I had a totally different take on the Kareem joke, which, in my mind, fell flat. I heard it as a kind of comedic punching up, where the point was to illustrate that whites are morally weaker. That is to say that white shooters are crazy and indiscriminate, while blacks kill with a specific target for vengeance or honor. However, unless invoked in clear act of self-defense, the implication that the latter killing is somehow morally justifiable relative to any other killing is absurd. Maybe the humor was lost on me, but it didn't appear that Sharrod was kidding. That is, he intended to line the joke with some basic truths as he understands them.
I'm not sure that whites being over-represented in mass murders is necessarily used to highlight their moral weakness relative to Blacks. If empirically speaking whites are in fact over-represented in such murders, I do think there are probably interesting sociological reasons why the kid who shoots up a school and kills dozens of people is disproportionately more likely to be white than Black. So I think it's an interesting phenomenon worth noting and trying to understand. That's also what I assumed Sherrod was referring to when he tried to deflect some of the criticism of Black violence.
That being said, these mass murders are basically just a drop in the ocean and obviously overall per capita homicide rates are still far higher in this country among Blacks than among whites, the difference being perhaps as high as an order of magnitude.
There's definitely something going on, and I'm sure there is research out there. The mass shooting cases vary, but on the spectrum of murder, the perpetrators skew toward legally insane relative to the more common "cold-blooded" killings that occur in context of poverty or gang activity. I mentioned serial killers in my response to your other comment, almost all of whom are white.
In any case, I'm not inclined to give Sharrod Small the credit needed to conclude that he was attempting to bring awareness to an "interesting sociological" phenomenon, but maybe that's just me. I've heard the argument so many times before as a deflection of criticism, and the notion circulates widely in the form of online memes. We clearly both agree that these mass murders, though horrendous, represent a small percentage of all homicides, the majority of which can be attributed to black-on-black violence, and that the latter doesn't get the scrutiny it deserves. That's where I think the morality play comes in: we are meant to understand that somehow when white people kill, it is much worse, or that poor blacks shouldn't be held to same standards of humanity.
Right, that was the point of the main joke. What struck me was the one-liner within the main joke. It stood out because it's something I've mulled over before, and it's not something I've heard discussed. While in the joke the two Kareems were schoolmates, the point easily translates to regular street violence. Maybe "snitches get stitches" isn't the entire story.
I don't want to overanalyze, but I thought it was a good example of the premise Dr. Loury first laid out when he announced these events.
Gotcha. Yeah, I was disappointed not to see it called out by Glenn. I thought immediately of Sowell's *Black Rednecks*.
Overall, the comics exhibited a kind of hip-hop braggadocio ("I dunked on you and fucked your girl", the constant interjections, etc.) that was difficult to engage with seriously and smacked of a mentality in which street violence might be glorified. I guess I just expected Glenn to have selected comedians who were above it. At the very least, given the popularity of this kind of posturing in comedy and music, it was a good demonstration of how easily honor culture and the ideas that go with it are reinforced.
I had a totally different take on the Kareem joke, which, in my mind, fell flat. I heard it as a kind of comedic punching up, where the point was to illustrate that whites are morally weaker. That is to say that white shooters are crazy and indiscriminate, while blacks kill with a specific target for vengeance or honor. However, unless invoked in clear act of self-defense, the implication that the latter killing is somehow morally justifiable relative to any other killing is absurd. Maybe the humor was lost on me, but it didn't appear that Sharrod was kidding. That is, he intended to line the joke with some basic truths as he understands them.
I'm not sure that whites being over-represented in mass murders is necessarily used to highlight their moral weakness relative to Blacks. If empirically speaking whites are in fact over-represented in such murders, I do think there are probably interesting sociological reasons why the kid who shoots up a school and kills dozens of people is disproportionately more likely to be white than Black. So I think it's an interesting phenomenon worth noting and trying to understand. That's also what I assumed Sherrod was referring to when he tried to deflect some of the criticism of Black violence.
That being said, these mass murders are basically just a drop in the ocean and obviously overall per capita homicide rates are still far higher in this country among Blacks than among whites, the difference being perhaps as high as an order of magnitude.
There's definitely something going on, and I'm sure there is research out there. The mass shooting cases vary, but on the spectrum of murder, the perpetrators skew toward legally insane relative to the more common "cold-blooded" killings that occur in context of poverty or gang activity. I mentioned serial killers in my response to your other comment, almost all of whom are white.
In any case, I'm not inclined to give Sharrod Small the credit needed to conclude that he was attempting to bring awareness to an "interesting sociological" phenomenon, but maybe that's just me. I've heard the argument so many times before as a deflection of criticism, and the notion circulates widely in the form of online memes. We clearly both agree that these mass murders, though horrendous, represent a small percentage of all homicides, the majority of which can be attributed to black-on-black violence, and that the latter doesn't get the scrutiny it deserves. That's where I think the morality play comes in: we are meant to understand that somehow when white people kill, it is much worse, or that poor blacks shouldn't be held to same standards of humanity.
Right, that was the point of the main joke. What struck me was the one-liner within the main joke. It stood out because it's something I've mulled over before, and it's not something I've heard discussed. While in the joke the two Kareems were schoolmates, the point easily translates to regular street violence. Maybe "snitches get stitches" isn't the entire story.
I don't want to overanalyze, but I thought it was a good example of the premise Dr. Loury first laid out when he announced these events.
Gotcha. Yeah, I was disappointed not to see it called out by Glenn. I thought immediately of Sowell's *Black Rednecks*.
Overall, the comics exhibited a kind of hip-hop braggadocio ("I dunked on you and fucked your girl", the constant interjections, etc.) that was difficult to engage with seriously and smacked of a mentality in which street violence might be glorified. I guess I just expected Glenn to have selected comedians who were above it. At the very least, given the popularity of this kind of posturing in comedy and music, it was a good demonstration of how easily honor culture and the ideas that go with it are reinforced.