Over at blackprof, Prof. Shavar Jeffries makes the provacative argument that perhaps black-on-black crime should be prosecuted as hate crime. To the extent that black criminals hate their racial identity, they may actually be committing crimes against other black people because of this self-hatred.
The concept of “black-on-black crime” should have been retired years ago. There is no “black on black crime.” There is only CRIME. As David Wilson notes in his new book, Inventing Black on Black Violence the concept reflects a trend of pathologizing black behavior. Crimes against property and persons are usually committed by people living in those same neighborhoods. Remember, car jackers, robbers, and the like tend to be poor and uneducated. They also tend to be creatures of habit. If they are going to commit crimes they are likely to commit them in places they are familiar with, and places they have to spend few resources to get to.
Black people remain segregated. We tend to live in neighborhoods with a high proportion of black people, and in neighborhoods that are poorer than white neighborhoods. Black criminals commit crimes in black neighborhoods not because they hate black people, or because they are somehow have different motivations than non-black criminals. They commit crimes in black neighborhoods because they live in black neighborhoods.
A number of well-meaning folks have bought into what Albert Murray calls the fakelore of white supremacy. “Black people have lost their religion, their culture, their god, and many of us by the way we act, we’ve even lost our minds.” I don’t buy it.
I don’t either. By the way, that last quote, where is it from? I think I’ve heard it on a Cube or Public Enemy record.
KB
Khallid Muhammad I believe.
Thanks for injecting some reality and common sense into this discussion. It has always seemed rather patronizing and insulting to hear “experts” discuss the motivations of “black criminals” as if their illegal activities were a symptom of a pathology or deficiency rather than a reflection of their own concious decission.
This I think shows once again the bankruptcy of psychoanalysis in dealing with such issues. By “probing deeper” into the problem it really serves to obscure, diminish and ultimately negate objective realities, leaving the door open to all types of wacko theories on black crime. This junk needs to be fought whenever it pops up and I’m glad you brought your gloves.
peace
RO
“Ed could you point to a newsstory or someplace where we could find an example of someone black who you believe committed a hate crime against another black person?”
Lester. I got your good question on Blackprof.com. I’m posting my reply here. Blackprof.com is holding my post for review, perhaps due to its length or hyperlinks (540 words).
Submitted to Blackprof.com July 21, 2006 @ 12:45
Lester:
I see your point. And, I do think determining the mens rea for someone who had committed a crime that might be categorized as a Black-on-Black hate (bias) crime would be a challenge. My first comment in this thread admitted this much. Although it would be a challenge, psychologists should be able to help us identify which perpetrators should qualify. Perhaps, psychologists could help us develop some form of test/rubric to determine who should qualify.
A news story that could provide an example of this type of crime would have to address the psychological dispositions of the perpetrator in order to provide us with a good example. I know of no news stories like this.
However, I think a chilling scene from the movie Menace II Society is a good example. There is a scene during which the character Kevin “O-Dog,†played by Larenz Tate, kills a crack-addicted drug user, who in a desperate attempt to trade a cheeseburger for drugs, makes an unwelcome sexual advance towards O-Dog.
O-Dog is disgusted by the Black man and doesn’t seem to view the Black drug user as a human being when he murders him in cold blood. Indeed, O-Dog shoots the man, picks up the cheeseburger, and then asks his friends if they would like to eat the burger—no sign of remorse for the man he just murdered. Even his friends accuse him of going overboard by killing the drug user, yet they do little more than call him foolish for his murder. Whether or not he would have killed a White drug user under the same circumstances, only O-Dog knows (perhaps the ease with which he kills an Asian cashier earlier in the movie gives us more evidence). However, if you closely observe his apparent mental state after each of the murders he performs during the movie, the one thing that stands out about his mental state after he kills the Black drug user is his apparent, almost stoic, unaffected demeanor—perhaps, an indicator that he thinks he had just murdered something…not someone.
In addition to the movie example, there are some examples of characters who have this type of criminal psychological disposition in Stanley “Tookie†Williams’ Memoir, Blue Rage, Black Redemption.
There are other books, authored by other former Black criminals, that I think could give us even more insight into the psychological dispositions of Black criminals who have committed the types of Black-on-Black crimes that would qualify as Black-on-Black hate (bias) crimes.
I knew men like O-Dog. And, this is the Black-on-Black perpetrator I have in mind when I think of Shavar’s stigma effect. I know criminals like this still exist. I think they could be identified among and separated from other types of Black criminals. And, I think this type of criminal—even though he or she might be misled by the stigma effect—is the worst type of benighted homoracist and deserves the strongest penalties for his or her most heinous crimes against Blacks.
I do think Shavar is on to something. I would like to see a scholar investigate and write about Shavar’s idea in more depth. If someone would like to do the research and analysis, I would be willing to help.
Ed, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for the example too. I’m going to try to put some more meat on this bone.
The strength of your example is that you’ve got two black characters (and though Menace II Society is obviously fictional, what happened in that scene isn’t beyond the realm of possibility), and you’ve got disdain. O-Dog doesn’t kill the crackhead because O needs something. He doesn’t kill the crackhead because the crackhead threatened O. He kills him seemingly out of disdain, and because he could.
The problem here is that you’re talking about a male crackhead who made sexual advances, and just so happened to be black. His blackness plays no conscious role (and arguably no subconscious role) in O-Dog’s crime. He was killed because he was a male crackhead trying to suck O-Dog’s dick…not because O-Dog hated black people.
This difference is crucial. As I understand hate crimes, the social identity of the victim is a critical component. If the brother in Texas wasn’t black, would he have been dragged through the streets? In the movie, if the crackhead were white, would O have not killed him? You’d have a much better shot at convicting O of some gender-related crime (O probably wouldn’t have killed the crackhead if he were a she.)
In my post, and in my comment on the subject, I said there was no “black on black” crime. There was only crime. What I meant was that the theoretical framework behind crime in black communities is exactly the same as that committed in other communities. The idea of “theoretical parsimony” comes into play here. If you can explain some phenomenon X perfectly well using TWO components (A and B), then that theory is much better than a theory involving three components BECAUSE IT IS SIMPLER.
I’d argue there are no crimes committed by black people against other black people that cannot be explained by general theories of crime.
My other point was that the entire idea of black and black crime is based on the premise of black self-hate. We hate ourselves, hence we kill each other.
There no crime that can be explained by the “self-hate” theory that cannot be explained without using it. You look at white criminals who largely commit crimes against other whites and you see the same type of depravity you do in people like O-Dog. Psychopaths are psychopaths. Further, there is little to no experimental literature that actually indicates that the self-hate concept exists. And there is at least anecdotal evidence to suggest the opposite (check out comparative suicide rates, or bulemia nervosa rates among black women).
The bottom line for me is that we need to shelve stigma as an explanation for ANY type of black behavior. It doesn’t work theoretically, it doesn’t work logically, and it robs black people of their agency. Just because we’ve been victimized doesn’t mean we’re victims.
Thoughts? (My comment ran a bit long. I know how I’d go about proving/disproving the self-hate thing. It wouldn’t be that difficult. Use some form of the IAT on black criminals who committed crimes against blacks…and then use the same test on black criminals who committed the same crimes against whites, and see whether the differences are statistically significant. I’d bet they aren’t.)
Thank you for this good conversation and opportunity to learn.
Your argument that the murder O-Dog committed was more likely the result of his reaction to a male crackhead’s sexual advance is a good one. And, I assent to it. My intuition tells me your explanation is more plausible. Perhaps, we would need to observe O-Dog across a wider variety of violent interactions with Black male and female crackheads in order to determine whether or not he is disposed to killing or harming them because he hates Black crackheads or because he hates crackheads. If he were to treat Black crackheads more violently than White crackheads after similar interactions, then we still would not have enough to prove he hates Blacks; however, I think that would give us more evidence that he has allowed himself to be duped by the stigma effect Shavar described.
For pragmatic purposes—especially in matters related to natural science theoretical constructs—I concur with the use of theoretical parsimony or the Occam’s Razor framework. However, in matters as complex as the human mind, human morality, or human psychology, I think the framework is less useful. I do not assent to your position that “there are no crimes committed by black people against other black people that cannot be explained by general theories of crime.†Yet, it would take me some time to develop a decent counterargument from examples.
“My other point was that the entire idea of black and black crime is based on the premise of black self-hate. We hate ourselves, hence we kill each other.”
I think this interpretation sets up a straw man. A Black needn’t hate all Blacks in order for the Black-on-Black crime premise to work. Perhaps, the idea of Black-on-Black crime is based on the premise that at least one Black hates some types of Blacks more than other types. There are a wide variety of attributes that a single Black perpetrator could use to distinguish between the types of Black people he or she hates or has a bias against. The perpetrator we might accuse of a Black-on-Black hate (bias) crime might only have his or her hateful disposition towards Blacks who have a designated set of attributes—like Black crackheads or Black indigents. If there were Blacks who would quickly harm Black crackheads or Black indigents, yet would hesitate or refrain from harming White crackheads/indigents, or would simply have a less heinous psychological disposition towards White crackheads/indigents than Black crackheads/indigents, then I think there would be some evidence that the Black-specific hate inducing stigma effect were present.
“The bottom line for me is that we need to shelve stigma as an explanation for ANY type of black behavior. It doesn’t work theoretically, it doesn’t work logically, and it robs black people of their agency. Just because we’ve been victimized doesn’t mean we’re victims.”
I think the toughest hurdles for the stigma effect theoretically are the mysteries of the human mind and human psychology. These mysteries would make it difficult for us to apply the theory. However, the difficulty we might face in our efforts to apply it does not entail that the theory has no explanatory power. Its explanatory power is simply made meek by the lack of evidence/data that the social scientific community requires of most of its orthodox theories—until research is conducted that attacks it or supports it.
As far as its logicality goes: I agree that due to lack of evidence the theory may be illogical or impractical as a scientific/empirical induction at this time. However, in the realm of the abstract, it can be deduced using sound premises. Proponents of the stigma effect theory would need to develop means to gather supportive social scientific evidence in order to give the theory more credibility—more explanatory power. You may be right that the evidence is not to be found.
As far as agency/free will goes: I don’t think the stigma effect theory robs Blacks of their agency. If the stigma effect is real, and Blacks choose whether or not to be persuaded or fooled by it, or to act violently towards other Blacks because of it, then their agency is in tact. We hold them accountable for falling for it and acting upon it. We punish them for their choices, for their voluntary heinous homoracist psychological dispositions (mens rea), and for their violent anti-Black crimes (actus reus).
Thanks for your comments Ed, I appreciate them.
As to your first point regarding O-Dog, even if we had a set of comparative cases in which he treated black and white crackheads differently, I could easily generate an alternative hypothesis that does not require stigma. O-Dog treats the black crackhead worse because he knows that inter-racial crime is punished greater than intra-racial crime….particularly when the victim is white and the perp is not.
Parsimony is a rule of the sciences, PERIOD, not just of the natural sciences. As a social scientist I too look for the simplest of explanations. Human beings are complex entities, but not too complex to ferret out using simple(r) theories.
Second, I think you should take a look at the original post again. Jeffries is making a much broader claim than you are–she’s arguing that MUCH of black on black crime could be prosecuted as bias crime. Blacks place less value on black life because of stigma, hence they are more likely to engage in violence against blacks. If I am setting up a straw man, how am I doing it?
Your argument is much more subtle (blacks may hate black gay men), but you are talking about a much smaller subset that in many cases is already prosecutable under bias crime legislation. Black crime against black gay men for example isn’t “black on black hate crime” as much as it is “black on gay hate crime.” It is as complex though in that it depends on a black/non-black comparison–a comparison that I tackle above in regards to O-Dog.
We don’t have to jump through any of these hoops to explain the acts committed against Byrd in Texas. We don’t have to jump through these hoops to prosecute someone like O-Dog. Making routine crime in black communities prosecutable under hate-crime legislation would render the concept of “hate-crime” designed to prosecute acts of what are in effect inter-group terrorism, meaningless.
I apologize for the length of my comments. My comments are extemporaneous, and I’m not a terse writer by nature. To learn the art of terse writing will be one of my foremost law school educational objectives beginning Fall 2007.
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The alternative hypothesis that O-Dog would consider an inter-racial crime as riskier, with respect to potential punishment, could certainly explain O-Dog’s behavior if we were to observe that he were prone to act more violently towards Blacks than Whites—ceteris paribus. And, I think crime prosecution stats reveal that his perception would be accurate. However, since the best evidence that we might gather regarding the true nature of O-Dog’s disposition or reasons for his more violent actions towards Blacks would have to come from our observations of his psychological states, these competing theories/explanations, due to their pseudoscientific foundations, would be at a stalemate with respect to explanatory power in my opinion.
Psychology—while I respect many of the explanatory frameworks it uses—is pseudoscience compared to the natural sciences. And, it is the same pseudoscientific nature of other social sciences, which rely so heavily on assumptions about human psychology and psychological theories, that has encouraged me to view even orthodox, pragmatic, or parsimonious social scientific theories as resting on shakier, less falsifiable, foundations than orthodox theories from the natural sciences. I think this a common position among philosophers of science, and my thinking has been heavily influenced by Karl Popper’s demarcation criteria for science vs. pseudoscience.
Even so, I’ll assent to your arguments that parsimony is the order of the day for all scientific inquiry, natural and social. If a theory predicts just as reliably as, is as equally falsifiable as, and is more economical or practical to apply than its leading competitors, then by all means it should win. Yet, I’m quicker to consider competitor social science theories (and so are many jurors), even if they are less parsimonious, if they are equally falsifiable (or unfalsifiable).
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I also agree that I might have developed a more narrow application of the stigma effect theory than Shavar intended to recommend. However, I think the nuance I brought up was necessary in order to reveal the full potential of his concept. I accused you of the straw man because I think you probably did not give Shavar the most charitable interpretation possible. His original post was terse and ambiguous—leaving room for interpretation. And, I think it is best to argue against the strongest possible interpretation of a view that opposes yours. Doing this results in a more thorough defeat of the opponent’s position if you show it to be untenable.
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I still think Shavar’s stigma effect theory is tenable and could be useful to many prosecutors who might want to use hate (bias) crime laws to help them get the worst Black criminals off the streets for longer periods of time. Your strongest counterargument is not that the stigma effect theory’s explanatory power is absent, but that the theory is less parsimonious than other theories that could be used to explain the motivations behind the same types of crimes. And, I think you are right about its parsimony relative to other theories. That argument however, for reasons I explained above, is not as forceful as an argument that would be based on evidence from head-to-head tests of the explanatory power and falsifiablity of two competing social science theories.
The best social science theories are those that have the most explanatory power and the most credible combination of parsimony and falsifiability. Are there any tools that could be used to allow the theories that would compete with Shavar’s stigma effect theory to demonstrate superior explanatory power, superior parsimony, and superior falsifiability? If IATs and one-on-one interviews with skilled psychoanalysts are the best tools we could employ, then even the tools we would use to compare the theories would be questionable.
The weaknesses related to falsifiability that are inherent in most, if not all, social scientific theories that could be used to explain the mental states of Black-on-Black criminals would give a skilled prosecutor the opening he or she would need to wield the stigma effect theory in an effort to stick the Black-on-Black hate (bias) crime law to the most heinous Black criminals who mercilessly or disdainfully murder other Blacks. I view the availability of this option as an added benefit of using the stigma effect theory.
“Making routine crime in black communities prosecutable under hate-crime legislation would render the concept of “hate-crime†designed to prosecute acts of what are in effect inter-group terrorism, meaningless.â€
I can’t follow your reasoning here without making some assumptions about your premises. If you would fill in some of the premises you used to arrive at your conclusion, I might understand your argument better. And, I might assent or present a counterargument for your consideration.
For me as far as the science in social science goes the question is simple–does it predict phenomenon? I know that if I split a group of whites into two similar groups and expose them to a doctored newstory about welfare, manipulating only the photograph (showing an image of black women in one, and an image of white women in the other), those exposed to the black woman welfare story will be less likely to support increasing welfare benefits and more likely to blame the woman for her condition.
That’s as scientific as they come.
Your point about making counter-arguments is a strong one, one that I’ll give serious consideration to in the future.
When I say that the stigma effect adds nothing, I am saying that the stigma effect is non-existent. Take the following two equations:
X + Y=A
X + Y + Z=A
Assume that X and Y and A possess the same values in both equations. We don’t have to know their “real” values to know that Z=0. I AM saying that the stigma effect is non-existent. I know how you WOULD find it if you were to look…but I know that it wouldn’t be there if you did. The stigma effect is an intellectual creation used (at its best) to garner political resources for black people.
Thinking more about this, I believe that Prof. Jeffries may have actually been making the stigma argument more as a way to incarcerate black felons than as a way to scientifically figure out the causes of their behavior. The stigma effect to the extent it can be proved in a court of law would be a legal strategy used for the purpose of getting the worst black criminals off of the streets.
While I do think such a tool would be useful to prosecutors, I do not believe it is one that SHOULD be used.
More later.