Jim West posted on something earlier today that struck a chord with me as it touched on a number of my pet peeves: the alarming rate at which the United States imprisons its population, the prison culture and industrial complex that arises out of that rate, the "War on Drugs" and its various ill-effects for urban centers here in the states and for various regimes particularly in South America, and the coup de grâce, the media's woefully inadequate methods of reporting on it all:
When Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom were brutalized and murdered by four blacks I wondered aloud why it seems that so many of the most violent crimes are perpetrated by blacks. The shooting of Officer Rickman raises the same question. So I wonder aloud again- why?
...
So - again - why are some blacks (usually males in their teens to late twenties) so very violent? And, more importantly, what can be done about it so that there are no more victims of that violence? And, by the by, this isn’t just a sociological issue but a theological issue as well- and more so.
I
initially responded that we first needed to get the facts straight, essentially, by asking whether or not there actually was more violence among or committed by minorities, or if in fact it was simply reported on more often and so it seemed as if there was more violence among or committed by minorities.
Another commenter linked to a number of reports about the relative rates of incarcerations among various demographics, which Jim took to invalidate my point about the reporting. However, I responded (
in full):
I disagree: increased incarceration rates aren’t reflective of a community that necessarily commits more crime or even more violent crime. It’s reflective of a society that is more comfortable incarcerating its minority cultures than its majority culture. In the first place, it should be pointed out that the United States imprisons its population at an astounding rate: recent reports put the number at 1 in 100 adults, and 1.6 million people overall. China, a country four times larger than ours, with human rights abuses of its own, managed to imprison only 1.5 million in the same time period. The vast majority of those in prison are there because of drug convictions, convictions that occur at a rate 12 times higher for black men than for white men (thank you, War on Drugs). That 12 times higher conviction rate does not reflect the fact that whites “in fact, commit more drug crimes than blacks.” So, again, I would argue that the racial component to this problem is a reflection of our society’s continuing prejudicial attitudes more than it is a reflection of actual levels of offences.
In his initial post, Jim noted that it wasn't simply a sociological issue, but a theological one as well. I'm not totally sure what he meant by that, but I take it to mean that we haven't really properly reconciled ourselves to the disparity (particularly within the church) of how we treat and receive people of different races. And I think it is exactly stories like these that should give us pause to reflect not on the more violent nature of minorities (which, as should be obvious from this post's title, I don't think exists), but on the manner in which the church, particularly in America, has actually tried to live out a colorblind Gospel.
Image used under a Creative Commons license from recurringdreams.
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