The State of the Art: Magic Utility Theory as Explanation for Black Crime

By Grand Rapids Anonymous
Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 8:05:00 P.M. EST

My laugh of the day—from the Grand Rapids Press and Mlive.com Sunday front page headline:

A DARK MATTER

Lack of street lights blamed for extraordinarily high [black] crime rate along South Division Avenue.

GRA: Before I throw a couple excerpts of this latest theory on how to explain black criminality, let me explain the background.

South Division has always been "The Ghetto" in Grand Rapids. Back in 1967, when the riots broke out, this is the area that burned, mainly between Wealthy and Burton streets—a four mile stretch along Division.

Nowadays, Mexicans have started to intersperse with blacks—which creates rivalries for the drug trade. This article says a mile-long area from Fulton to Wealthy, is even worse—because of poor lighting.

MLive: “The stretch of area represents 1% of the entire city—but saw 10.6% of all street robberies and 5.5% of all assaults reported in 2016. Most of those incidents took place at night.

City manager Greg Sundstrom said, "The lighting that the city provides on South Division doesn't meet our minimum standards for any neighorhood."

A 1.5 million dollar solution is being proposed.

GRA: What isn't discussed is the fact that the entire stretch of Division is black and Mexican. In this particular area, there are hundreds of vagrants wandering around various homeless shelters—like Mel Trotter missions. There have been numerous murders committed around this area—two of which I recall were black on white—and reported here.

So what do you think? Blame the lack of lights for the crime—or the unlighted minority thugs below those fixtures, for the rampant lawbreaking. I vote the latter.

(When I said, "It's my laugh of the day," I meant that in the same way I reacted to the news last week by our local leaders, who stated, "We need more low income housing in our city.")

Really? I would think the opposite is desired for a city to be safe and prosperous—and then it wouldn't matter HOW BRIGHT your street lights shine.