Originally posted by The Omega
ED>"there are many more factors to consider. Most of them culturally.”Culturally?? Well, what came first? Racism or the ghettos? If a minority in a country is constantly being treated as “second-class” and subject to racism in one form or another, I think that, socially speaking, the society in question is asking for trouble. You will see the formation of ghettos, and some kind of “f*ck-you” attitude towards the prejudiced society.
I see it happening here in DK. The Arab immigrants and refugees are starting to cluster together in ghettos, and a “gangsta”-style subculture is emerging among SOME of them. What do you do, if, whenever you go down a street, some stranger may yell racist comments at you without knowing anything about you or what you do?? If a well-educated ethnic Dane and an “indigenous” well-educated Dane apply for the same job, the chances that the latter receives the job are a lot higher than 50 %.
Growing up with this knowledge must be immensely frustrating. You get banned from night-clubs solely based on your skin-colour, and blamed for everything from unemployment to economic crises.
No one, of course, REALLY thinks its “cool” and “respectable” to commit crimes and go to prison. But if the society you live in rejects you or is just generally prejudiced against you, some kind of re-action is bound to happen, some kind of “let’s give them something to be annoyed about”-attitude.
It’s a vicious circle.
Have any studies been done to show a relationships between arrest and actual convictions?
Botakus> Sure, there are almost always exceptions to the rule! But that does not forfeit the RULE in itself. When we discuss something IN GENERAL, tossing in a “ah, but I know there’s one example where Eskimos DO like spaghetti” doesn’t change the rule or the statistics.
Lil Bitchiness> “What I found rather scary and heart stopping was when we were advised that in certain areas of Detroit, if we happen to be driving by at certain time do not stop at the red light, but keep on driving!”
I experienced the exact same thing when visiting NYC once. The “in THAT community, run the red lights after dusk.”
What this guy says is true. When people are ostrascized they do tend to group together, it's happened many times and in many places... Goes way beyond America.
Now to balance that statement out, here's a bit of trivia. the word ghetto actually originated from Jews being segregated out from the rest of the population in old europe. They were the ones being ostracized. So why don't we have as many problems with jews as with other minorities? Why did they become successful when other groups under "similar" circumstances seem to just degenerate (according to the previously mentioned model anyways)?
Now, stats.... ah stats (this part of my post really has nothing to do with what I quoted. It comes from myriad other posts I've read.).
I was wrong with my 30% figure. Nationwide it is apparently about 13%. In some places it's less than one percent (Vermont, Montana, and Idaho are all at 0.03%), in others as high as 65.8% (DC).
source: www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-5.pdf
prison population:
from the numbers posted on http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
about 3.2 percent of all black males in the US are in prison.
about 1.2 percent of all hispanic males in USA are in prison.
and about half a percent of white males are in prison.
So you could be right about institutional racism. Or it could be that they do commit a disproporionate amount of crime here. That could still be attributable to racism, but not institutional. Historic seems to me to be the only way to legitimately pin those numbers on racism if the system is as fair as it was made to be.