{"id":598771,"date":"2021-07-21T10:50:57","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T14:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=598771"},"modified":"2021-07-21T10:51:01","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T14:51:01","slug":"kendi-says-black-communities-are-considered-high-crime-because-what-is-criminalized-has-historically-been-based-on-race-and-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/kendi-says-black-communities-are-considered-high-crime-because-what-is-criminalized-has-historically-been-based-on-race-and-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Kendi Says Black Communities Are Considered High Crime Because \u2018What Is Criminalized Has Historically Been Based On Race And Power\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">40<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fkendi-says-black-communities-are-considered-high-crime-because-what-is-criminalized-has-historically-been-based-on-race-and-power%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=598771&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/GettyImages-1175990295-1.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi suggested that black communities are primarily considered high crime because \u201cwhat is criminalized has historically been based on race and power.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In a podcast <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/07\/16\/podcasts\/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-ibram-x-kendi.html\"><span>interview<\/span><\/a><span> with Vox co-founder Ezra Klein about criminal justice, Kendi cast doubt on Klein\u2019s assertion that increasing the number of police officers is among the most effective ways to decrease violent crime. In response, Klein theorized that systemic injustice has led to crime issues in black communities:&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"13\">\n<p><i><span>Going back to an argument you made earlier, I think everything in our history should lead you to believe that we created what the sociologists call or the criminologists call criminogenic conditions in Black communities. We redlined them and we kept people out of education and out of good jobs and subjected them also to a lot of police violence, among other things. And then you get a lot of crime, and then police do have both an effect on crime and also an oppressive effect as they, in different contexts, try to police that crime.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Kendi disagreed with Klein\u2019s argument that systemic injustice caused criminogenic conditions. Instead, he argued that the definition of criminality is itself subject to racial bias:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"13\">\n<p><i><span>I don\u2019t know if I necessarily agree with scholars who make the case that Black communities have criminogenic conditions. And the reason I\u2019m saying this is because what is criminalized has historically been based on race and power and even how certain criminalized or decriminalized acts have also been racialized\u2026 So when people hear about that person who was drinking and driving or that person who killed somebody because they were drinking and driving, it doesn\u2019t cause them to think \u2014 they don\u2019t perceive that as them thereby living in a dangerous neighborhood. So I\u2019m just emphasizing this, Ezra, because even what we consider to be violence, even what we consider to be crime is highly racialized. And therefore, what neighborhoods we consider to be criminal-like and dangerous becomes highly racialized.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Klein sought to find common ground:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"13\">\n<p><i><span>I think you do believe, if I\u2019m not wrong, that a community that is pushed into poverty, that is denied health care, that is denied mental health care, that\u2019s denied good jobs is a community where you\u2019re going to see more crime and more acts of desperation. And that part of how we rectify some of the society\u2019s imbalances is to ease those underlying conditions. Am I wrongly attributing a view to you here?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Kendi replied:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"18\">\n<p><i><span>No, you\u2019re not. And I guess one of the things that\u2019s happened \u2014 and I write about this in my work. One of the things that some people would say is, they wouldn\u2019t say, let\u2019s say, Black people are inferior genetically. They wouldn\u2019t say that Black people are inferior culturally. But they would say, what I sort of call in my work, the oppression inferiority thesis, which is that Black people are subjected to oppression, and that then results in behaviors that are deficient. And those behaviors include, let\u2019s say, violent behaviors or other types of behaviors.&nbsp;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Moving one step further, Kendi stressed the importance of not linking crime rates to ethnic identity, but instead searching for other explanatory factors apart from race:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"9\">\n<p><i><span>And it\u2019s a very thin line between saying that there\u2019s no such thing as a dangerous unemployed neighborhood and there\u2019s a dangerous Black neighborhood because of unemployment. Those are two different things, and I think I wanted to really push to ensure we\u2019re understanding these as dangerous unemployed neighborhoods. That the race of the people really don\u2019t matter in this sense in the way that the poverty does.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Although he laid aside such categories of thought during his interview with Klein, Kendi typically argues that people\u2019s actions \u2014 especially those carried out by white people \u2014 are fundamentally attributable to race.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>For instance, Kendi implied during a recent interview with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/campusreform.org\/article?id=17673\"><span>The Guardian<\/span><\/a><span> that parents\u2019 opposition to critical race theory is driven by their own prejudice:&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"9\">\n<p><i><span>I do think there\u2019s a concerted backlash from people who recognize that this time last year a growing number of Americans were either speaking out against racism or growing an awareness of the problem of racism. That growing awareness has put a spotlight on certain policies and certain ideas and even certain people who have been facilitating systemic racism and so those very people are like, \u2018How do we turn off the spotlight? How do we make the problem the people identifying us and our racism as the actual problem as opposed to racism itself?\u2019<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Samuel Sey \u2014 a blogger at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/slowtowrite.com\/how-to-be-a-racist\/\"><span>Slow to Write<\/span><\/a><span> \u2014 notes that Kendi\u2019s work does not have much to do with a consistent opposition to racism:&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"12\">\n<p><i><span>Instead, his opposition to Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s colour-blindness has everything to do with his own love for racism. Ibram X. Kendi\u2019s antiracism isn\u2019t a commitment to love people, it\u2019s a commitment to love power. He\u2019s anointed himself as an antiracist prophet, but he\u2019s actually an antichrist, a false prophet.&nbsp;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><i><span>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><i><span>member<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi suggested that black communities are primarily considered high crime because \u201cwhat is criminalized has historically been based on race and power.\u201dIn a podcast interview &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}