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Institutional racism in the US was a lot stronger 60 or 100 years ago - yet the level of black crime was significantly lower.

I had a hard time finding chart to show this, but here is the Chicago murder rate chart for 1870-2008: http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q689/john_albert1/murder...

I see a huge spike in the 60s with gradual leveling - but we are still 3x higher than before whatever happened in the 1960s...



I think everyone acknowledges things have gotten better, but the effects of institutional racism are pretty long-term.

Just an example, but up until maybe a generation ago, it was nigh-impossible to get a mortgage on your house if you were black or decided to live in a neighborhood that was less than 95% white. Even when going through federal aid programs.

Meaning people end up having to go through what are basically loan sharks to get housing for their family, and if anything at all happened, the house is lost instantly. Makes it pretty hard for the grandparents to retire in their tiny house when nobody actually owns the property.

I think the crime level stats are usually confounding with poverty rates. Pretty sure the color of one's skin doesn't make it more likely to kill someone, but there's an argument for poor environments (for example, the worst apartment possible because literally no one else will rent to you, in an area with poor social services) helping spawn crime.




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