DON'T WHiTE PEOPLE KILL EACH OTHER TOO? -> -> ->

DON'T WHiTE PEOPLE KILL EACH OTHER TOO? -> -> ->
YES BUT NOT VERY OFTEN!
FACT: Blacks Target Whites for Violent Crime 64-times more often than White Target Blacks for Violent Crime!
 23rd April 2012  

By Edward Wyckoff Williams
LOUISIANA WEEKLY
When it comes to America’s racial past and present, lies and snake oil are sold in many colors.
In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, conservatives in media have sought to deflect from the racism and racial profiling that precipitated his untimely death by referencing the broader social malaise of supposed “Black-on-Black violence.”
On a recent episode of “This Week on ABC,” Washington Post columnist George Will said that despite the Trayvon tragedy, “150 Black men are killed every week in this country,” and “about 94 percent of them by other Black men.”
Will parroted arguments made by many conservatives, his intended point being that Black-on-Black crime remains the real problem our nation should address. The half-truth he spoke went curiously unchallenged by the panel—including former White House adviser Van Jones—largely because the meta-narrative of Black-on-Black violence is widely accepted in journalistic and political circles.
Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News host and one-man propaganda machine, recently interviewed Columbia Univ­ersity professor Marc Lamont Hill to discuss similar claims from Wall Street Journal contributor Shelby Steele, who wrote in “The Exploit­ation of Tray­von Martin” that “Black teen­agers are afraid of other Black teenagers, not whites.” O’Reilly vehemently defended Steele’s premise that the Trayvon Martin case is an anomaly.
Blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other Blacks than by whites,” Steele wrote. He went on to attack the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for “exploiting” Trayvon’s death in an effort to promote a “liberal” agenda—a point that O’Reilly was all too happy to expound.
Steele’s perspective, misguided, remains pervasive and embedded in the broader social consciousness. This red-herring approach is not new, but in the face of Trayvon’s death—for which there remains no arrest, no charges and no arraignment—these obstructive tactics require an equal and opposite response.
What Will, Steele and O’Reilly failed to mention is the exacting truth that white Americans are just as likely to be killed by other whites. According to Justice Department statistics, 84 percent of white people killed every year are killed by other whites.
In fact, all races share similar ratios. Yet there’s no outrage or racialized debate about “white on white” violence. Instead, the myth and associated fear of “Black-on-Black” crime is sold as a legitimate, mainstream descriptive and becomes American status quo.
The truth? As the largest racial group, whites commit the majority of crimes in America. In particular, whites are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes. With respect to aggravated assault, whites led Blacks 2-1 in arrests; in forcible-rape cases, whites led all racial and ethnic groups by more than 2-1. And in larceny theft, whites led Blacks, again, more than 2-1.
The term “Black on Black” crime is a destructive, racialized colloquialism that perpetuates an idea that Blacks are somehow more prone to violence.
In Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, she explains that the term was coined in the 1980s as American cities underwent transformation as a result of riots, white flight and the onslaught of the drug trade.
Trayvon Martin’s tragic death reveals the worst ills at play within America’s criminal-justice system. Not only was he murdered in large part because of dangerous, persistent stereotypes, but the failure of police to judiciously respond to the crime underscores the inequities that characterize institutionalized racism.
This article originally published in the April 23, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
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