I will preface with MY own conclusions before citing history. Although I am a conservative in many regards, I find the denial of historically recent racism to be delusional on the part of "the right". Although the democrats have traditionally in recent history done more to keep the black community in poverty. The correlation of income inequality and crime has been well studied and documented and a quick Google search for more articles can back these assertions.
This is but one example.
The Jim Crow laws that were in effect at the end of World war II directly deprived black veterans and the black community of 1 BILLION dollars of GDP at THAT time (1966 for argument sakes). The implications of that STILL have a major impact on today! That is adjusted for inflation
$7,913,395,061.73
Although non of us today have anything to do with it and should not feel guilt whatsoever! This doesn't change the long term repercussion felt here and now.
While the white veterans prospered (rightly so) the same black veterans who went through the same hell were hung out to dry when they returned. The income gap created by this will be felt for years to come with no solution on the table.
Maybe that's why the flag and thes concepts of freedom we have, mean another thing to the black community.
As opposed to touting narratives and following party lines, maybe we should all shut the fuck up, listen and find solutions!
African American veterans benefited less than others from the G.I. Bill.
The
G.I. Bill aimed to help American
World War II veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with benefits including low-cost
mortgages, low-interest loans and financial support. African Americans did not benefit nearly as much as White Americans. Historian Ira Katznelson argues that "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate
Jim Crow".
[1] In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
[2][3]
Additionally, banks and mortgage agencies refused loans to blacks, making the G.I. Bill even less effective for blacks.
[4] Once they returned from the war, blacks faced
discrimination and poverty, which represented a barrier to harnessing the benefits of the G.I. Bill, because labor and income were immediately needed at home.
Most southern university principals refused to admit blacks until the Civil Rights revolution. Segregation was legally mandated in that region. Colleges accepting blacks in the South initially numbered 100. Those institutions were of lower quality, with 28 of them classified as sub-
baccalaureate. Only seven states offered postbaccalaureate training, while no accredited engineering or doctoral programs were available for blacks. These institutions were all smaller than white or nonsegregated universities, often facing a lack of resources.
[5]
By 1946, only one fifth of the 100,000 blacks who had applied for educational benefits had been registered in college.
[6] Furthermore,
historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) came under increased pressure as rising enrollments and strained resources forced them to turn away an estimated 20,000 veterans. HBCUs were already the poorest colleges. HBCU resources were stretched even thinner when veterans’ demands necessitated an expansion in the curriculum beyond the traditional "preach and teach" course of study.
[4]
Though blacks encountered many obstacles in their pursuit of G.I. benefits, the bill greatly expanded the population of African Americans attending college and graduate school. In 1940, enrollment at Black colleges was 1.08% of total U.S. college enrollment. By 1950 it had increased to 3.6%. However, these gains were limited almost exclusively to Northern states, and the educational and economic gap between white and black nationally, widened under the effects of the G.I. Bill.
[7] With 79 percent of the black population living in southern states, educational gains were limited to a small part of black America.
[4]
Wikipedia
The link between poverty and crime is a subject that has been examined by sociologists, governments and organizations such as the World Bank and United Nations for decades now. Robbing, for example, is most commonly reported to take place in areas of extreme poverty in the Americas (Latin America and the Caribbean) at a rate of 21 percent, and robbery and assault are among the most commonly reported crimes in communities that are predominantly poor. Places with high income inequality in particular have higher incidences of crime – overwhelmingly so, in fact. A 2002 study by The World Bank found that crime rates and inequality are positively correlated, and an increase in income inequality has the effect of intensely increasing crime rates. That same study also found that increases in a country’s GDP has the ability to lessen the incidence of crimes in that country, showing that poverty alleviation has a crime-reducing effect.
That being said, other studies have revealed that
the upper class commits far more crime than the lower class, which contradicts the assumption that crime is more predominant among the poor. In 1993, blue-collar criminals stole $15.3 billion but in that same year white-collar criminals stole $200 billion through embezzlement and fraud. In terms of violent crime, 23,271 people were murdered that year by street criminals, but the decisions made by high-value corporations led to the deaths of at least 318,368 people through worker safety violations, pollution, etc. Why are we conditioned to believe crime is limited to the lower and middle classes? Why is that when a white-collar worker is taken to court they gets far less media coverage than that of their blue-collared counterpart? The way the general public perceives crime is classist to say the very least.
Take the following statistic as an example.
South Africa holds a reputation for having the highest rape incidence in the world, at 500,000 annually. One associates the country’s high crime rates with the
disproportionate levels of inequality that have ravaged the country since the apartheid era. In 2011, it was found that the average annual income of white households was at least six times higher than that of black households. Is this what led to the murder rate in 2013 of 33 per 100,000 people being more than five times higher than the global average of 6.2 per 100,000? It is perceived to be so. For years now worsening poverty, unemployment and inequality have seen crime rates grow, with violent crime especially on the rise, seeing 49 people murdered every day in South Africa.
But in Sweden, a country of perceived wealth, high GDP and income equality, also reported among those countries with the highest incidence of rape in the world, with 46 rape cases per 100,000 in 2009. How is this so, you ask, given the general patterns seen around the world that link high levels of poverty with crime? Turns out that https://econlife.com/2016/04/swedish-wealth-distribution/. For a small country, Sweden has a relatively high number of millionaires and ranks among the top 20 nations for ultra-high net worth individuals. The growth in inequality in Sweden since the 1980s has in fact been
the largest among all OECD countries.
So, is it not so much the level of abject poverty but more the level of income inequality that lead to high crime rates in a country?
The reaction to the recent financial recession in the United States tells us that yes, this is indeed the case.
According to official FBI statistics, crime rates actually dropped across the country in 2009, despite the fact they had been gradually increasing in the lead up to the financial meltdown. Murder, rape, assault, theft, robbery – you name it, the incidences of it fell across the board, destroying the idea that the root cause of crime lies in poverty and rather, affirming that it lies in widespread income equality. This too was seen during the recession of 1893, in 1907, the Great Depression of the 1930s. In all of these economic catastrophes, crime did not increase at all, showing that, as inequality between the rich and the poor shrunk, so too did the number of crimes committed.
So, what can we take from this? Is the answer to preventing crime such as robbery and break-ins improving public education, installing better
security screens in our homes, or hiring security guards? Apparently not. It seems we need to focus more on lessening income inequality in countries around the world, targeting social justice and poverty in the fight against crime. In this way, we will perhaps be able to see a vast reduction in the instances of crime, both violent and non-violent, around the world – and especially in poorer countries.
