• Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.

• Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

• Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.

• Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa.

That is not a picture of inter-racial harmony.

This speaks more of economic rather than racial motives. Say you're a thief and you've got three guys standing in front of you, one white, one black and one hispanic. Being an economic rationalist, which of those three offers the best risk/reward ratio for the desired outcome? The white guy because he's more likely to have money or cash convertible assets. Does the answer change if you change the colour of the perp? No.

Most everything is ultimately a question of economics.

The white liberal lies about race are moral posturing for their own benefit. They want to proclaim their moral superiority toward non-liberal whites. So they tell lies about how racism by non-liberal whites is to blame for black poverty and pathologies and crime in black neighborhoods.

Yes, but they also HATE the notion that "biology is destiny". Objective external constraints based on gender or race or IQ or whatever are anathema to Liberals; they falsify the Liberal ideal of the existentially autonomous person. If the socio-pathologies of Blacks are NOT the result of white racism, then the "biology is destiny" bogey looms large before them (and might even apply to them). And that is inadmissable.

Stephen,

First of all I don't think 'economics' is the point. Robbery maybe an economic crime but
a violent assault during or afterwards is not. It speaks to something else and that
something else is the problem.

Secondly your point about economics is probably not that valid anyway at least nowadays.
If robbery is simply about money then robbing a business makes more sense and, of course
convenience stores and other vulnerable businesses are robbed, disproportionately by
blacks too. However, since the advent of debit and credit cards most affluent or middle
class people do not carry a lot of cash on them. I haven't for years. You'd be lucky to
get more than $20 from me. On the other hand many blacks, owing to their credit histories,
are forced to carry cash. Others enjoy wearing flashy and expensive status symbols be they
designer tennis shoes, gaudy jewelry or some coveted fashion accessory. A white businessman
might be wearing a $1500 Burberry trenchcoat or $500 Italian shoes but to the black thug
such things are useless to his small mind. He'd leave those and take the $20 in the man's
pocket and possibly even shoot him too.

That is the problem. The black thug isn't even intelligent enough to maximize his criminal
behavior. Further, because of his propensity to violence he also increases his risk of
being apprehended. Police are not going to investigate a $20 holdup to any great degree
but where the victim is shot or brutally beaten public outrage forces the police to make
a far greater effort to find the criminal. This is especially true when the black criminal
invades 'white' neigborhoods.

Stephen,

Say you're a thief and you've got three guys standing in front of you, one white, one black and one hispanic.

Let's test your hypothesis by using Asians as a control group. They have a higher mean income than whites, so we'd expect that they would bear a disproportionate share of being targets of crime.

Will you stand by your hypothesis? I'm willing to take the position that Asians will falsify your hypothesis.

"Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa."
So-called "hate crimes" by definition do not have an economic motivation.

Also,from Steve Sailer's blog-
http://www.isteve.com/
(...)
One simple way to look at it is to compare racial/ethnic groups with similar degrees of wealth and poverty: blacks versus Hispanics and whites versus Asians.

So, for Asians compared to whites, who are comparable on a lot of socio-economic status measures, we find that Asians are incarcerated only 0.22 times as much per capita.

Similarly, for blacks versus Hispanics, who are roughly equivalent in income and poverty rates, blacks are incarcerated at 7.2 times the nonHispanic white rate while Hispanics are incarcerated "only" 2.9 times the white rate. So, blacks are locked up up about 2.5 times more than Hispanics.

This would suggest that something else besides poverty et al is going to account for these wide differentials between blacks and Hispanics and between whites and Asians. And of course the 33 to 1 ratio in incarceration rates between African-Americans and Asian-Americans could hardly be explained by differences in poverty.

A social scientist adds:
In both individual-level and macrolevel research, the race factor is always much more powerful than poverty. In studies where census tracts, cities, counties, or states are compared, percent black explains roughly half the variation in rates of homicide. Percent poor does not even reach 20 percent. As an example of individual-level research, a famous study of Philadelphia crime conducted by Marvin Wolfgang--perhaps the best American criminologist a generation ago--reported that middle-income blacks had greater involvement in crime than lower-income whites.
(...)

Admittedly a series of fascinating interactions between nature, nurture, social and economic circumstance. The doubt I have relates to the appropriate weighting given to each aspect. I'll settle for agreeing about the symptoms, but will withhold judgement regarding the disease until we're able to finely tweak each variable and watch the result.

One line leaps out at me from the social scientist Steve quotes:

"As an example of individual-level research, a famous study of Philadelphia crime conducted by Marvin Wolfgang--perhaps the best American criminologist a generation ago--reported that middle-income blacks had greater involvement in crime than lower-income whites."

Amazing.

Stephen, copious quantities of evidence is there. Lots of conclusions can be drawn from trans-racial adoption studies, twins studies, brain scan psychometric studies, and lots of other studies. The standard liberal "Lets blame it on poverty" refrain is hard to take seriously at this point. Yet it forms the basis for wasteful and even destructive policies.

"Let's test your hypothesis by using Asians as a control group. They have a higher mean income than whites, so we'd expect that they would bear a disproportionate share of being targets of crime.

"Will you stand by your hypothesis? I'm willing to take the position that Asians will falsify your hypothesis."

What kind of experiment are you going to run? If you are going to report or quote crime statistics on Asians, will you control for other variables like size, geographic location, etc.?

If you are going to report or quote crime statistics on Asians, will you control for other variables like size, geographic location, etc.

Control for Asian Pop/Total Pop. of either the metropolitan area or the national census. Use crime data for Asian conviction rates, and crime victim data. For places like NYC, we can even use Orthodox Jews, who have higher incomes than whites, and can be easily identified by their distinctive dress and grooming. Criminals who have spent some time in NYC are quite likely to quickly identify Orthodox Jews as being a group different from Whites and Hispanics. If economics is the variable under study then we have the means to test Stephen's hypothesis.

Honest commentors: don't let this dishonest sidetracking obliterate the points of relevance. Aggression is not rational; to analyze it as if were not impulsive but deliberate and self conscious, and not the product of mental retardation and unreason, is to make excuses for it. We are dealing with the subhuman, and with a government professoriate and officialdom which is trying to get the subhuman accepted as equal with all others, because this is how power is gained.

Aggression is not rational

would you care to tell us whether that's an empirical statement (maybe TangoMan could test it too) or a new social law discovered by the great Bolton?

...as if were not impulsive but deliberate and self conscious, and not the product of mental retardation and unreason...

Again, are we to take your word for it or can actually point to evidence that aggression shown by anyone, across all population, is a sign of mental retardation?

...trying to get the subhuman accepted as equal with all others
This was your main point all along, Bolton. I have been following your comments here and on GNXP and would have to willfully blind not to see through your facade of rational discourse.

Stephen,

As Charles Murray recently pointed out, the problem is intractable. Whether genetics or a combination of genetics and culture, the evidence suggests some strong influence(s) other than socioeconomic status.

Whatever the cause, the symptoms themselves can still guide policy. For instance, society institutes quarantine on the basis of the symptom before the cause of the disease is fully understood or even identified.

One could predict the greater need for assistance to New Orleans after the hurricane than to other locations due to demographics. In fact, some here did. If the prediction were allowed to affect policy, much of the human suffering after hurricane Katrina might have been avoided. It would have been reduced without question.

One can choose not to throw money blindly at education programs and at policies doomed to failure from the start. One can allow a smaller number of black doctors, for instance, to excel in their profession and upon graduation to meet a public confident in their ability and their training.

One can choose not to punish law enforcement officers for factors beyond their control such as the race of the offenders they encounter while doing their jobs. This would greatly reduce the victimization of honest law-abiding blacks by the criminal minority who live among them. And in spite of the much higher group average criminality among blacks than among whites, one must remember that criminality happens out on the edges of the bell curve. Relatively small differences at the median or the mean can have very large differences at the extremes thereby suggesting the majority of blacks are law abiding and kind. I suspect many more of them would be much kinder to whites if they were not encouraged by the media and by negative stereotypes of whites into feeling wronged by all whites.

I don't see any reason to wait for a better understanding of the weightings of the various factors before taking a more humane and rational approach to policy.

I might have said 'as if it were not impulsive, but deliberate and self conscious; and not the product of mental retardation and/or unreason', which covers the possibilities. The evidence is in history and in your and everyone's experience. To the honest: observe the backflips with which the undiscriminating cravenly or maliciously block out awareness of the atrocities in New Orleans. Look how these are passed over in corrupt silence by a vicious intelligentsia, in the pay of state power. The antimerit society of racial patronage and hatred against human achievement, spawned the putrid miasma of failure, the debacle in NO. An insensate media, fearing to appear out of sympathy with the black man's freedom for aggression, desperately tries to maintain a news blackout on the atrocities, such as in the convention center. In the dark silence of this omerta, it becomes possible to indulge further depraved effrontery; and such as includes the demand for more racial quota placeholding. Even while the world comes to know that the police, busdrivers and other such local government employees, found the moment of crisis ideal for mass desertion; the antimerit society is capable of asking for more of this. Under stress, the antimerit society crumples, and reveals to the shock of those with values, its deep void of community of values. Life requires community of values, not tolerance of opportunists, such as, for example immigrants who need public subsidy to realize some petty ambitions.

John,

All members of the genus "homo" and in particular all members of the species "homo sapiens" are human. Thus, as alien as his mind was to most of us, Ted Bundy was human. Those who occupy the extrema of any particular attribute serve only to remind us of the diversity of our species. I remind you that Mr. Bundy was intelligent, aggressive and extremely violent. I found the man extremely dangerous with no socially redeeming value, but I see no reason to consider him anything but a human being.

Just as the general population do not consider brilliant scientists and olympic athletes super-human, we do not consider those less endowed or even those occupying the opposite extrema sub-human. Doing so serves only to engender hatred and to overcome inhibition against morally repugnant action.

""Let's test your hypothesis by using Asians as a control group. They have a higher mean income than whites, so we'd expect that they would bear a disproportionate share of being targets of crime."
Tangoman's affiliation with gnxp seems to have given him an "Asian fixation". With all the other existing evidence this line of inquiry seems totally unnecessary.The greatest difficulty might be in adjusting for the far smaller Asian population (as compared to whites). Whites, being a far larger group, are a far more "target-rich" population. The chances of a predatory black encountering a potential white victim are far greater than his chances of encountering a potential Asian victim. Such a study probably could be done (with great difficulty) but would not convince the usual suspects- and what would be the point?

There is nothing wrong with classifying aggressors outside the species; in fact it is mandatory, unless we want to have more convention centers. This is actually the crux of the issue; leading elements of society will not classify the subhuman as such, and punish accordingly. This is because their hopes of gaining total power depend on the people not being able to respond to subhuman aggression in a manner which allows for the continuity of civilization. There is no rational argument for tolerance of subhuman aggression; that is why the ad hominem and other fallacies about racism must be resorted to. Tolerance for the street aggressor leads on toward acceptance of the socialist despot.

seelow heights,

My problem with the "Asian" brand is that it encompasses groups who are as genetically distant from each other as they are from whites.

However, enough information gets collected about them as a statistical abstraction to make analysis of their rate of crime victimisation as probably possible. After all, they have enough about their criminality collected to make that part reportable.

It would be interesting to look at victimization statistics by race and income. How much of black targetting of victims is due to "that's where the money is"?

But there's another way to get at this: Look at crimes which are not done to get goods and money. Rape, for example. Assault and murder where no robbery takes place too. Robbery rarely requires assault, right? So don't the assault numbers demonstrate a heavy racial motivation to the assaults done by blacks?

Also, you have to adjust out assaults and murders that take place among families and friends. Families and friends heavily orient toward the same race. So the bulk of assaults among friends and families are intra-racial. The stranger assaults are what interest us. What percentage of assaults by blacks are against strangers?

Also, the ratio of assaults against strangers versus friends and family varies between races but I forget how. If memory serves, there's also been a trend toward more stranger assaults versus other kinds. Might partially represent more people living alone and in smaller families.

John,

If one's goal is to engender hatred and to overcome inhibition against morally repugnant action, then one will see nothing wrong with the ad hominem epithet "sub-human". I find that your resort to ad hominem and to racial fallacy weakens your argument, and I fail to see the necessity you claim. I see it in fact as a morally bankrupt rationalization for becoming the aggressor yourself.

Folks,

When you spend a lot of time going back and forth about each other's character then usually that means the thread is going to drift away from facts and reasoning that enlighten and inform. Since I write this blog to bring out facts and hope other people will bring more facts to the table and more rational analysis I try to avoid saying things that will lead threads down paths unproductive toward that goal. Therefore I try to ignore a lot of comments that I think are in bad taste or that show bad judgement. I don't always succeed in resisting temptation. But I think it is a good idea to try.

But I will say one thing about the idea of subhumans: If Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy or gang rapers or terrorists are not subhumans then what it means to be human includes some terrible things. Is it really worse to label someone who does terrible things as a subhuman and effectively write them out of what you consider to be the human race? Or is it worse to say that that the human race includes psychopaths and savages and people who most of us would prefer that they didn't exist? I mean, who wants rapists to exist for example? I would prefer a reality in which they didn't exist.

Perhaps for accuracy's sake we should include these terrible people in the human race. But consider the ramifications of doing that. If you then want to continue to be accurate in your other statements about the human race you can't exactly say we all deserve dignified treatment or full protection of our rights or other lofty things. Some people are really so terrible they deserve to be killed or (if you oppose capital punishment) at the very least locked in a very small room for the rest of their life and effectively denied any dignity of treatment or rights.

People locked in small rooms are treated far worse than I treat any dog or cat I have ever cared for. Yet we all support locking people up in small rooms and I do not see anyone arguing against solitary confinement for the worst criminals. Those people locked in small rooms in prisons are really getting treated like subhumans aren't they? Or do you consider the way they are treated as within the range of how humans should treat humans? If so, subhumans must be even worse than them. Perhaps John Bolton should have referred to certain humans as "sub-pet dog" humans rather than "sub-humans" since people in prisons are definitely "sub-pet dog" humans (excepting the dogs I see mistreated by the "sub-pet dog" humans on the animal police show on Animal Planet).

But, hey, I hope this comment does not distract us from the question of how much crime between races is motivated by racial animosity.

Yes, terrible things happened in NO but many of the sensational claims have not been substantiated:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/business/media/19carr.html?pagewanted=print

All of this NOLA news and the Color of Crime report just reinforce the obvious: We are living in a timeline blip in race relations. From presumably eons ago until the 1960s the white race had a brutally honest relationship with all other races. Since then a shroud of racial intellectual dishonesty has caused incalculable reported and unreported heartache and pain.

This period is a blip. It is an utterly unnatural top-down political dogma foisted on the public. Like economic Marxism, cultural Marxism cannot last. It can only expand and die.

A sweeping away and resetting of the table looms.

Centuries of propaganda have been dealt out through public institutions, along the lines of saying that man, with the police withdrawn, with equality and sharing the general practice, would be decently behaved. These were the conditions at the convention center, where thousands wallowed in unspeakable filth and depravity while women and children were dragged off, raped and killed, more than once. The population stands implicated, in that the top and middle level officials of the city permitted or encouraged the takeover by the worst. There was passive participation by many thousands; how can anyone not hate evil like that? Violence is not an argument, or not a rational one, so there is no ad hominem approach to be used where no argument is given. There is nothing morally repugnant in harshly treating aggressors; but there is grave immorality in excusing or covering up for them. The racial quota society is systematic aggression on those who'd rather recruit on a merit basis; and it destroys community of values throughout. Strangers cannot cooperate effectively without some minimum standards; the merit standard is not disposable in modern society. It is not man's nature to be a noble savage.

Expensive social programs that are based on false assumptions only waste all our money. The entire approach to social welfare has to be re-vamped using the knowledge of genetics, and discarding wasteful and dishonest PC policies. PC on these threads is wasteful. No PC on these threads please.

Stephen,
I might be a bit old-fashioned, but I do harbor the quaint belief that crime is purely a matter of MORALS."Econonmics" (should) never come into it.

Randall,

Yes, I think it is appropriate for humans to kill other humans--under extreme limitations. Yes, I think it is appropriate for humans to deprive other humans of liberty and dignity--again within limitations. I think moral adult humans can and should do these things without hatred. I think morality demands we take such actions with thoughtful care and solemn sobriety.

I agree, some humans are capable of truly horrific things all on their own. Most others--including more than a few serial killers--have to first dehumanize their victims before committing truly horrific and terrible acts. (Sorry, my references for this are still packed in unmarked boxes, but the FBI's studies of sexualized murder do reveal this fact.) I see no reason to promote any illusions or delusions regarding human nature, and I am surprised that you seem to be doing just that. We are a diverse species. Some few of us are truly and exceptionally good. Some few of use are truly and exceptionally evil. Most of us lie somewhere in between, and we are all humans.

When the founding fathers of the United States of America drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they did not make human rights inviolable. They required instead due process before depriving humans of these rights.

Even after due process when we have decided to legally deprive someone of their life, their liberty and/or their dignity, I see no reason to consider the convicted anything other than human. I find it ironic given your family's history to point this out to you. After all, your grandfather and your uncle made tremdendous sacrifices and suffered greatly for trying to prevent the execution of a man convicted of a heinous crime that enraged an entire nation. They did this because they were convinced due process may have failed or may have been circumvented.

Labelling any group "sub-human" serves no purpose other than to circumvent due process, and then we face a Rwandan kind of justice that any moral person should find repugnant.

In fact, we are still talking about racial animosity and the motivation for crime. After all, doesn't the targeting of whites at the convention center and at the superdome first require sorting humans into two groups: "my sort of humans" vs. "some other sort of humans" ? Is it not fair to say that among the blacks at those locations, some minority committed the violence? And some larger group actively cheered them on? And some larger group still probably held their tongues but felt a sense of satisfaction at seeing whitey get a comeuppance? And some larger group even still who were simply indifferent? Is it not fair to say that all of the above groups treated the whites there as sub-human?

Choosing to label any of the blacks who were there as sub-human is a very slippery slope. Where does one draw the line? You might strictly draw the line at those who committed the most heinous of the crimes, and the person you are talking to might include James Earl Jones for all you know.

By objective standards, all members of our genus are considered human just as all members of the genus canis are considered dogs. If we wish to use a more restricted definition, I suggest the species is appropriate. When one says "dog" without qualification, one generally means "canis familiaris" and not a jackal or a wolf--just as one generally means "homo sapiens" when one says human.

Ignoring the possibility of other human species in remote areas of the pacific northwest or isolated in the himalayas, only one species of human currently exists, which makes the genus and the species largely synonymous at this time. However, I expect within my lifetime to see two or more species of human walking the earth. Don't you?

Suppose germ-line engineering happens before somatic gene therapies allow the rest of us to catch up. When young women start having babies who are smarter, stronger, prettier and longer lived than we are, won't these babies be super-human? And since they are smarter etc. wouldn't we expect them to become a market-dominant minority? And shouldn't we expect them to fear the mob who are beneath them? Do you want them to define themselves as human and us as sub-human? Might super-humans not represent a much greater threat to humanity?

I think if we are to have a frank, intellectually honest and realistic view of human nature, we have to accept that all humans are human. Nobody considers canis lupus "sub-dog" or "super-dog", and I see no reason to exclude other members of our genus--let alone some members of our species--from our concept of humanity. To my ears, "sub-human" sounds like a prejudicial slur and I see no just reason for using it to refer to any human being.

None of what I have said has anything to do with political correctness, which is a denial of human nature and a prohibition on acknowledging human genetic diversity.

P.S. If you have never provided your dogs a secure confined space, I suggest you consider doing so. My dogs love their crates and seek them out as a place of sanctuary. While waiting for me to unpack them and set them up in the new house, Buddy and Nella have been forced to improvise. The previous tenants of the house abandoned a couple chairs with legs about 5 or 6 inches high. Nella likes to seek refuge under them -- in particular the one in the corner surrounded by walls on two sides, boxes on a third side with just a small gap under the desk to the fourth side. The space under the chairs is too small for Buddy. He prefers the space under my desk or his "Harry Potter" room under the stairs.

Keep in mind that dogs evolved to seek out shelter in crowded cramped underground dens.

Maybe we'll get lucky and the new social programs will be more reasonable, like no babies for unmarried women, no babies for men without jobs, finish high school before babies. Breast feed your baby. Learn to read. Plus, the government has failed its Hobbesian duty to all of us: It has lost its monopoly on violence. It has to get that back, especially against blacks, before anything will change much.

Rob,

I agree the government needs to get back to the job of asserting a monopoly on violence. I observe though that asserting it against black criminals actually asserts it for more blacks than against.

Achieving "no babies for unmarried women" etc. would require draconian interventions I don't think anyone really wants. I would prefer to see policies with both positive and negative reinforcers encouraging unmarried women and jobless men to refrain from conceiving babies. As it stands now, we don't force unmarried women or jobless men to have babies, but we certainly reward them for it.

There is a disabling contradiction in giving a slippery slope equation of those who observe group differences, being equated or lumped as: racism=nazism=mass murder. If individual judgement is owed to one group, then it is owed to the others, whom one wishes to package as being on that slippery slope. Actually individual judgement is not strictly necessary in either case. Those who avoid concentrations of low IQ groups, knowing that such will spontaneously form a hierarchy of ruthless violence, are not doing anyone an injustice. When you have the violent group in a condition of being able to challenge another group with a hierarchy of intelligence and achievement, conflict and animosity is guaranteed. The high IQ group will continually be taking out the leaders of the low IQ's hierarchy of ruthless violence. This procedure antagonizes them the most; it engenders a new struggle for dominance which they have reason to fear. The highIQ group will continually keep the lowIQ group off balance by upsetting the hierarchy, leaving an opening for new contenders to move into the places at the top of the violent hierarchy, by removing those higher in the rankings selectively, and frequently. The hierarchy of ruthless violence needs to be characterized as subhuman, in order to avoid moral implication in it, and to better note its analogous nature to those of several species.

With all due respect, John,

I observe group average differences, and I do not equate myself with racism or nazism or mass murder. Neither do I implicate myself in any kind of group violence morally or in any other way. On average, humans of all races are violent creatures. If we were not, we would have no need for government. Do you consider the Victors of Agincourt sub-human for their exceptional violence?

I will repeat: The term sub-human serves no purpose other than to engender hatred and to overcome inhibition to morally repugnant action. If you cannot achieve your goal without engendering hatred, I find your goal morally bankrupt. I suggest you stop and consider what your goal is. Then stop and consider whether the slur you use promotes that goal or defeats it.

Are you suggesting we should deprive violent criminals due process? If we grant them due process, do we not thereby recognize their humanity?

Jorge D.C.,

I agree that cultural Marxism (or whatever someone wants to call the current mass deceits) can not last. What's going to knock it off its perch is cheap DNA sequencing.

I will think about not using language which could be taken as moral support for hatred when professors who used terms like 'capitalist pig', as if we should be slaughtering the 'pigs', apologize in all contrition and humility. My motivations are not relevant to the truth of the characterizations. On a postmodernist or De Man type interpretation, though, there is no truth in words or texts, but only signals such as incitements to misbehavior. If no truth inheres in words such as 'morally repugnant' how will anyone know which signals will lead to the behaviors that one wishes to be avoided? If truth matters, then one does not first take into account how some signals might trigger some reactions in persons unknown. Why, if one has morals, would one not want to engender hatred against what should be hated, such as a hierarchy of ruthless violence? Inhibitions against the morally repugnant are not maintained through censorship or cowardice. Regarding Sailer's view that an image of moral superiority motivates those who take certain conspicuous antiracist or antixenophobic attitudes; this is an insufficient explanation. It doesn't explain why similarly situated people earlier buffed their images for conspicuous altruism by speaking for racial loyalty and nationalism, etc., and in many countries still do. It does not explain the about face which occurred forty odd years ago, on these attitudes. If one notes that the left gave up on the class war as the key to absolute power around that time, and took up the race war as their hope for power, and in Europe, has even pinned their hopes on a new war of religion, these otherwise nonsensical developments make much more sense.

With all due respect, John,

Please answer my questions: Are you suggesting we deprive violent criminals due process? If we grant them due process, do we not thereby recognize their humanity? (Yes or No answers will suffice for both.)

If you value truth, you will not use 'sub-human' to refer to any human or to any human artifact because by definition those are human. If you value truth, you will not use self-evidently false inciteful language whose only expected outcome is to evoke a nonrational emotional response in persons unknown. If you don't value truth, then you are grinding water.

Inhibitions against morally repugnant action are inherent in morals. You pretend to present a moral argument, but when you must seek to overcome morals to achieve your goal, you expose the moral banruptcy of your position. Please reconsider whether your goal requires such incitement and manipulation.

I have duly noted that your excuse for this behaviour is "Other people are doing it" even if these other people are themselves paradigms of moral bankruptcy. Since you consider that a valid justification, I expect you will grant the same validity to the looters' identical excuse.

I will further observe that hierarchies of violence have been the norm for all but a couple hundred years of humanity's 5,000,000 year existence. It has even been the norm for about 99.6% of civilization, and remains the norm for humanity throughout most of the world today.

Tribalistic hatred is not the solution to the problems we have seen in the aftermath of Katrina--it's part of the cause and one of the symptoms.

If we will ever hope to solve these problems, we have to come up with honest answers to: What is human nature? By what measures does our nature vary among individuals? Of those variables, which vary on average among groups? And how do they vary? And among which groups? What problems does our nature cause? How does current policy interact with our nature? How can we improve? How can we overcome the negative aspects of human nature? How can we leverage the beneficial aspects of human nature? Hatred will only interfere with the reason and honesty required. I believe Randall created his blog and posted the article partly to work toward answering the above questions.

Pretending violence is not part of human nature defeats us before we begin.

Bob Badour: Pretending violence is not part of human nature defeats us before we begin.

There is a great deal of pretending going on. Here is the greatest pretense: People are pretending that all ethnicities of humans are identical in virtually every way except appearance. Saying that "violence is part of human nature" is another way of saying that all humans have the nature to be violent. This technical essay suggests that there are differences between ethnicities in tendencies to aggression. This Steve Sailer article referenced by Randall also describes differences in crime by ethnicity.

All of us are capable of violence, but some are more capable than others. Pretending otherwise defeats us. We must look at the issue honestly so that everyone involved can act according to the true reality, not according to the pretend reality.

Marvin,

I agree the 'blank slate' idea of interchangeable humans has done great harm. I disagree that saying violence is part of human nature necessarily says all humans commit violent acts. Much of civilization involves getting humans to behave contrary to their nature. Most of our evolution did not prepare us for life in cities.

I have no objection to the observation that group average predilections to violence vary across races. None whatsoever. In fact, we all need to say it. We all need to understand it. We also need to understand the distributions generally overlap as much or more than they differ.

I personally think predilection to tribalism is as large as problem as predilection to violence, and I wonder how we could measure it. Or what we could do about it. I think some races on average are much more likely to use violence defensively and in defense of complete strangers than other races. And I think some races on average are much more likely to excuse and to ignore the offensive and criminal violence of their clansmen.

I fail to see how we achieve anything by combating one denial of reality with another, and I agree we need to look at these things honestly. To do that, we need to keep emotional baggage from clouding our judgement while recognizing that emotions are part of human nature too.

To illustrate my point above: As a thought experiment, picture 5,000 whites lined up for evacuation with 80 black and asian tourists interspersed among them in groups of 5 or 8. Imagine a not very nice group of young men threatening the tourists because they are a different race and are ahead in line.

How long does anyone think that would last before the other whites in line ripped those young men a new one? Who doubts that 5,000 whites and asians of varying ethnicities would band together for mutual defense from the criminals among them?

Bob,

You have a high ratio of long-windedness to evidence. Look back over everything you've written in this thread. Imagine someone coming to this thread 6 months from now via Google. Will they want to read it? NO. I've asked this privately. I'm asking publically. Edit yourself down. If you want to write longer comments then go dig for social and biological scientific evidence to support your many assertions.

As for getting humans to behave contrary to their nature: Our prisons are full of people who civilization failed to get to act contrary to their nature. Years of living under some control of civilization failed to get lots of people left in New Orleans to act in what most of us would consider a civilized manner.

You are exerting a lot of effort defending humans from being labelled subhumans as if this label represents a large demotion on some sort. A demotion from what exalted state? Consider a really basic fact: A white person can not safely live in an all-black neighborhood. Look at the first graph.

Humans really are just another species of animal. Within humanity there are genetic variations that are much like dog breeds. Walking thru a neighborhood of pit bulls off leash puts you in way greater danger than walking thru a neighborhood of border collies off leash. There's a huge practical genetic difference between Kobe Japan 1995 and New Orleans USA 2005.

Tribalism: It has a strong genetically coding, especially at lower IQ levels. Your philosophical arguments and therefore irrelevant (and remind me of Objectivist arguments).

Great point Randall about dogs, one which I have been thinking about too. While obviously some are going to object to comparing humans to dogs, there is actually a very interesting parallel. There is no question that dogs all fit in the same species, and despite their obvious external differences, they seem to have diverged rather recently, through domestication, selective breeding, etc.

The thing about dogs however, which any dog owner will agree with, is that there is a significant differences in breeds, in terms of temperament, obedience, being good with children, protectiveness, viciousness, etc. These differences may be more extreme than between humans due to the pressures of selective breeding, but the point is still the same.

Does there exist a "canine nature", just as a human nature? I think there is, but it must be defined as a bare minimum in both cases, unless we know what specific subset we are talking about. On the other hand, liberals and the multi-cultural right have long been guilty of projecting their ethnocentric human nature onto other distant and distinct groups with disastrous results, all in the name of "everybody is equal".

One important point I might add to my previous post is that this demonstrates the weakness of the cultural or 100% nurture argument. In the case of dogs, there just isn't a cultural component to speak of. Clearly genes can and do influence behaviors, emotions, mental outlooks, etc, all in ways which are comparable to cultural/environmental factors. How much is genetic versus cultural may be a legitimate question to ask, but it is high time that the multi-cultural conservatives admit the weakness of their "blame it all on cultural" argument.

Due process of law, without which life or liberty is not to be deprived, is highly particular as to nation or tribe, artificial and not really absolute. Are arrests not to be made without prior legal proceddings? A subhuman aggressor moving in direct lethal threat, is given a bullet, not due process. When we respond to the subhuman aggressor as such, and to the hierarchy of ruthless violence as such, we do not thereby turn races and tribes into enemies at war with each other; we instead thus actually promote peace between them. It is by treating the subhuman aggressors of a particular racial or ethnic background, as excusable by reason of their background, that fear and hatred of the intercommunal type is efficiently promoted. Those who make it their business to respond to the subhuman as such are the ones who alone can guarantee intercommunal peace and respect. The drift that needs to be noted and evaluated negatively, is that of the left and those with power seeking interest in building up the occasions of violent intercommunal conflict.

Due process for aggressors does not necessarily amount to a societal recognition of their humanity. It can be interpreted as a limitation on the government, and a safeguarding of its reputation; especially since it operates when we have the aggressor safely in custody, and have time for a stately process. No excuse of 'other people are doing it' is needed for riling the people against the subhuman; it is always morally justifiable to try to provoke indignation against evils that we can control, and justly punish. What is unjustifiable is to imply that a strict and spirited application of laws against subhuman misbehavior will lead to intercommunal hostilities that we dare not face.

Randall,

I think most people will get to the part where John thinks some folks are subhuman or the part where he thinks we should just go around shooting folks and then turn away muttering something about the people here being nothing but a bunch of effing racists after all.

Feel free to delete my responses to John at any time. As long as he has had an opportunity to read them, I won't take offense to their removal.

And I resent the implication that pitbulls are sub-dogs. Everyone knows beagles are the sub-dogs!

Zach,

If you want to learn about canine nature, I highly recommend the books by the Monks of New Skete especially The Art of Raising a Puppy.

Bob,

My reaction to the argument you are having with John is that anyone who might have been inclined to dig up data that is relevant to the original questions are driven off by the philosophical, moral, and semantic debate. I want evidence and analysis of the evidence. Neither you or John Bolton are throwing any light on the subjects at hand.

Canine nature: There is not a single canine nature. Similarly, there is not a single human nature. The universalism implied by some popular uses of the term "human" is lofty mythology.

However, John Bolton's labelling of humans that he doesn't approve of as "subhuman" is misleading to those who think the definition that human means homo sapiens. The problem is that savagery is well within the range of what genetics makes quite a few humans capable of. That's why I do use the word "savage" to refer to some humans but I avoid the use of "subhuman".

But even the word "savage" is misleading to some listeners because they think of savages as people who are either just not yet enlightened enough or educated enough or (in the modern Marxist formulation) not unoppressed enough. Then there are the fools who believe Rousseau's Noble Savage myth. It is so difficult to be properly understood.

As for worries on where the use of the term "subhuman" might lead: The vast bulk of the mass killings of the 20th century were by less intelligent groups against more intelligent groups. Documenters like Amy Chua probably avoid this way of formulating the generalization and prefer to use the results of this greater intellectual ability such as more economic success as the reason for the killings. But the cause of the success comes thru. Therefore I only worry when "subhuman" is applied to smarter groups by dumber and jealous groups.

This brings me back to my intellectual interest here: What crime data would allow one to separate out immediate economic motives from non-economic motives to allow measurement of the how much black-on-white crime is caused by black hostility, resentment, and hatred toward whites? How much of the hostility is due to a very primitive tribal view of the non-tribe members? If whites were as poor as blacks would blacks be just as likely to assault and rape whites?

I would say this statistic and these statistics show criminals do not choose victims on the basis of wealth. Since both criminals and victims tend to poverty, this suggests criminals choose victims of opportunity. I think it is probably reasonable to assume this holds true for interracial crimes as well.

I wonder how domestic violence confounds the interracial violence statistics. Domestic violence is more often male on female and biracial couples are more often black male/white female. While I have not yet found the direct statistics to measure, this table from the NCVS is suggestive:

Rates per 1,000 persons age 12 or olderI Ratio of ---------------- male-to-female Victim characteristic Female Male victimizations ----------------------------------------------------------------- Martial status Married 20.5 28.6 1.4* Widowed 7.7 11.7 1.5 Divorced 70.7 76.8 1.1 Separated 127.8 79.1 .6* Never married 82.5 110.5 1.3*

Notice that only separated women reverse the trend for higher victimization of males than females with divorced women approach unity with divorced males.

In the same document, this observation puts a cap on the magnitude of distortion:

When the offender was an intimate, victimizations of females were almost 5« times greater than those of males (903,700 and 166,700, respectively).

Aside: Hmmmm... this is interesting:

In 1976 the per capita rate of intimate murders among blacks was nearly 11 times that among whites; in 1996 the black rate was just over 4 times higher than the white rate.

I wonder what that's about? A little further in it says: "Since 1976 the sharpest decrease in per capita rates of intimate murder has been among black male victims." Could higher incarceration rates have done this?

Okay, here's another important piece of the puzzle:

Sixty-six percent of white victims and 76% of black victims were victimized by an offender of the same race, 1993-98 (when the race of the offender was known).

Aside: This is interesting if somewhat predictable:

Race of victim

Beginning in 2003 survey respondents were able to self-identify with more than one race. Persons of two or more races were victims of overall violence at significantly higher rates than those for whites,blacks, and persons of other races.

So, 1.6 million black on white crimes. At most, 0.9 million domestic violence incidents total with female victims. In general, 34% of white victims had non-white assailants. But does that apply to domestic violence? Let's assume it does with more than a little unease. (I suspect something here might help, but I am on dial-up and I don't have enough time to wait for it.) That would put a ceiling of 19% on the contribution of interracial domestic violence to Griffe's proclivity to violence analysis. Give the inverse-square law, could this then account for 43% of the 64 times greater proclivity?

Then at the census, we see black husband / white wife account for only 0.3% of marriages and a total of 163,000. The proclivity of interracial domestic violence would have to be even higher than 64 times to even come close to the ceiling established above confirming the unease and suggesting domestic violence does not skew the proclivity analysis too significantly.

The change in the multiple of black intimate murders to white intimate murders is probably due to the collapse of the black family. Black illegitimacy is at, what, 68%? In 1996 it was slightly higher (welfare reform may have helped shave off a couple percentage points). It was probably somewhere between 20% and 30% in 1976.

Well, what does that mean? Black women have become less likely to be living with black men. So domestic violence probably should have declined for that reason. Also, yes, the doubling of black male incarceration since 1980 probably saved quiet a few black women from beatings, rape, and murder.

Actually, Randall, I was thinking incarceration probably saved the men. Back in 1976, more black men were killed by an intimate than were black women. (Gives whole new meaning to the term "Black Widow", eh?)

From the same source as my first aside above:

Over the last two decades intimate murder rates dropped far more rapid among blacks than among whites, with the sharpest decreases among black male victims

Rate of murder by an intimate per 100,000 persons age 20-44
White Black
Year Total Male Female Total Male Female

1976 1.31 0.89 1.72 14.01 16.51 12.01
1977 1.27 0.93 1.61 11.94 14.97 9.49
...
1995 0.89 0.38 1.40 3.87 3.33 4.32
1996 0.85 0.36 1.34 3.74 2.83 4.51

While the intimate murder rate has dropped astonishingly for blacks of both sexes, I note that the lowest rate for black males over a 20 year period is still about double the highest rate for white females over that period with the lowest rate for black females higher still.

I would like to clarify two points:

1. When I say we need to be honest about human nature, it is precisely the fact that it varies that we need to be honest about. Humans have a large number of variable traits and each of these traits vary over a broad range. We need to consider the entire range of each of these traits, which include intelligence, aggression, temper, tribalism, altruistic punishment, height, strength and many more. We need to expect most if not all of these traits to show group average differences.

2. We need to keep in mind when discussing group average differences that these traits generally have more overlap than difference. The graphs here in another of Griffe's superb articles demonstrate my point.

The only clear conclusion I can see from the genetic evidence is that those humans with a Y chromosome are orders of magnitude more likely to commit a violent crime than other humans. My partner has been arguing for years that for the good of humanity we must embark on a project to weed out the Y-chromosome.

Though she has a disturbing glint in her eye when she says it.

Stephen,

While completely exterminating the Y chromosome will pose some problems (at least until the fertility doctors can reliably conceive from two ova), it is perhaps reassuring to some that probably 95% or more of the Y chromosomes out there are redundant.

I'll tell her that Bob, but given her current mood I think that 5% will still be too much to put up with.

More evidence the "barbarisms" in New Orleans were hyped. Here is Malkin on the case (I don't think anyone can accuse of being one of the MSM intent on downplaying the "sub-humanity" of blacks):

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003613.htm

Rape reports unsubstantiated:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1563532,00.html

Here is Powerline on the case:

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011792.php

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002520986_katmyth26.html

Poor Randall Parker was so ready to pounce on the evidence of black criminality to let these inconveniences get in the way.

Steve_o,

I've posted many links to many articles which quoted witnesses who described what they saw. Lots of those people were back in Britain and Australia getting interviewed. They aren't going to go back to New Orleans to file criminal reports to testify in trials. Ditto most American tourists who were there.

Yes, rape reports go unsubstantiated. It is a heavily underreported crime. It is going to be especially underreported by tourists who left as soon as they could.

Cimes after a disaster with few police around and a huge evacuation of people to other states and countries are going to go underreported. But look at the people who are getting resettled:

In South Carolina, state police checked every evacuee flown there by the government. Of 547 people checked, 301 had criminal records, according to Robert Stewart, state Law Enforcement Division Chief.

While most had been law-abiding for years or had committed minor offenses, the group included those convicted of rape or aggravated assault. Two had warrants, but were not held because the states weren't interested in extraditing them.

...

The state police in West Virginia said roughly half of the nearly 350 Katrina victims evacuated by the government to that state had criminal records, and 22 percent have a history of committing a violent crime.

...

In Massachusetts, where about 200 evacuees were flown to a military base on Cape Cod, criminal background checks turned up six sex offenders and one man wanted for rape in Louisiana. Two of the sex offenders have since left the state, said Katie Ford, a spokeswoman for the state public safety office. The rape suspect was being held on $250,000 bail.

You are grasping at straws.

How's that for rationality: a false dilemna as subtle as suggesting that you have to either participate in a news blackout on the extent of the savagery in NO; or classify the entire black race as subhuman. This was the worst breakdown of community of values and solidarity in America, on a large scale, in probably over a century, and we're supposed to be cowardly servitors of the official line that blacks are by definition victims, who can do no wrong? They turned on each other in the time of crisis; this is what we are sacrificing the meritorious'life chances for? Why would some people be alarmed at the notion that solidarity of citizens and community of values might be reasserted?