Every racist’s favorite word is Chicago. I’m serious. Even moreso than the n-word, because — even though they do love to say it — a lot of them aren’t completely stupid and they know if they say it in front of the wrong person they may in fact get popped in the mouth. Nobody is throwing a punch over “but Chicago!”
(But they might soon, and I would love to see it.)
Part of the reason Black people don’t get as upset at “but Chicago!” is…we kind of agree, amongst ourselves, in our own community, AWAY from the white eyeballs who are reading this post right now. I would feel like a traitor saying that all out loud, but this is about to get good y’all. Stay with me here.
Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) just blessed me with a pile of information that I never knew existed, never bothered to look for, and never even formed a concept around in my mind. I retweeted his thread on Twitter (so if you have Twitter, just go there and read it and retweet it), but I know a lot of my followers are social media averse and a Twitter thread isn’t most folks’ preferred method of receiving information. But I just want to be clear: all of the statistics and figures I’m about to drop down here were absolutely swiped from that thread. I just wanna give these numbers as much exposure as I can because I think it’s a very important understanding of the facts.
We’ll start with the factual information that makes this conversation uncomfortable to have in mixed company: Black people make up 13% of the population and commit 50% of the murders.
Even starting at that “fact” you should keep in mind: 1) that statistic is for arrests for murder and 2) when that information is presented, it comes across as though each murder is being committed by a different Black person, when in reality, criminals usually commit many crimes.
But Michael has decided to give White America and the justice system those two points, that every Black person arrested for murder actually killed someone AND every murder victim was killed by a different Black person. That is a lot of Black murderers Michael is prepared to offer up for this discussion, and we appreciate that because it gives white deflectors nowhere to go later. Now take these two charts together, murders vs population breakdown.
There are 47 million black people in the US.
— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) June 4, 2020
So, even if a different black person committed every murder, it means 99.989497% of black people DIDN'T commit a murder that year.
That also means 99.994923% of white people didn't commit a murder. pic.twitter.com/WzOxm3Zf8E
Honestly, he could’ve stopped right there and it was enough to sit me down, shamefully, and examine why I thought the percentage would be much higher. The way crime in context with race is framed in this country, we all — not just white people — grow up thinking Black criminals are a blight upon the land. From Hollywood to the local news, most of the violent criminals we see on television are Black. Most of the good guys (and not good in a specifically Law vs Crime sense, but just main characters in a romantic comedy or drama or 30 minute sitcom) are white. From the time we’re born, we’re brought up on a steady diet of visual media where there is a spectrum of white people presented to us alongside a much more narrow view of Black people. It seeps into your psyche without thinking, and most of us, regardless of color, are laboring under the impression that a much higher percentage of Black people are criminals than the percentage of white people.
It’s BASICALLY THE SAME. And part of the reason we have that impression is due to the overreporting of crime on television. Crime is down. It keeps going down. You were more likely to be abducted and murdered in 1960 than you are now, but all the movies set decades ago show kids riding their bikes all day and traipsing through the woods without a care in the world. Today, we have busybody parents calling the cops on single mothers who leave their kid in the food court (within eyesight) while they have a job interview at the mall so they can provide for their child.
Anyway, back to the facts.
If you add up all the crime, it means 94.6% of black people don't commit ANY crime in a given year and 95.8% of white people don't get arrested.
— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) June 4, 2020
So why are black people considered to be criminals?
Because you're racist, Karen.
Now that we got that outta the way, those facts may not completely shut down the conversation. When white people seek to discredit Black Lives Matter, they use “but Chicago!” as a way to say “Black people kill each other way more than cops do, so why don’t you talk about that huh!?”
First of all, crime itself is largely INTRAracial, meaning most victims of a crime are the same race as the criminal. 89% of Black murder victims are killed by Black murderers, and 81% of white murder victims are killed by white murderers. (x) So that’s a wash, and there’s your answer to that part of the argument.
As far as discussing it, We The Black Community absolutely discuss crime in our community, far more than white people do, even though, as we saw earlier, we have the same percentage of murderers in our ranks. We’re always talking about it and part of the reason is we have the same perception you do, that the Black murder rate is a much bigger problem than it really is. The media has told us that Black on Black crime is out of control and the news keeps interviewing white people who wonder why we never talk about it. White people don’t hear about it because we don’t need to have our inside conversations outside. There are a lot of things I talk about with Black people that I don’t talk about with white people, and that’s just on a small interpersonal scale. I have a whole Black Men’s Brunch I started because we like to have conversations away from y’all.
Pause for a bomb photo op, because the sun was blessing us on this day in particular:
Also, none of the men in this picture are murderers. And we are smiling. Look! Smiling Joyful Black Men on your screen! What a moment, right?
So there we have it y’all. Those are the facts you need to present to your racist friends and family members who only care about Chicago when it’s time to trample over the validity of Black Lives Matter. Memorize them and keep them in your pocket because this particular myth about race and crime is one we can easily do away with.
Numbers don’t lie. It’s all in the perception of those numbers. Change the viewpoint.
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