Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Walter Williams on Profiling and the Trayvon Martin Case

 

Look at that angelic face, look at those gold caps—who could possibly suspect Trayvon Martin of anything untoward?
 

By Nicholas Stix

My only disagreement with Williams’ column regards his conclusion:

[The high black crime rate is] devastating to the black community, which is its primary victim.

Actually, since at least 1987, the primary victim of black criminals has been the white community. Blacks victimize whites more than they do other blacks.

* * *

Profiling
By Walter Williams
March 28, 2012
Town Hall

Right now, there isn't enough known about the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old part-Hispanic, during his neighborhood watch tour in an Orlando, Fla., suburb. If evidence emerges that Zimmerman's actions were not justified, he should be prosecuted and punished; however, there's a larger issue that few people understand or have the courage to acknowledge, namely that black and young has become synonymous with crime and, hence, suspicion. To make that connection does not make one a racist. Let's look at it.

Twelve years ago, a black Washington, D.C., commissioner warned cabbies, most of whom were black, against picking up dangerous-looking passengers. She described "dangerous-looking" as a "young black guy ... with shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, unlaced tennis shoes." She also warned cabbies to stay away from low-income black neighborhoods. Did that make the D.C. commissioner a racist?

In some cities, such as St. Louis, black pizza deliverers have complained about having to deliver pizzas to certain black neighborhoods, including neighborhoods in which they live. Are they racists? The Rev. Jesse Jackson once remarked, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -(and) then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." Does that make the reverend a racist?

The former Charleston, S.C., black chief of police, Reuben Greenberg, said the problem facing black America is not racial profiling. He said, "The greatest problem in the black community is the tolerance for high levels of criminality." Former Los Angeles black police Chief Bernard Parks, defending racial profiling, said: "It's not the fault of the police when they stop minority males or put them in jail. It's the fault of the minority males for committing the crime. In my mind, it is not a great revelation that if officers are looking for criminal activity, they're going to look at the kind of people who are listed on crime reports." Are former police Chiefs Greenberg and Parks racist?

According to the Uniform Crime Report for 2009, among people 18 or younger, blacks were charged with 58 percent of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, 67 percent of robberies, 42 percent of aggravated assaults and 43 percent of auto thefts. As for murder, more than 90 percent of the time, their victims were black.

These statistics, showing a strong interconnection among race, youth and crime, are a far better explanation for racial profiling and suspicion than simple racism.

Black Americans have spoken out against racial profiling by police. They've been insulted by store personnel who might give them extra scrutiny. There's the insult of the sound of a car door being locked when a black approaches. It's insulting to have taxi drivers pass up a black person and pick up white people down the street. In a similar vein, I'm sure that a law-abiding Muslim is insulted when given extra scrutiny at airports or listening to Fox News reporter Juan Williams, who was fired by National Public Radio in 2010 for publicly saying that he gets nervous when he sees people on a plane with clothing that identifies them as Muslim. Blacks and Muslims who face the insults of being profiled might direct their anger toward those who've made blacks and crime synonymous and terrorism and Muslims synonymous.

God would never racially profile, because he knows everything, including who is a criminal or terrorist. We humans are not gods; therefore, we must often base our decisions on guesses and hunches. It turns out that easily observed physical characteristics, such as race, are highly interconnected with other characteristics less easily observed.

For most blacks to own up to the high crime rate among blacks is a source of considerable discomfort. Beyond that, it creates suspicions and resentment, which are destructive of good race relations, and it's devastating to the black community, which is its primary victim.

[A clink ‘o the handcuffs to Paul Nachman and Larry Auster.

Of related interest, and from the Trayvon Martin Hoax files:

“How Profiling Saved My Life: Reflections on Black Supremacy and Crime”;

“De-Policing in America’s Cities: Erasing the ‘Thin Blue Line’”;

“Central Park & Racial Profiling”;

“The Color of Crime: Ground-Breaking New Study Released”;

“Is the LAPD Guilty of Racial Profiling?”;

“Sanford, Florida: Black ‘Little Boy,’Trayvon Martin 17, Beat White ‘Vigilante’ George Zimmerman Bloody; Zimmerman Shot Martin Dead; Now Black WFTV ‘Reporter,’ Daralene Jones, Black Supremacists, and White Aunt Jemima Earwitness Demand That Zimmerman be Arrested”;

“Trayvon Martin: ABC ‘News’ Gets on Bandwagon, Acting as Martin’s Family Mouthpiece; Family Lawyer Refuses to Release All Information about Teen’s Last Phone Call to Girlfriend, but Insists That It Requires That George Zimmerman be Arrested ‘Right Now’”;

“Arrest First, Investigate Later: Press Conference by Lawyer Benjamin Crump, of Trayvon Martin’s Family, Seeks Through Violation of Due Process… to Railroad George Zimmerman”;

“News Coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case Keeps Getting Worse: New York Daily News Passes Off ABC News Hearsay as ‘Interview,’ While Changing the Hearsay!”;

“USA Today: ‘In wake of black teen Trayvon Martin's death, USA is soul-searching’; McPaper Invokes Jena 6, Quotes Al Sharpton, Self-Described ‘ThugNiggaIntellectual’ Mark Neal, and Jena Attacker Theo Shaw as Moral Authorities”;

“Why the Secret ‘Interview’ with Trayvon Martin’s Secret Girlfriend is Bogus, and His Alleged Last Cell Phone Call is Insignificant”;

“Another Trayvon Martin Supporter: Florida Atlantic U. Hate Crime Attacker Jonatha Carr Had Just been Interviewed about the Jena Six/Nuremberg-Style Rally She’s been Organizing; CBS12 News Tries to Rationalize Her Crimes”;

“Trayvon Martin’s Parents Attend New York City Riot Held on Their Behalf”;

“Associated Press and Penn Live: Arrest George Zimmerman for Killing Trayvon Martin, the Law be Damned! Let Zimmerman Prove His Innocence in Court!”

National Review ‘Conservative’ Rich Lowry Goes to Bat for Al Sharpton in Trayvon Martin Case, Ignoring or Misrepresenting Facts of the Case”;

“Trayvon Martin Case: Real Eyewitness Supports Zimmerman’s Story, as Opposed to Lynch Mob’s Fake Eyewitnesses”;

“Barack Obama: Because Trayvon Martin was Black, and Vaguely Resembled Me, ‘All of Us Have to Do Some Soul-Searching’”;

“The Trayvon Martin Hoax: Business Insider Joins Mob Seeking to Lynch George Zimmerman”;

“The Trayvon Martin Hoax: Geraldo Rivera Finally Does the Right Thing!”;

“Black Supremacist Spike Lee (‘Tawana Told the Truth!’) is Trying to Get George Zimmerman Murdered, by Tweeting His Address: The Trayvon Martin Hoax”;

“Hoax Starts to Unravel: Trayvon Martin Started Fight, and was Going to Kill George Zimmerman”;

“George Zimmerman’s Lawyer and Friend Defend Him Against Trayvon Martin Hoax, While ABC News Soldiers on, Repeating Refuted Claims”;

“First Report on Trayvon Martin’s Death One Month Ago Already Included Eyewitness Description of Martin Beating George Zimmerman, and Zimmerman Yelling ‘Help Me!’”;

“George Zimmerman: Trayvon Martin was Trying to Murder Me (Orlando Sentinel)”;

“Jesse Jackson Called for Riots on Behalf of Trayvon Martin, and North Miami Beach Senior HS Students Came Through, Ransacking a Walgreen’s”; and

“Another ‘Honor Student’: Trayvon Martin was a Thug, Vandal, Burglar, Pothead and/or Drug Dealer, and Had been Suspended from School at Least 3 Times.”

“The Nation of Islam’s New Black Panther Party Offers $10,000 Bounty for the Kidnapping (or Murder?) of George Zimmerman, for Shooting Trayvon Martin.”[

 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

A while back, I was watching the Investigative Discovery Channel. Someone identified as as "FBI Profiler" unctously said something like: "Whites overwhelmingly commit crimes against whites and blacks commit crimes almost exclusively against blacks." Oddly enough, I think the crime in question was black on white, but I don't recall the specific case.

For decades, I've seen commentators, conservative ones especially, say "black crime is mainly against blacks," or words to this effect.

David In TN

Anonymous said...

That a black man can't be picked up by a cab is a favorite PC theme, every news magazine TV show has done it, they put a black man on the street, who gets ignored by cabbies, then chase them down and ask why they passed up a potential fare. Many cabbies are East Indian and as dark or darker than the african americans they pass up so the TV shows make sure they find a white cabby or two (they must wait a long time to find one) to make sure the cabbies really look racist. The cabbies squirm around and mumble excuses then the reporters triumphantly trumpet how they are fighting racism by exposing all those racist cab drivers. One show I recall did something somewhat honest, they stopped a couple of black cab drivers and asked them why they didn't stop. They both just looked directly at the news teams with "Are you crazy" expressions and said: "I don't pick up brothers" Reporter: Why won't you pick up your own people? Black Cabbie: "I don't wanna get robbed and black guys don't tip worth %&$#. Simple as that. These news shows are so lame the only thing they can think to do it hassle some poor working class stiffs trying to make a living (at a competitive difficult job) and reducing their odd of getting robbed or possibly even killed. Nobody thinks that "all" black men are going to rob and kill them, but everyone knows the odds go up that it could happen. No rational mind could blame them. Every time I hear that garbage about how cab drivers are some indicator of racism in this country I just want to puke. I know it was just a small part of this article but when I saw the racist cab driver mention I just had to say this.

Anonymous said...

Wrong person in the photo. Not Trayvon Martin. This has been debunked before as it was passed around the internet. I am going to refrain from making a specific comment about how some think all black people look alike and they can't tell them apart. Instead I'll say, nice try.

Nicholas said...

Anon Idiot, 3/29/2012, 11 a.m.,

Right person in the photo. You’re either thinking about the wrong photo, a blurry one of a lighter-skinned, skinny, shirtless, colored kid with his hands out sideways, or you think that a lie can trump reality. I never posted the debunked picture, because I couldn’t be sure it was Martin. This photo has never been debunked.

I debunk scams for a living, and while my batting average isn’t 1.000, it’s as high as anyone in the business. But you obviously can’t tell one black teenager from another. Many negroes are like that, like the cops who walked right by Brian Nichols, while carrying pictures of him. Are you one of them?

Nicholas said...

David,

In Justin Cottrell's new book on black serial killers, he notes that the most famous FBI profiler of "serial killers," Robert Ressler, lied through his teeth for years about the prevalence of black serial killers, and sandbagged investigations that, on his advice, looked only for a white serial killer, when the real killer was black.

Nicholas said...

David,

P.S. Re "black crime is mainly against blacks."

It always drives me nuts when I see that from coming a white "conservative." The wrtier is either a moron or a liar, sucking up to the MSM.

Nicholas said...

Anon, March 29, 2012 2:16 a.m. EDT,

Exactly so. Thanks for the backgrounder.

Anonymous said...

I don't think a person's color should matter. I know black people are responsible for the most crime even though they're only 19% of the population because their culture encourages it though, and they stupidly think it's racist to point that out.
Are you really a "white nationalist"?