As usual, it is worth looking up the source of a KindaSkolarly post before taking it seriously.
Table 14 of the report cited, the basis for the graph shown about "interracial crime" tells a rather different story. It gives the percentages of crimes against various groups broken down by the race of the perpetrator.
Of violent crimes on white victims, 15% are by black offenders. It may be indicative of something that this is higher than the percentage of black people in the population, but it is not much out of line with those percentages. Most important to note is that the table KS has copied in looks at absolute numbers, rather than overall breakdown. Since there are many more white people, there are many more white victims, and so it looks like this "interracial violence" is a big category. In reality it is practically a simple statistical reflection of population (and money?).
Of violent crimes on black victims, only 10% are by white offenders. That is much smaller than the white percentage of the population, but it likely has something to do with the likelihood of making money by pointing a gun at a black person, as opposed to pointing a gun at a white person. The comparison is unlikely to reflect racial animus, even though avoidance and fear are significant factors in shaping it. After 250 years of white Americans setting up systems that would keep black people vulnerable and poor, much less likely to have access to good jobs and wealth-building real estate investments, is anybody really surprised that white people are more likely to be targets of "interracial" crime? Which raises the question of why someone wants to underline that comparison as if "interracial" violence is a process we all want to be watching.
And so we have to ask ourselves what comparison is implied by the cartoon focus on the media. First, I am not familiar with a lot of emphasis on "white on black" violent crime. There are stories about violent crime, but most of them don't worry about the race involved, for good reason. What the media focus on are stories that reveal something about power structures and the way people use them. Lynching a black man for jogging in white neigbhorhoods is a pretty revealing incident. Being able to get away with it unless outsiders step in is even more revealing. Normally when someone is shot, the people who shoot them are held responsible, and pursuing the person before pushing a confrontation is an aggravating factor not an exculpatory factor. But if it's Trayvon Martin or Ahmaud Abery, the white presumptions of guilt kick in, and power structures are revealed to be something other than objective. Which is what all the fuss is about.
Since today's news features a number of stories of journalists being targeted by the police, we are faced with questions about whether the police tend to see things the way KS does. Why would the police tend to think the media are intentionally distorting matters? Why would the same police (in many cases it is literally the same individuals targeting journalists and casually killing black people) feel that they are the victims of information while also feeling that they don't need to concern themselves with the death of someone they are subduing?
Not all the answers are about racism in the police force. Some of them are about the lack of opportunities and the desperation that breed crime in communities of color. About racism in the population, in other words. Some of them are about chaotic family lives, created by traumatized culture and by lack of opportunities. Some of them are about the police being put on the front lines where white people hope they can continue not to concern themselves about parts of the population who are deliberately excluded.
The New York Times had an interesting article today about the way the Twin Cities metro area set out decades ago to desegregate the whole area, providing affordable housing in the suburbs for example.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opin ... ation.html
But school desegregation and low-income housing in the suburbs fell by the wayside under the pressure of continued political resistance, and the area has segregated itself. Now there is the kind of mutual mistrust that led to the killings of George Floyd and Philando Castile. Police who feel more like occupiers than members of the community.
And many police officers don't want anyone watching what they do about it. My concern is not so much what the police do, though in many cases it is evil. My concern is why we are satisfied to let our country go down this road of segregation.
