“Confronting Politicus Distractus”

Column by Rev. David M. Felten on 24 September 2020 5 Comments

Recently, a half-dozen young people in our small town organized a peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration. The march was seen by some as an intrusion of threatening other-worldly politics into our predominantly (99.8%) white town and riled up a lot of emotional responses on social media.

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Question

As an active UCC member, I was looking forward to reading Dr. Dornhauer’s response. I came away disappointed, however. Though I agree that certainly there are sociological reasons for it (as alluded to at the end), I believe black-on-black crime is a legitimate problem. I was troubled by the suggestion that to even ask the question or use the phrase is racist and meant to perpetuate the larger narrative of “the black man as a savage beast” (which leads to “shoot-to-kill” justification). Since I am originally from Chicago, I regularly see items about all the shootings, etc. I wince when people say that “they seem to be killing each other” because I think it hurts the Black Lives Matter cause. Citing the statistic that “the offender in a violent crime was of the same race as the victim in 70% of violent incidents involving black victims and 62% of incidents involving whites” is really useless (and probably misleading – a red herring?) unless we know the number of crimes for each category. I don’t think it’s racist to believe the number is higher among blacks. I’d be happy to be shown that I am wrong about this. I DO realize that the problem of racial profiling is real, but I don’t think the perception that “they are killing each other (too)” should be dismissed as racist.

Answer

Dear Susan,

First, let me thank the reader for the question. It is an important one, and affords me an opportunity to be a little more clear about some things.

First, the question about ‘black on black’ crime is not, on its face, racist. There are, as you suggest, legitimate questions to resolve about this phenomenon. I do want to say two things about those legitimate questions.

One: As a white man with a degree in divinity studies, I am not the one who needs to answer them.

Second: Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, economists, and others have looked into this. As long as they claim to know and understand fully the cultural context of black communities in America, it is they whose writings should be consulted here. The full examination of the pressures put on black citizens in a systemically racist culture that produces micro-aggressions, mass incarceration, unfair distribution of and access to wealth and education must be conducted to get at the root of this.

What is racist is the application by whites of the question ‘what about black on black crime’ as a way of deflecting attention from the abuse of power and authority by white cops who racially profile black suspects. When black and brown bodies pile up under conditions that clearly demonstrate that many white police officers carry an already inherent predisposition to fear those black bodies, it is racist to avoid looking into that phenomenon by simply asking “well, what about black on black crime.”

Additionally, most crime is committed within a short radius of one’s home – and that is why most crimes are same-race crimes. Therefore, I suggest, it is, in fact, racist when a white person asks “what about black on black crime” without then having a simultaneous curiosity about white on white crime – which is just as statistically probable.

~ Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer

 

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