But let's dig into that and unpack the racism a little.

Drugs are easiest to understand. At this point everyone should know that white Americans do more drugs than Black Americans. They also do more hard drugs. We don't consider Drs. offices to be high crime, and yet, opioids.

Black neighborhoods only seem like they have more drug use, because of how we've decided to define crimes around drug use, and how we choose to enforce.

If I tell you that Mexican drug cartels are criminal organizations that illegally sell drugs and cause tens of thousands of deaths, you agree.

But if I tell you that the Sacklers criminally sold enough opioids that their actions killed *more US citizens than Mexican cartel wars killed Mexican citizens* you will have to run and fact check that, even though you know someone that dealt with opioid addiction.

Enough people overdosed that the *life expectancy of US citizens dropped*. No jail time!🤷🏿‍♂️

The war on drugs allows micro-dosing and dispensaries, but criminalizes possession for poor Black folk.

Pretty much any test you can do shows that drug use by white folk is about the same, or in some cohorts, many times more, than Black folk. Yes, even crack cocaine in the 80s. White folk did more crack than Black folk.

There's a false narrative that white folk did powder cocaine and Black folk did crack, and that's why more Black folk are in jail for drugs. It's not true. Poor folk did crack.

But what about theft? If you park your car in a high crime area, you're likely to get your windows smashed!

But, most theft in this country, is wage theft. Mostly rich white business owners, stealing wages from poor Black and brown service workers. Between $8B and $15B a year. Yes I said "billion!" Yes I said "a year!"

But we don't define wage theft by employers as a crime the same way as we define an employee stealing from the cash register, or a homeless person smashing a window. You don't go to jail for wage theft.

Again, this is an arbitrary decision around how we choose to define crime.

We could very easily decide that intentionally stealing more than $1000 from an employee is now a felony! Just like intentionally stealing $1000 from an employer is a felony. But you know that we won't.

Civil asset forfeiture is cops taking cash and other property from folk who are too poor to mount a defense against the theft. Most victims are never charged with a crime. Victims of this theft are disproportionately Black. ~$2B in 2016.

Civil asset forfeiture is not a crime. It's literally done by the cops! 😀

If I say I was driving back from Tijuana Mexico, and Mexican police pulled me over and took $1,000 from me, you will say "Mexican police are corrupt!" and maybe follow up with some racist statements.

But if a Black US driver is driving in Florida, police can just take $10,000 from her in broad daylight, without even bothering to accuse her of a crime.

It's very risky for poor Black folk to do any cash based transaction in the US. Not because they might get robbed by criminals, but by the cops.

I'm not kidding. If you sell your Honda Civic hatchback on Craigslist for cash, cops can take that. If you cash your paycheck, cops can take that. You would need a lawyer that you can't afford, just to get your own money back. Cops stole more stuff from citizens in 2015, than all burglaries in the US combined.

https://washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/

So the 2 forms of theft with mostly Black victims, that make up the vast majority of theft, are not even considered crimes.

Our definition of theft is arbitrary.

OK, but what about murder? Clearly there are more murders committed in "high crime" areas?

Again, it depends on our definition of murder and even our definition of location. If I stand on block A, and shoot someone across the street on block B, where did the crime occur? A or B?

Do we define murder as where the body fell? Or where the shooter pulled the trigger? Victim focused? Or killer focused?

This distinction becomes important once we explore how we have arbitrarily decided to define murder.

Shooting folk? Murder!
Operating unsafe factory? Maybe?

Lying about public health data during a pandemic? Not murder!

Grifting supplies needed by FEMA? Not murder!

Cops shooting unarmed folk in the back? Not murder!

So the forms of victimization disproportionately suffered by poor Black folk, don't even register as murder. 🙂🙃

Even in the highest gun crime cities in the US, there are a *very* small number of shooters doing most of the killing. Typically fewer than 50 killers in a city of millions.

But we consider entire cities "high crime" because of them, because they rack up *astronomical* bodycounts.

🤔But... By astronomical we mean 500 to 1000 murders a year, 80% of which will likely be committed by this pod of killers, most of the victims young, Black, male.

But we don't consider *intentional* negligence leading to 10K or 100K deaths, as creating a high crime neighborhood.

Of all the things that police do with their billions of dollars of budget, the one thing they don't do well at all, and the one thing that some residents of supposedly high crime communities (AKA, Black communities) would actually want them to do, is stop these pods.

But they won't.

Dallas PD has a budget of ~$500 MM, and has 3,000 officers and around 500 civilian workers. They only have ~15 homicide detectives.

The other 2,985 officers do a lot of policing of "high crime" neighborhoods. Arresting lots of poor Black folk for drugs and other minor crimes.

I'm not going into assault, other than to say: If in 2023 your definition of assault is "Men beating up men that they don't know," then I don't know what to tell you.

If you know that most assault is "Men harming women that they do know," then no explanation needed.

There's a list of 34 things women do to keep safe.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-women-have-to-do-to-be-careful_n_7072080

Great list! But nothing on this list will protect women from the vast majority of assaults. It's missing the 35th and most important tip: It will be a man that you know and trust, not a Black stranger. His gun isn't for burglars, it's for you. Do not allow yourself to trust men with unaddressed misogyny and fantasies of violence.

For violence against women, the high crime neighborhood, is wherever men are.

@courtcan

Something that weirds people out in the US once they start seeing it. Yes, even in California.

1) What percentage of white US men have a concealed carry permit?

2) What percentage of those men carry every day?

3) How many people are in a grocery store at any given time?

4) Can you spot the telltale bulge of a concealed weapon? (A gun imprint, AKA "printing")?

Statistically, grocery shopping in the USA involves being in a building with very few exits, with an armed white man.🤷🏿‍♂️