Civitas

"you can't say that a higher proportion of black and Asian women commit crimes compared with their white counterparts."

Is this a legal issue - would you be inciting racial hatred by saying this, or is it just a matter of political correctness? When you say "can't" do you mean that there a legal sanction or just the disapproval of the establishment.

There is no legal sanction, at least not yet! The Sunday Times article was discussing what you are permitted to say by certain politically correct speech codes.

The reason you can't say black and Asian women commit more crime than whites is because it's misleading. Any implication of a causal link between race or skin colour and crime would appear overtly racist. It encourages and is a process of public exclusion. The statement also runs the risk of confirming negative gender and racial stereotypes. Both these things appear unethical. The fact that your skin colour is dark has nothing to do with the likelihood of doing something criminal; there's no biological link between skin colour and crime. Is it not the moral responsibility of legitimate research and commentary to make this clear, whilst highlighting the use of these statistics is in no way intended to show that skin colour or any other socially constructed difference makes one race more criminal than another.

The use by certain groups to claim that over representation in the prison population is a sign of oppression is valid because of historical facts. Or would you have us believe there are no structural elements that lead certain populations and sub-groups to commit more crime than others?

The reasons they probably pleaded 'guilty' with such frequency is because they probably were. What are you trying to show by quoting this statistic? You want people to think that somehow because blacks and Asians admit their guilt that they know and choose to break the law with purposeful intent, whilst being conscious of their disregard for others? Would you prefer people to lie and plead innocent? Have you considered many of these crimes stem from a hopeless or desperate situation? What are the crimes these black and Asian women commit anyway? Possesion of drugs? Stealing milk? Stealing tampons? How can you forget to factor in the impact of poverty, isolation, employment status and individual circumstance before you hand down judgement that black and Asian women commit more crime than their white counterparts?

The sole reason for mentioning the race of a criminal is to reply to political activists who make an issue of it. The race of a person does not cause crime. Individuals opt to commit crimes for reasons of their own. The liberal approach to race and crime is to be colour blind, which means to treat people on their individual merits.

The argument put by Evert is self-contradictory. It complains that race is mentioned (because it is not a cause of crime) but chooses to make an issue of race (because disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among all criminals is said to be proof of discrimination). Each of the individuals convicted of a crime has been tried before an impartial court. Most pleaded guilty, presumably because they had committed the crime. The only reason for mentioning their guilty pleas is to rebut the proposition (often put by politically-correct ideologues – but not by Evert) that they were framed by the police.

The ideal to aim for is to treat everyone on their personal merits regardless of race. The main barrier to this ideal is the false claim that every occasion on which ethnic minorities are over-represented in unwanted situations must be the result of discrimination. In reality discrimination is only one possible explanation for disproportionate representation. There are several other possibilities.

Evert also makes the assumption that ethnic minorities are victims, who were forced to commit crimes by their circumstances. No one in this country has so little money that crime is justified. Crime is always a moral choice at every level of income. A true liberal treats all individuals as moral equals, regardless not only of race but also their material conditions. But Evert’s assumption is that ethnic-minority individuals who commit crimes are not morally responsible, and to that extent not equal.

It is true that race itself does not genetically make someone more likely to commit crime. It is instead a collective race culture at fault. Only 25% of African-Caribbean boys get five good GCSEs compared with 51% of the population as a whole, while 48% of African-Caribbean families in Britain are headed by a single parent (mainly mothers) compared to 22% of the general population.

Racism limits opportunities in all sorts of ways. If someone's legitimate opportunities are very limited, and their criminal ones are very available and appear to provide a social and financial status which is otherwise not going to happen, it isn't that surprising that crime is what tends to happen. A former crack dealer I know told me that when his father came to this country, with a university degree, he had to work as a bus conductor due to what presumably was racism. And for my friend, the successful black role models, with gold and cars, were the drug dealers. Everyone else was downtrodden.
It must feel so demoralising not to be free to excel when you have the ability - easier not to try, and to look elsewhere for success. Easier to define success in a way that racial issues can't intervene.

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