Jason Y writes:
The black crime tendency might be due to high testosterone. However, with religious training, that can be brought under control.
Could be a variety of factors:
- High testosterone
- Short time preference (see the bling phenomenon)
- High impulsiveness
- Relatively lower IQ, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean but less so in the US and UK.
Probably a perfect storm. At least some of those factors may be biological. But Blacks are not doomed; they only inherit a tendency towards these things. There are certain environments that can greatly reduce many typical Black pathologies. Blacks do great under Islam. Pretty low crime and violence rates, most of them work hard, and the squalor is very much reduced. You go to a Black Muslim state in Africa, and things are much more sane and orderly than you might find in your typical Christian-animist West African hellhole entropic Road Warrior state. Blacks also do great under Communism. Cuba is full of Blacks, but the violent crime rate there is low and Havana is said to be the safest large city in Latin America in terms of violent crime. Black people are not genetically doomed to chaos, squalor, idleness, doping and drinking, and massive crime. It ends up that way a lot, but there are certain environments you can put Blacks in that really shape them up a lot. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.
Nothing is stupider than US black ‘culture’. If your culture values violence as a solution to problem solving, crass materialism, instant gratification, sports above education, Bentleys and bling over benevolence, you are going to have a stupid, underachieving society. Blacks raised with the values of, say Jews or Koreans will probably do as well as anyone else.
That is not “black culture”. What I think you are attempting to refer to is ghetto culture. Most American black people don’t live in the fucking ghetto. Quit painting us all with a broad brush, it gets tiresome. Time and time again.
It makes for good entertainment, but like Hollywood, it’s not the life of average Americans.
Blacks raised with the values of, say Jews or Koreans will probably do as well as anyone else. So why don’t they then? Why do they find it far easier to ‘earn’ money via drug dealing, stealing then selling things @ a nominal lower price, being a sports star or smuggling? again, it comes back to things such as instant gratification,high testosterone, short time spans.
Has nothing to do with “instant gratification, high testosterone, and short time spans”. It’s simple economics. In the inner city, unemployment amongst males can be as high as 50%. There simply is no work. We have seen major shifts in the economy over the last few generations. Much of the manufacturing base has gone overseas while cheap labor has flooded the country lowering wages for blue collar workers here. In the 1950s, a poor young black man might have been able to get trade job in construction to support his family. Or worked in meat-packing or dry-walling. Now these jobs are pretty much entirely taken over by illegal immigrants working below minimum wage. Other factory and industrial jobs provided at least livable salaries for people of humble background. These are jobs that have left our shores never to return. So you grow up young and poor and you either get a job at McDonalds making $6/ hr or selling drugs making $500 a day. You can guess what many people are going to do.
Damn near all inner city violence stems from the drug trade. Most gang shootings happen over conflicts of drug territory. Or someone that didn’t pay up. Most of this violence isn’t random.
I don’t think we can realistic address inner-city violence without talking about the massive unemployment rate in these communities. When there are no jobs, people resort to drugs and crime to make ends meet. You see the same in rural white communities. Look at all the meth labs in these poor white communities. There may be no other viable work options in these communities than Walmart and whipping up crank.
This is an issue I’d like to see publicly addressed more. I’m sure you can find a correlation between increased drug usage and related violence with the decline in working class jobs that pay a living wage.
What’s funny about this comment is the fact that the right wing is now protesting increased wages for fast food.
Tulio, you read about the candy bar study. The kids in that study are only 6 years old. It’s now been repeated so many times in the US and the Caribbean that they don’t even want to do the study anymore.
You are pouring cold water on the shorter time span thing, but don’t those candy bar studies prove for an absolute fact that Blacks tend to have shorter time preference than Whites? I mean I would think the debate would be over at this point.
You are also pouring cold water on the testosterone stuff. However, the data available seem pretty conclusive that Black males age 12-32 have higher testosterone than Whites (after age 32 it goes down to parity or even lower than Whites). So it would seem to be proven that young Black males have higher testosterone than young non-Black males.
Now that it is proven that Blacks have shorter time preference and the males have higher testosterone, what makes you so certain, Tulio, that these facts have no real world implications for Black folks. What makes you so certain that these biological facts are not implicated some of the problems of Black culture in the US? Isn’t it possible that some Black problems may be related to this biological data?
Tulio, it is true that there is some comparison of working class Blacks and Whites in that in both communities, their jobs are taking off and few decent alternatives are left, and hence both communities are becoming drug addled – crack in the Black community and meth in the White community.
However, I lived in a White town that had a serious meth problem for 18 years. The violence level in that town was about zero, and there was little property crime either. A lot of people didn’t even lock their car doors.
I don’t think the bling phenomenon is low time preference. Its more a narcissistic showiness, personal adornment that shows wealth and status.
Well it could be related to that in that you spend the money instead of saving it but i’m not convinced blacks do have a lower time preference if you control for IQ anyway.
Well that’s MOST people. I don’t feel like digging up the stats right now, but aren’t the majority of Americans just a few paychecks from bankruptcy? The economy was crashed a few years ago by a bunch of people buying houses they couldn’t afford with floating rate interest only loans. All that consumer spending from taking out home equity lines of credit was the only thing keeping the economy afloat prior to the downturn. Economist widely recognize that America is a low-savings/high-consumption culture. No need to single blacks out here when it’s basically everyone that participates in this keep up with the Jones lifestyle.
White folks are not really known for the “bling” phenomenon, though they do have their own forms of conspicuous consumption. And you don’t often hear of Whites getting a windfall of money and then blowing it all right away and then standing around broke saying, “Duhhhh. What happened to all my money?”
Blacks do well under communal authoritarian regimes. However, Islam is only authoritarian. Therefore, blacks are not living to their full potential under Islam, especially black women. For instance, look at Yemen. What a poor place it is (it even has child brides). Now, it might be safe, but still a terrible environment. Islam does nothing, but foster a religious tyranny, whether or not, the locals have oil riches or not. Look at Saudi Arabia, it has lots of money, but look at all the lashings and backwardness.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that violent crime has fallen off a cliff, starting a little over 20 years ago. It is a remarkable phenomenon. It must be environmental; what else could it be? Changed genetics? Lower testosterone levels? Lengthened time preferences?
The most promising thesis is Rick Nevin’s:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073.html
Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 8, 2007; Page A02
[…snip…]
“[E]conomist Rick Nevin [holds] that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. [His theory] offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children’s exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives. What makes Nevin’s work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries. ‘It is stunning how strong the association is,’ Nevin said in an interview. ‘Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead.'”
[…snip…]
“Nevin says his data not only explain the decline in crime in the 1990s, but the rise in crime in the 1980s and other fluctuations going back a century. His data from multiple countries, which have different abortion rates, police strategies, demographics and economic conditions, indicate that lead is the only explanation that can account for international trends.”
————————————————————–
sciencedirect.com
Physiology & Behavior
Volume 99, Issue 2, 9 February 2010, Pages 260-268
doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2009.09.001
Environmental causes of violence
David O. Carpenter a and Rick Nevin
Abstract
Violent and anti-social behavior is usually attributed to social factors, including poverty, poor education, and family instability. There is also evidence that many forms of violent behavior are more frequent in individuals of lower IQ. The role of exposure to environmental contaminants has received little attention as a factor predisposing to violent behavior. However a number of environmental exposures are documented to result in a common pattern of neurobehavioral effects, including lowered IQ, shortened attention span, and increased frequency of antisocial behavior. This pattern is best described for children exposed to lead early in life, but a similar pattern is seen upon exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls and methyl mercury. Although not as extensively studied, similar decrements in IQ are seen upon exposure to arsenic and secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure. Prenatal and postnatal SHS exposure is also associated with increased rates of conduct disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity. Recent evidence suggests that temporal trends in rates of violent crime in many nations are consistent with earlier preschool blood lead trends, with a lag of about 20 years. These ecologic correlations are consistent with many controlled studies suggesting that lead-exposed children suffer irreversible brain alterations that make them more likely to commit violent crimes as young adults. If this pattern is true for lead and other contaminants, the most effective way to fight crime may be to prevent exposure to these contaminants.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Some also attribute it to widespread abortion. Babies that would’ve been raised in terrible homes with low-investment parentage might have been aborted thus never had the chance to grow into criminals. I also think a lot of the gangsta culture died down since the late 80s to mid 90s. Not that there aren’t still gangs, it’s just not as popular amongst teens as it was. The gangsta lifestyle fad has died down dramatically. All those gangsta rappers that were huge back in the day have nothing to do with that scene anymore. They moved on to things like production and business(e.g. Dr. Dre, 50Cent).
Also, I have a generally positive outlook on crime. I think the worst is behind us and I really don’t think it will come back to early 90s levels anytime soon.
Nice stuff, and WB to the site Alan!