Friday, November 30, 2007

Must not mention black crime (again)

We read:

"Nearly one of every 13 people living in Detroit does not have a job. Moreover, eight of every 10 is African-American - a racial group that, like it or not, is more likely than others in this country to kill or rob. It seems logical that these two realities might translate into a high crime rate that might create dangerous living conditions. But when a private research group reached that conclusion last week using FBI statistics, city mayors and the federal government called for suspending the group's publication and asked the media to ignore it....

The report in dispute is from CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc., which released rankings of the nation's most "dangerous" cities based on FBI figures. Detroit topped the list, followed by St. Louis, then Flint, Mich. Three California cities - Oakland, Richmond and Compton - were ranked among the 15 most dangerous cities. The rankings were based on per-capita rates for homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft....

U.S. Department of Justice figures also indicate that in 2005, homicide-offense rates for blacks were more than seven times higher than for whites, while incarceration rates were 5r times higher for blacks than whites, and almost twice as high for Latinos than whites. The Justice Department estimates about 32 percent of black males will enter state or federal prison during their lifetime compared with 17 percent of Hispanic males and 5.9 percent of white males.

Source