Read on Twitter
Just as a reminder: 84% of white people are killed by other white people, but you never hear folks talk about "white on white crime." https://twitter.com/seyiayorinde/status/913041648627499009
Though this has been outlined pretty extensively, per the conversation in my mentions it feels like people might need a refresher on this...
ppl commit crimes against those they live close to. Bc of decades of state-sanctioned segregation most neighborhoods are racially stratified
any difference (though it's relatively small) in the percentage of intraracial murders can be directly attributed to hyper-segregation
additionally there's a long history of police in black communities who are complicit in or direct participants in violence against black ppl
ppl forget that police are extensions of a state that for 350 yrs explicitly said black ppl were second-class citizens. & they enforced that
Police used to show up at lynchings & watch. That is if they weren't participating in it themselves.
These memories stay w/ communities.
These memories stay w/ communities.
Even today there's extensive social science demonstrating why black people don't often trust the police: https://nyti.ms/2dchy8N
This lack of trust also stems from the fact that violent crimes in black communities are often not priorititized and thus many go unsolved
And in part because these crimes go unsolved, they happen more frequently
Black communities suffer from being overpoliced in the most harmful ways and *underpoliced* in ways that could actually prove helpful
Jill Leovy outlines this incredibly well in her amazing book 'Ghettoside': https://www.amazon.com/Ghettoside-True-Story-Murder-America-ebook/dp/B0062OCN4E
You can see this in the DOJ reports from Ferguson & Baltimore. Cops will arrest you for sitting on the corner but the murders go unsolved
So you live in a hypersegregated neighborhood w/few resources, & you know cops won't come/solve the crime, then ppl enact their own justice
Anyway, you can read how the phrase "black-on-black crime" came to be & was stripped of its original meaning here: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/06/the-origins-of-the-phrase-black-on-black-crime/395507/
