Nobody Learned A Thing

On March 9, an African-American family and some friends in Wilkinsburg, Pa., were having a backyard cookout on an unusually warm day. Two gunmen crashed the party. While one herded the partygoers into the backyard, the other waited and methodically shot them, killing six and wounding three others.

A couple weeks later, Wendy Bell, a news anchor at WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, weighed in on her official Facebook page. She decried the violence and what she perceived as too much black-on-black killing.

Among other things, she said, “You needn’t be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday... they are young, black men, likely in their teens or early twenties. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs.” (The perpetrators have not been caught as this is being written.)

It was inelegant, and the inevitable furor erupted almost immediately. The station apologized for Bell's “egregious lack of judgment.”

There are multiple points here. The first is that Bell's assessment of the perpetrators will likely be pretty accurate just based on statistics. The second is the overreaction to her postings. The third is Bell’s erroneous notion that race-on-race crime is somehow unusual among young African-American men.

It’s true enough, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an arm of the Department of Justice, that 90 percent of violent crimes against African-Americans are committed by other African-Americans. The typical perpetrators are not dissimilar to Bell's description.

But it’s also true that 85 percent of violent crimes against white people are committed by other white people. There are similar statistics for Hispanics, Asians and any other identifiable group. Criminals usually victimize in neighborhoods with which they’re familiar. There is nothing new about that.

It’s also true enough that there are a lot of young black men shooting other young black men. But not as many as white men shooting other white men.

In fact, white folks commit more crimes at every level primarily because there are more of us to become criminals and victims. White folks commit more murders, more rapes and more child abuse, 85 percent of it committed against other white folks. Oddly enough, we never even consider such a thing as whiteon-white violence despite the statistics.

Are discussions about black-on-black violence racist on their face? Does it lend itself to the old canard about connections between race and criminality?

We make assumptions based on what we read, especially if it supports our preconceived notions. At least in the media, for example, it seems there is a lot of violent interaction between young black men and law enforcement. In fact, white people are shot by the police more than twice as often as black people, and white folks shoot police officers more often than black folks.

Urban violence, now much reported in places like Chicago, is actually way down from its peak in the 1980s. Chicago had more than 500 murders in 2015, a shocking total that surpassed that of New York and Los Angeles. But 30 years ago they reached 800 more than once.

There are predictors for the kind of violence decried by Bell and others, but it isn’t race; it’s economic status. And that can be directly linked to lack of education.

Those convicted of crimes of violence tend to have high school educations or less, live in economically depressed areas, make less than $10,000 annually and have usually had multiple contacts with law enforcement. It doesn’t much matter if it’s a black kid connected to some gang nonsense or a white kid cooking meth; their backgrounds will likely have similarities.

The national discussion we should be having is not about black-on-black crime but young poor man-on-young poor man crime.

Were Bell’s Facebook musings offensive and racist, the result of an “egregious lack of judgment?” WTAE apparently thought so. Bell, who worked at the station for 18 years as a reporter and anchor and won 21 regional Emmy Awards for her efforts, was fired. The station said her comments were “...inconsistent with the station's ethics and journalistic standards.”

There was a chance here for WTAE to step out of the darkness and into the light so everyone could see black-on-black violence is just one symptom of a larger problem. Instead, another opportunity for an honest dialog about young men and violence lost, this time in furious social media overreaction and a television station unwilling to engage.

This was what educators call a teachable moment. There was a real opportunity to dispel old and ugly stereotypes, provide some historical context and dig into the root causes of urban violence.

Instead, a flurry of self-righteous indignation vanquished the offending anchorwoman and everybody congratulated themselves.

Nobody learned a thing.

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