Message to the Grassroots

Mos Def reads Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots” (November 10, 1963) from Voices of a People's History on Vimeo.

Mos Def reads from Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s book Voices of a People’s History of the United States, November 11, 2006, at the Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, California. For more information, visit: http://www.peopleshistory.us.

Tags: Berkeley, black, civil rights, defense, equal rights, equality, Howard Zinn, liberty, Malcolm X, Mos Def, Negro, non-violence, People's History of the United States, Violence, Voices of a People's History of the United States
Category Main category, Racism |

Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.

It is quite often claimed that Black Americans or Chicano Americans are more prone to be criminals in the United States.  Usually this claim is accompanied by statistics.  I often wonder if people really just pick and choose statistics to support what they “want” to prove, or if they look at statistics and make a conclusion from gathering the evidence.  I think we all know that the prior is much more common than the latter.

First, Let us look at the statistics.

From the US Census Bureau (2008):
The American population is 304,059,724.
257,116,111 people are not Hispanic or Latino.
199,491,458 people are White.
37,171,750 people are Black Americans/African Americans/Negro (was on the 2010 Census)
2,328,982 people are Native American
13,237,698 people are Asian
434,561 people are Hawaiian
4,451,662 people are “two or more races”
46,943,613 are Latino or Hispanic (and are broken up among various other races)

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics:  “In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults.” and “In 1997, 9% of the black population in the U.S. was under some form of correctional supervision compared to 2% of the white population and over 1% of other races. “

What does this say?  Well, it does say that Black Americans are disproportionally arrested in the United States. It doesn’t quite clearly say much else.  You can infer that it means that Black people are criminals.  You can also infer that it means a racist society will tend to prosecute those at the receiving end of the racism.

After a few hours of combing through statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, I remembered again why I hate numbers.  They give me a headache.  I can reprint a ton of information, but I really don’t want to.  A bunch of it can be found here:  http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1743
It basically says that Whites are more often the victims of crimes, overwhelmingly.  What does that say?  Well, for once, it says that crimes are reported by whites much more frequently than by anyone else.  Does that mean they aren’t more often the victims of crimes?  Not at all.  Does it mean they are?  Not at all.  There are a lot of things you can infer from statistics, but it doesn’t always make them legitimate until you can correlate them and provide farther evidence.

So, yeah, I got really tired of those pages and pages of charts and numbers.  Then I found the National Crime Victimization Survey that was started under President Nixon.  “A key finding of the survey was the realization that many crimes were not reported to the police.”

The survey also found that ‘in the period 1992-2000, significantly less than half (43%) of all criminal acts reported through victimization surveys were also reported to police.‘  Hart & Rennison (2003:3)

So, when you look at the DOJ statistics, it states that 4,176,440 Whites were the victims of crimes in 2007 and 794,220 Blacks were the victims of crimes in the same year.  With a “rate per 1,000 persons age 12 and over” of 20.5 for Whites and 26.1 for Blacks.

Again, what do we conclude by this?  When 43% of crimes are not even reported, does this give an accurate picture?  The Uniform Crime Report has numbers very similar to the National Crime Victimization Survey, but the UCR is only reported by police.

I’m getting tired, so I’m just going to rip this line from Wikipedia, but it is a summary of the FBI Expanded Homicide Data – Crime in the United States 2008. Link here.

African Americans were arrested more than any other race for murder in 2008, making up 36% of all arrests. African Americans, constituting approximately 12% of the general population, were significantly overrepresented in the total arrests made. African Americans were also significantly overrepresented in victimization, representing 47% of all murder victims. White Americans and individuals of Other race were significantly underrepresented in cases of murder and non-negligible homicide in 2008. Murder in White American and African American populations were overwhelmingly intraracial, with 83% of all White victims and 90% of all Black victims having been murdered by individuals of the same race. The same was true, though to a lesser degree, for individuals of Other race, with 52% having been murdered by individuals also of Other race.

So, what did we learn? So far we learned that our prisons are filling up with Blacks more than Whites, that half of all crimes go unreported, and that most people are murdered by people with the same skin color as themselves.

Finally, I want to turn to a non-government source of information.  If you have never heard of the Innocence Project, it is a noble organization that does wonderful things.  Anyone who talks bad about them is an asshole.  And this is why: 254 EXONERATED

Here is information from the Innocence Project:

• Seventeen people had been sentenced to death before DNA proved their innocence and led to their release.
• The average sentence served by DNA exonerees has been 13 years.
• About 70 percent of those exonerated by DNA testing are members of minority groups.
• In almost 40 percent of the cases profiled here, the actual perpetrator has been identified by DNA testing.
• Exonerations have been won in 34 states and Washington, D.C.

HERE IS A BIG FAT LINK TO THE INNOCENCE PROJECT.

70 PERCENT OF THOSE EXONERATED BY DNA TESTING ARE MEMBERS OF MINORITY GROUPS!

Surprise!

Anyway.  This could really go on for quite a while.  There are so many moderating and intervening variables that need to be examined.  Even IF there was concrete evidence that Black Americans were 90 times more likely to commit a violent crime, you need to isolate that to provide proof that it is due to them being Black Americans and not the social environment, class situation, environment, nutrition, prenatal care, neonatal care, et cetera.  (There is a lot of evidence that people from low-income communities were more prone to violence in the past due to children ingesting large amounts of lead paint. We DO know that lead causes violent behavior.)  I still see no evidence at all that links skin color to violence or criminal behavior.  These tendencies  have not been proven to be clustered, or linked, to skin color in any way.

Oh, nevermind.  There are several books written about it.  Like America behind bars: trends in imprisonment, 1950 to 2000  by Rick Ruddell. (You can look it up on Google Books for free, or you can come back when I update this page and click on the link to buy it from Amazon and give me a percentage of the sale.)

I really don’t like maths.

And I really get tired of using statistics to prove a point in such detail.

I guess we could all just go to Lawrence Auster’s website and read the selected incidents and news articles that he has cherry picked to prove his point and avoid doing ANY actual research.  Hell, if Sarah Palin’s research involves having someone else write her biography and give a speech about the notes on her hand, and make $12 million a year, who needs to actually look up statistical data and analyze studies?  Compiling data?  Isn’t that for the Elite?  “We don’t need no book learnin’ and ‘rithmatic!”

Especially when 99% of all statistics are wrong.

“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.” – Homer Simpson

Tags: african-american, anti, black, Constitution, Department of Justice, discrimination, equal rights, incarceration, Innocence Project, latino, lawrence auster, parole, population, prison, race, racist, sarah palin, statistics, United States, US Census Bureau, White, white dominance
Category Definitions, Racism |

Defining “race” and “racism”

Being noticed by Lawrence Auster brought a few of his followers to this site. A few debates on “race” ensued. What made me curious was his use of the current social-political environment of South Africa to perpetuate the “white fear” agenda. But, I don’t want to really talk about South Africa. What I find concerning is the American concept of “race.” It is not limited to America, but this is where I’m limiting my concern for today. I feel like most people in the United States think “race” or racial classification, is something it is not. (I also do not believe that this blog entry will actually change that, but I’m still doing it for my own sake.) I can start with my conclusion: The social concept of race is not scientific, but does exist as a social classification.

In taxonomy, “race” is used to describe subspecies.  All human beings are homo sapiens sapiens.  There is no genetic basis for racial classification. I don’t know how many times I have to state this, but apparently, I cannot be overstated.  Many people believe human “races” are as different as dogs and cats.  Not only is this unfounded, science actually contradicts it.  Through genetic mapping, we know that majority of the world population has any variation of “racial genetic makeup.”  This has become an alarmingly popular topic recently, as President Obama comes from “mixed parentage.”  I read several articles, a few on the Huffington Post, mentioning President Obama “denying his white ancestry” or similar topics.  Well, what about the rest of Black America?  On average, African Americans are genetically 30% to 60% African.  Do they get to claim to be of “mixed parentage” as well?  And what of White Americans who have more then 40% African genetic markers?  What if someone is 30% Asian, 50% European, and 20% African?  I could also go into the fact that these physical traits are not clustered. You can have two siblings with the same parents and two different noses, but the same brow.  I really don’t want to go into genetic clustered traits and clines and all of that.

Quite simply:  genetics are not like mixing paint, they are more like playing roulette.

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Tags: anti, labels, race, racism, racist, white dominance
Category Definitions, Racism |

Response from “A knee-jerk liberal blogger”

So, today Larry Auster calls me “a knee-jerk liberal blogger.” The full entry can be found here. I think it is interesting, that there was not one link to my site, or my page. Not one mention of me. (update: there is a link to my entry, but it is on the word “finds,” so I don’t know how intuitive that is.) Yet, he disliked being called out as a racist so much he commented on it. So, today’s entry is in response to Larry and his post about me. I will ignore the fact that he is afraid to link to me as to have a proper display of information.
(In all sense of fairness, I did edit the entry today.  There were problematic sentences and spelling errors, but I honestly did my best to not change any meanings or specific terminology that was originally used.  I simply tried to make it flow better and convey my points more succinctly.

Specifically he states:

A knee-jerk liberal blogger, the type who takes the Southern Poverty Law Center as his authority, came upon View from the Right, this entry in particular, and finds it indistinguishable from the neo-Nazi Stormfront.

So… I’m not a liberal, but I don’t even want to get into that. I’m probably more liberal than Conservative, though. But, let’s just place our own labels on people and that way we can dismiss them without actually using talking points, definitions, discussion and debate.  For instance, Lawrence Auster is a racist. Farther, I did not use the SPLC as my authority.  Larry, I found quite a few interesting tidbits of information about you from all over.  Even your Wikipedia entry is a bit interesting (and brief).  I just said the SPLC classified you as a racist before I did.  But, yes, I did say your site felt like Stormfront.  (I did not say I found it indistinguishable from Stormfront, just that it has the same “feel.”)  Majority of all of your bitches are about non-whites, Larry.  That is the same thing as the Stormfront website.  The biggest difference is that Stormfront complains about “Jews” as much as every other “non-white” in their classification.

Mr. Auster, I will attempt to answer your questions.

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Tags: conservative, labels, lawrence auster, liberals, Martin Luthar King Jr, neocon, neoconservative, racism, racist, response, southern poverty law center, white dominance
Category Racism |

View From The Right?

Ughs.  Sorry, nothing lighthearted today, again.

**I stated in the original entry that I would edit and update this entry when I had some time.  Since, it has already received comments, I felt I should make time, to truly represent myself and this site.**

I saw Carl Hancock Rux stated that he was looking for the entymology of the term “post-racial.”  (Spell check recognizes Entomology but not Entymology.)  I was curious myself, and started a simply search query.  I ended up on this blog entry, on  “A View From The Right.” The tagline for the site is “The passing scene and what it’s about viewed from the traditionalist politically incorrect Right.”  The blog is authored by Lawrence Auster.  So, if this is a “View from the Right,” this is why I don’t consider myself either “Left” or “Right.”  I had to look up Lawrence Auster, after a few pages of reading.  I admit that I did not know who this man was prior to finding this site.  Once again, the Southern Poverty Law Center beat me to classifying this man’s persona as it should be classified.

The entry that led me to this site was on a blog entry entitled “What is Post Racial America?“   I thought, “this might be interesting, I’m curious myself.”  Well, Auster goes on a rant about minorities, specifically non-whites, and blames them for all of the racial issues in America.  He states that post-racial is not here because of minorities refusal to accept white supremacy.  (That is what I took away from it.)  There was not one mention of any racist acts or issues perpetrated by whites in his entire entry.  I would be remiss if I were to do the opposite, and simply blame White America for all of America’s racial issues.  Still, who was it that classified “race” in America?  Who drew the lines?  Who set up the levels of privilege based on “racial” classifications?  Anyway, the whole point of this long boring story is the few interesting points it raises.

I perused a large amount of the site.  Let me say that the front page of the site appeared very similar to Stormfront.  Everything is slanted against everyone and anyone who is browner than Anglo, but especially those of African diaspora.  Almost every story is one regarding Blacks and/or Muslims (in a negative light).  This is not just “politically incorrect.”  It’s racist propaganda.  (It is politically incorrect, because it isolates such a large voting base, there is no way you can achieve any level of success in this representative government.)  Sorry, Larry, you are just a racist.  You can hide under any umbrella you wish, like “traditionally conservative.”  (That would make you a Democrat, wouldn’t it?  Since the Republican party was traditionally the part of equal rights.)  You can even hide under the guise of being an idiot.  I am being a bit brash, but it is because I’m just tired of this racist rhetoric hiding under the guise of being an “unpopular truth” or a “conservative opinion.”

So, Mr. Auster, do you mean Conservative as a supporter of an aristocratic monarchy with subjugated peasants and surfs?  Then, yes, you are a Conservative.  So is Kim Jong Il, apparently.

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Tags: anti, commentator, conservative, labels, lawrence auster, liberals, neocon, neoconservative, racism, racist, southern poverty law center, white dominance
Category Racism |