Forgetting the real victims
Cynthia Tucker writes in her latest column “Black victims of crime deserve outrage, too”:
“Even black politicians and activists pay less attention to cases where black victims are given short shrift. Though most crime involves a victim and a perpetrator of the same race, there is no tradition of outrage on behalf of black victims who are attacked by black assailants. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, who is black, has noticed the difference.
“Everyday my office … handles horrible cases involving the sexual assault and/or death of black children, black women and black senior citizens. It is difficult for me to recall an occasion wherein my office has received a note, card, letter or phone call from any black advocacy group or political leader in support of these victims. We receive many communications in support of black defendants in some of those same cases,” he wrote in an e-mail.
“I am very disturbed about what’s happened to Genarlow Wilson and the ‘Jena Six,’ but I am equally disturbed by the plight of the endless number of black victims who don’t have the benefit of community support or outrage,” he said.” (more…)
Reading her article immediately reminded me of a post I did the other day regarding acquittal rates in mostly Black urban areas. Here, I want to revisit Paul Craig Roberts’ say on the matter:
“Inner-city blacks understand that the defendant doesn’t always get a fair shake from prosecutors and police, who are under career pressures to produce high conviction and arrest rates. Inner-city blacks are not only street-smart but also justice system-smart. In contrast, middle class jurors are naive about the criminal-justice system and assume that police and prosecutors are purer than they are.
This means that black juries are doing a better job than white juries. The purpose of juries is to prevent innocents from being framed, not to fight crime by putting defendants away. Black juries will seldom convict on the basis of police evidence and prosecutorial argument alone. They require independent witnesses and a thoroughly investigated case. The fact that inner city juries are more likely to acquit explains, in my view, why charges against blacks are more likely to be dismissed. Prosecutors have learned that they have to present black juries with better evidence and, therefore, dismiss inner-city cases that they would be prepared to present to white juries.” (source)
He later makes the following statement in the same article:
“…and that’s why savvy black jurors don’t trust prosecutors and police and insist on higher standards of justice than white juries require.”
Where Roberts misses it big time in his analysis is that oftentimes real criminals are often set free by ‘downtown juries’ as proven by the ridiculously high crime rates in most urban areas. This is a very bad definition of “savvy”. The two biggest factors are the no-snitching policy adopted by folks who are afraid of retaliation and the automatic drive to ‘defend one of our own’ when faced with a judgment of prison and/death being issued by system with racial discrimination in its history. Regardless, folks who oftentimes should be put behind bars have grown accustomed to the fact that with a mostly-Black jury, they have a huge advantage–leaving the community at the mercy of criminals.
Click here to read more on the acquittal rates in urban areas.
Related:
Oh Jena
