Crime in the US is vastly disproportionately a problem of American blacks. Despite Afro-Americans being only 12% of America's population, they commit about half of total US homicides. In 1997, 8% of US homicides were blacks killing whites, 3% whites killing blacks and 43% were blacks killing blacks (42% were whites killing whites). A black is seven times more likely than a white to be murdered, and eight times more likely to be a murderer. A young black male is more likely to be a present or former inmate of the penal system than a university graduate -- and Afro-Americans have higher rates of tertiary education participation than Australians.
These are the results of a culturally and institutionally impoverished community. Not that this applies to all Afro-Americans -- the burgeoning black suburban middle class is as distant from this urban battleground as white suburbia. They show that escape is possible (though difficult) and that the issue is not race. The black suburban middle class has escaped by successfully inhabiting mainstream American culture -- even though the lack of wider acceptance, shown by the racial slights which are the abrasions of ordinary life, still fuels considerable anger.
Inner city violence and social decay is much of the public face of the US, but very little of its actual experience. That most Americans resent the taint of something very different from their own lives is part of what makes so-called "wedge" politics so effective -- where attacks on welfare fraud and criminality are code for the rejection of the inner city social wasteground.
So how did this socially and spatially limited disaster happen in the world's most prosperous society?
By the early 1950s, Afro-American society had largely recovered from the experience of slavery. Black had the same -- or better -- unemployment and employment rates as whites. Harlem was a centre of considerable cultural vitality.
Then the US state decided to be "helpful" and unleashed destruction on the inner city black communities. Prime instruments of destruction were welfare, "progressive" education and the war on drugs. In New York, an extra spin was added with rent control.
It is easy to think your own cultural patterns are universal, particularly in your own society. The European presumption about family formation is that a couple gets together, then has children. Having the first child is a stage in the life of an already formed family.
This is not the universal human pattern. In some cultures, a woman first proves her fertility by having a child prior to a family being formed. The experience of slavery also followed this pattern. Having a child was a proof of "coupledom". The pattern of "have child, then marry" was a continuing one among Afro-Americans.
Then, the US state comes along and says "have child, be paid by taxpayers". Not only is the incentive to find a partner weakened, marriage acquires a real penalty -- if a man on a low income marries a single mother, he often lowers the effective income of the household through loss of benefits. The destructive impact on Afro-American family formation may be imagined -- and is well-documented. The rate of illegitimacy has been rising -- over 60% of Afro-American children are illegitimate. The poorly-socialised, fatherless black male leaving his own trail of unfathered children while engaging in petty -- or not so petty -- criminal activity has been the blight of inner city life and the prime reason for that enormous level of criminal activity.
But the US state was not finished in its path of social destruction. In New York, the city operated a regime of rent control which made it uneconomic to invest in new low income housing. Meanwhile, the Federal government operated a high inflation regime which made the situation of landlords increasingly desperate: paying for maintenance meant -- or aggravated -- financial loss. Inner city property decayed, not because of the "rapacity" of landlords, but because of the interaction of rent control and inflation -- government-induced "market" failure.
There was public housing, but the waiting lists were long. Unless, of course, your current apartment was burnt out. Surprise, surprise, buildings started burning down.
Whole city blocks were devastated. And no one invested in new housing, because, thanks to rent control, it was a losing proposition. Welcome to government-created urban decay. (Rent control is not the only way of having the same effects: there are a plethora of ways in the interests of "raising standards" through "proper development procedures" whereby government makes it uneconomic to invest in low income housing -- homelessness in the US is not a national phenomena, it occurs in those areas were government action makes investment in low income housing unprofitable).
Added to the mix were "progressive" education policies. Students who did poorly were hard done by "the system", black students hard done by worse of all, so all students were given excuses for failure. Worse, any student who tried hard and did well was a standing indictment of other students -- they broke the cover blaming "the system" or "racism" provided. Students who applied themselves became targets of systematic intimidation by other students. Student performance plummeted, massively retarding their appeal to potential employers.
Then, to top it all off came the "war on drugs". By deciding that adults did not own their own bodies (at least not when making choices about one's narcotic of preference) the US state created a huge black market with high risks making high profits.
As the narcotics market is illegal, the protections of normal markets (civil and criminal suits against fraud and negligence, brand reputation, discussion in the consumer pages of the media, etc) do not apply. The products sold are much more dangerous than they otherwise would be -- leading to devastated lives though death and disability.
Furthermore, the central wealth-generating property -- the narcotics themselves -- are not protected by the normal legal protections of property rights. So might -- private violence or the threat of it -- and corruption of public officials became the necessary staple of an already illegal trade, as the only way to defend one's property. The narcotics trade is not illegal because it is violent, it is violent because it is illegal.
Narcotics provided the possibility of income and status. Unemployment was rife -- until minimum wages were frozen under Reagan, they had kept rising; pricing low productivity labour market entrants out of jobs; while the rising taxes, violence and urban decay of the inner cities encouraged business to move elsewhere. Now, those poorly-socialised, poorly-educated, fatherless black males, what were they going to do? A choice made easier when a drug bust for using one's narcotic of choice passed you into a penal system where you could learn a whole set of new skills and be "socialised" into a culture of criminality -- where at least you had a place.
The problems of America's inner cities are all too glibly passed off as "typical" failings of American society or American capitalism. There is nothing typical about them. They are the predictable results of specific government interventions in a particular social context. "The government should do something" people say. All too often, what the government should do is to stop doing things.
The problem is endemic to political action. Because government action is centralised, coercive action, it can have effects that those who vote for it, and those who implement it are either unaffected by or unaware of. So folly can persist and persist and persist and nothing is done: or, rather the wrong thing continues to be done, again and again and again.
Remember, this parade of postwar destruction, this creation of urban hells, was all by good intention. Rent control is supposed to make accommodation more affordable, not choke off its supply. Supporting single mothers is supposed to help keep children out of poverty, not devastate family formation. Allowing the victims of arson to jump public housing waiting queues is supposed to deal with emergencies, not burn down city blocks. Banning narcotics is supposed to protect people from negative health consequences, not create violence and corruption and make narcotics more dangerous. Minimum wages are supposed to raise incomes, not price people out of jobs.
But the language of politics is an abbreviated language. It deals in intentions and resources allocated, not in effects; because intentions and resource levels are easy to grasp and most of us have neither the time, the incentives nor the information to examine effects seriously. And since the intentions are so "noble" those who complain about the effects are easily categorised as heartless, simple-minded, blaming the victim, prejudiced, unconcerned with social justice, or (worst of all) economists.
While the US employment boom, better policing, tougher sentencing and welfare reform are improving things for US inner cities, most of these policies continue on their destructive path. As for the relevance for Australia; well, does any of this remind you of indigenous Australia?
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