We've covered School shootings. Now lets tackle Chicago.

The focus on Chicago for a thread topic is interesting. I assume it's because the high number of murders made the national news, especially when it reached a high of 762 in 2016. And then it took a double digit dip (down 112) in 2017--a 14% decline--to 650. That's still a lot of homicides-- in absolute numbers, the highest in the U.S. But if you look at the rate--per 100,000 people--it's not even in the top 20. Specifically, it ranks #25, 17.25 per 100,000) compared to 25.9 for Hartford Connecticut, 25.29 for Salinas, California, and 24.15 for Milwaukee. The 30 cities with the highest murder rates in the US Chicago is a much bigger city, which explains the bigger absolute number and probably the media focus.

If we broaden the focus to violent crime, including homicides, rapes, armed robbery and aggravated assaults, Chicago once again is not in the top twenty. It ranks 24th (1,106 per 100,000), compared with (1820 for Memphis, 1,653 for Kansas City Missouri, and 1531 for Little Rock, Arkansas. 25 Most Dangerous Cities in America As the largest city in the Midwest, Chicago has experienced the economic upheavals and population shifts that the rest of the region encountered from the decline of manufacturing. The World Bank (2000) study on the causes of violent crime found that changes in GDP growth rate and income inequalities were statistically significant variables.https://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/What_Causes_Crime.pdf
Others have noted the importance of interactions between criminal and would-be criminal populations, which Chicago's long history of Criminal gangs would provide (Glaser and Sacerdote, 1999). Not to be overlooked are policing practices and the political corruption for which Chicago became notorious. The Justice Department investigation after the shooting of Laquan McDonald uncovered police abuses that led to policy changes. Social scientists are still trying to sort all this out, so I think it's unlikely that impressions and uninformed one-liners from armchair pundits are going to get to the bottom of it.

 

Stop making excuses for lazy people

 

The difference is that the white people could hold a family together and work hard. The poor black people in Chicago cant. They sit at home all day living off welfare with their 5 kids from 3 dads.

 

Instead of being a single mom with no job and living off of government handouts and feeding multiple mouths from multiple baby daddies,

Wait to have kids until you have a partner that will stick around and you have a job that can provide food and shelter.

Stop making excuses for low quality decisions and low quality people!

 

I am really sick of people blaming everything on white people and that white people have all these advantages. Dont bother explaining it to me, I already know its not true.

Even if what you say were true...

Our last president was black!!!

Please wake up and smell the coffee

 

That is the tokenistic fallacy if I've ever seen it. The tokenistic fallacy of racism attempts to say that because one person or a few people are successful, say Oprah Winfrey or Barrack Obama, that there is thus no problem with racial integration in our culture. This is clearly false. No one is blaming "everything" on anyone. White people are responsible for their actions, or inactions, just as African American people are responsible for theirs.

 

Lol

 

And Barack Obama was half white, but no one ever tried to say he's a white dude. Everybody goes around saying he's African American. He's half African American.

 

The problem is it isn't in the news. Yet the killing of 17 people dominate the news for weeks. And yes I was going to model Chicago data and then compare it to other cities results and see if we can accept what the data provides. If Chicago becomes so normal that it isn't newsworthy and it isn't even the worst example. Then why spend the countless hours dissecting a school shooting that kills 17? I hate that 17 kids got killed. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the same media that covers a school shooting, doesn't want to discuss that Chicago has killed more people in 3 months than the whole previous year? I'd like to see CNN camped out in Chicago providing us every detail possible on the killers do the killing there. Maybe that will bring about change as is hoped for school shootings.

 

That was raised by his white half family.

 

White privilege is indeed blaming all white people.

People need to stop blaming it on the system and take individual responsibility.

 

White privilege isn't about blame. It's a fact. It's real. It's not to be contested. It's in textbooks. It's scientific.

 

Thats the other thing. There is always a way to explain stuff away instead of just taking responsibility. You people are always trying to come up with a boogeyman to prove that racism is inherently ingrained everywhere.

 

Yet these same armchair pundits can spend weeks on threads on a forum about other topics and claim to understand a problem and proclaim solutions?

 

I think the difference in school shootings amd inner city violent crime is inner city crime is often gang related. No one has really touched upon the gang problem in Chicago but it is a problem.

Whereas a mass shooting is completely senseless. In a gang related killing, even in one where innocent people get caught in the crossfire, it isn't difficult to determine a motive.

Whereas I think that's one reason people become fixated on mass shootings, because the average person wouldn't ever be able to understand the motive. So we're all left scratching our heads and asking why

The why is easier to determine with inner city crime

 

ON white privilege

 

You're the one not taking responsibility, dude!

 

Hey look I already said dont bother explaining it to me.

 

Thats ridiculous, white privilege isnt about blame. Its about accepting that the majority of the country has it a little easier because they're the majority .You can see this repeated all over the world. There may be a few exceptions, but generally the majority ethnic group has the power.