The long Western legacy of violence against Asian Americans

[Dill]

(03-25-2021, 11:24 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Quote:How are those circumstances separated from the legacy of white supremacy? 

Some of them are not, many, if not most of them are.  In fact we have a very easy way to empirically prove that "white supremacy" or it's "legacy" is not the main driving factor.  We can do so by looking for similar patterns in other minority communities.  Americans of Hispanic descent commit these crimes at or just slightly above their percentage of the population.  Asians are very much underrepresented.

Now, I can already hear you saying that those communities, while certainly marginalized to varying degrees by this country, did not experience the same level of animus and discrimination that Black people do/did.  This would be a fair, and perfectly true, point.  To counter it we need only look at the one ethnic minority treated even more poorly in our country's history than Black people, Native Americans.  They are slightly over represented in these categories, but nothing close to on the same scale. (Anyone looking for raw data on this need only check my link in the post above.

This comparison of minorities treats oppression as a quantity, with little regard for quantitative differences.
You've singled out Native Americans. It is true that, in historical terms, they were treated very badly. Entire tribes were wiped out to the last member, their lands taken.  Few remain today. 

But in the East, the survivors were assimilated more readily and completely than Blacks, as a rule. This is certainly true in the post WWII era. In the West, where many held on to their language culture, and a parcel of land, the story is rather different. On reservations in Montana, for example, the homicide rate among Native Americans is not very different from that of Blacks.  Alaskan Native Americans and Eskimos are subject to high rates of inter- not intraracial attacks. In some reservation counties in the West. violent crimes are 20 times higher than the national average. NA women experience a higher rate of "disappearance" than any other ethnic group. 
https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/mmiw/native-american-homicide-rates-are-soaring-but-causes-aren-t-clear-due-to-inconsistent-data/article_cd39d5e5-0bae-5f6d-9da5-994e3e8bdbd6.html
Suicide rates for NA men are also, I believe, the highest of any ethnic group. https://sprc.org/scope/racial-ethnic-disparities. Blacks, interestingly, have the lowest suicide rate.

So far as I can tell, the "raw data" you posted show numbers arrested and for what crimes, and then a percent distribution. They do not indicate the total populations for each demographic, from which the number of offenders is drawn. But what they do show is disturbing for NAs, especially in the under 18 group, where the murders per capita would be much nearer that for Blacks than whites. 

The relation of Western Tribal groups, from Apache to Cheyenne to Eskimo, to the dominant white culture/government is qualitatively different from that of virtually all other minorities coming to the U.S., in large part because of their "pre-civilized" status as the dominant white culture encountered them.  We speak loosely of "Black culture" in the U.S., but a 17 year old Crow or Cheyenne growing up on his MT reservation is REALLY growing up in a different culture. S/He must learn English as a second language, learn an entirely different set of laws and customs--and abide by them.  Tribes are benevolently allowed to keep their disempowered customs, where they don't conflict with U.S. law. They cannot set legal/political terms on equality the white man's government. Assimilation is difficult. Depression and hopelessness dominate. Living on the Crow Reservation is where I got my first clue about white supremacy. In every conflict, my culture cancels theirs.

Hence the differences in NA crime statistics from other minority populations. With no group do state or federal authorities or academics have so much trouble just getting accurate statistics. The situation is similar on the steppes of Siberia or deserts of Namibia--where ever tribal peoples become subject to "civilized" powers. Cultural disintegration follows with its unique attendant stresses.  But so far as I know, though, crime statistics for Native Americans living on tribal lands east of the Mississippi don't very much from those of whites in their states. 

Chinese, in contrast, came from a civilization, with writing, banking, bookkeeping, complex social hierarchies. Same with Japanese and Vietnamese. For military purposes, Japanese were declared "white" in 1942 to solve segregation issues at training sites in the South. That tells you where they have ranked vis a vis blacks in white racial imaginary.

Black Americans have an "advantage" over those Western NAs in that, if their ancestors were slaves, they were forcibly assimilated hundreds of years ago--forced to forget their language and adopt the white man's. The cultural gap is not nearly so great.  But Blacks, unlike Asians, are still considered more racially "different"--especially in visual and aesthetic terms.  And over hundreds of years, not only laws, but norms of exclusion were constructed specifically around Blacks to a greater degree than any other minority.  Other minorities, like poor whites, assimilated in part by distinguishing themselves from Blacks--the bottom rung of the racial ladder. 

(03-25-2021, 11:24 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Consequently, we can conclude rather comfortably, that while white supremacy, or it's "legacy" is absolutely a contributing factor, it can in no way be used to explain the enormous discrepancy in the commissions of violent crime within the black community.  It's absolutely a factor, but the raw data just doesn't lend itself to it being the major contributor, at all.

So then, please allow me to point the mic in the other direction and ask the same of you.  Why do you think there is this enormous statistical discrepancy?

I confess it is still not clear to me how we can "comfortably" conclude that while white supremacy may be a "contributing factor," it cannot explain the "enormous discrepancy in the commissions of violent crime" etc.  

First, I don't see a substantial statistical difference between violent crime amongst NAs living in the West and Black Americans. Your own data does not bear that out. Add to that the scandalous problem of reporting crimes involving Native Americans, especially homicides. They are not an example of a heavily oppressed minority whose oppression has resulted only in some minor statistical deviation from the white norm. And I don't see how the massive problems in NA communities cannot be uncoupled from white supremacy. So I cannot grant you the leverage of that benchmark.

Second, if high rates of black crime can be linked to 1) places where Blacks as a group were segregated in cities by law and real estate/banking practices, and 2) generations were denied equality of opportunity, turning people to criminal activities in greater numbers than in populations and places with those opportunities, that would seem to explain higher rates of criminality. That would explain why poor Blacks might be statistically more likely to turn to crime than poor whites or Asians. Such places would also be more susceptible to "force multipliers" like gangs and drugs, which drive crime rates even higher, and may set norms of behavior and values for neighborhood children which are difficult to unlearn.

So far, I still haven't read anything beyond 1 and 2 to effectively explain the higher levels of criminality you reference. I don't see some other cause out there, either. If I wanted to reduce that discrepancy in criminality which you cite, I see no way of doing that without addressing 1 and 2--which are most definitely a legacy of white supremacy.