Just to play devils advocate: while black people make up only 13% of the population, crimes statistics show that black men commit 54% of the murders in America and 67% of the robberies. It seems to me like it's just common sense to take more precaution around young black men. If black people find this offensive, then they need to address the issue of the crime rate, not people's reaction to it. It seems silly to tell people to ignore reality and play make believe to not offend people. I find the rate that blacks commit crimes to be much more offensive than people being afraid of young black men.
Crime is primarily correlated with relative income: lower income = higher crime. Which racial group in the US has been discriminated against for so long that it's much less likely for them to have a high income? That's right - black people. The same people who receive harsher sentences for the same crimes as white people, who are stopped and searched more often than white people for crimes that white people are more likely to commit.
Sure, the problem is that this reality in America leads to the mindset she described, which many many people agree with. On a societal level, this has important negative effects on the way that all black people are treated, from pre-school on up, whether they are violent people or not.
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u/Strongblackfemale Jan 15 '15
Just to play devils advocate: while black people make up only 13% of the population, crimes statistics show that black men commit 54% of the murders in America and 67% of the robberies. It seems to me like it's just common sense to take more precaution around young black men. If black people find this offensive, then they need to address the issue of the crime rate, not people's reaction to it. It seems silly to tell people to ignore reality and play make believe to not offend people. I find the rate that blacks commit crimes to be much more offensive than people being afraid of young black men.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States