The Outstater
Race and Crime: Stats Matter
(He) “struggled with mental health issues” and appeared to have “suffered a crisis.” — the mayor of Charlotte describing the man who stabbed to death 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska riding the train to her work.
A FRIEND, a young man with a wife and two small children, was shot a few days ago — in the morning, driving to work. That is the fifth person in my middle-class otherwise mundane circle, all simply going about their lives, who has died or suffered traumatic injury in a criminal assault.
One would be a fool not to take notice. That is a higher number than we lost in our combat zone in Vietnam.
Nor can it be ignored that all of those responsible were shielded to a degree by the official and media reports. By that I mean their descriptions were general and the motives vague. In each case, an effort was made to avoid casting aspersion on their nature and background. This was to block stereotyping.
That cat, however, is out of the bag. Consider the most recent per capita offending rate in black-white crime. Black individuals commit violent acts against white individuals 30 to 31 times more often than the reverse.
A rational person will apply that data in two ways. First, he will interact only reluctantly with unknown persons on the weighted side of the ratio — moving away from them, even, if he can afford it. Second, he will expect friends on that other side to acknowledge his statistical risk and join him in seeking a practical, immediate solution rather than engage in an abstract, philosophical discussion of “racism.”
For the moral justification of government — and this goes back to Cicero and pertains to all races and classes — is the protection of its citizens. A government indifferent to whether you can safely drive to work, answer your front door bell, sleep in your bed, is not a government worthy of respect.
And social justice be damned. — tcl
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