mekka okereke :verified:
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
Not ready to talk about Black History. Still talking about white US history.
Q: Why are Black neighborhoods so often high crime neighborhoods? Must be a lawless people! Violent! Thieves! Predators!
A: There is no such thing as a "high crime neighborhood." The whole concept is entirely made up based on our notion of what we consider a crime.
You may be thinking:? Wait... What?! Not true! A high crime neighborhood has more drug use and sales, theft, and even murder!
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
mekka okereke :verified:
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!"
mekka okereke :verified:
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!??♂️
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
cultdev
@mekkaokereke that’s the best washington post headline i’ve ever seen
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
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.
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
mekka okereke :verified:
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! 😀
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