race to the top
So why do all the black people get all the rap for being criminals?*
Yes, it's true. Some do steal a few hundred dollars to help put dinner on their plate (or in some cases, a birthday present for a daughter).
Yet on the other hand, I'm reading through databases of hundreds of hundreds of cases of mainly rich white males in large corporations engaging in criminal and improper business and market practices to earn a few extra million to pad their already gold-lined yachts and country houses.
*Please read comments to this post.
4 comments:
Hmn...I know personally of two of these "hundred dollar" thefts....In one there was a Chinese couple who ran a mom-and-pop store we went to when I was a kid. Wife was killed when someone knocked over the store, got something like $50. In another, a co-worker of mine (who was black) was shot when he tried to stop a robbery at a 7-11 after the guy pointed a gun at his girlfriend. He hit him with a bag of charcoal briquets. The guy shot at his head, but fortunately it went through the side of his mouth and didn't kill him.
On the other hand, calling someone like Martha Stewart a "criminal" makes no sense to me at all.
I think you make a good point in your original post. In God's eyes, a sin is a sin is a sin. But in the eyes of the world, we tend to rank sins into those that are 'ok' (e.g. the little white lie) to those that are absolutely detestable (e.g. child pornography). The crux of the matter is that both the 'hundred dollar crime' and the white collar embezzlement are wrong. Yet since the hundred dollar crime tends to be more violent, it is deemed the more 'wrong' of the two, only because its effects are more visible. And this leads to racism, which I think is abhorrent in any form (and that is what I think was your original point).
I am going to play a card here that isn't very fair...
I agree with you. Racism is an issue which develops from the unfair standards created in the media. We are all walking proof of that. No matter what one says, each person has a bit of racism in them. Each person has, at one time or another, felt some iota of fear due to the proximity of a person of another race. Sometimes this fear is warranted, sometimes it is not. Today I found myself being followed by a black man as I left the train station. Immediately my guard went up. As someone raised in the city and familiar with urban crime my first reaction was to put distance between the man and myself. My second reaction was to imediately walk to a well-populated area. Was I being a bit racist? Yes. Was I also being safe? Yes.
But I also disagree with you. I have been relatively lucky in life. Good family, good education, enough money, enough love. I certainly do not want. Yet as a person who has lived in Philadelphia my entire life, I must say that there are plenty of people who take a certain pleasure in their unfortunate situation. Yes, there are good, hardworking folks who can't catch a break, but I refuse to let my argument be stunted in such a manner. The people who truly ignite the flames of racism are not only those who deny jobs, education and opportunity due to race, they are also the people who sit in the situation and choose to be helpless. They choose to live in a practically condemned home in a poor, dirty, crime-ridden part of the city- but they also drive an Escalade with 26 inch rims. Their kids go to the poorest schools- and they have plasma TVs in their living rooms.
The questions of cause and effect can be tossed around forever in these debates but ultimately it comes down to this... if you are not willing to accept responsibilty for your actions, then how can you expect to rise above your situation?
Sorry for the length and lack of compassion, friend. It's been a tough day.
Briefly in response to Hillary:
These aren't comments on the differential in treatment of the two types of crime, rather they're comments on motives for racism. I disagree for the following reason: people of all races, when subject to poverty, will look for an opiate to alleviate their suffering. Thus the rims and the plasma TVs. There is no difference between black, white, asian, or hispanic in this respect. In contemporary American society, everyone feels a certain "right" to be entertained -- this simply manifests itself differently in different cultural groups. And it's always much easier to see the failings of another culture than our own --- so even on your basis of "some of them are inconsistent and seem to like their situation," we as whites are still completely to blame for our errant racism against blacks, because white people do the same thing -- except instead of rims and plasma screens, it's satellite dishes and motorcycles (ever been to rural Alabama?).
The point here is that racism is inexcusable because EVERY ethnic group and EVERY class is fundamentally depraved to the same extent, but we love to shift the blame around to people 1. whose weaknesses are more obvious (because they're different) and 2. whose weaknesses are not close enough to ours to force us to take responsibility for our own failings.
That being said, another point on petty crime vs. white collar crime. C.S. Lewis has makes an important distinction here:
"The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."
I would venture to say that white collar crime has a lot more to do with the diabolical self than petty street crime. Why? Because a petty theft, a beating, even a murder can be committed in the heat of passion, an "id-experience" lived out, to use Freud's terminology. Petty crimes may also be premeditated and diabolical, but it could go either way -- yet white-collar crimes leave us no doubt. These are almost never crimes of desperation, they are nearly always crimes of calculation. The white-collar, who engages in a calculated, systematic scheme of deception over a long enough period to seriously profit from it, by necessity has had to put to death their own conscience, in order to rationalize to themselves that what they are doing is acceptable. We must always resolve cognitive dissonance by changing either behiavior or values, and a person who engages in this type of crime has to deceive themselves in order to succeed at deceiving others. I would venture to suggest that this is the purest essence of the diabolical self: to glory in winning power and wealth for yourself, because you have come to genuinely believe in both mind and heart that you matter more than anyone else.
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