Elsewhere (286)
Christopher Rufo on excusing habitual crime, in the name of “intersectionality”:
The latest fad in criminal-justice activism is the concept of “survival crime.” The theory holds that the homeless, the poor, and people of colour commit property crimes and low-level infractions in order to secure their basic survival. Any enforcement of these laws is thus a violation of their basic human rights… Survival-crime theory argues that local governments should decriminalise [property crime, drug possession, and public nuisance] offences because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them… Over the past five years, the classification of survival crime has expanded well beyond stealing the proverbial loaf of bread. In California, for instance, Proposition 47 downgraded theft of property valued at less than $950 to a misdemeanour, meaning that the police are unlikely to pursue even habitual shoplifters and thieves. The predictable result: a state-wide rise in petty theft.
Exempting favoured identity groups from the normal consequences of predatory and antisocial behaviour is the Hot New Fairness, apparently, at least among the enlightened. And if someone steals your phone or laptop, it would be wrong of you to protest, especially if the thief happens to be “of colour” and therefore, obviously, entitled to your stuff. Mugging, it turns out, is a form of “social justice.” We’ve been here before, of course. As when the Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming championed the recreational looting of trainers, in bulk, and other fashion items, on grounds that the law-abiding are “hoarding resources.”
Somewhat related, Heather Mac Donald on school indiscipline and so-called “disparate impact” policies:
In 2018, a cell-phone video captured a classroom assault emblematic of the post-disciplinary era. A physics teacher in Texas had confiscated a student’s smartphone. “Give me my fucking phone. This is the last time asking your stupid ass,” the teen yelled, towering over the teacher sitting frozen behind his desk, grinning nervously, the very image of submission. The student aggressively swept the papers on the teacher’s desk to the floor, then violently shoved him in the face. Still impassive, the teacher pushed the phone across the desk back to the student, who grabbed it with a self-righteous shrug and strode away. The school principal explained that it “was just a bad day the student was having,” and commended the teacher’s response. The other students who observed this adult capitulation to thuggery learned a terrible lesson about their apparent immunity from any consequences for atrocious behaviour.
However, we’ve been assured, by our betters, that punching teachers in the face and setting fire to students’ hair is how black students “engage in learning.” What, you didn’t know?
And not entirely unrelated to that, in the pages of Inside Higher Ed, sociology lecturers Johnny Williams and David Embrick insist that calls for civility in debate are merely a front for “white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist power.” Opposition to threats of assault is, they say, “myopic and troubling.” You see, assaulting people, because you want to, is “democracy in action.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Professor Williams has a history of, shall we say, adventurous thinking.
It’s woke academia, people. The bleeding edge.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Survival-crime theory argues that local governments should decriminalise [property crime, drug possession, and public nuisance] offences because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them…
Way to insult the law-abiding poor.
“…because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them..”
Can’t find it now, but wasn’t there a Dalrymple quote about soiling your own doorstep in communal housing?
Way to insult the law-abiding poor.
Yes, absolutely. It’s because, being woke, they care so very much.
I’m going to make a wild guess that those advocating survival-crime theory don’t live in areas where there’s high levels of survival-crime.
wasn’t there a Dalrymple quote about soiling your own doorstep in communal housing?
Can’t recall off-hand, but it’s curious how enthusiastically lefties will strip people of agency. This comment, by the late Peter Risdon, comes to mind.
I was also reminded of Peter Matthews, a Guardian contributor and urban studies lecturer, who fretted about the unequal distribution of litter – yes, litter inequality – while studiously ignoring how the litter gets there in the first place, as if it were irrelevant to the question of why some neighbourhoods are more garbage-strewn than others.
That’s the exact quote I was (mis)remembering!
wasn’t there a Dalrymple quote about soiling your own doorstep in communal housing?
https://www.city-journal.org/html/little-social-experiment-10190.html
“This is the last time asking your stupid ass,” the teen yelled, towering over the teacher sitting frozen behind his desk, grinning nervously, the very image of submission.
A “teen”? What is this, the Patty Duke show?
We’ll push that rock up that hill because our values are universal, applicable regardless of ethnic affiliation or social disadvantage, and we have so much social capital to burn that we can be generous with slow learners and overlook “survival crimes”.
We’ll let the rock roll back down that hill because their bad behavior is our fault and who are we to judge?
It’s a kind of grandiose masochism.
Clearly, the purpose of decriminalization is not to help “The Downtrodden” but to destabilize civil society. This is the goal in itself.
Survival-crime theory argues that local governments should decriminalise [property crime, drug possession, and public nuisance] offences because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them…
Dindu nuffin.
A belated Happy New Year to David and all his readers.
On with the motley:
…excusing habitual crime, in the name of “intersectionality”
New year, same leftist bullshit. As Mr Rufo points out:
While concern is growing that these permissive policies have led to an increase in property crime, the greatest risk of survival crime theory is that we are slowly creating a parallel justice system: one for average citizens and another for politically-favored identity groups.
Equality under the law is racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ transphobic.(Delete as applicable)
Excusing insubordination and aggression in the name of racial equity is not a civil rights accomplishment.
That.
Meantime, expect a battle over the future of disparate-impact analysis. The New York Times has accused the Trump administration of attacking “protections for minority students,” and the advocates are predictably outraged. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised to defend “vital student anti-discrimination protections.” The incoming head of the House Education Committee, Bobby Scott, will likely seek to enshrine disparate-impact methodology further in statutory law. Doing so would not only distort policymaking; it would also continue poisoning civil discourse and society with unjustified claims of racism. The only antidote to such a counterattack is a willingness to tell the truth about the behavioral disparities that create disparate impact in the first place.
God bless America.
Millennial
bank robberysurvival crime attempt. (Language caution)So when I blow his head off, that is just me expressing my culture.
New Statesman interview with Jonathan Haidt:
He partly attributes Trump’s election to the rise of progressive identity politics. “Hillary Clinton’s opening advertisement had lots of people who were visibly members of identity groups, it had only one white male with a speaking part.”
But then:
Haidt is troubled by the remorseless polarisation of US politics…. “I certainly agree that putting together antagonists or opposites within an institution that channels the disagreement in positive ways is a good thing. But when the political system changes from sport to hooliganism, once people think the end justifies the means, then we’re asking for disaster.”
OK- so who instigated this here sport/hooliganism change thing, then?
Millennial bank robbery survival crime attempt.
In total honesty, I’m a bit surprised that tactic didn’t work. If this gets viral enough, the SJW crowd and the lawyer scum that enable them will put social pressure on the banks to do that. Maybe there’s a customer in the bank at that time who can file suit stating that the bank, by not giving this woman the money, was making the customer feel unsafe. The argument that banks can’t work like that is easily dismissed by saying the cops will catch her anyway and isn’t the bank insured?
we’ve been assured, by our betters, that punching teachers in the face and setting fire to students’ hair is how black students “engage in learning.”
The ‘Free Hits’ post is horrifying. What the hell is *wrong* with these people?
Can’t find it now, but wasn’t there a Dalrymple quote about soiling your own doorstep in communal housing?
In South Africa, back in the day, there was exactly one road leading from Soweto to Johannesburg. When this road was closed, whether due to accident or intentionally, black workers could not get to work in the morning, or go home in the evening.
This was intentional, as riots in Soweto often resulted in sympathetic riots within the city of Johannesburg, and the residents wanted none of it.
The single road theory was explained as allowing them to “soil their own nests” and no one else’s. When rioting started, they simply closed the road. Once the rioting and burning was done with, and everyone had calmed down, they reopened the road.
As a a result, the only people who suffered from these riots where the blacks themselves. Only their homes that were burned and looted. And the honest, hard-working blacks that were either trapped away from their families for days, or unable to get to work for days, the loss of family ties and/or income was punishment itself.
It cut down on quite a bit of rioting, as you’d expect.
What the hell is *wrong* with these people?
Leftist psychology given power.
A “teen”? What is this, the Patty Duke show?
This reminds me of the Bill Clinton’s crackdown on guns to “think of the children”. In this case, child meant teen, which included everything from 13 year old street waifs to 19 year old gangbangers.
While invoking the image of the former, it was in fact the latter that were disproportionately represented in crime statistics.
The poor victimize the poor. Do you think anyone else is going to stand for being robbed? Hell no, they just get more security.
The school principal explained that it “was just a bad day the student was having,”
Not bad enough. That thug needed prison.
“I certainly agree that putting together antagonists or opposites within an institution that channels the disagreement in positive ways is a good thing. But when the political system changes from sport to hooliganism, once people think the end justifies the means, then we’re asking for disaster.”
Well seeing as the elites of the West have decided the ends consist of mass ethnic replacement of the indigenous peoples of the West, yeah I can’t see any problems from that.
As a a result, the only people who suffered from these riots where the blacks themselves. Only their homes that were burned and looted. And the honest, hard-working blacks that were either trapped away from their families for days, or unable to get to work for days, the loss of family ties and/or income was punishment itself.
It cut down on quite a bit of rioting, as you’d expect.
And yet SA is more of a shithole than ever. Odd.
The poor victimize the poor.
By and large, yes, if only for reasons of proximity. And it is strange to watch lefties tie themselves in moral knots while shifting empathy (or pretend empathy) from the working-class victim of crime and social disorder to the working-class thug or criminal, on grounds that the criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.
See, for instance, this.
This was intentional, as riots in Soweto often resulted in sympathetic riots within the city of Johannesburg, and the residents wanted none of it.
twice, just to be sure…
I recall being “surprised like you wouldn’t BELIEVE!” that Los Angeles riots all take place in poor downtown areas of L.A. I mean, you’d think they’d go up in Hollywood and Beverly Hills to riot instead, wouldn’t you? They’d be ‘sticking-it to whitey’, and the looting would be so much better!
– Mind you, I notice the Governor doesn’t call-out the National Guard if the rioters stay downtown…
I was an undergraduate when the 1992 riots happened. Looking back, I’m pretty sure that the images from that week — of a bunch of Korean neighbors desperately defending themselves from the barbarian horde while the police looked on with feigned or actual helplessness — was a turning point in my development. It marked the beginning of a long process of examining the assumptions that I’d been programmed with since infancy, and subsequently discarding an awful lot of them.
It seems a shame that the only effective means of instilling respect for the Gods of the Copybook Headings is for those gods to appear in person and readjust people’s perspectives with extreme violence. I’m just happy (and relieved) that I received my lesson through images beamed across a few thousand miles.
What’s even more depressing is that we’re seeing the next riots brewing up in slow motion, right in front of our noses. Kids without fathers to keep them in line, attending schools where teachers are forbidden from enforcing any discipline, graduating into neighborhoods where police are told to let them do as they please. As in ’92, we’re going to see neighbors band together to protect themselves, doing the job the Mayor won’t let the police do. And then those neighbors are going to be nailed to the wall by a prosecutor who is happy to bring the full weight of the law to bear on them, partly to make up for all the lawbreaking he’s been told to tolerate for years, but mostly because The Authorities cannot abide people thinking and acting for themselves.
Left unprotected by the police, and forbidden from protecting themselves, these neighbors will be left to decide whether to pick up and leave (assuming they have the means), to set up underground vigilante groups to protect themselves from thugs and cops alike, or to petition City Hall to recognize the harm their policies are causing.
I’ve little hope that the latter will yield satisfactory results. More’s the pity.
The example “Somewhat related” was a poor one. I agree that the violence that the student displayed was wrong, but so was taking their property.
Who knows why the student wanted the phone… some urgent situation, important news, basketball scores, Candy Crush(tm)…
If the teacher objected to the use of phones, then they could have asked the student to leave the room or sit elsewhere…
How many of us did other things while the teacher was droning on…?
It seems a shame that the only effective means of instilling respect for the Gods of the Copybook Headings is for those gods to appear in person and readjust people’s perspectives with extreme violence.
That.
I’m just happy (and relieved) that I received my lesson through images beamed across a few thousand miles.
That too.
Farnsworth,
Millennial bank robbery survival crime attempt.
Why I am also not professional security:
So when I blow his head off, that is just me expressing my culture.
This is why I don’t believe a lot of the conspiracy theories about the left’s Alinsky-Cloward-Pivan plan. If they were true, the left would be in favour of arming teachers, because the inevitable result of that will not be a teacher successfully stopping a school shooting; it’ll be a teacher shooting a student “of colour” to defend himself. It won’t matter that the shooting is justified; the left will have their Trayvon moment.
Brought to you by the same people who say blacks don’t have and can’t get id’s in order to vote. From Ami Horowitz.
Bill de Haan,
The single road theory was explained as allowing them to “soil their own nests” and no one else’s. When rioting started, they simply closed the road. Once the rioting and burning was done with, and everyone had calmed down, they reopened the road.
In Los Angeles, it’s a little less obvious, as they have the Interstate 10 freeway which, as an elevated highway with relatively few underpasses, presents a formidable barrier between
ghettodowntroddendiverse South Central and the more fashionable LA neighborhoods, which is a good reason why the “Rodney King riots” in 1992 did not spread much beyond the “point of origin”.(When it was built in the late 1950s, what are now called “social activists” complained loudly about the “barrier” aspect.)
And yet SA is more of a shithole than ever. Odd.
The SA of today is not the SA of 1970. The forced isolation of the townships has been abandoned, and integration is the rule now.
For good or ill, large numbers of poor blacks are no longer compartmentalized in townships, but have been integrated into the larger cities.
South Africa is more violent than ever, but it’s distributed more equally, now. I figure it’s got about another 15 years, if that, before it reaches Zimbabwe levels of collapse.
The SA of today is not the SA of 1970. The forced isolation of the townships has been abandoned, and integration is the rule now.
Indubitably. I figure it’s got about another 15 years, if that, before it reaches Zimbabwe levels of collapse. I’m reminded of the quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway or Mark Twain (or Otto von Bismark or Benjamin Disraeli) that “At first you go bankrupt slowly, then all at once”. Money, morals, laws, perceptions of reality. All the same.
How many of us did other things while the teacher was droning on…?
How many of us would threaten to beat up a teacher? Of course I say this as when I was in school, a math teacher who had shell-shock (as PTSD was called then) would have his instruction interrupted by students who would make a whistling noise followed by slamming a book on the desk so that they could watch “Shaky Joe”, as he was not-so-affectionately called, drop to the ground. This was 40 years ago. The administration did very little to support him then and even other (baby-boomer) teachers would say that such a person “really shouldn’t be teaching in the school system anyway”. I refer back to my previous quote.
Something Wonderful: 又是一年樱花季，来壶樱花茶吧(또 새로운 벚꽃 시즌에 벚꽃차를 드세요 **
Something Not Quite As Wonderful 【色んなテーブルクロス引き】
Something Not Quite As Wonderful 【色んなテーブルクロス引き】
It’s not a large spoon.
Just sayin’.
Reading about Johnny Williams took me down a rabbit hole that eventually led to this:
https://medium.com/@SonofBaldwin/let-them-fucking-die-c316eee34212
For those with any interest in some of the disciplinary issues in education, I recommend Colin Flaherty. He posts video clips at minds.com lately. I think the proportion of his videos from schools is up since recent changes in policies.
Our host tends to focus on the what’s coming down from the administrators, professors, and media. Colin’s focus is where the rubber/skulls meet the pavement. David gives us occasion to laugh at “educated” idiots. Colin shows us what those idiots would condone and encourage, regularly eliciting more comments like these:
Not bad enough. That thug needed prison.
What the hell is *wrong* with these people?
For those with any interest in some of the disciplinary issues in education, I recommend Colin Flaherty.
Any links/recommendations?
How does all this square with the fact that violent crime is at an all-time low in the West, though? Worldwide as well, as far as we can ascertain.
It’s an incredibly safe world compared to even our recent ancestors in terms of how you will likely die. A lot of the rot we see is a direct result of this world we’ve* built:
Students turning to activism for a sense of something adventurous. The constant pushing of moral boundaries with no real countervailing force (think toddlers raised without ever hearing “no”) has led to standards completely falling off a cliff while simultaneously creating a deep, primal need for such a moral authority which has been filled by the Left in general and SJWs in particular. Feminism, intersectionality, etc, provide the guardrails that nearly all people crave, but of course those are cheap imitations of a grounded moral code built on centuries of trial and error, or twisted mutations of them.
The more wealthy among us are responsible for most of this idiocy because they crave moral guardrails more than those just trying to make ends meet, and wealthy people can afford to make it a reality. This has always been the case, but the recent twist is that most of us are wealthy – and safe. At a time when ancient moral codes are damn near irrelevant we’ve created a situation where a large chunk of society is the equivalent of a 19th century princeling, with endless wealth and safety but no real purpose.
Of course, as David has frequently pointed out, the “poor” and the poor have the most to gain from adopting the very values that the wealthier majority seem so keen to cast off as old hat, and therefore will suffer the most from the neo-religious poison emanating from the idle rich**.
*Yes, we moderns deserve some credit for creating such a safe world. Our challenge is to keep it.
**Seriously, most of us fall into this category. If you’re reading this I guarantee you are a prince compared to nearly any other human that’s ever lived.
@Min he had a lot on youtube but moved here: https://www.minds.com/colinflaherty
He’s also on twitter.
“The theory holds that the homeless, the poor, and people of colour commit property crimes and low-level infractions in order to secure their basic survival”
If only there was a welfare state in order to secure their basic survival.
@Joe – thanks.
I weep for anyone looking to intersectionality as a source for timeless principles to live one’s life by. If these kids were old enough to have read Watterson on the educational page of the newspaper, they’d recognize the current madness for the giant game of Calvinball that it is.
If only there was a welfare state in order to secure their basic survival.
But that doesn’t have quite the sense of justice about it because being white or east asian in some neighborhoods is oppressive enough. Especially if you’re just as poor, regularly exposed to violent/vibrant subcultures, and find yourself frankly expressing your dissatisfaction for such.
And don’t even think about moving out of that neighborhood or school because that would also be racist.
It squares Sam, because the West:
— is much richer, so fewer people need to steal.
— has a lid on organised crime
— keeps kids in school until they’re past the age of peak criminality
— drinks far less. An astonishing amount of the violent crime in NZ at least is carried out by drunk people.
It’s not a large spoon.
I’m a shovel man, m’self.
Ahem.
“…I recommend Colin Flaherty…Any links/recommendations?”
His old website for his first book:
http://whitegirlbleedalot.com/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ColinFlaherty
As I’ve been dealing with Prop 47 for several years now, this article hits home and still doesn’t convey the devastation it has wrought along with a plethora of other criminal-excusing legislation.
As of Jan 1, the felony murder rule no longer applies. I received my first motion on it a few weeks ago, hearing on 1/19. Gang member, still in state prison for a murder in 1980. He’ll be out soon and I believe this is just the start.
Bail goes away in October.
Crime, property & violent, has gone UP in California starting with “prison realignment” in 2011.
Who knew?
the greatest risk of survival crime theory is that we are slowly creating a parallel justice system: one for average citizens and another for politically-favored identity groups.
That.
https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/922607119326535680
That.
You have marvel at the conceit that a given identity group will somehow benefit from being seen by the wider population as effectively exempt from everyday laws and normal proprieties, as if that weren’t at all socially poisonous. Again, if you wanted to create resentment and racial animosity, reinforced daily, during every commute, what would you do differently?
And speaking of racial favouritism and encouraging incompetence:
You see, those composition classes you’re paying for shouldn’t teach students how to write clearly.
Professor Inoue has, of course, been mentioned here before.
Very much related.
Again, if you wanted to create resentment and racial animosity, reinforced daily, during every commute, what would you do differently?
Any expression of such resentment is defined as racism, and proves the need for even more special treatment.
A white who’s exposed to this during every commute, a white who can’t afford to insulate his family by moving to a “good school district”, isn’t seen as a trustworthy witness of minority misbehavior, he’s seen as a spittleflecked Deplorable pining for lost economic privileges.
As soon as Badwhites start to say “you bleeding hearts know nothing, let me tell you how these people behave on the street”, Goodwhites have been conditioned to nitpick and snark and probe for racism. That stimulus-response has been installed in the culture at least since Lee J. Cobb in 12 Angry Men, and it’s prevailed despite decades of white flight from inner cities to suburbs to gated communities.
…Goodwhites have been conditioned to nitpick and snark and probe for racism.
To which the only reasonable reply is, “Oh fuck off, Sally. Swap neighborhoods with me for six weeks and then we’ll talk.”
as if that weren’t at all socially poisonous.
Victor Davis Hanson has written extensively about the change to the Central Valley where he still lives on the family farm. He writes that the local law and code enforcement no longer do anything, even citations, to the squatters/homeless/vagrants who occupy abandoned property or the illegals who use farms as a trash dumping site. But any normal, law abiding citizen, is in their crosshairs for any minute violation, even inadvertent.
Victor Davis Hanson has written extensively about the change to the Central Valley
We’ve touched on some of that writing previously.
While doing some teaching, I was amused how the ‘students’ routinely ignored signs plastered on the classroom walls telling them they could not use their phones in class. I was less amused when one of my colleagues who had the audacity to take a phone of a non-working student (we called these kids Pups: ‘Present but unproductive’) was censured by the college bosses for doing that and told not to do it again. That’s right; the college would not back its own policy, which the kids knew was meaningless so they carried on.
My wife also taught, and she sometimes had students who would lay two or three phones out in front of them, claiming at least one was needed ‘for their drug deals.’
Amusing if it were America, but this was dull old middle England ten years ago. I doubt if it has got any better.
A white who’s exposed to this during every commute, a white who can’t afford to insulate his family by moving to a “good school district”, isn’t seen as a trustworthy witness of minority misbehavior, he’s seen as a spittleflecked Deplorable pining for lost economic privileges.
Kind of what I touched on earlier. And the whites in the area will develop their own terms to refer to various perpetrators which starts another round in the oppression olympics. Because if the random mobs in Chicago are black then any word used will be said to take on a racist meaning.
Colin had a video up from Australia where along with “teens” or “youths” the reporters referred to “thugs”. I was rather surprised because I know that term hass developed a judgmental, if not strictly racial, connotation and gone out of style in some areas.
And all this happens because saying “black youths” would be decried by the goodwhites as racist. So we all learn to read between the lines whenever “youths” are referenced and are made to feel guilty when explaining to our kids or others about what to watch out for.
The reporters referred to “thugs”
Among some American blacks, “thug” is a label to be proud of. /no further comment needed
“Goodwhites have been conditioned”
Reminds me of “goodlife” in Fred Saberhagen’s Betserker stories.