Permissible comments about blacks and crime in British media

(Note: in this entry, a commenter says that it’s not true that the British never talk about the racial aspect of violent crime, and I reply.)

Gintas writes (June 24):

Five comments mentioning race or groups have slipped by the censors at the Telegraph in the comments section following George Pilcher’s article. They are hardly at the level of the original deleted comment (or your follow-up). This low level apparently is acceptable:

1—Martin:

I see that the one honest post referring to the real issue,—race, has been deleted.

No wonder newspapers are going out of business. Every one with at least a double digit IQ knows that nearly all this type of crime is committed by blacks. All else is huffing and puffing.

2—Tomas T.:

Martin is right; the vast majority of the knife violence is black instigated. It sounds like it’s not just a knife problem, but a blacks-with-knives problem.

3—Josh017:

“Yes, our society must address how such monsters are created.”

And also acknowledge that different groups commit crime at different rates and it isn’t simply due to poverty. For instance poor Jewish migrants living in ghettos 100 years ago were never linked to high crime rates. In San Francisco at one point there was high poverty levels and TB in Chinatown but they had the lowest crime rates. You need to address the reality that groups differ in testosterone and aggressiveness.

4—Chi:

You need to slowly strip away the brain washing and acknowledge that groups differ in their propensity for crime.

5—Fred:

Ditto on the last few comments referring to race.

It’s time to bring a little honesty into the discussion of crime, instead of endless obfuscation and hand-wringing.

[end of Gintas’s comment]

Such is the voice of the permitted opposition! These are brief, passing remarks, making the bare point—without much energy—that blacks commit more violent crime. What the Telegraph will not allow is more substantive comments presenting arguments that will challenge the lockstep liberal orthodoxy.

- end of initial entry -

Jeff in England writes:

Are you forgetting that Tony Blair himself talked about BLACK violent crime. And Janet Daley wrote an article in the Telegraph about it (google: Janet Daley black crime).

The Brits do talk about black violent crime from the Prime Minister downwards.

It didn’t help that that commenter at the Telegraph used the word Negroid. He should have said black.

And as you said most of the victims of black crime are black. It is rarely a racist scenario per se.

And in general Muslims are not attacking whites in the context of violent crime. It is rare.

LA replies:

I think that the article sent by Jeff shows the opposite of what he believes it shows. It shows that the British do NOT talk about black crime. Blair at the end of his prime ministership made one decent speech on this issue. And what happened? As we see in the article, his speech was roundly rejected not only by the black community but by the British establishment in general and even by his own Home Office. And things then returned to normal, normal being that blacks commit murder after murder, and race is virtually never mentioned, but crime is discussed in terms of the cowardly euphemisms

And notice the way Blair expressed himself: He said he had been “lurching into total frankness” on the issue. When someone “lurches into total frankness,” that means he doesn’t have a thought-out position that he’s prepared to defend against attacks, it means that like Larry Summers, like Pope Benedict at Regensburg, like James Watson, he’s acting on an impulsive basis, and that he will soon retreat from the position he’s taken. And indeed, did Blair revisit the issue after he had been attacked for his speech? Evidently not. So, far from the British talking about black crime, what we see is that the reaction against Blair, plus Blair’s subsequent failure to hold his ground and stand up against his critics, resulted in the politically correct silence on race becoming stronger than ever.

It was the same with The Bell Curve. After the book was published, its co-author Charles Murray thought that the issue of race differences had been opened up. As I pointed out to him at the time, the exact opposite had happened. As a result of the intense reaction against his book, and his own failure to drive his points home in a decisive way that would really make a difference in the way people thought about the issue of race and intelligence, racial PC—at least as far as mainstream discussion is concerned—became stronger than ever.

When will people understand that a single book, a single speech, does not defeat liberal orthodoxy? If it is to make any difference, the rejection of liberal orthodoxy must be sustained, unrelenting, uncompromising.

Here is the article Jeff sent about Blair:

Blair blames spate of murders on black culture; Political correctness not helping, says PM; Community leaders react angrily to comments

April 12 2007 The Guardian

Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.

One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.

Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped “by pretending it is not young black kids doing it”.

It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.

Mr Blair’s remarks are at odds with those of the Home Office minister Lady Scotland, who told the home affairs select committee last month that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.

Giving the Callaghan lecture in Cardiff, the prime minister admitted he had been “lurching into total frankness” in the final weeks of his premiership. He called on black people to lead the fight against knife crime. He said that “the black community—the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening—need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids”.

Mr Blair said he had been moved to make his controversial remarks after speaking to a black pastor of a London church at a Downing Street knife crime summit, who said: “When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it?” Mr Blair said there needed to be an “intense police focus” on the minority of young black Britons behind the gun and knife attacks. The laws on knife and gun gangs needed to be toughened and the ringleaders “taken out of circulation”.

Last night, British African-Caribbean figures leading the fight against gang culture condemned Mr Blair’s speech. The Rev Nims Obunge, chief executive of the Peace Alliance, one of the main organisations working against gang crime, denounced the prime minister.

Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: “He makes it look like I said it’s the black community doing it. What I said is it’s making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they’re doing. … He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children.”

Keith Jarrett, chair of the National Black Police Association, whose members work with vulnerable youngsters, said: “Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both. It is curious that the prime minister does not mention deprivation in his speech.”

Lee Jasper, adviser on policing to London’s mayor, said: “For years we have said this is an issue the black community has to deal with. The PM is spectacularly ill-informed if he thinks otherwise.

“Every home secretary from [David] Blunkett onwards has been pressed on tackling the growing phenomenon of gun and gang crime in deprived black communities, and government has failed to respond to what has been a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection”.

The Home Office has already announced it is looking at the possibility of banning membership of gangs, tougher enforcement of the supposed mandatory five-year sentences for possession of illegal firearms, and lowering the age from 21 to 18 for this mandatory sentence.

Answering questions later Mr Blair said: “Economic inequality is a factor and we should deal with that, but I don’t think it’s the thing that is producing the most violent expression of this social alienation.

“I think that is to do with the fact that particular youngsters are being brought up in a setting that has no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them.”

Some people working with children knew at the age of five whether they were going to be in “real trouble” later, he said.

Mr Blair is known to believe the tendency for many black boys to be raised in families without a father leads to a lack of appropriate role models.

He said: “We need to stop thinking of this as a society that has gone wrong—it has not—but of specific groups that for specific reasons have gone outside of the proper lines of respect and good conduct towards others and need by specific measures to be brought back into the fold.”

The Commission for Racial Equality broadly backed Mr Blair, saying people “shouldn’t be afraid to talk about this issue for fear of sounding prejudiced”.

Mr Blair spoke out as a second teenager was due to appear in court charged with the murder of 14-year-old Paul Erhahon, stabbed to death in east London on Friday. He was the seventh Londoner under 16 to be murdered since the end of January, and his 15-year-old friend, who was also stabbed, remains in hospital.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 28, 2009 04:27 PM | Send
    

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