Kim has an interesting post up today looking at Kevin Bakers crime stats post I linked to the other day, and talking about violence in society, immigration, and American culture.
I thought I'd put in my two cents here.
I grew up dead poor in a rich town, because we would rent a house from my grandfather who was quite well off. We always had enough to eat, and clean clothes; but other than that we were pretty well skint, until I was a teenager.
My mother would periodically get a new job or get into a new business and we'd move someplace where we werent getting a lower rent because of my grandfather. So when I was a kid, we moved around a lot, into some of the worst ghetto areas in this country because that is what my mother could afford on her own.
Thing is, we always moved back to that nice rich town after a year or so in each of those nastier places; because pride be damned, my mother wanted us to live in a safe place where we could get a half decent education
Since I’ve grown up, I’ve been rich, and I’ve been dead poor. I’ve lived in luxury homes and in my car. I’ve lived in the U.S. , Ireland, and for short periods of time (a few months) the U.K., Australia, Japan, and Russia. I’ve lived in good neighborhoods and bad; with all income levels, all social levels, all nationalities, and all races.
In all of this, one thing has been abundantly clear.
Almost all crime against strangers in a healthy society is commited by people who deliberately hold themselves apart from the productive mainstream of society.
In the western world it was once common for groups to be alienated from society by force through racism or other arbitrary prejudices; but in most places in the west these days institutional pervasive racism is not only absent but illegal (though personal racism will always remain). Most of what racism remains is because of toxic ignorance, tribalism, identity politics, or as a reaction to the self selected alienation by the groups I am speaking of.
Be they the chronic dolists (permanent welfare recipients for us Americans) , the “refugee community”, “travellers”, gypsies, gangs, punks, skinheads, or any other group; the people commiting the majority of crime in these societies are all self selected groups that refuse to integrate into society.
It doesn’t matter if you are black, white, yellow, red, or puce; pervasive violent crime against strangers is a symptom of alienation from society; whether it be from racism, tribalism, other self-selection into an alienated sub-culture (tribalism is a form of it), or sociopathy.
The mainstream “black culture” in America is one of these self-selected, alienated subcultures.
“Self selected you say? But they’re born black, how can that be self selection?”
Because in this country, your position in society is not determined by your birth, your race, your looks, or any other arbitrary factor; but by your work, your intelligence, and your drive.
Yes, it is HARDER for you to succeed depending on your circumstances at birth, but since when was something being hard and excuse for failure…
Oh wait, that’s right, we’ve made it not just an excuse, but a completely valid reason. Just because it’s easier for a good looking kid born to rich white parents to get ahead than an ugly kid born to poor black parents; it’s OK to sit back and do nothing.
If you choose to participate in a destructive, nihilistic, and anarchistic sub-culture of disrespect, macho phony “honor”, hedonism, infantilist social oportunism, and predatory crime; well that’s your choice. Societies choice is - or should be - then to exclude, and eventually imprison you.
If a society does NOT exclude you for these behaviors, then that society will fail.
