Seeing the Color of Crime

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This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

I was born in Washington, D.C. My parents were liberals, and we lived close to the Capitol. In fact, my parents bragged about attending MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

In 1968, the riots happened following MLK’s assassination. My mother took us over to Virginia to watch the smoke hanging over D.C. A year or two after that, we joined white flight and moved to the suburbs. If asked, my good liberal parents would never admit it was because of black crime, but our house did get broken into and a black handyman who my father had hired to do some home repairs showed up one night drunk, screaming that my dad still owed him money. My father had already paid him, but I guess the man wanted more (he’d probably drunk through what he had been paid already).

We were one of the few white families still in that area when we left. I remember watching a lot of TV at the time; Ultraman and The Cisco Kid come to mind. When we moved to the country, suddenly there was hardly any TV, and each time we complained, our parents told us to go play outside. In my new digs, there was no diversity. We were all white, and it was a frankly idyllic childhood. I had no black, brown, or Asian friends, because there were none where I was.

I think the indoctrination about civil rights came early though, and we went on a field trip once to Fort McHenry. When loading up our yellow school bus, I looked at the bus parked next to ours full of black kids about our age. I waved to one of them, and he stuck his tongue out at me. It sort of surprised me. I had expected the “oppressed” to be a bit friendlier to sympathetic white people.

Later, my father’s job took us to France. The school I attended introduced me to a little diversity. There was an Algerian kid there, and I think he had a learning disability. He had what you call “moron strength.” Later, we had one solitary black kid in one of our classes. I believe his family was from the Ivory Coast. We were once trying to throw a slipper up to one of our classmates on the third floor of a building. We were having trouble because the slipper was kind of awkward to throw. Someone handed it to Bwana (really, that was his name), and he promptly threw it over the fourth floor and onto the roof. When hearing later on that the amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers is genetically inherited, it didn’t surprise me at all. You could see that with different white kids, but it was readily apparent when it came to black kids in things like sprinting. I wasn’t surprised when I learned about Jesse Owens or saw our all-black Olympic team rack up medals in the 4X100 relay race.

When I was in France, I encountered two bullies. They were both of Italian descent. One had been held back not one but two grades. He was essentially going through puberty while the rest of us had a couple years to go yet. That’s a little like going up against someone on steroids because the testosterone hasn’t kicked in for the younger ones yet.

When I got back to the United States, the first bully I met was an Italian-American. If you want to know what got me wondering about genetics, it was that. Was it cultural or something in the genes? As I started to have a negative view of all Italians, I made friends with two guys who had regular Anglo-American names. When they invited me into their homes, I was surprised to discover that both their mothers were of Italian descent. I started taking a more nuanced view.

However, when I learned about the existence of the mafia, it didn’t surprise me at all. No, I don’t believe all Italians or Sicilians are criminals, but people like Joe Pesci were very much like what I encountered. They acted like Pesci’s character in Lethal Weapon (a bit of a clown, sort of wimpy) when outnumbered but like Pesci’s character in Goodfellas (psychopathic) when in a group of their own kind.

Still back in the USA, I attended a high school that was probably about 10% black. I was taking advanced courses, so I often would have only one or two black kids in my classes. I never really got to know any of them well, but they were all well behaved.

Classically, when it came time to find a spot to sit at lunch, the black kids hung out at one table, the nerds at their own table, jocks at another, dope smokers at still another, and so on. When I was a brand new kid, I wound up at a table with other new kids who had just moved to the area.

This was about the time I was learning to drive, and I was told by parents and teachers to stay out of certain neighborhoods and areas. It didn’t take a genius to see all the areas I was warned about were black. When it came time to turn on the news, it was still an era of “If it bleeds, it leads.” So the news reports covered accidents and shootings. Back then, they may not have said who the perpetrators were at the beginning, but they would often show their mugshots at the end of the broadcast. If the police didn’t have a mugshot, they would still give the race and physical description of the suspect. Crime was overwhelmingly a black thing night after night.

I was never really victimized by black crime. I can remember one winter in college walking from the library back to my dorm at night when a red Camaro pulled in front of me. The window came down, and what looked like a snowball came flying out and hit me in the chest. When it hit me, I realized it was solid ice. Fortunately, it hit me in the middle of the chest, and my heavy winter jacket absorbed most of the blow, but it stunned me. I couldn’t make out his face, but it was clearly one of the black students in the passenger seat. I didn’t bother to report it. What good would it do on a liberal campus?

Much later, in the 90s, I took a course in criminal justice. By then, crime had begun to fall. The question was why. Was it because of increased sentences for criminals (ironically, made possible by a law Joe Biden helped write)? Was it because more shop owners were putting in security cameras? Was it because the economy was getting better? Our professor told us there was one subject we would not be talking about, and that was genetics. He said that research had shown that if a person had a low IQ and low impulse control, both of which are influenced by genetics, then that person had a greatly increased likelihood of being a criminal. It didn’t mean that he was a criminal, just that he was more likely to become one. He added, “And, we will not be discussing that in this class. Research in this field has been largely shut down due to protests in the black community who were worried about what we would find.”

At the time, I thought nothing of it. We were debating several different things, such as the new “community policing” initiatives and the Broken Windows Theory, so it was easy to move on to another subject.

Later on, I was talking to a friend of my parents at a party, and the subject of crime came up. He said, “I think it’s genetic.” He was drunk and a bit of a clown, so I thought he was joking at first, but he doubled down. I forget how he put it, but he had me laughing. “Don’t you think it has to do with poverty?” I asked. “Nah, it’s genetic. People are born that way.” Increased unemployment has been shown to increase the crime rate, so I stuck to my liberal indoctrination for a little while longer. But the seeds of curiosity had been sown.

Still later, I remember hearing that black people had an increased rate of psychopathy. It may have been from the research done by Richard Lynn, but I don’t recall for certain. After seeing the devastation in their neighborhoods, it wasn’t really a surprise. Just as I had been seeing mainly black-on-black violence on TV, you start to observe more. In 1994, Bill Clinton sent the military to Haiti to try to provide humanitarian aid. I talked with a friend who had been in the Navy for these relief efforts, and his description of Haiti was like something out of Dante’s Inferno.

It was never one thing only that led me to become a race realist. It was a gradual process of realization. I also came to realize that the Left has no problem bringing up a genetic link to crime so long as the perpetrator is white. Consider, for example, such articles as “Neuroscientist Related to Lizzie Borden Finds Out He’s a Psychopath” and “When Crime Is a Family Affair.”

Today, I consider myself a race realist. I have black friends, I have Hispanic friends. But I have many more white friends (even some who are Italian) with whom I prefer to hang around. (I know many friends and relatives would be appalled to know that I regularly read AmRen.) Nevertheless, it does not surprise me that black people have a higher crime rate than whites. If you look at the homicide rate in Mexico and the Mexican cartels, it’s not surprising that we are getting criminal Hispanic gangs here like MS13. And yes, when I hear about white murderers in places like New York City, I do wonder how many of those are Italian. I’m told that years ago, the DEA had a separate classification just for Italians on their fingerprint cards.

Now, for all that being said, I have to add that even if white people had lower IQs and greater crime rates, wouldn’t we still have the right to our own destiny, our own areas? White genes are recessive. If you breed a white person with an African, the child is going to look like Barack Obama. You will not be getting a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby. The first time I saw a black/white couple, I was instinctively turned off. There was an instantaneous “yuck” factor. Studies have shown that men with blue eyes prefer women with blue eyes. Interestingly, women with blue eyes do not have much of a preference for eye color. One of the theories is that because blue eyes are recessive, blue-eyed men are trying to prolong a recessive gene. In a breeding war, our kind would otherwise go extinct.

If you have a story about how you became racially aware, or about your firsthand experience with race, we’d like to hear it. If it is well written and compelling, we will publish it. Please feel free to use a pen name and send it to us here.