Not race, but choices of city-living, violence, and governance.

A few days ago, I commented on some possible reasons that violent crime is rising while property crime continues to fall. The post was Math and reality conspire against the preferred SJW narrative.

Part of the explanation hinges on the fact that 60% of murders occur within cities which constitute only 20% of the total US population.

A couple of days ago, the Washington Post had an article, The big difference in the way white and black Americans view protests against police by Mark Berman. The article was interesting as an example of how postmodernism and critical theory have blinded journalists to actual reporting. Berman emphasizes differences in opinion between whites and blacks without addressing the more critical issue that whites and black actually share much the same opinion and that those opinions, no matter who holds them, are often contradictory.

For example, Berman writes:

And, as it turns out, black and white Americans tend to have very different views on what they think is motivating these demonstrations.

While most black Americans say the protests are driven by a real desire to hold officers accountable, white Americans are more likely to cite bias against police as the real cause, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.

And he is correct as far as he goes. He does note that:

Overall, about eight in 10 Americans generally think that at least some of the motivation behind the protests has been prejudice against police officers, the Pew survey found.

So 80% of Americans think that some of the motivation behind the protests has been prejudice against the police. But in his earlier statement, Berman seems to be marking Blacks and Whites as having different views on this. But they don't. Here are the numbers:

The numbers show that large majorities of black (56%) and white Americans (85%) both believe that the protests are motivated by bias against the police. Sure, more white Americans believe that than black Americans, but it is still a large majority of both. Berman treats these differences as differences in kind whereas they are differences in degree.

Similarly, large majorities of blacks and whites also both believe that the protests are also motivated by a desire to hold the police accountable.

Berman is identifying differences, as if to accentuate divisions between whites and blacks, but the data says that blacks and whites both share strikingly similar viewpoints, though occasionally differing in degree. Most blacks and whites recognize that many of the protests are a consequence of bias against the police. Both also believe that there is a desire for increased accountability of the police. Blacks, whites, and the police can likely all agree that these are true but were you to only read the headline (or even the article without thinking critically) you would likely arrive at the SJW view that there is a race and policing problem that divides the nation.

Now part of this is the original tone of the source report from Pew Research.

From the original data, 77% of the population has some or a lot of confidence in the police. Clear majorities of both whites and blacks say they have some or a lot of confidence (81% and 55% respectively). But that is not how the data is presented.

This is not to say that there aren't important differences in the views of blacks and whites. They just aren't of the nature that the SJW mindset wants. For example, take a look at these important issues. Clearly there is a divergence here:

But are these differences in perspective because of race or are there other dynamics that explain these differentials. I suspect the latter.

Take the first item. Nearly 80% of whites believe the police do a good job of protecting them from crime but barely 50% of blacks believe this to be true. Is this because the police are prejudiced against blacks? There is plenty of evidence to show that is not the case, but here is another line in that argument, drawing from the earlier posts.

60% of violent crime occurs within the city limits of the major cities. Only 20% of the population is exposed to those high levels of violence (i.e. 20% of the population lives in the cities.)

If you are black, what is the probability that you live in a city? According to PBS, 86% of whites live in the suburbs and countryside (where crime is low) but 70% of African Americans and Hispanics live within cities (where there is high violent crime rates). Contra what Pew and Berman are indicating, that means that this is not an issue of the color of your skin, it is an issue of where you live. If you live in a city where there is objectively higher volumes of crime, it would be natural for you to have a more jaundiced view of the effectiveness of police. In other words, it isn't because they are black that would explain why blacks have a more jaundiced view of the effectiveness of the police; it is because they live in violent cities (compared to the suburbs and country).

I think the issue of the volume of crime and where you live is behind the other three Pew findings.

For example, only 33% of blacks say the police do an excellent or good job of using the right amount of force for each situation. If most blacks live in the city and most violence occurs in the city, then they are going to have much more opportunity to gage the degree of appropriateness of use of force than if you live in an area where there are never any riots, protests, or other high volumes of violence. There are simply more opportunities for the police to make mistakes in cities with a much more violent environment and much greater diversity (opportunities for miscomprehension).

The same with treating racial and ethnic groups equally. Only 35% of blacks think the police do this well versus 75% of whites. If you live in the city, you will have many, many opportunities to make this judgment. If you live in communities with low violence and low diversity, you likely are simply unaware of the possibility of the issue as it is so rare.

The final Pew finding is that only 31% of blacks believe that the police do a good job of holding officers accountable when misconduct occurs.

Again, I think this is likely explained by where you live rather than by race. Certainly, with higher volume of violent crime, there are many more instances to judge whether the police are held accountable. However, accepting that 70% of African Americans live in cities, there is another dynamic that would explain the different perspectives of blacks (31%) and whites (70%) on this issue.

On top of the volume of violent crime, there is the nature of municipal governance. Corruption exists at all levels of government and across geographic areas. It differs in degree by historical circumstance, cultural norms, and local behaviors, but the conjunction of coercive governmental power and large sums of money inevitably lead to corruption of some degree. Cities have always seen concentrations of corruption whether we are talking about Tammany Hall or Public Service Unions or Financial hijinks or underfunding of pensions, ghost employees, mutual back-scratching, etc. Its just the nature of the beast.

In the US, for a variety of historical reasons, virtually all our city governments have for decades been dominated by a single party, the Democrats. The important election is the primaries, not the general election. Win the Democratic primary for Mayor or City Council and you have already won the general election. The issue is not that the Democrats are inherently corrupt. The issue is the absence of true electoral competition. Lack of competition, whether economically or politically, always leads to insider dealing and corruption.

The list is long of cities who last saw a Republican in office many decades ago. Any place that has a reputation for social dysfunction, violent crime, and corruption will have had political non-competition for decades. Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Flint, Newark, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore, Oakland, Trenton, Miami, Buffalo, Cincinnati, El Paso, Milwaukee, Memphis, Kansas City, Boston, etc.

Most of these cities haven't seen Republican competition for fifty or more years. Some for more than a century. A few have never had a Republican mayor; ever. This list deals only with long absence and does not tackle relative absence. For example, New York City, Miami and New Orleans have had a couple of Republican mayors over recent decades but occasional occurrence is no reliable indicator of real competition. Lack of political competition is a significant root cause of urban governance dysfunction. Without that competition, poverty, corruption, violent crime, inequality, insider dealing, rent seeking, regulatory capture, gangs, drugs, etc. all flourish.

This isn't an anti-city diatribe. Cities are often both the economic engines of entire regions as well as the source of much that is positive in terms of the creation of human capital (universities), integration of migrant citizens, and innovation and creativity. To say a place has systematic negatives is not to deny that there are systematic positives as well.

My point is that most major cities have no electoral competition and have been under the governance of the same party for decades. These are the cities with the highest crime, highest inequality and highest levels of municipal dysfunction.

It is not surprising, under these circumstances, that African Americans might have a significantly differential perspective on city government, government in general, and police in particular. They live in the areas with the highest violent crime incidence rate and the lowest performance of governance.

The differential in perspective is not due to race but to choice of living location and circumstances of municipal history.