[lbo-talk] Gangbangers vs. lynching mobs

Wojtek Sokolowski wsokol52 at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 24 21:02:50 PST 2006


--- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:


> Wojtek wrote:
> Those tables show nothing but raw numbers. The
> "mostly in gang or
> drug related incidents" cannot be drawn from them.

Of course. I could do a more fine-tuned extrapolations based on NCVS results http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus0302.pdf that show characteristics of the perpetrator and victim type of crime (cf. table 42 showing that 77% of black victims of completed violence were assaulted by a black perpetrator which is more likely to involve gang-related incidents), and do some other adjustments - which obviously have limitations as you correctly pointed out. However, I figured that even if I assumed an improbably low estimate of gang-related incidents to be only 10% of the reported murders only for the last 15 years, I would still end up in a number that is 2 or 3 times larger than the reported number of lynchings - so I did not see the point of making that effort.

The lynchings stats I quoted are claimed to be reasonably reliable, but of course we all know limitations of criminal stats. My understanding is that the lynchings were most numerous in the post-civil war period (i.e covered by the stats), but were not as frequent when slavery was still legal - for obvious reasons. But if someone has any better information, I would be glad to hear it. To compnesate for the unavailability of the lynching stats in earlier periods, I reported only the number of homicides since 1990, even though the gang related violence started in the 1970s.

Finally, the only reason I cited thess numbers was because I was challenged by Dwayne to support my claim - which I did. I understand that comparing gang violence to mob lynching requires a very careful consideration of the context, not just the numbers. However, the point I tried to make is that the number of people killed in sensless gang-related violence is simply mind-boggling, thousands and thousands of victims, yet people either do not give a shit about it, or those who do, treat these murders as signs fearlessness and status.

Wojtek

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