[darkroasted]

Do you really think it's random happenstance that urban blacks get arrested for experimenting with drugs in a way that suburban whites do not?

It's more complicated than that. Police are actually much more tolerant of open-air/street corner drug-dealing in black ghetto neighborhoods than in suburbia. If you read books or news articles about these neighborhoods, you see that the dealing gets ignored for months and months, or the dealers are harassed and arrested and then right back out on the street later in the day. This would never be tolerated the same way in suburbia. Then what happens is that there is a shooting, or a gang war with many shootings breaks out. Neighbors demand that the police "do something." Since the police do not know who is responsible and witnesses refuse to talk, the police take the path of least resistance and lock up whoever they can on drug charges. I recommend the books "Ghettoside" and "Don't Shoot" for more on these issues.

Do you know what Ockham's razor is?

The elephant in the room is that black ghetto communities do not self-police and have a dire problem of particular senseless and indiscriminate murders. For instance, Ghettoside recounted a story of a 13-year-old, black kid wandering through the back alleys of his neighborhood, stumbling across a gang of older youths, who immediately started shooting at him. That is just insane. Completely insane. And the book is full of examples like that, of street shootings that take out innocent bystanders because the shooter couldn't be bothered to verify that the target was actually in an enemy gang.

If a community does not self-police, then there are two equally bad options: 1) outsiders can impose their own policing, which is always going to be fraught, brutal, and mistake-prone. 2) other communities can just try to contain the problem, ie, they can segregate themselves.

[beat]

Do you really think things are different in wealthier communities because they "self-police"? Calling the police in a poor neighborhood is dangerous business... not because of gang retaliation, but because of the police themselves. And as you observe, the police generally do nothing about street dealers, and what they do is ineffectual. So why even bother calling them?

[darkroasted]

Well, in a "wealthy" community, generally the police are members of the community. They live nearby, go to the same schools, etc. So all policing in a sense is self-policing. There is much less of a sense of the police being the "other", and vice versa, the police have less of sense that the population is all "others" and all "savages". When you are an outside police force, you only deal with the criminals, so you it becomes your sense that the entire community is criminal.

Also, I put "wealthy" in scare quotes, because this dynamic also applies to areas like Chinatown or the Hasidic Jew communities of Brooklyn. These communities are not rich, but have low crime rates and rarely involve the police in their disputes, they mostly take care of problems using internal social sanctions.

More generally, "self-policing" means problems are nipped in the bud early before they escalate to crimes requiring the police, and never have a chance to escalate to murders and retaliation killings. Most "policing" is taken care of by families and parents. Growing up, it was normal for one parent to complain to another parent about the behavior of the second parent's child, and the second parent to enforce discipline on their own children. I cannot remember a single time in my neighborhood where we had to call the police on a neighbor. I cannot actually recall a single instance of crime, such as burglary.

[beat]

This problem, applied racially, leads to an uncomfortable question. If black communities are less effective than white communities at "self-policing", why is that? Is it because of externally imposed social structure issues (the consequences of racism), or is it because of internal nature (blacks are less intelligent and moral than whites)?

You have to start with this raw, painful question. Either you argue for racial inferiority, or you acknowledge that the problems are truly from external rather than internal sources. Once you acknowledge that, complaining about "self policing" sounds like blaming the victim, because it is.

[darkroasted]

Why is that? Is it because of externally imposed social structure issues (the consequences of racism), or is it because of internal nature (blacks are less intelligent and moral than whites)?

Hypothesis #1: Blacks are the pawns in an ongoing civil war between the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe of American whites. The blue tribe, the left, talks a big game about helping black people, but if you look at what they do, they try to pin all the blame for the plight of black people on lack of education and the racism of the Red Tribe. The blue tribe is mostly interested in using blacks as a voting bank, not on finding the true causes and fixing them. The fixes they do spout, such as education, provide massive wealth transfers to Blue tribe labor unions while doing nothing to fix the problems of broken families and crime. The Red Tribe cares mostly about containment. To the extent they want to fix the problem, it is by funneling money to their own political base, police unions and the prisons. "Tough on crime" attorney generals care a lot more about big drug busts and crack-downs on gangs than on the kind of beat policing that would prevent the crime in the first place. Note that this civil war has been ongoing for 200 years, and turned into a hot war a couple times, once in 1860, again in the late 1960's.

Also, because ghetto blacks never evolved their own indigenous culture, what culture messaging they receive comes through the Blue Tribe institutions. The official story in these institutions is that everything good comes from the government. The story of U.S. history as told as government becoming more progressive, a great president is a president who made some new program to help people. This contrasts to my own upbringing. Growing up in a white suburb, most of what I learned about life came from watching my family and neighbors, where you had lots of crusty older guys serving as role models in how they built their own businesses, did work on their own homes every weekend, took care of their family, etc. I didn't learn right or wrong from school, it came from my mom, family, and peers. School was anarcho-tyranny and Lord of the Flies, even in my wealthy suburb.

Thus in all, the Blue Tribe cultural messaging discourages the black communities from self-organizing to figure out their problems on their own. The Red Tribe policing also prevents this. Potentially, if gangs were allowed to fight it out without any interference, eventually one gang would win and they would set up their own government. But there is just enough policing to prevent that from happening. So the whole community is caught in a trap. Alternatively, the police could seek out the good guys in the ghetto, there are good guys, and deputize them as local officers, who could walk beats and police the street. But the Red Tribe police unions would likely hate this, as there is no way they could pay those officers union wages, it would be seen as taking away from union jobs.

Hypothesis #2: The genetic hypothesis. The evidence for this has been covered elsewhere, for example https://liberalbiorealism.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/first-thi... and https://liberalbiorealism.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/the-likel... and https://liberalbiorealism.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/the-vice-... and https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i... and http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur... For my own part, if you hold a "preponderance of the evidence" standard, then I would say there is more evidence on the side of there being significant genetic difference in average IQ. I avoided this conclusion for a long time, I did not want to believe it, but I think that avoiding the truth will only make it harder to deal with these problems. I do think that the lower average IQ this makes it harder for black ghetto populations to figure out how to build localized institutions to enforce rule of law, and it makes it harder for these ghetto populations to work around the dysfunctions of the broader political institutions. Also, making the problem worse, is that the most intelligent 20-30% of the black ghetto population escapes the ghetto and lives elsewhere. So the ghettos are continually stripped of the human capital needed to make their local institutions functional. For instance, I was reading on one site that the average IQ in the black ghettos of Baltimore is 75, which is stunningly low.

I don't think that identifying the problem of "lack of self-policing" is blaming the victim, it is just identifying the proximate cause. I don't think blame is constructive framing for fixing anything. My goal is simply to get the truth out there, and it will be up for people working locally to figure out fixes, based on the hard realities of the situation. I certainly don't think that finger-wagging at black people saying "you need to self police" is going to fix anything. But we do need a sort of "five why's analysis" for what has happened ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys ), so that we can fix things. Too often in these debates as soon as you get to one cause that can be pinned on the other tribe, the analysis stops and the blaming begins.

There is a final dark implication to ponder, that neither tribe talks about. Many of these ghettos are actually in prime real estate. South-central LA and Oakland have wonderful climates. Brooklyn, Anacostia, etc, are highly proximate to lots of great jobs. If the crime problem was actually fixed, blacks would be pushed out of these neighborhoods by gentrification very quickly.

I don't really have any great solutions myself. The red versus blue tribal war needs to end. The only way these problems can ever be fixed is at a local level, by people who care about the problem and who are close to the problem. Having outsiders moralize or use these issues to score political points just makes everything worse. But even then, a happy fix is unlikely.

[beat]

Never evolved an indigenous culture? You've heard rap music, haven't you? Of course it's an indigenous culture... one that the mainstream cultures of the "blue and red tribes" finds alienating and strange. The indigenous culture of the African-American community has, among other things, created the basis of American music for over a century.

To argue that what culture they have is simply handed to them by the "blue tribe" liberals is shockingly ignorant and condescending. Seriously, man, check your privilege there!

Where I think you're on to something interesting is the idea of racial flight. Before the 1960s, blacks simply were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods, no matter how wealthy or successful or talented they were. Black neighborhoods were much more economically integrated, with more role models for kids (although a look into the history of redlining is valuable, something else you touched on. The theft of wealth accumulation via property values and rent is far greater than the petty crimes of burglary and mugging that justify the police state. Look into it, there's been great writing on the subject).

Anyway... come the 1970s, it became socially viable for more successful black professionals and entrepreneurs to move to nicer, safer, more valuable white neighborhoods, and they did so. The more they left, the worse the ghettos got, which drove even more away. This went hand in hand with the rise of the lucrative paramilitary police state, and a massive per-capita increase in black prisoners. So it's much, much more difficult for ambitious and talented young black kids to improve their lot in life today than it used to be - ironic, considering how much better life is for the black middle class.

There are other problems as well. A friend of mine, a successful upper middle class black professional (doctor), has devoted himself to teaching financial literacy to black teenagers. Lack of basic financial literacy is endemic among the poor, and contributes to the ongoing poverty. It's also endemic among black entrepreneurs. He is also working on a side business as a financial advisor and investment counselor for wealthy black individuals. They often invest very poorly, because they distrust the white-dominated financial industry - and for good reason, given the century-long tradition of outright theft and victimization. By putting a black face on sound investing, he can help them grow their wealth more effectively. So think about the impact that deliberate bad financial advice has had economically on the black community.

Your formulation of blue tribe welfare-for-votes versus red tribe police state is entertaining to read, but it is simplistic to the point of being seriously wrong. Look at the deeper issues.

[darkroasted]

"To argue that what culture they have is simply handed to them by the "blue tribe" liberals is shockingly ignorant and condescending."

I will not deny the charges of being condescending and privileged, though personally I would describe myself as being in advantaged position and having a sense of Noblesse Oblige. I do not appreciate the name calling on your part.

I will not admit to being ignorant, as I am both well-read on this issue and have considerable personal experience. To think is to generalize; to think is to take the raw data from the world and frame it in patterns that make sense. There will always be imprecision in so doing. There will be mistakes around the edges, or places where the point was not phrased perfectly correctly. If you start calling me names every time I make an imperfect generalization, while I am trying in good faith to explain the core dynamics the best that I can, then we cannot have a productive conservation and this will be my last comment.

"Never evolved an indigenous culture? You've heard rap music, haven't you?"

Well, you are underestimating the role of white (liberal voting) producers and merchants of cool in the creation of hip-hop culture, but that is beside the point. Music is only one tiny part of culture.

More important aspects of culture include: messaging about what makes a good life, norms, mores, institutions, messaging and narratives about how to be successful, narratives explaining the way things are and how to deal with problems, etc, are the important part that I am talking about. And yes, there is some indigenous norms that have arisen, and hip-hop culture is more than music. But this culture is very, very recent, and it takes a long time for a culture to evolve to be pro-social and pro-civilization. Hip-hop culture is similar in some way to the honor culture and feuding culture of the old Scotch-Irish, medieval Europe, Homeric Greece, or many other primitive cultures. But the culture messaging and narratives coming down from blue tribe controlled schools and from ministers are very, very real and give a very flawed view of how the world actually works. And that messaging matters a lot when there is the absence of positive role models in the form of people building their own businesses and making it on their own.

I am quite aware of the history of segregation, red-lining, etc. But these do not explain what is going on. Every ethnic group is segregated. That is the definition of an ethnic group. Segregation doesn't explain why black ghettos have so much more crime than the Jewish or Chinese ghettos of old.

"The theft of wealth accumulation via property values and rent is far greater than the petty crimes of burglary and mugging that justify the police state."

You are going to explain yourself, because this is quite backwards.

There were indeed attempts by the WASP's in charge of the American cities to do slum clearance and move blacks out of their existing neighborhoods into the neighborhoods of working class ethnic poles, Irish, and Jews, who did not have the political clout to defend their turf. This has been written about extensively in books like "The Slaughter of the Cities" or "Canarsie".

However, the WASP's plans did not work out at all like intended. In some cases, blacks were pushed out of great real estate to slightly worse real estate. For instance, in Boston, some blacks who lived where the Prudential now is were pushed out toward Roxbury and Dorchester. But the bulk of the action was in blacks moving up from the south, who pushed out working class whites in neighborhoods like Roxbury and Dorchester. If you look at most cities, blacks live in great real estate from a location point of view - it is an easy commute to the central city, often near parks like Fairmount park in Philadelphia or Franklin Park in Boston. I don't know by what metric you can blacks in the Philadelphia area have the worst real estate. Now, the property values are very low. But that is because of the crime. By definition, any real estate occupied by a high-crime tribe is going to have low values, since people don't want to live near crime. This hardly constitutes left by white people.

Your formulation of blue tribe welfare-for-votes versus red tribe police state is entertaining to read, but it is simplistic to the point of being seriously wrong. Look at the deeper issues.

I have read dozens of books and hundreds of articles on the subject, ranging from the very liberal like the "New Jim Crow" or "When Work Disappears" to the more reactionary like "Slaughter of the City." I have spent years living near ghetto neighborhoods, and doing on-and-off volunteering in these neighborhoods. To think is to simplify, thinking is the act of condensing the raw data of the world into patterns and models that we can use. If you have a better model of what is happening, or can make improvements to my model, then make the argument. But I once believed the conventional segregation/red lining/de-industrialization caused all the problems hypothesis, and I now believe that hypothesis to be seriously wrong.

Lack of basic financial literacy is endemic among the poor, and contributes to the ongoing poverty. It's also endemic among black entrepreneurs. He is also working on a side business as a financial advisor and investment counselor for wealthy black individuals. They often invest very poorly, because they distrust the white-dominated financial industry - and for good reason, given the century-long tradition of outright theft and victimization.

While I wish your friend luck, this goes back to the question of intelligence. The deep problem is that someone of 130IQ will always be able to steal from the person of 80IQ. The stealing can take many forms - unfair financial contracts, convincing that buying Nike shoes will make them awesome at basketball, convincing them to vote for politician X, where politician X then funnels money to his own cronies. I'm not sure what can be done about this. It is a very hard problem. I don't know if history has an example of systematic, long-standing, altruism between ethnic groups.

[r00fus]

> The elephant in the room is that black ghetto communities do not self-police and have a dire problem of particular senseless and indiscriminate murders

s/do not/are not allowed to/

Even Oakland won't allow community policing despite the wishes of the community.