Tim Wise's Blog, page 17

Baby Mama Drama: Explaining Conservative Deception About Out-of-Wedlock Births in the Black Community

Ever since my post two days ago, in which I detailed the way the right, a) distorts evidence about social pathology in black communities with regard to crime and out-of-wedlock childbirth, and b) routinely ignores those pathologies that are prevalent in white spaces, I’ve been bombarded with requests for further clarification. Specifically, about the matter of out-of-wedlock childbearing among black women. Folks are apparently confused by the evidence and would like to better understand what I was saying and why conservative arguments about this issue are entirely fraudulent.

I agree that the data is confusing, and so I will try and explain it as clearly as possible.

First, to recap: when conservatives argue that there is an “illegitimacy” crisis in black America, and that rising out-of-wedlock birthrates are the real cause of black folks’ problems, they demonstrate an inability to actually understand statistics. The fact is, the birth rate for unmarried black women (births per 1000 such women of childbearing age) is dropping, not rising. For black teens, the birth rate has fallen by half since 1970 and is now at its lowest point ever, and for black women generally the out-of-wedlock birthrate is down by about a third in that same period of time.

However, as conservatives note, it is also true that the percentage of black births that are out-of-wedlock as a share of all black births has risen, nearly doubling since 1970, and now stands at just over 72 percent.

Both of these things are true: declining birth rates and fertility rates for unmarried black women (i.e., unmarried black women are increasingly being more and more “responsible” in conservative terms, not less), and also a climbing share of out-of-wedlock kids as a share of all black kids born.

The reason for these seemingly contradictory trends can best be explained like this:

Imagine a community of 100,000 people of childbearing age (50,000 men and 50,000 women), where half the men and women are married and half of each are single. Of the 25,000 single women, imagine that 500 had babies this year. This would represent a very small number, and an unmarried birth rate of 20 babies per 1000 women. You could also represent this by saying that only about 2% of single women in this community would have a baby out of wedlock this year, since most women would have only one child per year, and so the 500 babies born likely represent roughly 500 of the 25,000 women too.

But let’s say that that same year, for whatever reason, only 200 of the married women gave birth. In that case, 500 of the 700 babies born, or over 71 percent of all babies born in this community would be out-of-wedlock! Oh my God! Send out the cultural police! But note, this result would not in any way reflect the widespread misbehavior of single women and their male companions — after all 98 percent of all unmarried women are not giving birth — but rather, it would reflect the fact that married couples were simply having even fewer kids than single women were.

And in fact, that is what has happened in the U.S. Even though single black women have cut back on how many babies they have while unmarried, married black women have cut back even further. So if single black women have reduced their birthrates by a third, but married couples have cut theirs by over half, or even two-thirds (which is the case), then obviously the percentage of births in the black community that are out-of-wedlock will rise.

The reason it is unfair for conservatives to seize upon the latter of these facts while ignoring the context that explains it, is that their argument is first and foremost that black folks need to stop having babies out of wedlock. But the data says they are already cutting back on that, and dramatically so. In other words, the trend lines in that regard are positive. To suggest a pathological — and increasingly so — black culture when it comes to out-of-wedlock childbirth is entirely dishonest. If anything, “black culture” if we really want to suggest it is linked to the decision to bear children out-of-wedlock, must be improving, rather than regressing. So conservatives should be celebrating these trends.

Meanwhile, as I noted — and since black single women are already cutting back on childbearing — there is only one other way that that 72 percent number could be brought down. But it is unlikely that conservative white folks are going to push for it: namely, if black couples started having 5, 6, even 10 kids each, that number (the percentage of black births that are out of wedlock as a percentage of all black births) would be cut in half within a year or so. So, since single black women are already behaving increasingly “responsibly” in terms of their childbearing behavior, how about it white folks? How about we push for a massive increase in married black womens’ fertility? Maybe pass out fertility drugs so they can have triplets and quads? Maybe encourage them to go the “full Dugger family” and have 20? That way, the share of out-of-wedlock births in the black community can plummet and everyone can stop talking about shit they don’t understand. Oh, and the black population would also skyrocket, so…

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

What’s the Matter With White People? A Modest Call for Personal Responsibility

Predictably, white conservatives are at it again: blaming black people specifically, and black culture more broadly, for various crises facing the African American communities of this nation. In the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict, and black anger over the racial suspicions that animated Zimmerman’s decision to follow Trayvon Martin the night he was killed — and which likewise guide the actions of law enforcement across the nation from New York to L.A. — the same refrain could be heard over and again from right-wing quarters. No matter the source, the song remained the same: namely, that black folks need to stop complaining about white racism (which they assured us doesn’t even exist and hasn’t for at least 45 years), and pay more attention to the damage they are ostensibly doing to themselves in places like Chicago, where violence and homicide rates have recently risen.

Black-on-black crime, they intoned, was the real problem, and until African Americans address the cultural dysfunctions to which their children are being exposed — be it hip-hop, fatherless families, sagging pants, hoodies or a fascination with violence — racial profiling is not only not the problem, it’s actually understandable. With black pathology so common, they suggested, it makes sense for others (whether cops or Neighborhood Watch types) to suspect them — especially black males — when the latter are seen in the neighborhood. Indeed, they should be profiled no differently than one might profile a more dangerous breed of dogs, because black people are basically, ya’ know, rabid animals.

But even if we ignore the unfairness of racial profiling, not to mention its blatantly unconstitutional nature given that whole Equal Protection Clause thing, sitting smack dab in the middle of the 14th Amendment — and even if we momentarily put aside the evidence that profiling is not justified by crime data, and can actually be counterproductive — several points have been overlooked by those who think they have either the moral or factual basis to lecture black folks about so-called pathologies in the black community. And they are points worth noting, because they indicate that not only are the Negrophobic critics of black America largely wrong about black folks (few of whom they actually know) and black communities (few of which they have ever actually spent time in), but even more interestingly, they appear to be ignoring a number of data points suggesting serious cultural rot in the white community, to which they might wish to turn their attention. Especially seeing as how they love to inveigh about “personal responsibility.” What better way for white people to take personal responsibility, after all, than to stop hectoring blacks and perhaps begin to clean up our own behavioral back yards?

Uh-O’Reilly: Black “Pathology” is Actually on the Decline

Despite the alarm bells rung regularly by hysterics on the right, there is evidence that progress is being made in the black community on the very issues about which conservatives love to bray. For instance, teen pregnancy rates have been falling considerably for African American youth, contrary to popular perception. From 1991 to 2010, the rate of births to black teens, 15-19, fell by more than half, with a full 9 percent drop just between 2009 and 2010 alone. Likewise, from 1980 to 2008, the birthrate for all black women under 18 fell by more than half. Indeed, the birth rate for African American teenagers is now at an all-time low.

In fact, since the early 1990s, the rate of out-of-wedlock child birth for all women — not just teenagers — has fallen for blacks, while actually climbing for whites. From 1990 to 2010 the white out-of-wedlock birth rate grew by one-third while the rate for black women fell by more than 28 percent. Since 1970, the rate of out-of-wedlock births has more than tripled for white women, while falling among black women by nearly a third.

But how can that be? Over 72 percent of black babies born today are born out-of-wedlock, as opposed to 66.5 percent of all black babies in 1990, and only 37.5 percent of black babies born in 1970! Doesn’t this prove that single black women are becoming less responsible in their childbearing patterns? Doesn’t it prove a cultural tendency in the black community to bring children into the world, despite the lack of a father in the home? Well no, and anyone who knew how to interpret basic statistical concepts would know why. The fact that right-wing blowhards like Bill O’Reilly and pretty much everyone on FOX makes this same point, incessantly, only indicates their statistical illiteracy. A brief examination should explain.

As you can see, in the second section of the table linked above, labeled “percent of live births to unmarried mothers,” it is undeniably true that as a share of all births to black women, those that are out-of-wedlock have indeed grown dramatically over the past four decades. And yet, as the first part of the table indicates (and as I noted above), the actual unmarried birth rate for black women has been declining steadily. So, how can these two facts both be true? How can the actual rate of unmarried births to black women be falling and yet, at the same time, the percentage of births to black women that are births out-of-wedlock be climbing? Easy. These facts represent two different social realities, only one of which indicates anything about the behavior of unmarried black folks. And the one that matters isn’t the one white conservatives like to talk about.

If unmarried black women are having fewer babies than ever — and that’s what the table demonstrates — then this means unmarried black women are increasingly doing exactly what conservative moral scolds would have them do: namely, be more “responsible” about their sexual activity, and not bring babies into the world that they are presumed less likely to be able to support because of the absence of a father. But if, despite this trend towards “responsible” behavior, the share of black births that are out-of-wedlock continues to rise, what can explain such a seemingly contradictory phenomenon? There is really only one possible answer, and it has nothing to do with cultural pathology or bad behavior. Simply put, it must be that black married couples are having far fewer children than in the past. Indeed, the rates of birth for married black couples must be falling faster than the rates for unmarried black women, such that out-of-wedlock births as a share of all black births will continue to climb, even as unmarried black women cut back on childbearing. That is, in fact, exactly the culprit here. Black married couples are having far fewer children than ever before, and far fewer than white married couples, by the way, unlike in the past when their families tended to be larger.

So, in other words, the statistic to which conservatives point as evidence of growing black cultural pathology only proves that married black families are dramatically restraining their child-bearing relative to earlier years. Perhaps conservatives should start a campaign not to get single black women to have fewer babies — after all, they are already doing that — but rather, to encourage black married couples to have 5, 6, or even 10 kids, thereby boosting the black population and cutting the out-of-wedlock share of black births dramatically all at the same time! Win-win, right white conservatives?

But it is not only in the arena of childbearing that the black community seems to be increasingly “responsible;” so too is this apparently the case when it comes to lethal violence. Despite a steady stream of media attention to violence in black communities like those in Chicago — and the use of this violence by the right to deflect attention from racism and place the blame for black folks’ problems on black folks themselves — the fact is, homicide death rates today are actually far lower for black men than in the past. Though such a fact is surely cold comfort for those who have lost a loved one to tragic violence, it is worth noting that, generally speaking, black men are safer today when it comes to the threat of being killed than they were 60 years ago! In 1950, for instance, the homicide death rate for black males was 38 percent higher than in 2008, with 47 black males dying from homicide for every 100,000 black men in the population, as opposed to 34 per 100,000 in 2008. And although crime and homicide spikes in a few places like Chicago have been quite real, these seem to be outliers, as violent crime nationally (including crime committed by blacks) has continued to fall in recent years and now stands at rates that are well below those of twenty years ago. In some mostly black cities, like Washington D.C. for instance, homicide rates now stand at their lowest point in the past half-century.

Such data eviscerates the notion that somehow black culture — and especially cultural dysfunction brought on by the emergence of hip-hop — can explain violence and dysfunction in today’s African American communities. Were these things truly correlated with social pathology as the right insists, we would expect to see things getting worse in terms of homicide rates and out-of-wedlock birth rates, rather than better. After all, there was no Lil Wayne in 1950, nor indeed in 1973, when the violent crime rate nationwide was more than three times higher than today.

What About White Pathology? (Or, Doctor Heal Thyself)

But not only does the white right overlook any number of positive trends in the black communities of this nation; more to the point, they manage to completely miss the evidence of substantial pathology in the very communities where they, as white folks, tend to live. As the data make clear, when it comes to several destructive behaviors, whites often lead the pack, but somehow manage to escape the harsh cultural judgments so regularly reserved for persons of color (1).

One in seven white women, for instance, smoke cigarettes while pregnant, thereby endangering the health of their soon-to-be-born children: a rate that is 60 percent higher than the rate for black women. White women were also about 30 percent more likely than black women to drink alcohol when pregnant in 2010-2011, thanks to a significant reduction in gestational alcohol consumption among black women compared to previous years and a slight increase in such consumption among whites. So is there something about white culture that contributes to this disproportionately cavalier attitude among white women when it comes to the health of their developing fetuses?

And what is it with white people and suicide? Although suicide touches all communities, the numbers show that whites end our own lives at a far higher rate than blacks. In 2010, for instance, whites committed suicide at a rate that was roughly three times higher than the rate for blacks. Is there something about whites, culturally, that can explain this disproportionate inability to cope with life’s pressures, or with depression, or the other precursors to suicide?

And what’s the deal with white people and drug overdoses? In 2010, for example, white men were nearly twice as likely as black men to die from an opioid overdose and white women were more then twice as likely to die from such an overdose as black women. Interestingly, not only are whites apparently having a hard time handling our drugs, but even more telling, there has been a shift in the rates of opioid overdose deaths since the late 1990s, at which point black men were actually 44 percent more likely than their white counterparts to die this way. Since 1999, while black male opioid drug overdose deaths have fallen, rates for whites have increased by 137 percent! In other words, black men are taking it easier on the heavy stuff, while apparently white men are swallowing Hydrocodone like Tic-Tacs. What’s up with that?

And don’t even get me started on binge-drinking! It had been a while since I’d looked at the data on this, and although I knew white rates of heavy boozing were higher than the rates for blacks about a decade ago, I had hoped that we might have learned to control ourselves in the interim, but no such luck apparently. In 2011, for instance, white folks were still about one-fourth more likely than blacks to have binged in the past month, and 78 percent more likely to binge drink regularly (5 or more times in one month).

Among younger whites the problem is especially acute. According to the most recent available evidence, by their sophomore year of high school, whites are one-third more likely than our black counterparts to have been drunk, with a full 37 percent of white tenth graders having been inebriated. By senior year, a full 55 percent of whites have been been drunk, compared to 35 percent of our African American counterparts. As for current monthly use of alcohol, whites in 8th, 10th and 12th grades are all more likely than comparable blacks to be current drinkers. In the past month, 1 in 7 white sophomores have been drunk (more than double the rate for blacks), and 3 in 10 white seniors have been drunk, more than twice the rate for comparable blacks. In the past two weeks, one in seven white 10th graders have engaged in binge drinking (drinking five or more alcoholic beverages at one sitting), as have one in four white 12th graders: in both cases rates of binging that are at least double the rates for comparable blacks.

White drinking relative to black drinking remains high in college as well. As of 2011, nearly half of full-time white college students were binge drinking, compared to less than a fifth of black full-time college students, and white college students are a full six times more likely than our black counterparts to binge drink on a regular basis. Other studies have found somewhat lower rates of occasional binge drinking for all college students, regardless of race, but the disparities between whites and blacks even in these studies remains huge (in fact, larger). One study, for instance, estimated that about 6.7 percent of black collegians binge drink compared to 35 percent of whites, a ratio of more than 5:1. And according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse Research at Columbia University, students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), including white students at those schools, drink far less than students at mostly white colleges (only about 39 percent as much weekly) and are only 59 percent as likely to binge. Might there be something about white colleges — especially their white fraternities and sororities — and the culture of such places to which the moral scolds of the right might wish to throw some shade?

Not only do white youth apparently have a collective drinking problem — at least, relative to their black counterparts — but they also are more likely to then get behind the wheel of a car and attempt to drive, thereby endangering themselves and others. White male high school students are 46 percent more likely than similar black males to have driven under the influence of alcohol, while white females are more than twice as likely as their black female counterparts to have done so. When looking at all persons over the age of 12, whites are two-thirds more likely than blacks to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol. And this indulgence is no mere academic matter, as driving while impaired by alcohol alone (to say nothing of other drugs) contributes to roughly 10,000 fatalities annually.

White youth in grades 8 to 12 are also about twice as likely as their black counterparts to smoke cancer-causing cigarettes (talk about a self-destructive tendency!), with more than 1 in 5 white high school seniors doing so. Indeed, among 12th graders, whites are three times as likely as comparable blacks to smoke a half-pack or more of cigarettes daily.

Although drug use is roughly the same across racial lines, white youth appear more likely to use heavier drugs than black youth. According to data from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, white 8th graders are a third more likely than their black counterparts to have used drugs other than marijuana, and by 10th grade, this ratio climbs to nearly 2:1, with 15 percent of white sophomores having used other and often heavier drugs, compared to only around 8 percent of blacks who have done so. Among high school seniors, more than 1 in 4 whites have used illicit drugs other than weed, compared to fewer than 1 in 8 African Americans.

And although most youth, regardless of race, don’t use hard drugs, racial disparities remain when it comes to these harder narcotics. By their senior year of high school, whites are four times more likely than blacks to have used hallucinogenic drugs, with 1 in 11 white seniors having done so, compared to only 1 in 42 black seniors. Likewise, white seniors are 2.4 times more likely to have tried Ecstasy, four times more likely to have tried cocaine (even 2.5 times more likely to have used crack), 3.5 times more likely to have used amphetamines (with more than 1 in 7 white seniors having used these compared to about 1 in 22 blacks), and 4 times as likely as comparable blacks to have used sedatives, with one in ten white high school seniors having done so. Among 12th graders, whites are 2.7 times more likely than comparable blacks to have used a prescription drug without a prescription, with about 1 in 6 whites having done so.

As for current drug use, by 10th grade, whites are nearly 70 percent more likely than comparable blacks to have used an illicit drug other than marijuana in the past month, and by 12th grade, they are more than twice as likely to have done so, with 1 in 10 whites currently using drugs other than weed, compared to only 1 in 23 blacks in that grade.

In college, the disparities continue, with white students more than twice as likely as black students to smoke weed or use other illicit drugs like Ecstasy, twice as likely as black students to abuse prescription opioids and three times as likely to abuse stimulants. At HBCUs, there is virtually no evidence of prescription stimulant abuse at all, according to one national survey, again suggesting that maybe white culture needs to take a few pointers from black folks and the educational institutions where they predominate.

All in all, as the Centers for Disease Control note, there are any number of dangerous activities in which white youth engage more often than black youth. Yet somehow we escape the generalized cultural critiques that follow blacks whenever members of their group do something wrong. In addition to the above-mentioned differences in alcohol and drug use, as well as drunk driving and smoking, white youth are also more likely than blacks to text while driving, thereby putting themselves and others at risk on the road, more likely to vomit or take laxatives so as to lose weight, less likely to have used a condom the last time they had sexual intercourse, and far more likely to use dangerous, cancer-causing tanning lamps to become, well, darker — which raises the question as to why white people hate ourselves so much that we’ll go out of our way (especially white women and those guys from Jersey Shore) to become brown. But that’s another essay for another day I suppose.

And why are white youth so disrespectful to their parents? According to the available evidence whites between 12 and 17 are nearly twice as likely as their black counterparts to have fought with their parents at least 10 times in the past year. Why no lectures from the cultural warriors of the right towards smart-mouthed white teens, whose disrespect for their parents clearly indicates a pathologically delinquent tendency? And please, someone develop this lecture quickly as we have a 12-year old who I fear may be tempted to try out some of that white-culture-backsassing-shit on us any day now!

And why no sexual responsibility lectures for the white and affluent college students who apparently are far more likely to hookup with multiple sexual partners than college students of color? Putting aside the over-reaction to so-called hookup culture in general (which seems to be substantially overblown as is the case with most conservative moral panics), and the way in which that reaction seeks to demonize and then circumscribe the sexual freedom of women, to the extent there is any overly-irresponsible sexual behavior on campus, it is the white and wealthy who drive the trend.

Looking again at drug use, but now for the overall white versus black populations — in other words, not just youth — although current drug usage rates are roughly the same across racial lines, the sheer numbers of white drug users should sound alarm bells, especially among those who claim that a few thousand black murderers per year presents a cultural crisis in the black community. So, for instance, the data indicates that as of 2011 there were approximately 83 million white people, 18 or over who had used illicit drugs, as opposed to only 13 million such blacks; 23 million whites who had used drugs this year, as opposed to only 4 million blacks; and 13.4 million current white drug users, compared to about 2.6 million blacks.

For cocaine, whites are over 75 percent more likely than blacks to have tried the drug, while for hallucinogenic drugs, whites are nearly two-and-a-half times more likely than blacks to have tried them. For prescription psychotherapeutics like pain relievers, sedatives, tranquilizers or stimulants, nearly 1 in 4 whites have misused them by taking such drugs without a prescription, compared to fewer than 14 percent of blacks.

So why no cultural critique of white drug use, or hysterical cries that white drug users indicate something about white people that needs to be collectively addressed? After all, drug users in the white community are far more prevalent as a percentage of our population than black violent criminals are of theirs.

Although violent crime rates are higher in black communities than white ones — owing to various socioeconomic conditions more prevalent there, such as crowded housing, population density and poverty concentration — there are certain indicators that white folks, especially youth, might be increasingly predisposed to violence too. So, contrary to popular belief, white high school students are more likely than black students to carry weapons, either generally or at school, with young white men being more likely than members of any other group to do so. In the past month, nearly 3 in 10 white males in high school carried a weapon, compared to only about 2 in 10 comparable black males. When can we expect to hear O’Reilly or Limbaugh or Hannity decry this increasing tendency to carry weapons among young white men, the way they lecture black men for doing so in places like Chicago? Or are these white men just carrying weapons to protect themselves from the random deer that are known to invade the halls of America’s secondary schools?

Especially considering the disproportionate rate at which white males are involved in mass shootings or other killings, like spree killings, this tendency to carry weapons, either in general or on campus should give pause to all persons concerned about the health of white culture and the fate of the nation.

Though I have no doubt there are redeeming aspects to white culture, with data such as this, and in so many categories of apparent and overwhelming dysfunction, can any rational person deny the crisis in white America? How much longer will we ignore the pathological behaviors of the nation’s dominant racial group? How long will we allow whites to blame their problems on affirmative action, Mexican immigrants, high taxes, Obamacare, Islam, oh, and black people, when it is so blindingly obvious that we are our own worst enemies?

Enough is enough. Time for some tough love. Time for white leaders and white-led organizations to finally speak out about the ruinous behavior of white children and their Oxy-addled, thrice-divorced, morally reprobate parents.

And if they aren’t up to the job — and of course, they aren’t — then I suppose a decent fallback option would be to just ignore everything they say about the shortcomings of others. After all, projection isn’t just a room at the movie theatre, or a talent they teach actors, if you know what I mean.

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Note:

(1) To be clear, data on whites in this essay is specific to non-Hispanic whites. Some government data tables use a broad category of whites, which includes the vast majority of Hispanics, and indeed, the tables referenced in this essay also have categories for whites, generally, including those who are ethnically Hispanic. But these tables also include specific data for only those whites who are not Hispanic (what most white people consider “real whites”), and as such I use that data here so as not to confuse whites with others who are socially constructed as persons of color in the U.S.

WHITE LIKE ME – Race, Racism and White Privilege in America (The Movie) – Now Available for Streaming!!!

You can now stream my film, White Like Me (from the Media Education Foundation) for up to 24 hours, until August 31st. After that, it will be unavailable online, and only purchasable either at a much higher institutional rate (for educators) or at an individual rate from me on the road (or from MEF).

Here’s the trailer. At the end of the trailer, there is a link that takes you to the full film, which you can then stream for $4.99 using a credit card or PayPal. Or you can go there now and watch the film at this link.

Tim Wise on Al-Jazeera’s The Stream, 7/23/13: Implicit Racial Bias and Racism in America

My appearance on Al-Jazeera’s The Stream, to discuss implicit racial bias and the modern face of racism. With Maya Wiley and David Williams.

To the Character Assassins of Trayvon Martin (and his real one): Martin Bashir Lays You Out…

Martin Bashir lays the blam on those who have chosen to assassinate the character of Trayvon Martin and make excuses for George Zimmerman…

FLASHBACK ESSAY: Color-Conscious, White Blind (15 Years Later: Still Responding to the Same Nonsense)

This essay was original published in LIP Magazine, in October, 1998, as “Color-Conscious, White-Blind: Race, Crime and Pathology in America.” I am reposting it because it struck me that with all the conservative noise about how black folks need to worry less about racism and more about “black on black crime,” the analysis herein was more relevant than ever. It’s amazing how, the more things change, the more right wing thinking remains the same. The pathologization of black people and black communities has been a staple of conservative thought for decades, and once again we see this tendency in full swing. Meanwhile, white misdeeds are never racialized or thought of in group terms at all. So even though the examples in this piece are now dated, the fact that we are still having to have the same arguments fifteen years later indicates that the analysis is still important and timely.

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In a 1984 interview, ex-Klansman, David Duke explained: “You know, you really can’t talk about the crime problem unless you talk about the race problem…Blacks are much closer to the jungle than European people.” Six years later, as Duke ran for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana, a supporter told the press: “Once you get rid of the niggers, you get rid of the crime.” Though one might dismiss such invective as the ranting of extremists, it would be only four years later that Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve would hit bookstores, becoming an instant best seller. No “extremists” these, Murray and Herrnstein were viewed as legitimate social scientists even though their 552-page tome was little more than a highbrow “up yours” to people of color; a recapitulation of the argument that has always informed racist movements: namely, that there’s something wrong with those people–they’re criminogenic, less intelligent; basically a genetic mess.

For those uncomfortable with Murray and Herrnstein’s resurrection of so-called racial science, owing as it does to such glorious traditions as social Darwinism, eugenics and the Third Reich, never fear: 1995 would bring yet another volume intended to keep the darkies in their place, this time dressed up in the language of cultural defect. And so we had Dinesh D’Souza’s The End of Racism, which explains that the real problem with the swarthier types is that their families, values, and behaviors are dysfunctional and culturally inferior. Their DNA is fine, but unfortunately they’ve chosen to act irresponsibly, aided by welfare programs that have rewarded their pathology and prevented them from “acting white,” which, according to D’Souza, is the only sure route to success.

So in just a few short years, comments about the pathology of people of color have gone from the margins of political discourse to the center. Discussions of crime have become increasingly racialized and our dialogue on race increasingly criminalized, such that deviance is now seen by many as synonymous with melanin, or Black culture. Meanwhile whites, no matter how criminal or “deviant” our behaviors may be, are allowed the privilege of individualization. We’re allowed to be “just bad persons,” unlike non-whites who come to be seen collectively as bad people.

Mainstream media contributes to this process in myriad ways: from news clips showing Blacks being taken to jail, to the headline in my local paper concerning a study on injurious behavior among teens, which read: “White teens more likely hurt selves; minorities more a threat to others.” Oh really? Tell that to the victims of the white kids who shot up their schools in Pearl, Mississippi, or Paducah, Kentucky, or Springfield, Oregon. I’m sure they’ll be glad to know that Kip Kinkel was only a threat to himself. Or what about Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, or Jeffrey Dahmer? Perhaps whites only become a danger to others once they’re adults. Or rather, their race is seen as irrelevant to their actions, even while lawbreakers of color are made to represent their larger communities.

Consider that after the Oregon shooting, experts tried to figure out what went wrong with Kinkel, noting similarities between his killing spree and those of his predecessors–well, all similarities except one. Kinkel, like the others was a boy, it was noted. Kinkel, like the others used a gun. Kinkel, like the others talked about violence. While we can rest assured these kids would have been “raced” had they come from Black “ghetto matriarchs” in the ‘hood, it was as if no one could see the most obvious common characteristic among them: their white skin. It gives new meaning to the term colorblind.

Of course this kind of vision defect is typical. After all, we hear lots about “Black crime,” but nothing about “white crime” as such, only white collar crime (though usually the collar isn’t the only thing lacking color). We hear of “Black-on-Black” violence, but nothing of “white-on-white violence,” even in Bosnia where the practice is routine. In fact, I recently did an Internet search, finding only 217 entries for “white crime” (most dealing with the pale collar variety), but 973 entries under “Black crime.” Interesting, considering that the majority of crimes are committed by the majority of the population, which is white. Similarly, “Black-on-Black crime” netted 559 entries, compared to only seventeen for “white-on-white crime,” even though the latter is more numerous.

Nowhere is the de-racializing of white violence more blatant than in discussions of mass civil disturbances, or what less sanguine commentators might call riots. Consider a November 1996 USA Today article, concerning a study at Northeastern University, which found that race had played a role in only half of all riots since 1994. In other words, when people of color rebelled against police brutality in St. Petersburg, race (but apparently not racism) was implicated, but when white rock concert-goers or sports fans rioted in stadiums, race was irrelevant. The white rioters had a race, but it didn’t matter. Thus, when riots erupted in the past few years at Colorado University, Iowa State University, Penn State, the Universities of Wisconsin at Whitewater and Oshkosh, Southern Illinois University, the University of Delaware, Michigan State, Washington State, the University of Akron and the University of New Hampshire — all of them white events, and over nothing so serious as police brutality, but rather crackdowns on underage drinking or the results of a ball game — no one asked what it was about whites that makes us smash windows for the sake of $4 pitchers of Bud Light.

It’s amazing how many crazy whites there are, none of whom feel the wrath of the racial pathology police as a result of their depravity. Killing parents is among our specialties. So in 1994, a white guy in New York killed his mom for serving the wrong pizza; last year, a white kid in Alabama killed his parents with an axe and sledgehammer; and in 1996, Rod Ferrell, leader of a “vampire cult” in Murray, Kentucky, bludgeoned another member’s parents to death and along with the victims’ daughter, drank their blood so as to “cross over to the gates of hell.” Which brings me to rule number one for identifying the race of criminals. If the crime involved vampirism, Satan worship, or cannibalism, you can bet your ass the perp was white. Never fails. But you’ll never hear anyone ask what it is about white parents that makes their children want to cut off their heads and boil them in soup pots.

Ditto for infanticide. When Susan Smith drowned her boys in South Carolina, she had hundreds of people looking for a mythical Black male carjacker, because that’s what danger looks like in the white imagination. We should have known better, especially when you consider how many white folks off their kids: like Brian Peterson and Amy Grossberg, in Delaware, who dumped their newborn in the garbage; or the New Jersey girl at her prom who did the same in the school bathroom; or Brian Stewart, from St. Louis who injected his son with the AIDS virus to avoid paying child support; or the Pittsburgh father who bludgeoned his 5-year old twins to death when they couldn’t find their Power Ranger masks, and were late for day care; or the white babysitter outside Chicago who bound two kids with duct tape, before shooting them and turning the gun on himself. None of these folks’ race was offered as a possible factor in their crimes. No one is writing books about the genetic or white cultural causes of such behavior. In 1995, when a poor Latina killed her daughter in New York by smashing her head against a wall, every major news source in America covered the tragedy, and focused on her “underclass” status. But when a white Arizona man the same month decapitated his son because he was convinced the child was possessed by the devil, coverage was sparse, and mention of race or cultural background was nowhere to be found.

Or consider thrill killing, spree killing, and animal mutilation: three other white favorites that occur without racial identification of the persons involved. In October 1997, a white male teen obsessed with Jeffrey Dahmer killed a 13-year old to “see what it feels like.” In New Jersey, a 15-year old white male killed an 11-year old selling candy door-to-door, but only after sexually assaulting him. Late last year, a white couple in California was arrested for “hunting women,” and torturing and mutilating them in the back of their van. At Indiana University, a white male burned four cats alive in a lab, while in Martin, Tennessee, two white teens set a duck on fire at the city’s recreational complex, and in Missouri, two white teens killed 23 cats for fun, prompting their white neighbors to say, not that there’s something wrong with white kids today, but rather, “boys will be boys.”

It makes one wonder, why aren’t the authorities doing something to stem the tide of white mayhem? Why no heightened surveillance and police presence in their neighborhoods? Why no crackdowns on immigration from Europe–particularly from the former Yugoslavia and Ireland: two places known to produce a particularly dangerous brand of white person? Why no demands for white politicians to disavow white deviance, the way Jesse Jackson, and any other Black figure in America is expected to speak out against Black crime and violence? And why no call for an immediate scientific inquiry to determine if in fact the crimes committed disproportionately by white folks might be genetically predetermined?

And by what standards are people of color the ones with messed-up values? According to a 1994 study of college students, whites are far more likely to drink, they average three times as many drinks weekly as Blacks, are 50 perecent more likely to drink to the point of hangover, and 70 percent more likely to drink until they vomit. Yet based on news coverage of college drinking, one would think boozing it up to be an equal opportunity pastime. In September of ’97, a Time story claimed, “Colleges are among the nation’s most alcohol-drenched institutions. America’s twelve million undergraduates drink four billion cans of beer a year, and spend $446 on alcoholic beverages–more than they spend on soft drinks and textbooks combined.” Yet there was no mention of the racially uneven drinking habits on the campuses. Likewise for a recent Mother Jones article about drinking among women: every woman in every photo getting wasted was white, and needless to say there aren’t many “underclass” women of color going to martini and cigar bars (featured in the piece). Yet the whiteness of these budding alcoholics is glossed over by the writer and probably most readers as well.

Or how about drunk driving? A pathological behavior that claims about 17,000 lives a year, and in which whites are roughly twice as likely to engage as Blacks. According to government figures, white men drove drunk 85 million times in 1993, compared to 5.8 million times for Black men. And yet, officials downplay the racial inequity of drunk driving. James Fell, chief of Research and Evaluation at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says mentioning such stats is “counterproductive,” while Linda Algood, president of the Broward County, Florida chapter of MADD, has said: “A drunk driver is a drunk driver.” Funny how irrelevant race becomes when its visibility might reflect badly on the dominant majority.

The same is true for drug use. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that 74 percent of drug users are white, while fewer than fourteen percent are Black. There are 9.7 million whites using illegal drugs in the U.S., compared with 1.8 million Blacks. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, whites ages 12-21 are a third more likely than Blacks to have used illegal drugs; twice as likely to smoke pot regularly; and 160 percent more likely to have tried cocaine. But despite the white face of drug use, most police “profiles” of drug users and pushers read like a description of urban youth of color. Of course, in The End of Racism, D’Souza claims that white drug abuse isn’t really a problem because they “can take advantage of expensive treatment programs,” whereas Black “crack addicts” can’t. In other words, whites are to be excused for their behavior, since the ability to pay your way out of trouble makes such pathology, well, less pathological.

As for the value systems of young Blacks, surveys in 1994 found that Black high school seniors are 32 percent more likely than whites to say professional success and accomplishment are “extremely important;” equally likely to say having a good marriage and happy family life are extremely important; 26 percent more likely to say “making a contribution to society” is extremely important; and 75 percent more likely than white seniors to say “being a leader in their community” is extremely important. And since those who critique “Black values” typically consider religion a “civilizing” institution, it should be noted that Black seniors are more likely than whites to attend religious services weekly, and almost twice as likely to say “religion plays a very important role” in their lives. Overall, Blacks spend twice as many hours weekly in religious activity as whites.

If anything, “mainstream” American values seem particularly damaging to newcomers of color, whose behaviors were less pathological before coming here. According to recent studies, as Latino immigrants become more “Americanized” they dramatically increase their use of drugs and alcohol, as well as participation in promiscuous sexual activity. Perhaps Mexico should tighten their border-crossing policies to keep drunk and stoned white American sexual predators from coming to Tijuana, Cancun, and Cozumel, thereby contributing to the erosion of Mexican family values.

But the racialization of pathology is more than just a source of amusement; it is also a source of danger. By encouraging folks to believe that the threats to their property or themselves are Black and brown, this process encourages discrimination against non-whites, skews our criminal justice priorities, and diverts our attention from larger threats to our well-being. The racialization of danger encourages us to view all criminality through an anti-black lens. Consider the way we talked about the trial of the white officers who beat Rodney King. What is it called in popular discourse? The first Rodney King Trial. But Rodney King wasn’t on trial. White cops named Briseno, Koon, Wind and Powell were, but how many Americans even remember their names–the names of the criminals? So conditioned are we to criminalize Blacks, that even the name we give to this trial reflects the process.

So conditioned is the media to presenting this kind of image, that during the L. A. riots, when a Milwaukee news team wanted to show footage they’d received of a wealthy white female looter, loading designer dresses into her Mercedes, and justifying her actions by saying “everybody else is doing it,” their white producer refused to air the clip. Such imagery didn’t fit his conception of what the riots were about — crazy Black and brown people — so the public understanding of race and danger remained unsullied.

By racializing danger, we lend legitimacy to what D’Souza calls “rational discrimination.” Thus, if certain types of people seem more dangerous, then it’s O.K. to refuse to pick up anyone of their race in your cab, or refuse to hire them, or keep them out of your neighborhood or for the cops to rough them up a bit. It’s rational. Far from mere rhetorical excess this logic has been utilized by a California judge to justify murder. In the 1991 trial of Soon Ja Du, charged with shooting and killing Black teen, Latasha Harlans, the judge handed down only a nominal fine, explaining that the event should be viewed in the context of Du’s family’s “history of being victimized and terrorized by gang members.” Not victimized and terrorized by Harlans, mind you, but by people who looked like Harlans. One can only wonder how this kind of argument would hold up if used by a Black man to justify his killing a white cop because of his prior experiences with police brutality.

Ironically, the racialization of danger has skewed our criminal justice resources while doing nothing to make us safe. In 1964, sixty-five percent of inmates were white, while thirty-five percent were people of color. By 1991, the figures had flipped. Did whites decide to stop committing crime in the intervening years, while people of color went nuts? Or was something else at work? According to FBI data, the share of crimes committed by blacks has remained steady for over twenty years, while the number of Blacks in prison has tripled and their rates of incarceration have skyrocketed. Much of this increase is due to the “war on drugs.” Despite the fact that Blacks are fewer than fourteen percent of drug users, they are thirty-five percent of possession arrests, fifty-five percent of possession convictions, and seventy-four percent of those sent to prison for possession. How is the “drug crisis” to be solved by focusing attention on those least responsible for driving the demand side of the problem to begin with?

Similarly, by encouraging whites to fear Blacks, we paint a highly unrealistic picture of danger that leaves people less safe. Less than three percent of blacks will commit a violent crime in a given year, and only a small percentage of these will choose white victims. Only seventeen percent of the attackers of whites are Black, while three-quarters of them are white. Yet, if we’re encouraged to avoid people of color, we let our guards down to the real sources of danger that confront us: spouses, family members or neighbors of our same race.

Even worse, the racialization of deviance takes our eyes off some of the biggest dangers. White-collar crime costs the U.S. nearly $200 billion annually according to the Justice Department: eleven times the money and property stolen in all thefts combined, let alone “Black theft.” While around 15,000 people are murdered each year, 56,000 die from occupational diseases, approximately 10,000 workers are killed on the job, and 1.8 million suffer serious, disabling injuries, in large part due to safety violations by their employers. Nonetheless, only two-dozen companies have been prosecuted and only two defendants have done time for safety and health violations since the inception of OSHA. Last year, a Michigan employer violated OSHA rules, killed two employees, and received a mandatory moment of silence as punishment. Think about that the next time some politician talks about the need to get tough on lawlessness.

So from now on, when you hear someone talking about what a dangerous world we live in, fight the impulse to picture Colin Ferguson on the Long Island Expressway, or some random gang-banger with a Tec-9. Instead picture Ford Motor Company, which gave us the “Pintorch;” picture the nuclear power industry, or your garden variety fossil fuel-burning power plant giving you or someone you know cancer as you read this; or R.J Reynolds; or the folks who gave us the Dalkon Shield. Then try and picture the heads of these companies. Not a black one in the bunch.

And the next time you pay to insure your valuables against theft from criminals, most of whom you’ve been encouraged to believe have dark skin, ask yourself where’s your insurance against the theft you suffer as a taxpayer every time some defense contractor double-bills the government for doing shitty work on weapons the Pentagon says we don’t need anyway; or when white S&L bandits like Neil Bush take the nation for a $450 billion ride.

And the next time you hear about some flesh-eating, Satan-worshiping teenager who just pickled his grandma, you’ll know his race before you even see his face on the nightly news, and you’ll know that if he’d just spent a little more time in church with the Black folks, none of this might ever have had to happen.

Crime, Race and the Politics of White Deflection

Amid conservative exhortations that black leaders are “too focused on racism,” and insufficiently concerned about “black-on-black crime” — which claims are commonly made whenever racism is in the news, but have been especially ubiquitous in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict — a few points are, it seems, in order.

First, the charge is simply false. Civil rights organizations and black community leaders do in fact discuss crime in urban communities often. That most white folks — and especially those on the right — don’t know this, is simply because they don’t know many if any black people (at least not those who live in black communities), haven’t spent time themselves in those communities, and don’t read or listen to black media, where not only are such issues covered, but the efforts made by people in the community to address those problems are also highlighted; unlike in the “mainstream” (read: white) press, where they are usually ignored.

Occasionally these self-help efforts make their way into major news sources, but rarely do right-wing talk show hosts then mention the efforts of black and brown communities to address violence. They get more political mileage out of simply blasting “black pathology,” without context or countervailing evidence.

Oh, and needless to say they don’t praise groups like the Nation of Islam, which have a long track record of effective anti-crime initiatives in urban communities (and a history of getting black men with records moving in a more productive direction), or folks like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose tenure at Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago, involved multiple initiatives aimed at addressing violence and crime on the South Side. In other words, they ignore such self-help initiatives because they don’t emanate from blame-the-victim, “culture of poverty” theorists, but rather, often militant and radical black voices who speak out against crime and violence in the black community, but also against racism and systemic injustice (because black folks, unlike white conservatives apparently, are capable of addressing both at the same time).

Second, the mere fact that the term “black-on-black crime” is used (while “white-on-white crime” is never used the same way), suggests that the phrase is more about reinforcing stereotypes of black people as inherently dangerous, than actually addressing the phenomenon of intra-group violence. The term is not benign or merely descriptive, for if it were intended as such, we would use “white-on-white” crime to describe the crime that mostly affects white people, but we don’t. And not because it’s a minor occurrence. According to the most recent comprehensive data from the Justice Department (in that it tallies crime estimates by race, for offenders and victims, and not merely for crimes reported to police, but also those that are not reported):

In 2008:

There were 2,788,600 white victims of violent crime involving a single offender.

In 67.4 percent of these cases, the offender was known to be white.

So, in 2008 there were at least 1.9 million white-on-white single offender violent crimes.

This, compared to roughly 369,000 black-on-black single offender violent crimes.

So, in 2008 there were more than five times as many white-on-white violent crimes involving a single offender as there were black-on-black violent crimes involving a single offender.

Oh, and, importantly: the rates of white-on-black and black-on-white violent offending here were virtually identical, contrary to common perception. 15.4 percent of white victims were victimized by blacks, while 15.9 percent of black victims were victimized by whites.

Additionally in 2008, there were 726,530 white victims of violent crime involving multiple offenders. Although large numbers of these crimes involve offenders with indeterminate racial identities, or a mix of such identities, in 42.4 percent of such incidents the offenders were both (or all) known to be white. Meaning there were at least 308,000 white-on-white multiple offender violent crimes.

This, compared to about 117,500 black-on-black multiple offender violent crimes.

So, in all, there are roughly 2.2 million white-on-white violent crimes annually, compared to fewer than 500,000 black-on-black violent crimes, meaning that there are about four times as many of the former as the latter.

Although some of the Justice Department data in these tables involve sample sizes too small to make clear estimates about the numbers or crime rates for particular offenses (whether inter- or intra-racial) the overall trends remain clear: there are far more white-on-white crimes than black-on-black ones. And this would remain true, even if we were to exclude from these estimates the offenders and victims who are Latino. Because about 94 percent of Latinos are lumped into the white category racially in crime data (since Hispanic origin is not considered racial, but rather ethnic), obviously some of the white offenders (and victims) in this data will actually be Latino. But even were we to exclude those persons from the white totals, there can be no doubt that white-on-white crime would still remain far more plentiful than black-on-black crime. And yet, the term is never used.

Indeed “white” and “crime” are rarely heard together. Indeed, even looking at corporate misdeeds, or the misdeeds of folks on Wall Street, the term we normally hear used to describe the offenders in these cases is what? White collar crime. But the collar is not the only thing usually lacking color.

And finally, to suggest that civil rights groups and leaders should be criticized for focusing mostly on issues of racism and discrimination — which are what civil rights issues are about, by definition — is self-evidently preposterous. It would be like criticizing Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) for not adequately speaking to the problem of vehicular deaths caused by inadequate seatbelt usage: no doubt a numerically more frequent phenomena. And since more blacks were killed by other blacks than were killed by whites even during the era of Jim Crow segregation (since that’s who black folks tended to live around), one has to wonder, would conservatives argue that even in the era of overt racial oppression in this country, blacks should have eschewed civil rights work and focused instead on their own “internal pathologies?”

So long as conservatives continue to demand that black leaders prioritize the problem of “black-on-black crime,” while ignoring the obvious epidemic of white-on-white violence and mayhem, they will expose themselves as rank hypocrites, crappy social scientists, pure liars, or simple racists. Take your pick: in any or all cases the response from the rest of us should be to ignore them as the opportunistic hacks they are.

Tim Wise on Lyrical Rhapsody w/Ginnie Love and Samaria Graham: Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman and Race in America – 7/17/13

Here is my conversation with Ginnie Love and Samaria Graham last week, on the Zimmerman verdict, the killing of Trayvon Martin and race in America

Racism, the Zimmerman Verdict and Parenting While Black in America

The takeaway for white folks on the Zimmerman verdict and race in America…from the Media Education Foundation blog (the folks who produced my upcoming film, White Like Me)

Amazing Video on NYPD Racial Profiling, Brutality and the Injustice of Stop and Frisk

An incredible video, demonstrating in clear terms how a) the “stop-and-frisk” policies of the NYPD are simply thinly veiled, unjustifiable racial profiling, b) these policies are encouraging rampant, thuggish tactics by the NYPD, and thus, c) the NYPD is little less than a criminal gang, operating under the cover of law. Thankfully, some within their ranks are speaking out, as in this video. But the fact that they have to keep their faces hidden tells you how dangerous it is to go against the cop mafia.