Blacks, Jews, liberals, and crime: is the black-crime problem a crime problem, or is it a poverty problem, or an education problem? - various political leaders and analysts offer contrasting opinions

National Review, May 16, 1994 by Edward I. Koch, Jack F. Kemp, Walter E. Williams, Peter N. Kirsanow, Jared Taylor, William F. Buckley, Jr.

Is the black-crime problem a crime problem, or is it a poverty problem, or an education problem? New York's former mayor offers a diagnosis; other doctors disagree.

In 1964, I, along with thousands of other young en and women, went to Mississippi and elsewhere in the South to assist in the program initiated by black organizations to register black voters. The group was mostly white and preponderantly Jewish.

I spent a week in Mississippi, and the only place I felt comfortable was in the black community, either in the church where we met to plan strategy, or in the homes of black citizens where I spent each night. Everywhere else, in Jackson and in Laurel, the city where I actually tried cases and was subject to mob threats, I was very frightened--not of blacks, but of whites.

This was an historic moment for me personally and for the nation. In the church every night we sang "We Shall Overcome" with great feeling.

Today, most whites, myself included, would feel very uncomfortable in a totally black neighborhood, particularly at night. What has happened in the last thirty years? Well, Jesse Jackson summed up the reasonableness of white fear in black neighborhoods when he recently said, "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery--then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

So the fear is not irrational. To finish the story, however, when Jackson was later condemned for telling what is clearly the truth, he gave a ludicrous explanation. He said, in effect, what I really meant was that if I saw a white face I would know that whites were moving into the neighborhood and that there would therefore be more cops around. Poor man. Plain fear of his colleagues caused him to so demean himself. But, as his earlier and more honest remarks had conceded, fear of black crime is not irrational or rooted in prejudice.

In New York City, 57 per cent of those in prison are black and 35 per cent Hispanic. According to Department of Justice statistics, 45 per cent of violent crimes are committed by black males, who are only 6 per cent of the population. And black males aged 15 to 24, who are 1 per cent of the population, are responsible for at least 19 per cent of the murders.

Black Victims, White Fear

IT IS TRUE that large numbers of these crimes are committed black on black; but what difference does that make? If a person is brutalized, it makes no difference to whites if the victim is black, not white. Whites are still frightened by the violence, as are the overwhelming majority of blacks who are law-abiding. Several years ago, if I had cited these violent-crime figures, I would have been attacked as a racist even though they are accurate. I take some credit for having been willing to cite them in a quest for truth and in order to call attention to the cancer of crime, realizing that unless the cancer is identified you cannot treat and remove it.

It has now become acceptable to discuss black crime. Two years ago Bill Bradley stepped onto the Senate floor and said, "In politics for the last 25 years, silence or distortion has shaped the issue of race and urban America ... there are two phenomena here. There is white fear, and there is the appearance of black emboldening ... you snatch a purse, you crash a concert, break a telephone box, and no one, white or black, says stop. You rob a store, rape a jogger, shoot a tourist, and when they catch you, if they catch you, you cry racism. And nobody, white or black, says stop."

And President Clinton himself last November called for an end to the violence in a speech to black ministers at the Memphis church where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last sermon. Said Mr. Clinton: "I tell you, unless we do something about crime and violence and drugs that is ravaging the community, we will not be able to repair this country."

He went on: "If he [Martin Luther King] were to reappear at my side today and give us a report card on the last 25 years, what would he say.? |You did a good job,' he would say--voting and electing people who formerly were not electable because of the color of their skin. ... he would say, |[You] did a good job creating a black middle class of people who really are doing well, and the middle class is growing more among African-Americans than among non-African-Americans.' . . . But he would say, |I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see 13-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down 9-year-olds just for the kick of it ... I fought to stop white people from being so filled with hate that they would wreak violence on black people. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandonment.'"

It is interesting to note that the New York Times, commenting on this speech, remained true to its traditional role of denigrating jail time for criminals and always seeking to identify the "root causes" of crime. It sought in this case to link minority crime not so much to personal responsibility, as the President did, but rather to vicissitudes with which the individual could not cope. The Times wrote, "As inspiring as it was, Mr. Clinton's sermon was only a prologue to an urban policy. Big-city mayors will surely want to hear more of how he intends to stimulate investment in cities . . . What of gun control? . . . What of welfare reform?"