The Warzone Formerly Known As Chicago

Published February 17, 2019

Today for something a little different, we’re going to address a scary Fox News standard: Black on Black Crime!!!!! Especially in Chicago!!!!1!!

So. First let’s figure out what we mean by “black-on-black” crime. We mean crimes committed by black people, against black people. Right?

So really, we’re just talking about intra-racial crime. In fact, it really feels like we should use that term, seeing as that’s the concept we’re discussing — and we wouldn’t want to limit ourselves to focusing on just ONE racial group, because we’re not a bunch of drooling racists, right?

So: seeing as we’re all reasonable intellectuals seeking the truth here — and definitely NOT drooling racists — white-on-white crime is just as valid a question to ask, right?

Murders are usually committed by people who know the victim personally. And since the Great American Melting Pot is more of a mixture than a compound, I guess it’s not too surprising that per to the FBI’s uniform crime-reporting data for 2016, 90.1% of black victims of homicide were killed by black perpetrators, and 83.5% of whites were killed by white ones. Adjust for the facts that Black America tends to be confined to the coasts, and more likely to live in racially-homogenous communities than White America (largely due to bad past experiences), and the difference in those rates largely evens out.

Okay, so the ratios are roughly the same for intra-racial murder between blacks and whites. But what about real numbers — how do we establish what kind of actual body-quantities we’re talking here?

The same way we do every night, Pinky: begin by establishing a hypothesis, and then following the evidence wherever it may go.

Hypothesis: Surely Chicago must be the murder capital of America, right? Why else would FOX be screaming about it all the time.

As it turns out, a simple Google search yields an unexpected and startling result. Not only is Chicago not the murder capital of America — it doesn’t even break the top 20.

Instead, the list includes a number of Caucasian Havens of the midwest: Gary, Indiana; Flint, Michigan; Salisbury, North Carolina. I can only imagine what it’s like living in such a Super-Chicago. Do they build the barns there bullet-proof to protect the livestock from drive-bys and ricochets?

But maybe that’s all well and good, but these are LIVES we’re talking about here. We can figure out the why’s and wherefores later, we just need to get policies in place to save people RIGHT NOW! Okay, I get it, human life is the priority here, the focus NEEDS to be on saving as many citizens as possible from harm. In which case I greatly look forward to your proposal for the government to provide Universal Health Care, as well as funneling funding toward the development of self-driving cars — since (as we all know) Heart Disease is the number 1 killer in America closely followed by Cancer, Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease, and then Accidents — often caused by distracted driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Murder’s not even a top 10 contender (except if you kill yourself, since Suicide is #10 — but that’s the mental health system, which is 100% related but outside the scope of today’s topic). What’s Matt Drudge’s stance on “giving people healthcare” and “the future in general” again?

But still. Fox News feels strongly enough about what’s going on in Chicago that they felt it was necessary to write a negative article about a declining murder rate: Chicago reduces murder rate in 2018 but level still outstrips LA and NY combined

They’ve got a compelling point, though: why is it that Chicago — which has an admittedly blacker populace per-capita — homicidally outstrips both those larger cities combined? All three cities have stringent regulations regarding gun ownership. However — both California and the state of New York themselves have tight regulations on handguns in particular and firearms in general, while in Illinois they seem to be speeding in the opposite direction. Might that have something to do with it? Perhaps it’s not so much “Black people are are more likely to shoot each other” as it is “Chicagoans have broad and easy access to firearms, due to low regulation and loose enforcement on the part of their state elected officials”?

Okay but even if the gun laws are part of the problem that still doesn’t mean it’s not at least mostly the fault of… you know. Again, not a drooling racist, just seeking truth here.

Excellent point. I guess the next step is to talk to the police so they can give us their take on where the point of failure lies. One of their biggest collective complaints seems to be that the local community refuses to help the police solve the crimes — those gosh darn folks, not letting the authorities help them better themselves and their communities!

I wonder: who could have created a culture that might lead to such a reluctance to work with and talk to authority figures like the police and local politicians (like the DA, for example).

Let’s go once more to our sources:

Well gee, when you put it that way, and realize that:

These are systemic problems that represent failures at the highest levels of public service in Chicago, Illinois, and the US Federal Government itself, and that-
As a citizen in an already underserved community (given that the police exist not to protect people, but to protect property — of which these citizens have very little) where so much as speaking to the police can result in you being “disappeared”, without any sort of functioning justice system to rely on, then well…

…Gosh you know I guess it sounds a heckuva a lot more like a failure of the system to provide for the safety and security of its citizens, as bound by law and human decency than it does some sort of racially specific crime wave. Because again, as we all know: society is a compact, not an absolute. Government exists because the people permit it to do so, not the other way around. It exists to serve the people. The people are the government. I feel like somebody made a musical about it?

Either way — given that we now know that white-on-white violence is an even more pervasive problem than the black version, I think it’s definitely time we started talking more about it. What do you guys think?

Last modified October 3, 2023 #opinion