Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.
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For more than a decade, people have been talking about the concept of black-on-black crime without really thinking about what they are saying. They view black-on-black crime as a unique and particularly heinous development in black America. They never say exactly what pattern of crime we should hope for instead. White-on-black crime? Black-on-white crime?
What the people lamenting the occurrence of black-on-black crime do not realize is that most whites in the U.S. are victimized by other whites, but one never hears anyone talking about white-on-white crime. In Mexico, Mexican Hispanics are mainly victimized by—guess who?—other Hispanics, yet there is no hand-wringing over an idea of “Hispanic-on-Hispanic crime.” In China, Asian Chinese victimize—you guessed it—other Asian Chinese, but, again, there is no shock over the fact that Asians would prey on other Asians. Only black Americans have the privilege of being condemned for a nearly universal phenomenon.
Black-on-black crime is a ridiculous concept. It has emerged and is sustained by the strength of anti-black sentiment in American culture. It is certainly legitimate to be concerned about the high rates of “street” crime in black communities. The next Black Directions report will address this very issue. But it is wrongheaded to be surprised that blacks mainly victimize blacks. Most “street” crime across the globe is intra-racial.
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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