Why do dark skinned males commit so much crime?

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I think the education system is mostly to blame. I am from a poor white background, but I still got into university because the public education system in Britain isn't as bad as the US one. Plus, I grew up surrounded by Asians and West Africans who were trying to go to university as well, despite being poor.

Being a poor white in Britain means you face just as much discrimination as a minority because of the class system here.

Once the educational opportunities are in place, it's a matter of being unmacho enough to take them.

I disagree. "Dark skinned males" have every bit the opportunity anyone else has entirely on their own.

What happens is they are not TAUGHT that they have equal opportunity, and this attitude that there isn't anything for them is something they share among their peers and is reinforced by similar attitudes at home.

It boggles my mind that schools don't do a better job at getting to them. A school counselor actually get upset with me because I advised and assisted a student in getting accepted at an arts school. I asked several other students why they waited until their senior year to take college entrance exams. The same counselor told them they only got to take it once. When I told them that was an outright lie and that they should start taking college exams as early as possible and to repeat them often to raise scores, they told me their parents couldn't justify paying for taking and retaking the exams. The schools are working against these people not to mention being lied to by their own people--even their own parents.

Black schools and parents are working to keep their children ignorant, and the only way towards advancement is by cheating or circumventing the system.

Not all blacks buy into the lies they are being told. I know plenty of black men who are community leaders, run their own businesses, and avoid giving into a criminal lifestyle. If you can get the kids away from situations in which they'd be pressured into a life of crime, you can break that cycle. But it takes a willingness to move to where the opportunities are and away from the pressure to conform to harmful and destructive alternatives that might only momentarily be appealing.

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I do wonder, though, if the media really is only sensationalizing black crime. My wife and I watch the show "Bait Car" every week, and we've noticed that those who are stealing cars are almost exclusively black. Apparently auto theft happens in predominantly black neighborhoods whereas the same crime is less prevalent elsewhere. With some exception, of course, it really is mainly black men who steal cars. If you ever follow that show, you'll also find occasional "good Samaritans" who just move cars to a safer location nearby and report the car to the police (who then promptly arrive and have the car towed). But those moments are, sadly, rare. My conclusion is that culture has the most to do with it, and it is a particular sub-culture that encourages this behavior. Take a black person out of the negative environment and things are totally different.

What's also interesting to me about race-motivated threads is that races are so often distinguished at all. I was discussing what race issues are like in the south with a friend from upstate New York, and she pointed out that people where she grew up never even make the distinction between a black person, a white person, an Asian, or anyone else. A huge difference in how I grew up, because there are places where white people are not welcome, and where the two mix you really do have to watch your step. That kind of sensitivity just doesn't exist in some regions, and racism is probably much less prevalent where minorities are a rarity--people just accept you and don't ask questions. Racism is going to be more of a topic where two distinct cultures exist and there are enough differences that a clash is inevitable. Minorities will otherwise tend to blend into the background of the dominant culture they live in, and when that happens it's less likely that race will ever become an issue. And that will only happen when minorities are extremely few and far between, like, say 50:1000 minority to majority ratio. It can also happen when a culture consists of an evenly spread diversity of several people-groups. But it won't happen if you have 60/40 mix of two groups that have a tradition of resenting each other.

I come from a family of dark skinned people not many of them commited crime but some did.

Slavery was abolished, yes. That did not stop the cycle of oppression. Instead, laws were passed targeting African Americans, and then they were arrested and sent to jail. They then used those prison gangs as a form of rented labour - often treating them worse than slaves because they were returned at the end of the day. They were of course, paid nothing.

It doesn't stop there. Once they were released from slavery, many went straight into some sort of debt-bondage. Others had to stay with their former masters, except the wages they were paid were enough to cover their food and a place to live, that was it. Most were still subjected to only certain types of jobs - primarily physical labour and servants positions. It stayed like that in regard to the positions they could hold in society until the 60's. Until the 60's there was still segregation and racial crimes were the norm.



Obama is the worst example you could have possibly used. He had a rich father, he went to Harvard for gods sake, he was a corporate lawyer! You think the average African American can relate to that, that they grow up rich?! Of course they can't! They can't relate to him any more than the average white American can relate to Bill Gates.



That's exactly what I am trying to tell you. They were given their culture by the white man, by their masters (now previous - or not, depending how you see it). They accepted that from them for centuries. You cannot grow up with the dominant culture shoving something down you throat, something which you own culture has taken seriously and believes, and now reinforces by itself as well as the outside culture.

They have been told all this time that they are inferior, that they are violent, that they are poor, that they are not good enough, that they are ugly, that they are bad, that they don't deserve anything good. When the dominant culture puts that in your face every second of every day, as well as your own sub-culture continues to perpetuate those myths, you start believing it. Even if it's only subconsciously.

Attitudes take a long time to change, and they are only 60 years out of segregation. Yes, their own attitudes are holding them there, but they got those attitudes from somewhere, and they are still being fed those attitudes today by both their own sub-culture and the dominant culture as well.

Anyone who says racism doesn't exist there hasn't lived it.

It's poor people who commit the most crimes (that gets you arrested).

I'd like to know more about the supposed cycle of oppression that only people adhering to a culture originating mostly in Africa are unable to escape.

As for the victim issue, I've trusted my instincts after seeing a video of Johnny Cash in San Quentin, and started looking for statistics to go along with it. I found a nifty little table that completely contradicts what you said there. It's a table showing both federal and state prison admissions between 1926 and 1986. Federal prison admissions aren't very relevant, as they form a very small part of the total admissions in any year. The trend indicates that, even with Mexicans calculated with 'white' in 1986 but not in 1926 (categorised as 'other'), the percentage of 'black' prison admissions has shown a continuous increase at the expense of 'white' admissions.

Interesting comparison:

State Prisons, 1926:

75% white;
23% black;
2% other.

State Prisons, 1986:

53% white;
46% black;
1% other.



Again, I'd like to know more about that. Until I see something to back that up, it's not something I'm ready to believe. You see, most of what you're saying here applies to my great-grandparents and grandparents. However, my grandfather worked hard enough, which landed him a comfortable office job with a personal secretary, enabling my mother to start working in the same field, where she and my father made enough money to buy a house, buy a car and start a family. It's a complete mystery to me why, in spite of overzealous anti-racism programmes, black people have shown little to no signs of improvement in any field.



Obama's father wasn't born the wealthiest man in the world. He worked as a cook for missionaries, worked for the British and was subject to corporal punishment. However, while he lived in a British colony, he wasn't addicted to the idea that white people were keeping him down. He worked, he studied and he was given scholarships. Only then could he visit Harvard. Once again, I fail to see why a man beaten up by the British in Kenya while working in a soup kitchen was able to go to Harvard in 1962, but millions of black people born and raised in the United States apparently aren't able to this day.

You'll have to wait for several hours until I can finish this post; I need to hurry to catch a bus.

You realize the point of this thread is mostly about dark skinned people with slave ancestors, don't you?

Between 1920 and 1971, the prison population grew at about the same as the general population, after 1971 a massive spike starts to occur.




The problem is with the 'war on drugs', over time rates of violent crime have been dropping but the war on drugs, long sentences and the '3strikes and you are out' policies have been disastrous for the US. If you check the Bureau of justice Statistics, in 2009 only 7.9% of inmates were in for violent crimes.

That's good to hear. However, this is proportional. It's not the amount of black people who entered prison; it's their percentage of the total amount. In 1980, for example, 134,634 people were admitted to either type of prison; approximately 55,200 of them were black. 183,769 were admitted to prison in 1986; approximately 80,858 of them were black. In both cases, it's much more than you could possibly expect. In these years, African-Americans constituted 41% and 44%, respectively, of the total amount of admissions. That's still much more than you could possibly expect from 12.6% of the population.

What these data should mainly show, though, is that the theory of laws to keep them down after the abolition of slavery contradicts the actual figures, which show that both the percentage and the total amount of African-Americans in prison has risen dramatically since 1926, when it was more proportional, to a more disproportionate point in 1986, with more recent data showing it's a trend that largely isn't reversing. In that case, either the theory submitted by Kjas is wrong, or African-Americans have had approximately 60 years of sudden peace and proper treatment between the abolition of slavery and 1926, after which they were suddenly heavily discriminated to this day.



More people committing crimes have been locked up. That doesn't nullify the fact that blacks are extremely over-represented in both the prison population, crime statistics, violent crime statistics and more things they shouldn't be over-represented in. And it's not just the United States, either - we have our own severe problems with black populations over-represented in crime since they've lived here back in Europe.

I have those as well Rain Rain go away.

What exactly do you think we are counting?

If you believe that any of these statistics are counting crimes committed, then you are committing a fundamental statistical error.

There are a body of people who are in prison--they have all committed crimes, been convicted and been sentenced to terms in prison.

But of the people in prison, people who have been sentenced to long terms in prison are disproportionately represented, because they show up in population statistics year after year, whereas those sentenced to shorter terms come and go more quickly. There is a significant political element to this, because legislatures will choose to take more draconian action, such as harsher sentences and mandatory minimum sentences in the case of some crimes, and not in the case of others. So when minimum sentences for trafficking in crack cocaine are higher than those for trafficking in powdered cocaine, then it will follow that there will be more people in prison for trafficking in crack than for trafficking in cocaine--unless the ratio of convictions for each offence is comparable to the ratio of sentences imposed for each offence.

In the next larger grouping, we have to add in all the people who have been convicted of crime, but who are no longer in prison, either because they have served their sentences, or because they were not sentenced to imprisonment in the first place (either because of time served awaiting trial, or the ability to pay monetary fines so that they don't serve time in lieu).

A still larger grouping must include those who have committed crimes, been tried for crime, but who are acquitted--either by reason of investigative misconduct, or a failure on the part of the prosecution to prove the offence. Conviction rates depend primarily upon the availability and quality of legal defence, and barriers to access to counsel are a significant feature in studies of conviction rates.

Then let us add all the people who are never tried for the crimes of which they are accused, because police or prosecutors choose not to proceed.

And finally, there are the people who are never arrested for the crimes that they have committed in the first place.

So I refuse to accept the proposition that the higher percentage of blacks in American prisons, or the higher percentage of Aboriginals in Canadian prisons stands for anything more than the fact that there are a higher number of blacks in US prisons and a higher number of Aboriginals in Canadian prisons. Period. Any further assessment of crime rates requires far more detailed research than anyone participating in this thread has demonstrated thus far.

Sorry if visagrunt mentioned this but there are also studies that show if a white person commits a crime he will usually get a shorter sentence compared to if a black person commits the same crime.

Yep this is true very true.

I didn't, Delphiki, but it's a valuable addition to the discussion. Thanks.

Anything to do with crime, especially violent crime, and black people's disproportionate part in that. Even with all apologism, 13% of the population makes up 44% or more of prison admissions in almost any year. That has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal justice system being mean, as the criminal justice system wasn't that mean in 1926, or 1956, or 1976, while the percentage of black people admitted to prison was steadily rising. It's quaint how the politically-motivated can ignore Occam's Razor and immediately skip onto elaborate theories of neo-colonialism, oppression through specific laws and debt servitude that clearly didn't hinder other minorities.



If you're counting any kind of statistic and expecting a clean truth adjusted for your opinion, you're committing a fundamental statistical error much worse than that. No statistic will ever be completely realistic. However, I can imagine the actual situation being much worse rather than much better - remember, the police here refuses to deal with complaints of bike theft by now, so our crime rates are comfortably low. However, I can offer you some information about recent statistics for the overall prison population in the United States. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 37.4% of the population of federal prisons is black. That sounds like less than their proportion of admittance to state prisons in 1986, but it's still a steep proportional rise from the original figures for federal prisons in 1986. It seems they're over-represented in all categories.



Although I hadn't addressed this subset of prisoners until now, African-Americans are extremely over-represented in both groups. I'm not sure where this is going.



Have they done this? I'll ask for something more substantial than a claim now. And how come it's mainly African-Americans who are able to trade drugs worth thousands of dollars, but not send their children to college? Is it still white man keeping them down, or is it white powdery money keeping them afloat?



And if you increase the group to a certain size, you'll almost certainly be right at some abstract point. If you observe a tree while looking for marine biology, you might prove that leaves are able to grow in water. And don't bother blaming it on their lack of legal counsel, either. The statistics remain the same if they have free legal counsel. Afro-Caribbeans who live here have astronomic crime rates, with 55% of Antillean young men having been held on suspicion of a crime more serious than bike theft. These are facts, not suspicions and propositions.



That's your problem. My explanation is this: despite having lived in the United States for over 140 years, African-Americans still have a lot of problems otherwise reserved for first-generation immigrants. Problems with crime, unemployment, welfare and broken families that most other minorities managed to escape within two or three generations, even in the face of supposed racism. Meanwhile, they teach themselves that they're being discriminated against, and a lot of them build a fair lifestyle around it. I'm going to assume a cultural explanation here.

Is it really that hard to assume the least complex reason and assume there's simply an excruciatingly disproportionate amount of them in prison because they commit an excruciatingly disproportionate amount of crimes?

Because they are brought up through more poverty and generally deal with a lot more prejudice in general. In other words they usually have a rougher life so sometimes they get desperate and go to crime. It can happen to anyone it just so happens to be the minority populous that ends up this way because they usually have a harder life.