TLDR:I long windedly agree with Firecat almost completely.
I think immigrants in general have found success in many countries and flourished. In most cases, surpassing the lower income classes of those respective countries. That includes immigrants from African countries as well. Perhaps it has to do with the whole premise behind immigration....searching for better opportunities. Perhaps that is what is lacking among the local population....
I see you are making an effort to distinguish between culture and race, but at the same time your arguments conflate the two.
We also can't ignore white collar crime, which i'm sure are overwhelmingly committed by whites (in the United States).
Immigrants often represent the most internally motivated group of any people. The Vietnamese boat people took huge risks and fought long odds to come here and capitalist system favors people with those characteristics. They represent a self selected group, who have a common ethnic and geographical origin.
These people leave others behind.
The people of the 9th ward were those types of people. Whites and Black middle class moved to the suburbs in what was called white flight, leaving behind those who couldn't, or wouldn't. Crime rose for the reasons you mentioned.
The people who could leave were people with assets. The homeowners left, the shop owners moved their shops, and the tax base disappears. Schools go to hell, policing goes to hell, streetlights that go out aren't replaced because there's no money to pay for services. The next group of people fled the higher crime rate, and so on. You pump out the successful, and concentrate the least successful.
"I see you are making an effort to distinguish between culture and race, but at the same time your arguments conflate the two. "
This is the point I am getting to. The statistics I quoted were ABSOLUTELY TRUE. But they tell you absolutely nothing practical. They measure something easy to measure, which is a simple head count of violent criminals.
But the race of the offenders have NOTHING to do with the "criminality" of black people. Because black people are just like white people, in every way that is important.
Black men work to get the raise, the woman, and the wristwatch
I want. They work within the system to get what they want, and are getting more successful as entrenched racism becomes less acceptable. They will have to work harder, because racism will never totally go away, but the vast majority will find success, and drive their children to be successful.
Black people are not inherently more criminal than whites. But black people have a core group of unsuccessful inner city residents that live in a setting that siphons away its role models and success stories.
Whats left behind? A culture of failure, populated by all races, but disproportionally represented by oppressed, some mentally ill, some unmotivated. Because few people that had a choice, the money,or the gifts stayed.
What became acceptable behavior changed. It's understood that young people in these circumstances will commit more petty crime, and being arrested for those crimes doesn't carry the stigma it does amongst the middle class. Succeeding in school is seen as acting "white". Inner city women don't take birth control at the same rate as middle class women, which leads to high out of wedlock births, and a staggering abortion rate. There are poor whites and black that will have nothing to do with these people, and that's why Chalmet didn't have the problems that 9th ward had.
But there were plenty of black Chalmets.
This is why I don't consider myself racist. I'm not afraid of the black guy that runs the local branch of my bank. I'm not afraid of my black co-workers. I wasn't afraid of the two black girls that took pity on my nerd ass and dated me in college after I left the service, because those people
share my goals and beliefs, and are like me in most ways except with a greater chance of lactose intolerance and Sickle Cell Anemia.
