and 33% of those arrested for aggravated assault. Additionally, on any given year, around 89% of black murder victims die at the hands of black people, and only 8% are killed by white people. Whereas black people account for 16% of the murders of whites.3
The point I’m making here is that crime is a problem in the black community (this is no secret), and whilst this doesn’t excuse white people or Hispanics who also commit lots of heinous crimes, black people are a) overrepresented relative to the total population, and b) mainly killing or hurting black people.
Broken Families
According to 2020 US census data only 38% of black children live in a home with two married parents. This is contrasted with 87% in Asian only households, 75% in White only households, and 62% in Hispanic only households. Or looking at it another way, 59% of black children live in households with just one parent or no parents.4 This statistic and its consequences are disastrous and need no further elaboration.
Poor Academic Performance
The National Household Education Survey revealed that in 2016 almost 24% of black students in US Elementary and Secondary Schools had been suspended at least once. By contrast, 9% of Hispanic, 8% of White, and less than 4% of Asian students had been suspended.5
If we look at the arrest rate of school age kids (ages 10 to 17), black kids are arrested 6.5 times more than white kids for murder and intentional manslaughter, 8.7 times more for robbery, and 3.4 times more for aggravated assault.6 This is despite making up just one third the number of white kids.7 Clearly other pursuits are a higher priority than school for these kids. Moreover, it doesn’t take many to be doing it to have a major negative impact on all other students at the same or nearby schools and neighbourhoods.
The black community particularly in poorer neighbourhoods tends to have a strong anti-education bias. Black students who do well academically (or who simply try to do well) are deemed to be ‘acting white,’ which can make them a prime target for bullying. Moreover, when you consider the disruption caused by unruly or criminal students, the broken families who don’t foster the value of embracing learning, the lack of respect for teachers and authority, and the threat of being targeted by other students if you do too well, not to mention that many good teachers will leave for schools where they don’t need to deal with such drama, then it’s no surprise academic performance lags.
For instance, figures from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that nationwide on average, black students in 8th grade are far below proficient in Reading and Maths. This is by contrast to white students who are near proficient and Asian students who are above proficient.8,9
So in addition to all the other problems the black community has, failure at school adds yet another one.
Low Incomes or Poverty
When your community wins gold medals in the fields of committing crime, producing broken families, and doing poorly at school, then if you want to avoid the path to prison or getting shot, you inevitably find yourself in low income jobs or in poverty. The cycle becomes hard to escape at this point; some do of course - the strong willed, smart, or lucky - but many do not.
Furthermore, communities blighted by these problems scare away businesses and productive citizens, and the local government isn’t able to collect enough taxes to invest in the community. Work itself often competes with welfare - and women are incentivised to raise kids alone so as not to lose out on their paychecks. This, in addition to creating a bad example for children, is the equivalent of a whole community shooting themselves in the foot. Low income, fatherless households are a recipe for societal destruction.
Let’s now look at the causes of the problems outlined - and they won’t be the ones that the unthinking intellectual class shout about without end.
2- The Causes of Modern Black Problems
The fashionable explanation for these problems amongst white intellectuals is that it’s all due to racism. This is also the most comforting explanation for black people. The real reason however gives white intellectuals no scope to feel morally superior (which they live for), and it gives black people who are in denial a harsh meeting with reality.
The reasons are a) Gangsta culture, b) a Victim mentality, and c) General circumstance. Let’s look at each in turn.
Gangsta culture includes the following beliefs and practices to varying degrees:
• Using violence as a default option for navigating the world.
• Looking down on those who succeed at school.
• Seeing those who follow a straight path in life - whether in the public or private sector - as losers, traitors, oppressors, or Uncle Tom’s.
• Fathering multiple kids with different women, and raising none of them.
• Getting high on drugs and dealing drugs.
• Living a life devoid of responsibility.
• Blaming the police when you break the law.
• Pride in belonging to a criminal enterprise like a gang.
• Lack of respect for other people and their property.
• Lack of respect for public and community property.
• Calling each other demeaning terms, including the ‘n’ word.
• Glorifying crime and anti-social behaviour.
• Claiming welfare checks because you feel you’re owed it.
And the list goes on.
This culture is the lowest common denominator, yet it has come to rule and ruin the black community. This does not mean it is the de facto culture for all black people, rather that like crabs in a bucket those who subscribe to gangsta culture are pulling other black people down.
This is not helped by the fact that often through some unspoken and one could say blind adherence to solidarity, black people feel they must sympathise with or relate to people with the same colour skin as theirs regardless of their character, values, beliefs, or actions. In doing so they bow to the lowest common denominator in a way that other races and ethnic groups do not. For example, white people and Asians generally don’t hail or excuse criminals and degenerates who happen to have the same skin colour as theirs. For them, solidarity is based on values, character, and more, where as unfortunately (and ironically) for black people it often runs skin deep, i.e. skin colour first and character second.
This of course is to their detriment, for the old idiom rings true here, that one rotten apple spoils the barrel. Those rotten apples ruin schools, neighbourhoods, livelihoods, local economies, community spirit, people’s belief in a brighter future, and crucially, the perception of black people in society. Solidarity based on skin colour therefore becomes a handicap for well meaning black people, for the cost of it is being associated and tainted by gangsta culture.
But this is not the only poison they swallow. There’s another one, just as pernicious, and it is victimhood.
If there’s anything more self-disempowering than a victim mentality, then I’ve yet to encounter it. Believing that all your problems are the result of someone else’s actions, and will forever be so, puts you in a position where you can do nothing productive about it - apart from finger-pointing and blaming, getting all worked up about it, and finally, resigning to your miserable fate.
The narrative currently is that white people are responsible for all black people’s problems, including for them committing crime, propagating broken families, failing at school, and working lowly jobs. This reveals a severe lack of taking responsibility for one’s actions amongst the black community. Not surprisingly therefore there is very little or very slow change, because if you misdiagnose the source of the problem, then the solution (in this case battling supposed wide-scale racism) isn’t going to fix it. It’d be like hitting yourself on the head with a mallet repeatedly and blaming your resulting headache on your neighbour’s TV being too loud. Demanding they switch off their TV won’t stop your headache; stopping hitting yourself on the head with a mallet will.
Black victimhood today means not letting go of a historical circumstance you never personally experienced, and blaming people for that experience who had nothing personally to do with it. It basically is an excuse for repeated bad behaviour and for masking one’s own continued failures. This might all sound harsh, like an attack on black people, however it is not. It is just that the truth sometimes stings, but facing it can set one free.
Instead though we have a chorus in the mainstream media of both black and white pundits whose sole contribution to humanity is having a deliberately or genuinely misinformed opinion on almost every topic under the sun. One of their favourite topics that belongs to the fiction genre, is that of as mentioned, white people being the cause of all of this. When black people hear this repeatedly it becomes a blank check to keep doing as they’re doing, because it’s 'not their fault' after all. The cycle therefore continues.
But there’s a third reason for their problems, which again doesn’t involve racism, and it is general circumstance. The fact is that regardless of your race, skin colour, or ethnicity, if you live a life of crime, or grow up in a broken family, or fail at school - your life’s prospects will naturally diminish. This is not just the case with black people in the West, but with white people too. It’s also the case in Latin America, India, China, South East Asia, Africa, the Middle East - basically everywhere on this planet today - and everywhere on this planet throughout history.
So if you’re black and are poor and struggling, it’s not because of racism, because if it were there would be no white people who are poor and struggling - and there are plenty of them who are. Moreover is a Chinese person in China who is poor and struggling a victim of racism? Is a Russian in Russia who is poor and struggling a victim of racism? Is an Egyptian in Egypt who is poor and struggling a victim of racism? Of course not. There are economic and social factors at play here that have zero to do with racism.
In the same way, the segment of black people who seem to have a never ending stream of problems either cause these themselves through poor choices, or fall victim to the poor choices of their neighbours and community (aka other black people), or simply face socio-economic forces that impact us all globally regardless of race or skin colour. Life is challenging enough without downloading bad software into your brain like gangsta culture and a victim mindset, which only makes it much harder. It becomes a handicap in a world and universe that ruthlessly and indiscriminately punishes handicaps - no matter one’s skin tone.
Let’s now look at the impact of actual racist white people versus the impact of criminal black people on the black community.
3- Racist White People or Criminal Black People
In 2022 what impact do actual racist white people have on the black community? Think of say Neo Nazis, white nationalists, and people with retrograde views who genuinely subscribe to a belief that black people are inferior or barbarian or whatever, because of their race, aka their hardware. This is to be distinguished from people who pass judgement based on culture (or software), because that is something separate to race. A decent hard working black person can look down on gangsta culture and a victim mindset and consider it destructive and inferior, whilst not holding the racist view that black people are inferior. Just as a white person can look down on criminal and victim culture in white people and consider it destructive and inferior, whilst not holding the racist view that white people are inferior.
So if we consider the people who hold the racist view that a black person, regardless of their culture or software, is inferior, then we are talking about a tiny minority of the population. They are usually, though not always, ticking some of the following boxes: uneducated, working low paid jobs, involved in crime, coming from broken families, and are angry and confused.
Do such people have much influence or power in our society? No, their impact borders on zero.
Is there a direct or indirect link between their views and actions and the everyday suffering of black people? No, you’d be hard pressed to find any.
Do some of them attack black people either verbally or physically? Yes, but in such insignificant numbers that it pales in comparison to the attacks on black people by black people, or black people on white people.
In short, they are not needle movers whether for better or worse, they are just people with their own serious problems who are running bad software of their own.
But some will say, well you’re going for an obvious example, how about the less overt form of ‘prejudice’ from everyday white people? Well, ok, let’s take a look at this.
Just as we know about the black community’s decisive first place finishes for the least productive behaviours in American society, everyone else knows about it too; it’s an open secret. Does this impact how black people are perceived by white people? Of course it does. It also impacts how they’re perceived by Asians, Latinos, Arabs, and even Black people. After all, it’s both human nature and a feature of our busy and demanding lives to generalise and use mental shortcuts when evaluating people and things.
More importantly though, one of the blowbacks of the identity politics peddled by the woke and the Left (and swallowed by many in the black community - hook, line and sinker) is that the identity categories run skin deep, so that blacks are not in a general colourblind category of people or citizens: they can’t just be ‘Americans,’ or ‘British,’ or ‘French,’ etc, instead they have to be ‘black people,’ or ‘the black community.’ This ridiculous, monolithic category means that law abiding, successful, and morally upright citizens who happen to be black get lumped in with citizens who are criminals, self-destructive, and with terrible values, who happen to be black. The black label or category ends up superseding all.
What follows then is black people end up being defined (or in this case, tarnished) as a whole by what sticks out the most in this crude category called ‘the black community.’ Unfortunately for them that is the crime, broken families, academic failure, low incomes, and welfare dependency that gangsta culture and victim mindset blacks perpetuate.
There is good too of course in the black community - success in sports and music for example - but at the everyday level that gets drowned out by the bad. Moreover, black music often comes ingrained with gangsta culture and victim mindset lyrics and themes (sometimes overt, sometimes subtle), and sports today is increasingly adopting identity politics at its peril. By contrast, being a good black citizen, working a regular blue or white collar job, or perhaps running a small business, unfortunately can’t compete with all of the bad for attention, nor with the glitz of sports and music. It’s just too boring, plus it’s inconvenient to the victim narrative to have black people just getting on with their lives unhindered by racism - this puts many unproductive black people and woke white people on notice, and we can’t have that, so it is ignored.
Does all this lead white people to see black people in a less than favourable light at times? Sure it does - whether they openly admit it or not. If the situation were flipped and white people had the widespread problems black people had, then blacks would perceive whites likewise. As it stands though, decent and law abiding blacks, being the biggest victims of blacks, view criminal blacks in a far less favourable way than whites ever could. For example, a Pew Research survey in 2021 (Pew being the non-partisan gold standard for research) surveyed Americans on the subject of ‘Defunding the Police’ - something popular amongst Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and woke activists. It revealed that 38% of black people wanted to see spending on police increased and 39% wanted to see it stay the same. Only 22% of blacks wanted to see it decreased.10 This paints quite a different picture to what the media wants you to believe.
Now back to white people, regardless of what they think at times, we must look at what they do - and that is discriminate in favour of black people. Whites, who have also been lumped into their own monolithic category, use affirmative action and its offshoots to recruit and promote blacks based on their skin colour (not just their experience, aptitude, and skills) into private sector companies, public sector departments and organisations, universities, and movies and TV shows. This is motivated by whites feeling bad about the problems the black community faces; they see blacks as poor victims who by by virtue of their victim status are powerless to change anything about their lives, hence they need to step in as their saviours. In a more general sense, white people today bend over backwards so as not to offend the black community. They also listen to their music in droves, and pay lip service to organisations like Black Lives Matter.
So supposed prejudice or racism here doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting the black community, nor does it seem to even exist in the way self-proclaimed victims like to think it does.
But I’m forgetting something. The smoking gun: police killings of blacks in America. This is clear evidence that racism exists. Or is it?
Let’s once again dive into the available data. First it’s important to note that there aren’t official figures on people killed by police in the US, but there are multiple organisations that piece together data to come up with estimates. Most tend to put the numbers at around 1,000 to 1,200 per year in recent years.
Here are the facts:
1) More white people are killed by police each year than are black people. For example in 2021 an estimated 1,144 people were killed by police: 482 of those were white and 266 of those were black.11
2) Whites outnumber blacks in the general population, and this is used by dishonest parties to state that even though less blacks are killed than whites, a higher proportion of blacks are killed relative to their population size. However what is relevant here is who outnumbers who when it comes to the type of crime that might elicit a lethal police response, and if you recall the data we covered earlier: blacks were 51% of those arrested for murder, 53% for robberies, and 33% for aggravated assaults.12 How does this align with the percentage distribution of those killed by police? 482 whites killed is 42%, and 266 blacks killed is 23%.
What’s the takeaway here? Blacks commit a higher percentage of violent crimes overall but are less likely to be killed by police. If racism therefore is a factor in police killings, then the police are racist towards white people and show favouritism to black people. Of course the outrage mob aren’t interested in facts, but in fictions that make them feel superior or that justify their petty prejudices, so this too is swept under the carpet. What society is left with then is with a lose, lose, lose, lose, win scenario.
The first who lose are the black people who are infected by gangsta culture and a victim mindset - who because they blame white people for problems they cause themselves, can never change their ways.
The second who lose are decent, law abiding black people who are tarnished by being lumped into a crude category based on colour of skin where the lowest common denominator gains the most attention.
The third who lose are whites who are blamed for actions they bear no responsibility for and who try their best to make up for it, only to see little or no progress being made because they are after all ‘irredeemably racist.’
The fourth who loses is Western society as a whole, as it goes further down the road toward civil conflict and potentially civil war.
But there is a group who win, and they are those who profit from keeping this institutional racism myth going. These are the media who get more eyeballs on their content, politicians who receive more votes from the ‘victims’, university sociology and humanities departments who attract more students, corporate consultants who make a small fortune, think tanks and non-profits who receive a seemingly never ending flow of funding, Black Lives Matter - whose founders have become millionaires, and the list goes on. Their profit is everybody else’s loss.
So let’s revisit the title of this piece again: racist white people or criminal black people? It’s a simple, if generalised, question, but it aptly sums up the argument. Are black people’s woes in the West today due to racism or due to a criminal and destructive sub culture amongst a segment of the black population? I hope I have answered this question, or at least shone enough of a light on this subject to get you closer to an answer. The answer for me at least is the one that is both true, and that can set the black community on a path to change for the better. The tragedy is that it’s also the answer that will be branded as racist and dismissed without consideration.
And so the closing lyrics of Tupac’s song ‘Changes’ comes to mind:
“That’s just the way it is. Some things’ll never change.”
Sources
1. Black population size: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race-ethnicity-measures-reveal-united-states-population-much-more-multiracial.html
2. US arrest data: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-43
3. Black on black crime: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/29/fact-check-meme-shows-incorrect-homicide-stats-race/5739522002/
4. Children living with one or no parents: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/number-of-children-living-only-with-their-mothers-has-doubled-in-past-50-years.html
5. Student suspensions by race: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-black-white-divide-in-suspensions-what-is-the-role-of-family
6. Black children arrest rates: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/special_topics/qa11501.asp?qaDate=2018
7. School enrolment by race: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge
8. 8th grade reading performance: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/groups/?grade=8
9. 8th grade maths performance: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics?grade=8
10. Defunding the police survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-want-more-spending-on-police-in-their-area/
11. Police killings in the US: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org
12. US arrest data: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-43
Written by Arcadius Strauss.
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