A common whataboutism raised when discussing police brutality is “why aren’t we talking about black on black crime?” (That is a specious argument since a lot of people - especially within the Black Community - have been and continue to talk about it, but let's get into why crime rates are the way that they are).
If we want to have a good faith discussion about crime, we need to talk about all of the factors that contribute to crime happening in the first place.
According to the Bureau for Justice Statistics, people in households with income below the federal poverty threshold are twice as likely to commit a violent crime than people in high-income households, regardless of race.
But, since we live in a country where the poverty rate is more than twice as high among black Americans than white. And that has as much to do with 400 years of systematic racism as it does anything else.
Yes, racial disparities in crime and punishment are real. However, they have been produced in large part by the systemic and structural racism against dis-empowered minorities, particularly African Americans.
Even though overt racial discrimination has been prohibited by law for decades, it still occurs at an alarming rate.
Additionally, the brutal structural legacy of racism, segregation, concentrated poverty, and violence remains.
The full article is available here
