[lbo-talk] Comment on F-9/11 and racism

snit snat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Wed Jun 30 11:57:56 PDT 2004


At 02:16 PM 6/30/2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
>snit snat wrote:
>
>>I don't know if this applies much anymore, but they used talk about how
>>political the crime stats are. If a mayor who campaigned as though on
>>crime wants to look good, there are ways to cook the books, so to speak.
>
>For sure, but it's hard to cook the books with murders. And NYC's murder
>rate is back at early 1960s levels.
>
>Doug

AS I've mentioned before, though, they do explain part of this as the baby boom effect. You saw a huge rise in the population that typically committed crimes (males 16-29) and up went the crime stats. It wasn't all necessarily because people became more prone to criminality. (reminds me of the Kitty Genovese case and how that was used to say all kinds of things about U.S. culture which subsequently turned out to be quite a bit less the case than some folks seemed to want!)

Recent ish of Scientific American covered the whole crime reduction thing. If I get a chance, I'll try to scan it and load it on my site for perusal. It was a damn good article. Researchers remain puzzled over how to account for the drop in crime rates across the country. They've got five suspects but none of them can fully explain it all. Can't remember the gist of the article in any more depth than that.

Also quickie: been meaning to say to Dwayne that I was thinking about my last comment to you. I hope I didn't actually offend you at all. I realized that this might be interpreted as inappropriately sexualizing you. Not meant that way at all. It's a habit from working at a catering company where it was a huge joke to tell someone how much you appreciated something they'd done. Since then, I'll occasionally say it to a good guy friend when they've done something outstandingly helpful or cracked a joke that made me laugh til I cried. I know you didn't appear offended, but then it might actually be diff. to register offense given dynamics. So....

Kelley


>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

"We're in a fucking stagmire."

--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list