While it is great that people are paying more attention to hate crimes, it is disappointing that it is only now, when Asian's are being the victims, that there is a media outcry.
As I am sure Mr. Loury knows, Blacks are 5x more likely to be the victim of hate crimes. Jewish people, and LGBTQ+ people are even more likely and Trans people are the most likely.
Why is it that only now we are seeing stories in the media about this? I think you need to think a little bit harder and consider the extent that we are all awash in propaganda all the time that tells us what to think, how to act and what to feel. Who does this narrative serve and why are they pushing it? Billionaires don't buy money losing media properties because they are magnanimous. They want to control the narrative.
Asians are still the ethnicity least likely to be victims of violent crime. That's at least partially why there has never been an outcry over anti-Asian violence.
What difference does it make what the race of the perpetrator of violence is? Most violent crimes against Asians are committed by Whites as well as most hate crimes. I don't doubt that Blacks are overrepresented in Black on Asian violence. It's really beside the point though.
Asians have been the smallest racial demographic for a long time. That's the simplest explanation why there has been little reporting on Asians. There is also the more complicated answer that Asians have not much political power until recently and there is a certain disenfranchisement that comes from being a first generation immigrant. Please don't take offense but I will say what I observe from the Asian community in San Francisco and my wife's family, who immigrated from Vietnam as part of the Vietnamese diaspora: there is a cultural taboo about speaking out. I was taught the Vietnamese phrase "Cái đinh thì ra sẽ bị đóng xuống" which roughly means "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" and I can see how she and her family avoid political entanglement at all costs. Spending time in a reeducation camp can do that to you. This is not intended as victim blaming in any way but I can see that it has taken a while for Asians to find their voice. The newer generations are more willing to speak out. I know my mixed-race daughters are very vocal and involved politically.
It is true that there is very little Asian representation at all in our culture. I remember how excited my daughters were when "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" came out, and there were finally Asian superheros out there with their own movies. I live in the Bay Area bubble where we have a pretty significant Asian representation politically and economically, but I know that it is not like that anywhere else in the US.
I deleted my initial comment but since you responded to it I guess I'll summarize my original thoughts more succinctly. Basically I argued that your observation was totally backwards, that rather than Black on Asian violence being over-exaggerated by the mainstream media, it was in fact downplayed and oftentimes ignored.
While Black on Asian crime vastly predates the current pandemic, the recent reporting on such crimes over the past year bizarrely tried to argue that they were fundamentally about "white supremacy", which I said made zero sense. My argument was that if there was in fact propaganda being pushed by the media it was basically the opposite of what you were claiming it to be. I also stated that I wasn't a huge fan of pitting different groups against one another in our racial discourse, while conceding that America has various social issues affecting different ethnic groups and that the particular issue of Black on Asian crime was obviously not the only one worth discussing or necessarily the most pressing even. Nevertheless, I believe that if something is wrong then it's wrong simple as that.
Your claim about Asians being the least likely to be victims of violence ignores the fact that most violent crime is intra-racial. Most Black victims of violent crime are victimized by other Blacks. My guess is that if you examined inter-racial acts of violence, it's probably far more likely that someone Asian is victimized by someone Black than vice versa. A previous commenter suggested the disparity might be two orders of magnitude but I'll admit I haven't really dug into this data in depth.
Claiming that overrepresentation of ethnic groups in a certain category of crime is irrelevant strikes me as disingenuous. If relative overrepresentation/underrepresentation is irrelevant then why are we even having conversations about different groups being underrepresented at elite high schools or overrepresented among police killings? It was frequently pointed out in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing that out of the roughly ~1,000 civilians killed by police each year about a quarter of those were Black. Despite Blacks being overrepresented by almost 2x relative to their population percentage among police deaths, the fact remains that about half of all people killed by the police each year are white. Yet somehow I have a feeling that this overrepresentation isn't something you'd find to be irrelevant.
I am not trying to argue you with you and I find most of your points to be correct. I just want to add some nuance and perhaps expand on what is being said by both of us here.
I am sure your claims about intra-racial violence are true or mostly true. But so what? You state that you don't want to pit races against each other in racial discourse but then you do that. Maybe you are just responding to my statements. Blacks are far more likely to be victims of violent crime. That's a terrible thing and can't really be ignored by pointing out the fact that most crime is intra-racial. What is the point here? That Black victims of crime are deserving because they happen to be the same race as their attacker? Maybe you are saying that the root causes of Black criminality are within the Black community and therefore the responsibility of that community to solve, but I don't want to put words in your mouth though. It is too easy to argue straw men. Let me know why you talk about this and why it is relevant to the larger conversation. I am doubt the victim of a mugging is less traumatized if the perp is the same race as they are.
Most perpetrators of hate crimes are White, that is pretty easy to prove via FBI statistics. I haven't seen any hard data on which race is committing hate crimes on whom, though that would be interesting if you have it.
What I have noticed on my local media is that the same videos of Black people attacking Asians, usually elderly is being played over and over again. I watch the 10 o'clock news and read the local paper, The Chronicle. Few if any of these are "hate crimes" by the definition of the term, they are either random attacks or muggings. They are certainly terrible, but why are they being played over and over. Why are there 100 muggings a day in the Bay Area but only the ones with Asian victims are on the news? Who is pushing this agenda and why? I have my own ideas and I will tell you them here. They are certainly just speculation on my part but let's call them educated guesses given what I have seen in the past, with the constant media manipulation we have seen over and over again. I can give examples of other manipulation if you want. The marches to war are the most blatant examples.
The billionaires who control the agenda in the country prefer that we are scared and divided. They know that income inequality has been increasing over the last 50 years. They know that social media has loosened their grip on the narrative. They know that Trump has stirred up class resentment among working class Whites. They are terrified of class consciousness. They found the BLM protests to be also threatening as they started to build racial solidarity. So they are using the old proven tactic of splitting us racially. If they can convince Asians that voting for "law and order" tactics and to be opposed to racial solidarity with Blacks that this works to their longer term agenda, which is to expand and consolidate their power.
You can properly dismiss this paragraph above as the rantings of a leftist if you want. I am a middle aged white guy in tech though, who has studied at Caltech and UC Berkeley. I am a Veteran and an ex-paratrooper. I am not some starry eyed idealist. On the contrary, I consider myself mostly a cynical realist. I subscribe to The Economist and WSJ, along with WashPo and NYT. The latter I find increasingly irrelevant as they just push the mainstream liberal narrative. I frequent substacks like this one to expand the range of opinions available to me. I don't think that either party represents me well and have always been kind of a disaffected lefty. Growing up really poor affects your views, though most of my rural poor White relatives are all Trump voters. Getting an education and moving out certainly impacted me, as well as my time at Berkeley.
I will address your white supremacy statement in a separate comment as I think it is its own discussion and I don't want to muddy the waters by making you think that I find these claims to be a good use of language. I certainly understand the argument and find some value, but the language they use is so deceptive as to be useless, especially when communicating with people outside their ingroup.
Thanks for hanging with me this far, if you have. I really am trying hard to have a discussion with you in good faith, though given our differing perspectives it is hard.
We can have a philosophical debate about why it matters whether crime is intra-racial versus inter-racial, but even if I were to concede that it shouldn't in matter in theory, in practice it definitely matters. The fact that a white or Asian person is perhaps 1-2 orders of magnitude more likely to be violently victimized by a Black person than vice versa is not a trivial or irrelevant fact in my opinion. I don't believe it can be dismissed by pointing out that numerically Black on Black crime swamps Black on non-Black crime.
As to who bears responsibility for Black on Black crime, I'm not sure if I would state it in exactly the way you did above, but if challenged to articulate my position I might very broadly go down the high level path you alluded to. I find my own position to be roughly aligned with the sentiments that Glenn and Heather MacDonald expressed during their most recent conversation.
What I find to be ironic is that you seem to be arguing that we shouldn't be so fixated on Black on Asian crime because the real problem is Black on Black crime. Possibly one of the few things that gets ignored or downplayed to the same extent as Black on Asian crime is Black on Black crime. As far as I can tell, the mainstream media loves fixating on violent interactions where the perpetrator is a white person in a position of authority, i.e. a cop, and the victim is a Black civilian. I imagine this is because, as John McWhorter points out, progressives are obsessed with power disparities and when there's perceived to be such a disparity in power between the perpetrator and the victim, those incidents somehow feed into a larger narrative about societal inequity. I have to imagine though that the degree of media focus on this particular category of violent interaction must also be 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than its actual occurrence among all violent interactions.
From what I can tell your argument seems to be that non-Asian on Asian crime isn't that big a deal because overall Asians are the least likely to be victims of violent crime. However the reason why this is true is because Asian on Asian violent crime is exceedingly low. By contrast Black on Black crime is exceedingly high. It seems incredibly perverse to me to argue that Black on Asian crime is not a big deal because Asian on Asian crime is so low. Because Asian Americans are relatively well off who cares right about the gruesome incidents of elderly Asians being viciously assaulted in San Francisco or New York City? I'd like to consider myself to be open-minded and enlightened, but that's a tough argument for me to swallow.
There is a lot of unreported Asian on Asian domestic violence. I don't know how much there is, but there is a strong community incentive to hide this. I know this goes against my narrative that Asians are the least likely victims of crime, but it something I just started thinking about. My mother in law and my wife were both victims. I don't think there are any good statics on this, at least none that I can find.
It's pretty obvious that there is bias throughout the criminal justice system. Poor people, and especially poor Blacks are overpoliced compared to the general population. I know that my father, my step father and all my my brothers, including myself, have been arrested. Mine was for civil disobedience so it is kind of different but still.
Black people are more likely to be policed, more likely to be stopped by the police, more likely to be arrested when stopped, more likely to be charged when arrested and more likely to be convicted when charged and more likely to be be sentenced when convicted. Blacks and Whites are equally likely to do drugs but Black men are 3-5 times more likely to end up with a conviction from it. With devastating impacts on Black communities.
But it probably doesn't explain all the difference in arrest and conviction rates. Black communities are definitely more violent, I can speak from personal experience. And murder rates don't lie. One of the reasons I am here is because Dr. Loury is willing to say the tough things about the Black community that only an educated Black elder can be allowed to say. We can do what we can to reduce racism but the Black community itself has to want to change too.
Violence against anyone is abhorrent. Society should do what it can to reduce violence. I think we should do what is proven to reduce violence and that we should focus our efforts on those things most likely to get bang for our buck. Of course we should care about all victims of violence, including your horrific experience.
I was happy to read this well-articulated sentiment from someone in Glenn's Asian readership. In spite of Amy Wax's recent claims about Asians and their proclivity for wokeness, I have found that Asians as a group — and successful immigrants in general — typically take an agnostic approach to politics. I have interpreted the Asian Hate narrative as an attempt by the far left to indoctrinate Asians into the victimology cult, and I worry very much for the end game of such a venture. The crude and preposterous aggregation of Asian ethnicities aside, it can only serve to idly shift blame while pitting all groups against each other.
The narrative goes hand-in-hand with the deflection of realities around homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction. Here is a perfect example from my local blotter:
Why would anyone want to politicize a homeless man screaming obscenities as a hate crime? To cover your ass? To divert attention elsewhere?
I posed have this question to Glenn and John before. It’s an important one — and it goes indirectly to Glenn’s position on incarceration. What should one make of the current discourse on addiction and mental health with regard to policy that targets the escalating urban homeless crisis (particularly in cities with progressive politics and warm weather)? How does one square ones views with the likelihood that blacks are disproportionally represented among the mentally ill? Might this fact reasonably lead one to raise race-based objections to certain practical mitigation policies, especially those that involve limiting personal freedoms?
And by the way, as media outlets increasingly feel the need to use racial descriptors as appositives (e.g., “an Asian woman”), does anyone else hear the tag on Stevie Wonder’s “Black Man”?
The Asian Hate narrative seems to me to be an attempt by the powerful people who control the media to turn Asians and Blacks against each other and especially encourage Asians to vote for more law and order candidates with more police and jails. I really can't see how the constant reporting on violence against Asians support any kind of Left agenda. That is not what is happening and there is no reason to believe that it would.
Black-Asian antagonism is nothing new. In fact, if you want to see good old-fashioned naked racism, just talk to someone on the street in the Bay Area immigrant community. What is unprecedented is the arrival of a narrative that links crime against Asians (and by crude extension, Pacific Islander people) with "white supremacy". It is absolutely divisive, but I don't see the same designs at work -- a media power play, for instance -- that you do.
I just commented on an old podcast but, it is very important that you read it. I want to help. It was Race and Classics from 7 Months ago. I will pay the subscription if you like, but this is imperative.
It's tremendously satisfying that when you sort through all the extraneous stuff, George Lee. Heather MacDonald, Amy Wax and Glenn Loury are all pretty much on the same page.
I am gay and should be on alert if White supremicists are stalking the streets. So should African Americans and Jews. So - the newest wave of White Supremacists only hates Asians? BS. I was walking Polk Street (SF) in fear just 4 days after Trump got elected in 2016. And I was wearing the solitary safety pin. A young African American male, who would also be a target of White Supremacists, stopped me on Polk to ask what I thought of Trump winning. I said “He is a jerk. The stranger paused a very long time after I answered his question as he likely contemplated how to direct our discussion to a conflict location. Me: What do you want? I don’t have any money. Him as he is walking away: You are a racist. end.
Only science can lead us to the place where we need to be.
I mentioned the issue of Black on Asian crime in a monthly Q&A that Glenn and John graciously addressed a while back. My main point was that rather than lumping Black on Asian crime into one indiscriminate bucket, we should actually consider two distinct categories of such crimes. First there are Black on Asian robberies that I argued almost certainly have a utilitarian rationale on the part of the criminal. It's often said that crimes like homicide are intra-racial, i.e. people mostly kill and are killed by someone of their own ethnic group. One statistical indication of this is the fact that the racial distribution of victims roughly mirrors that of the racial distribution of perpetrators. However, when you look at crimes such as robbery in large cities like NYC, you can immediately see that in contrast to crimes like homicide or shootings, Asians generally make up a much larger percentage of victims as opposed to perpetrators while the opposite is true for Blacks. Clearly Blacks are targeting Asians for robberies in big cities and my own suspicion is that a major part of the reason is that Asians are being targeted because they happen to be of smaller stature on average relative to members of other ethnic groups and are perceived to be less likely to fight back. There's a reason why Black guys rob elderly Asian women. It's high reward low risk.
I'm not sure that I would describe this first category of Black on Asian crime as being motivated primarily by racism, although I certainly agree that it's highly problematic and in any case the mainstream media loves pretending that it doesn't exist which just makes the problem worse. That being said, there is a second category of Black on Asian crime that was really exemplified during the pandemic by random senseless assaults of Asians by Blacks with no property being taken from the victim in most cases. We've seen the videos of Black perps randomly coming up to Asian victims and sucker punching or assaulting them. I'm sure some of these incidents have a racial angle based on the rhetoric uttered by the perpetrators. In other cases it's certainly possible that the assailants may have mental health issues. I agree with John and Glenn from their monthly Q&A that we don't have great sociological insight into what this second category of Black on Asian crime is all about. Like John I agree that what's sorely needed are the journalist anthropologists who can help us make sense of these Black on Asian assaults. I also agree with George and Wai Wah that the mainstream media loves promoting the narrative that somehow Black on Asian crime is fundamentally about white supremacy, which when you think about it makes absolutely no fucking sense.
I think an honest discussion of the underlying phenomenon of Black on Asian crime is sorely needed in this country. I say this as someone who was personally a victim of Black on Asian crime himself. Shortly before relocating across the country a couple of years back, I walked past a group of male Black youths with my phone out. While I was preoccupied with doing something on my phone, one of the youths ran up from behind me, grabbed my phone out of my hand, punched me in the right eye and ran away. I suffered a black eye and apparently had a broken right orbital socket as well as a fractured nose. It took many weeks to recover and was not a pleasant experience. There was nothing remotely Trumpian or white supremacist about what I endured and now when I walk past groups of Black youths I'm almost certain to be more on guard. Stereotypes and perceptions unfortunately exist for a reason.
The perpetrators in my case and in many other cases of Black crime are often juveniles. We saw this in many of the videos of the lootings that took place in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots. I remember personally asking myself where the parents were in the lives of many of these youths when I saw footage of these crimes. I think Heather MacDonald's observations about the breakdown of the Black family in her conversation with Glenn are extremely apt.
"Clearly Blacks are targeting Asians for robberies in big cities and my own suspicion is that a major part of the reason is that Asians are being targeted because they happen to be of smaller stature on average relative to members of other ethnic groups and are perceived to be less likely to fight back. "
I think a large chunk of it is that Asians are known to work in cash businesses and routinely carry cash home.
When I looked at CDC 2020 homicide data, I was shocked to see that non latino asians were less likely to be murdered in 2020 than 2019, the only large group of Americans for which this was true.
Non latino African American (AA) homide victimization rose by 36% to 13,594. Non latino AAs were more than 18 times as likely to be murdered as asians. [Non latino caucasians and latinos were 9 1/2 and 5 times as likely to be murdered as non latino AAs in 2020. Non latino AAs were over 8.1 times as likely to be murdered as other Americans. By far a record high.]
Need to see if something similar happened with asian rape, violent assault and armed robbery victimization relative to all non asian and AA victims.
This makes me very suspicious of exaggerations of anti asian "hate" crime. Could part of what we are seeing be that a larger percentage of crimes are being labeled as "hate" because of changes in definition?
Should asians feel guilty discussing anti asian crimes when non asians and AAs are so much more likely to be victims of it? Part of me feels this.
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On the other hand I think something is clearly going on in specific regions of the USA such as greater NYC, Bay Area CA and maybe other areas as you mentioned. How can these issues be directly dealt with while being respectful of the fact that AAs are orders of magnitude more likely to be victims of crime than asians?
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I would note that asians are the only major group of Americans that only commits a small fraction of crimes against their own group. [The large majority of crimes against asians are committed by non asians.]
I love to collect data on all types of crime and other socio-economic outcomes. AA on asian and visa versa crime and homicide is often not released. Many years ago, I found that the ratio might be more than 100 to 1. Why do you think this data is not released by the FBI and many states any more?
The stats are damning; to ignore them is simply dishonest.
No need to feel guilty discussing the nature of anti-Asian crime if the crime is in fact anti-Asian. The folks who should be judged, especially in light of the numbers above, are the heroes in the hills crying “defund” while the cities burn below.
Asians are by far the race least likely to be victims of violent crime period, by at least two to one compared to society as a whole. Ignoring that fact is dishonest as well.
I'm not ignoring that fact. As I pointed out in another comment of mine, Asian Americans are the least likely to be victims of violent crime in large part because Asian on Asian violence is exceedingly rare. Arguing that non-Asian on Asian violence isn't a huge deal because Asian on Asian violence is low seems to me to be bad morality. It's basically the moral equivalent of arguing that it's okay to steal from someone as long as the person you're stealing from is rich.
The answer to black on Asian crime is the same as to all crime. A rapid armed response. Hopefully the upcoming SCOTUS decision on New York’s overly restrictive gun laws will enable its honest citizens to avail themselves of this remedy.
The numbers I saw showed that Asian males have the highest income in the US and Asian females tied White males for second ($50 under). Wondering if this is a a status/envy problem disguising itself as a race problem.
Would you and Substack Reader say "Democrats" or "woke"? There are many conservative, moderate, liberal, non woke and woke lite Democrats who are much better than the woke.
The Democrats have serious problems. Are Democrats the only ones with problems?
Dems are not the only ones with problems but no one is saying they are, so why the straw man? Dems very clearly ARE the ones fanning the crime program, often through policy initiatives that elevate the law-breaker over the law-abiding. Some of us wonder the apparent legions of non-woke Dems that you allude to will make their voices heard. Must the crime issue land on their doorstep first? The left has hijacked the party.
I used "Democrats" because they have institutionalized the practice. I'm referring to the higher ups in the Democrat party sitting around a table and deciding the official direction and tactics of their party. They are proudly passing divisive legislation. It's the core component of their election strategy.
For example, the idea of releasing violent felons for "justice" is a ridiculous idea that would gain no traction if it were only shouted by loonies on street corners. However, the Democrat party has officially embraced and implemented the idea -- as a vote-generating strategy. You can't get any more cynical and dangerous than that.
If you don't think both parties are doing all of these things, I don't think are you looking very hard at this. Trump in particular, stirred up racial resentment as a political tactic and he is still in charge of the GOP, at least for now.
This is by no means meant as an excuse for Democratic actions.
And incarceration doesn't lower crime. This isn't even really an opinion anymore, it has been proven by study after study.
It *is* important to have a cop on the beat, this deters crime. Arresting a criminal helps reduce crime as well. Defunding the police is a stupid idea. But long prison sentences do not. There is nothing cynical about following the evidence as to what works and does not work. I want us to use strategies that work. Even after the most recent round of moderate decarceration, we by far have the largest percentage of people incarcerated. Yes, reducing that is a vote getter. It's not cynical, in fact is the opposite of cynical, it is hopeful. I have hope that we can be a less violent society without locking so many people up. What is cynical in that?
I honestly think you are right. What the Democrats are doing today is unconscionable.
Maybe the dam is about to break and they'll go extinct like the Whigs.
I should point out I am not a Republican, my last presidential vote for a Republican being George Bush I in 1988. Since then I voted for Clinton and Obama and a lot of third party candidates.
The Democrats are destroying what was a pretty damn good country. A bunch of clowns who viscerally hate and mock the people they are most dependent on -- good, honest, moral working people trying to make the most of their time here on Earth. Equally despised, whether they are rich, poor, or in-between.
I think it is the "enhancement" concept that is misguided. Labeling common crimes as race-based in service of promulgating a false narrative about white supremacy is an insult to actual hate crimes, which do exist, to be sure.
The term has really taken on a life of its own. The media often reports "hate crimes and incidents," where an incident could be two guys arguing over a parking space and one them driving away, saying, "You Irish steal parking spaces!"
What is NOT a hate crime: Shooting and killing a guy as you steal his iPhone (so you can sell it at a pawn shop for $100.) Unless you shout, "I hate Irish people!"
Also, it would be helpful if the matter were stated "the crime qualifies for hate crime enhancements," as that is how the laws actually work. If a judge can sentence from 4-20 years, a hate crime enhancement means he can tack on maybe two additional years. (As if he was going to sentence 20 years in the first place.)
While it is great that people are paying more attention to hate crimes, it is disappointing that it is only now, when Asian's are being the victims, that there is a media outcry.
As I am sure Mr. Loury knows, Blacks are 5x more likely to be the victim of hate crimes. Jewish people, and LGBTQ+ people are even more likely and Trans people are the most likely.
Why is it that only now we are seeing stories in the media about this? I think you need to think a little bit harder and consider the extent that we are all awash in propaganda all the time that tells us what to think, how to act and what to feel. Who does this narrative serve and why are they pushing it? Billionaires don't buy money losing media properties because they are magnanimous. They want to control the narrative.
Asians are still the ethnicity least likely to be victims of violent crime. That's at least partially why there has never been an outcry over anti-Asian violence.
What difference does it make what the race of the perpetrator of violence is? Most violent crimes against Asians are committed by Whites as well as most hate crimes. I don't doubt that Blacks are overrepresented in Black on Asian violence. It's really beside the point though.
Asians have been the smallest racial demographic for a long time. That's the simplest explanation why there has been little reporting on Asians. There is also the more complicated answer that Asians have not much political power until recently and there is a certain disenfranchisement that comes from being a first generation immigrant. Please don't take offense but I will say what I observe from the Asian community in San Francisco and my wife's family, who immigrated from Vietnam as part of the Vietnamese diaspora: there is a cultural taboo about speaking out. I was taught the Vietnamese phrase "Cái đinh thì ra sẽ bị đóng xuống" which roughly means "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" and I can see how she and her family avoid political entanglement at all costs. Spending time in a reeducation camp can do that to you. This is not intended as victim blaming in any way but I can see that it has taken a while for Asians to find their voice. The newer generations are more willing to speak out. I know my mixed-race daughters are very vocal and involved politically.
It is true that there is very little Asian representation at all in our culture. I remember how excited my daughters were when "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" came out, and there were finally Asian superheros out there with their own movies. I live in the Bay Area bubble where we have a pretty significant Asian representation politically and economically, but I know that it is not like that anywhere else in the US.
I deleted my initial comment but since you responded to it I guess I'll summarize my original thoughts more succinctly. Basically I argued that your observation was totally backwards, that rather than Black on Asian violence being over-exaggerated by the mainstream media, it was in fact downplayed and oftentimes ignored.
While Black on Asian crime vastly predates the current pandemic, the recent reporting on such crimes over the past year bizarrely tried to argue that they were fundamentally about "white supremacy", which I said made zero sense. My argument was that if there was in fact propaganda being pushed by the media it was basically the opposite of what you were claiming it to be. I also stated that I wasn't a huge fan of pitting different groups against one another in our racial discourse, while conceding that America has various social issues affecting different ethnic groups and that the particular issue of Black on Asian crime was obviously not the only one worth discussing or necessarily the most pressing even. Nevertheless, I believe that if something is wrong then it's wrong simple as that.
Your claim about Asians being the least likely to be victims of violence ignores the fact that most violent crime is intra-racial. Most Black victims of violent crime are victimized by other Blacks. My guess is that if you examined inter-racial acts of violence, it's probably far more likely that someone Asian is victimized by someone Black than vice versa. A previous commenter suggested the disparity might be two orders of magnitude but I'll admit I haven't really dug into this data in depth.
Claiming that overrepresentation of ethnic groups in a certain category of crime is irrelevant strikes me as disingenuous. If relative overrepresentation/underrepresentation is irrelevant then why are we even having conversations about different groups being underrepresented at elite high schools or overrepresented among police killings? It was frequently pointed out in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing that out of the roughly ~1,000 civilians killed by police each year about a quarter of those were Black. Despite Blacks being overrepresented by almost 2x relative to their population percentage among police deaths, the fact remains that about half of all people killed by the police each year are white. Yet somehow I have a feeling that this overrepresentation isn't something you'd find to be irrelevant.
I am not trying to argue you with you and I find most of your points to be correct. I just want to add some nuance and perhaps expand on what is being said by both of us here.
I am sure your claims about intra-racial violence are true or mostly true. But so what? You state that you don't want to pit races against each other in racial discourse but then you do that. Maybe you are just responding to my statements. Blacks are far more likely to be victims of violent crime. That's a terrible thing and can't really be ignored by pointing out the fact that most crime is intra-racial. What is the point here? That Black victims of crime are deserving because they happen to be the same race as their attacker? Maybe you are saying that the root causes of Black criminality are within the Black community and therefore the responsibility of that community to solve, but I don't want to put words in your mouth though. It is too easy to argue straw men. Let me know why you talk about this and why it is relevant to the larger conversation. I am doubt the victim of a mugging is less traumatized if the perp is the same race as they are.
Most perpetrators of hate crimes are White, that is pretty easy to prove via FBI statistics. I haven't seen any hard data on which race is committing hate crimes on whom, though that would be interesting if you have it.
What I have noticed on my local media is that the same videos of Black people attacking Asians, usually elderly is being played over and over again. I watch the 10 o'clock news and read the local paper, The Chronicle. Few if any of these are "hate crimes" by the definition of the term, they are either random attacks or muggings. They are certainly terrible, but why are they being played over and over. Why are there 100 muggings a day in the Bay Area but only the ones with Asian victims are on the news? Who is pushing this agenda and why? I have my own ideas and I will tell you them here. They are certainly just speculation on my part but let's call them educated guesses given what I have seen in the past, with the constant media manipulation we have seen over and over again. I can give examples of other manipulation if you want. The marches to war are the most blatant examples.
The billionaires who control the agenda in the country prefer that we are scared and divided. They know that income inequality has been increasing over the last 50 years. They know that social media has loosened their grip on the narrative. They know that Trump has stirred up class resentment among working class Whites. They are terrified of class consciousness. They found the BLM protests to be also threatening as they started to build racial solidarity. So they are using the old proven tactic of splitting us racially. If they can convince Asians that voting for "law and order" tactics and to be opposed to racial solidarity with Blacks that this works to their longer term agenda, which is to expand and consolidate their power.
You can properly dismiss this paragraph above as the rantings of a leftist if you want. I am a middle aged white guy in tech though, who has studied at Caltech and UC Berkeley. I am a Veteran and an ex-paratrooper. I am not some starry eyed idealist. On the contrary, I consider myself mostly a cynical realist. I subscribe to The Economist and WSJ, along with WashPo and NYT. The latter I find increasingly irrelevant as they just push the mainstream liberal narrative. I frequent substacks like this one to expand the range of opinions available to me. I don't think that either party represents me well and have always been kind of a disaffected lefty. Growing up really poor affects your views, though most of my rural poor White relatives are all Trump voters. Getting an education and moving out certainly impacted me, as well as my time at Berkeley.
I will address your white supremacy statement in a separate comment as I think it is its own discussion and I don't want to muddy the waters by making you think that I find these claims to be a good use of language. I certainly understand the argument and find some value, but the language they use is so deceptive as to be useless, especially when communicating with people outside their ingroup.
Thanks for hanging with me this far, if you have. I really am trying hard to have a discussion with you in good faith, though given our differing perspectives it is hard.
We can have a philosophical debate about why it matters whether crime is intra-racial versus inter-racial, but even if I were to concede that it shouldn't in matter in theory, in practice it definitely matters. The fact that a white or Asian person is perhaps 1-2 orders of magnitude more likely to be violently victimized by a Black person than vice versa is not a trivial or irrelevant fact in my opinion. I don't believe it can be dismissed by pointing out that numerically Black on Black crime swamps Black on non-Black crime.
As to who bears responsibility for Black on Black crime, I'm not sure if I would state it in exactly the way you did above, but if challenged to articulate my position I might very broadly go down the high level path you alluded to. I find my own position to be roughly aligned with the sentiments that Glenn and Heather MacDonald expressed during their most recent conversation.
What I find to be ironic is that you seem to be arguing that we shouldn't be so fixated on Black on Asian crime because the real problem is Black on Black crime. Possibly one of the few things that gets ignored or downplayed to the same extent as Black on Asian crime is Black on Black crime. As far as I can tell, the mainstream media loves fixating on violent interactions where the perpetrator is a white person in a position of authority, i.e. a cop, and the victim is a Black civilian. I imagine this is because, as John McWhorter points out, progressives are obsessed with power disparities and when there's perceived to be such a disparity in power between the perpetrator and the victim, those incidents somehow feed into a larger narrative about societal inequity. I have to imagine though that the degree of media focus on this particular category of violent interaction must also be 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than its actual occurrence among all violent interactions.
From what I can tell your argument seems to be that non-Asian on Asian crime isn't that big a deal because overall Asians are the least likely to be victims of violent crime. However the reason why this is true is because Asian on Asian violent crime is exceedingly low. By contrast Black on Black crime is exceedingly high. It seems incredibly perverse to me to argue that Black on Asian crime is not a big deal because Asian on Asian crime is so low. Because Asian Americans are relatively well off who cares right about the gruesome incidents of elderly Asians being viciously assaulted in San Francisco or New York City? I'd like to consider myself to be open-minded and enlightened, but that's a tough argument for me to swallow.
There is a lot of unreported Asian on Asian domestic violence. I don't know how much there is, but there is a strong community incentive to hide this. I know this goes against my narrative that Asians are the least likely victims of crime, but it something I just started thinking about. My mother in law and my wife were both victims. I don't think there are any good statics on this, at least none that I can find.
It's pretty obvious that there is bias throughout the criminal justice system. Poor people, and especially poor Blacks are overpoliced compared to the general population. I know that my father, my step father and all my my brothers, including myself, have been arrested. Mine was for civil disobedience so it is kind of different but still.
Black people are more likely to be policed, more likely to be stopped by the police, more likely to be arrested when stopped, more likely to be charged when arrested and more likely to be convicted when charged and more likely to be be sentenced when convicted. Blacks and Whites are equally likely to do drugs but Black men are 3-5 times more likely to end up with a conviction from it. With devastating impacts on Black communities.
But it probably doesn't explain all the difference in arrest and conviction rates. Black communities are definitely more violent, I can speak from personal experience. And murder rates don't lie. One of the reasons I am here is because Dr. Loury is willing to say the tough things about the Black community that only an educated Black elder can be allowed to say. We can do what we can to reduce racism but the Black community itself has to want to change too.
Violence against anyone is abhorrent. Society should do what it can to reduce violence. I think we should do what is proven to reduce violence and that we should focus our efforts on those things most likely to get bang for our buck. Of course we should care about all victims of violence, including your horrific experience.
I was happy to read this well-articulated sentiment from someone in Glenn's Asian readership. In spite of Amy Wax's recent claims about Asians and their proclivity for wokeness, I have found that Asians as a group — and successful immigrants in general — typically take an agnostic approach to politics. I have interpreted the Asian Hate narrative as an attempt by the far left to indoctrinate Asians into the victimology cult, and I worry very much for the end game of such a venture. The crude and preposterous aggregation of Asian ethnicities aside, it can only serve to idly shift blame while pitting all groups against each other.
The narrative goes hand-in-hand with the deflection of realities around homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction. Here is a perfect example from my local blotter:
http://nixle.us/CNL88
Why would anyone want to politicize a homeless man screaming obscenities as a hate crime? To cover your ass? To divert attention elsewhere?
I posed have this question to Glenn and John before. It’s an important one — and it goes indirectly to Glenn’s position on incarceration. What should one make of the current discourse on addiction and mental health with regard to policy that targets the escalating urban homeless crisis (particularly in cities with progressive politics and warm weather)? How does one square ones views with the likelihood that blacks are disproportionally represented among the mentally ill? Might this fact reasonably lead one to raise race-based objections to certain practical mitigation policies, especially those that involve limiting personal freedoms?
And by the way, as media outlets increasingly feel the need to use racial descriptors as appositives (e.g., “an Asian woman”), does anyone else hear the tag on Stevie Wonder’s “Black Man”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEoE2UQXduA
The Asian Hate narrative seems to me to be an attempt by the powerful people who control the media to turn Asians and Blacks against each other and especially encourage Asians to vote for more law and order candidates with more police and jails. I really can't see how the constant reporting on violence against Asians support any kind of Left agenda. That is not what is happening and there is no reason to believe that it would.
Black-Asian antagonism is nothing new. In fact, if you want to see good old-fashioned naked racism, just talk to someone on the street in the Bay Area immigrant community. What is unprecedented is the arrival of a narrative that links crime against Asians (and by crude extension, Pacific Islander people) with "white supremacy". It is absolutely divisive, but I don't see the same designs at work -- a media power play, for instance -- that you do.
I just commented on an old podcast but, it is very important that you read it. I want to help. It was Race and Classics from 7 Months ago. I will pay the subscription if you like, but this is imperative.
Asians, you're on your own. No one is coming to help you.
You need to take the attitude of the "Rooftop Koreans."
sprial8802, how horrifying! :-(
You will protect asians, right?
Yes I will, and I have. And something swift and brutal works much better than trying to open a dialog.
This is true for everyone. The police aren't here to protect you. Something like your own survival is far too important to trust to someone else.
It's tremendously satisfying that when you sort through all the extraneous stuff, George Lee. Heather MacDonald, Amy Wax and Glenn Loury are all pretty much on the same page.
With respect I would not put Amy Wax in the same category of the others you mentioned.
[Don't think Amy Wax should be censored.]
FYI, one of the likes for my post is from George Lee.
I thought we agreed to disagree on this subject.
I am gay and should be on alert if White supremicists are stalking the streets. So should African Americans and Jews. So - the newest wave of White Supremacists only hates Asians? BS. I was walking Polk Street (SF) in fear just 4 days after Trump got elected in 2016. And I was wearing the solitary safety pin. A young African American male, who would also be a target of White Supremacists, stopped me on Polk to ask what I thought of Trump winning. I said “He is a jerk. The stranger paused a very long time after I answered his question as he likely contemplated how to direct our discussion to a conflict location. Me: What do you want? I don’t have any money. Him as he is walking away: You are a racist. end.
Only science can lead us to the place where we need to be.
Crime and hate crime against Blacks is up as well, though not as much as it is against Asians. But this is lost in the media narrative.
"Only science can lead us to the place where we need to be."
I just can't fathom such a statement.
I mentioned the issue of Black on Asian crime in a monthly Q&A that Glenn and John graciously addressed a while back. My main point was that rather than lumping Black on Asian crime into one indiscriminate bucket, we should actually consider two distinct categories of such crimes. First there are Black on Asian robberies that I argued almost certainly have a utilitarian rationale on the part of the criminal. It's often said that crimes like homicide are intra-racial, i.e. people mostly kill and are killed by someone of their own ethnic group. One statistical indication of this is the fact that the racial distribution of victims roughly mirrors that of the racial distribution of perpetrators. However, when you look at crimes such as robbery in large cities like NYC, you can immediately see that in contrast to crimes like homicide or shootings, Asians generally make up a much larger percentage of victims as opposed to perpetrators while the opposite is true for Blacks. Clearly Blacks are targeting Asians for robberies in big cities and my own suspicion is that a major part of the reason is that Asians are being targeted because they happen to be of smaller stature on average relative to members of other ethnic groups and are perceived to be less likely to fight back. There's a reason why Black guys rob elderly Asian women. It's high reward low risk.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/year-end-2020-enforcement-report-20210721.pdf
I'm not sure that I would describe this first category of Black on Asian crime as being motivated primarily by racism, although I certainly agree that it's highly problematic and in any case the mainstream media loves pretending that it doesn't exist which just makes the problem worse. That being said, there is a second category of Black on Asian crime that was really exemplified during the pandemic by random senseless assaults of Asians by Blacks with no property being taken from the victim in most cases. We've seen the videos of Black perps randomly coming up to Asian victims and sucker punching or assaulting them. I'm sure some of these incidents have a racial angle based on the rhetoric uttered by the perpetrators. In other cases it's certainly possible that the assailants may have mental health issues. I agree with John and Glenn from their monthly Q&A that we don't have great sociological insight into what this second category of Black on Asian crime is all about. Like John I agree that what's sorely needed are the journalist anthropologists who can help us make sense of these Black on Asian assaults. I also agree with George and Wai Wah that the mainstream media loves promoting the narrative that somehow Black on Asian crime is fundamentally about white supremacy, which when you think about it makes absolutely no fucking sense.
I think an honest discussion of the underlying phenomenon of Black on Asian crime is sorely needed in this country. I say this as someone who was personally a victim of Black on Asian crime himself. Shortly before relocating across the country a couple of years back, I walked past a group of male Black youths with my phone out. While I was preoccupied with doing something on my phone, one of the youths ran up from behind me, grabbed my phone out of my hand, punched me in the right eye and ran away. I suffered a black eye and apparently had a broken right orbital socket as well as a fractured nose. It took many weeks to recover and was not a pleasant experience. There was nothing remotely Trumpian or white supremacist about what I endured and now when I walk past groups of Black youths I'm almost certain to be more on guard. Stereotypes and perceptions unfortunately exist for a reason.
The perpetrators in my case and in many other cases of Black crime are often juveniles. We saw this in many of the videos of the lootings that took place in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots. I remember personally asking myself where the parents were in the lives of many of these youths when I saw footage of these crimes. I think Heather MacDonald's observations about the breakdown of the Black family in her conversation with Glenn are extremely apt.
"..unfortunately, stereotypes exist for a reason." I agree
"Clearly Blacks are targeting Asians for robberies in big cities and my own suspicion is that a major part of the reason is that Asians are being targeted because they happen to be of smaller stature on average relative to members of other ethnic groups and are perceived to be less likely to fight back. "
I think a large chunk of it is that Asians are known to work in cash businesses and routinely carry cash home.
Yan Shen, excellent comment.
When I looked at CDC 2020 homicide data, I was shocked to see that non latino asians were less likely to be murdered in 2020 than 2019, the only large group of Americans for which this was true.
Non latino African American (AA) homide victimization rose by 36% to 13,594. Non latino AAs were more than 18 times as likely to be murdered as asians. [Non latino caucasians and latinos were 9 1/2 and 5 times as likely to be murdered as non latino AAs in 2020. Non latino AAs were over 8.1 times as likely to be murdered as other Americans. By far a record high.]
Need to see if something similar happened with asian rape, violent assault and armed robbery victimization relative to all non asian and AA victims.
This makes me very suspicious of exaggerations of anti asian "hate" crime. Could part of what we are seeing be that a larger percentage of crimes are being labeled as "hate" because of changes in definition?
Should asians feel guilty discussing anti asian crimes when non asians and AAs are so much more likely to be victims of it? Part of me feels this.
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On the other hand I think something is clearly going on in specific regions of the USA such as greater NYC, Bay Area CA and maybe other areas as you mentioned. How can these issues be directly dealt with while being respectful of the fact that AAs are orders of magnitude more likely to be victims of crime than asians?
++++++++++++++++++++++++
I would note that asians are the only major group of Americans that only commits a small fraction of crimes against their own group. [The large majority of crimes against asians are committed by non asians.]
I love to collect data on all types of crime and other socio-economic outcomes. AA on asian and visa versa crime and homicide is often not released. Many years ago, I found that the ratio might be more than 100 to 1. Why do you think this data is not released by the FBI and many states any more?
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Dirty-secret-of-black-on-Asian-violence-is-out-3265760.php
The stats are damning; to ignore them is simply dishonest.
No need to feel guilty discussing the nature of anti-Asian crime if the crime is in fact anti-Asian. The folks who should be judged, especially in light of the numbers above, are the heroes in the hills crying “defund” while the cities burn below.
Asians are by far the race least likely to be victims of violent crime period, by at least two to one compared to society as a whole. Ignoring that fact is dishonest as well.
I'm not ignoring that fact. As I pointed out in another comment of mine, Asian Americans are the least likely to be victims of violent crime in large part because Asian on Asian violence is exceedingly rare. Arguing that non-Asian on Asian violence isn't a huge deal because Asian on Asian violence is low seems to me to be bad morality. It's basically the moral equivalent of arguing that it's okay to steal from someone as long as the person you're stealing from is rich.
The answer to black on Asian crime is the same as to all crime. A rapid armed response. Hopefully the upcoming SCOTUS decision on New York’s overly restrictive gun laws will enable its honest citizens to avail themselves of this remedy.
The numbers I saw showed that Asian males have the highest income in the US and Asian females tied White males for second ($50 under). Wondering if this is a a status/envy problem disguising itself as a race problem.
Haven't read the piece yet, but I wanted to say I really appreciate these Sunday afternoon posts. They often lead to great discussion.
Would you and Substack Reader say "Democrats" or "woke"? There are many conservative, moderate, liberal, non woke and woke lite Democrats who are much better than the woke.
The Democrats have serious problems. Are Democrats the only ones with problems?
Dems are not the only ones with problems but no one is saying they are, so why the straw man? Dems very clearly ARE the ones fanning the crime program, often through policy initiatives that elevate the law-breaker over the law-abiding. Some of us wonder the apparent legions of non-woke Dems that you allude to will make their voices heard. Must the crime issue land on their doorstep first? The left has hijacked the party.
I used "Democrats" because they have institutionalized the practice. I'm referring to the higher ups in the Democrat party sitting around a table and deciding the official direction and tactics of their party. They are proudly passing divisive legislation. It's the core component of their election strategy.
For example, the idea of releasing violent felons for "justice" is a ridiculous idea that would gain no traction if it were only shouted by loonies on street corners. However, the Democrat party has officially embraced and implemented the idea -- as a vote-generating strategy. You can't get any more cynical and dangerous than that.
If you don't think both parties are doing all of these things, I don't think are you looking very hard at this. Trump in particular, stirred up racial resentment as a political tactic and he is still in charge of the GOP, at least for now.
This is by no means meant as an excuse for Democratic actions.
And incarceration doesn't lower crime. This isn't even really an opinion anymore, it has been proven by study after study.
It *is* important to have a cop on the beat, this deters crime. Arresting a criminal helps reduce crime as well. Defunding the police is a stupid idea. But long prison sentences do not. There is nothing cynical about following the evidence as to what works and does not work. I want us to use strategies that work. Even after the most recent round of moderate decarceration, we by far have the largest percentage of people incarcerated. Yes, reducing that is a vote getter. It's not cynical, in fact is the opposite of cynical, it is hopeful. I have hope that we can be a less violent society without locking so many people up. What is cynical in that?
I honestly think you are right. What the Democrats are doing today is unconscionable.
Maybe the dam is about to break and they'll go extinct like the Whigs.
I should point out I am not a Republican, my last presidential vote for a Republican being George Bush I in 1988. Since then I voted for Clinton and Obama and a lot of third party candidates.
The Democrats are destroying what was a pretty damn good country. A bunch of clowns who viscerally hate and mock the people they are most dependent on -- good, honest, moral working people trying to make the most of their time here on Earth. Equally despised, whether they are rich, poor, or in-between.
I think it is the "enhancement" concept that is misguided. Labeling common crimes as race-based in service of promulgating a false narrative about white supremacy is an insult to actual hate crimes, which do exist, to be sure.
The term has really taken on a life of its own. The media often reports "hate crimes and incidents," where an incident could be two guys arguing over a parking space and one them driving away, saying, "You Irish steal parking spaces!"
What is NOT a hate crime: Shooting and killing a guy as you steal his iPhone (so you can sell it at a pawn shop for $100.) Unless you shout, "I hate Irish people!"
Also, it would be helpful if the matter were stated "the crime qualifies for hate crime enhancements," as that is how the laws actually work. If a judge can sentence from 4-20 years, a hate crime enhancement means he can tack on maybe two additional years. (As if he was going to sentence 20 years in the first place.)
I think you have nailed it.