At RealClearPolicy economist Robert Cherry explains the model he has developed to explain the spike in violent crime which began in 2014:
I developed a model to explain the variation in state-level violent crime rates. It would have been ideal to use urban data, but racial measures are difficult to obtain on an annual basis because of small samples. Instead, I used state-level data for 2010 through 2016. Even at the state level, small sample size precluded the Department of Labor from publishing estimates of the black male population in a number of states. State-level explanatory variables included the black share of all men not in prison, poverty rate, male employment rate, high school graduation rate, and the share of disconnected men, 16 to 24 years old: those who were neither at work nor in school. Results varied, depending upon which variables were included. Once the disconnected youth variable is added, it is strongly statistically significant but now neither the poverty nor high school completion variables are significant. In particular, for every 10 percent increase in the disconnected rate, this comprehensive model predicts a 6.59 percent increase in the state’s violent crime rate. The black share of men is strongly statistically significant indicating that even after taking into account employment, education, and poverty, states with a greater black share have higher violent crime rates.
I suspect that many will find that model disquieting, challenging as it does so many comforting slogans. It basically comes down to we need more jobs that can be filled by young, black men.
I’ll stick my neck out. First, there are lots of openings, what jobs are they actually willing to do?
(HipHop Moguls are all filled up).
There’s a kernel of truth in your comment. Black kids frequently have a terrible lack of exposure to the possibilities. Entertainer, professional athlete, police officer, and cat. That’s about it. A cat is (or at least used to be) a guy who just hung out and made a living by shall we say uncertain means.
Article: “The black share of men is strongly statistically significant indicating that even after taking into account employment, education, and poverty, states with a greater black share have higher violent crime rates.”
Dave: “It basically comes down to we need more jobs that can be filled by young, black men.”
I’m confused.
From the quoted portion of the article:
Jobs make people connected.
But I also don’t think that people like to be reminded that there’s a strong racial component.
Here’s a question for you. I think that joblessness is easier and more acceptable to address than trying to address the number of black men. Are you saying that the problem of violent crime is intractable or are you saying that in order to address the problem of violent crime the number of black men must be reduced?
… are you saying than in order to address the problem of violent crime the number of black men must be reduced?
The left is doing their part. There is not a black baby they do not want aborted.
I would just add that in my humble experience, that there is such a thing as a “legacy of slavery”. It leaves young black men too proud to do humble but honest work. How that manifests in the home is for someone who’s been there to explain.
For me, as a white, poor child, it was hammered home that this or that was for our “betters”. Or a phrase often used, “Big People”.
This indoctrination didn’t leave me too proud to do humble work, quite the opposite, it led me to only apply for the work “my type” would do. I’m sure this came down through the generations from the days of European serfdom as a warning to children not to get too big for their britches else they’d be killed.
Like to hear from an American Black on the subject.
When I was in college I worked with black men who were in their 50s and 60s. I was the only white kid on an otherwise black crew. They were some of the most decent, hard-working people I’ve ever known. They took me into their homes; I went to church with them; I listened to old blues records with them.
Black kids today are suffering but it’s not from the vestiges of slavery or Jim Crow. They’re suffering from a couple of generations of bad public policy.
From the article: “this comprehensive model predicts”
Big old red flag there. For the record, I am extremely skeptical about the utility of models and theories in guiding public policy, or anything else for that matter. This skepticism comes from more than a half a century of experience with them. My observation: “The love of theory is the root of all folly”.
—
“Are you saying that the problem of violent crime is intractable or are you saying than in order to address the problem of violent crime the number of black men must be reduced?”
I ain’t sayin nuthin. If I had something to say about it I would have said it.
“When I was in college I worked with black men who were in their 50s and 60s. I was the only white kid on an otherwise black crew. They were some of the most decent, hard-working people I’ve ever known. They took me into their homes; I went to church with them; I listened to old blues records with them.”
Not my experience, exactly. I went to college in 1971, I remember one older black man who fit that description. But the younger ones, teens to twenties, walked around with an attitude, and backed it up. They were armed, would not permit eye contact, let alone conversation from a white, without immediate violence. They hung out at nite on vacant lots or selected parking lots, and feeling strength from numbers, would threaten any whites who happened by. Or, propositioned, in the most vulgar words you can imagine, if they were female. A surprising number of these took them up, and moved into their camp. Now, 45 years later, most young “African Americans” are mixed race, raised by their mothers, and much more civil, and more likely to be employed.
“The left is doing their part. There is not a black baby they do not want aborted.”
Yup, I personally drag at least a dozen black women every week in to have abortions.
Steve
steve, there’s a kernel of truth in TastyBits’s jibe. The women who seek abortions are disproportionately black which in turn means that the Democrats’ support for abortion is willy-nilly an affirmation of terminating black pregnancies.
Not buying it. There is no comparison between making a procedure legal and wanting someone to have it. Since most abortions are still by whites, are we going to say Dems want to eradicate whites and blacks? It is an affirmation that when to is available, poor women are the ones who have abortions.
https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2017/abortion-rates-income
You can actually make a much better case that conservatives “want” black women to have abortions. If they would stop opposing contraceptives (those Democrat women are all sluts who just want the govt to pay for their sex dont you know) then abortion rates would drop.
“Using economic modeling, they found that if poorer women had the same access to contraception as more well-off women, it would cut the birth rate for single women living in poverty in half. Doing the same for abortion would also have a dramatic impact, reducing the birth rate from 72 births per 1,000 women to 49. Of course, the real solution would be to make both contraception and abortion accessible to lower-income women, which would probably result in their unintended birth rate coming very close to what it is for higher-income women. ”
“At 79 per 1,000, the unintended pregnancy rate for non-Hispanic black women in 2011 was more than double that of non-Hispanic white women (33 per 1,000). 2”
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states
Steve
All I’ll say is that Bill Clinton’s formulation (“safe, legal, and rare”) was the right one and I’m not making this up. Look up “black genocide”.
Yes, I am well aware of the claims about black genocide made by right wing groups to try to smear the left and force women to have babies when they dont want them. What I also know is that there is no black genocide. Fertility rates among blacks are higher than for whites and Asian, behind Hispanics. Yet, I dont see you talking about white genocide. As I noted above, black women have many more unintended pregnancies, at least partially due to the policies that make it harder for them to obtain contraceptives. Not sure why you are buying into what is one of the stupider memes on the internet. Guess I should proclaim that because conservatives dont want to pay for universal health care they just want poor people to die? Doesn’t intent count for something, especially the intent of the black people who are supposedly being genocided?
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/05/17/explaining-why-minority-births-now-outnumber-white-births/
Steve
Note that I didn’t begin this dialogue by claiming it was absolute truth but that there was a kernel of truth, i.e. some basis, for making the claim.
I should add that you are painting with too broad a brush. Noted right-wingers like W. E. B. DuBois, Dorothy Day, Mildred Jefferson Fay, and Dick Gregory have all characterized abortion as “black genocide”.
It is amazing that progressives somehow live in segregated communities and that somehow progressives send their children to segregated schools. It is amazing that progressives support policies that contribute to the destruction of black families.
It is all just a series of amazing coincidences.
As to Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians, I have no doubt that they do not want poor people to die, but it is an amazing coincidence that their policies will lead to that end.
“It is amazing that progressives somehow live in segregated communities and that somehow progressives send their children to segregated schools.”
It is just amazing that everyone on the left is a wealthy elite. Never mind that it is impossible that 50% of the country is wealthy.
Steve