Jamaicans, I believe, started immigrating to Canada about the same time they started immigrating to England- post WW2. As a member of the Commonwealth, they had that right. Some Englishmen warned that this would cause a problem- most famously Enoch Powell in his "Rivers of Blood" speech.
Yes, Americans weren't too thrilled about the Irish/Italians/Russians/Poles/
Whatevers- most people prefer the company of their own kind. But some groups assimilate better than others, due to many, many factors. It might be wise to choose immigrants primarily from these groups. See the stories about recent rioting in Australia, as well as the problems wih Arab Muslims in France (and the rest of Europe).
I would like to believe that black crime rates are tied to the legacy of slavery, but I increasingly question that theory on several grounds. First of all, if past mistreatment were the cause of crime, would it not be logical to expect crime rates to have been higher in the past (when slavery was still a relatively fresh experience) than now, 150 years later? Black illegitimacy rates, for example, were actually LOWER than white illegitimacy rates as recently as the 1920's. Thomas Sowell (one of my favorite authors, BTW) has made this point several times. The utter destruction of the black family (with all the social pathologies that stemmed from that) seems more to be a product of 60's liberalism than the legacy of slavery.
But the other issue on black crime rates is the experience of other countries who never experienced slavery. Virtually all black majority countries have very high crime rates. Blacks have higher testosterone levels than whites (violent crime is overwhelmingly a male phenomenon) by about 11-13%. There are differences in testosterone receptor sites as well. I suspect a biological component. Even after adjusting for income, IQ, age, etc. one finds Black violent crime rates in the US to be about 2.5 times the White mean.(Before everyone gets excited, Asians are by far the most law-abiding minority group- an Asian male is an unbelievable 30 TIMES less likely to have ever been in prison than a white male- they also have lower testosterone levels than whites).
You are correct about my assumptions on gun control- I re-read your post. It is indeed logical that most illegal guns in Canda would come from the US. But there's an interesting little remembered fact about illegal gun shipments- back in the Clinton era, a shipment of 2000 fully automatic AK-47's was intercepted at the port of Los Angeles. The company shipping them was headed by the same Chinese General whose daughter had made illegal contibutions to the Clinton campaign. He could not be made to testify, and some noise was made about a "rogue shipment". In communist China, nothing leaves a weapons factory run by a general without his permission, or heads (literally) will roll. The strange thing is that these weapons were completely illegal in the U.S. These weapons were not semi-autos to be illegally converted, they were full factory jobs. There is no legitimate market for these -the law changed in the late 80's. Gun dealers with Class Three licenses may buy one apiece as a dealer sample, but they cannot be sold to anyone else. There was no paperwork, nothing. The serial numbers did not exist on file anywhere in China (claimed). Some speculation was made that they were either to be sold to gang members or trans-shipped to some other country- but the story was unbelievably fishy to anyone who knows anything about the gun business. Conversion of semi-autos to fully automatic weapons is not that difficult for a gunsmith - professional or amateur. If the point was to sell these illegally, why run the huge risk of importing them? Just buy semi-autos, and convert them illegally. I mention this to show how difficult it is to control international weapons smuggling. Only 4% of the containers at the port of Long Beach are ever inspected. Do the math.
As far as building a wall goes, I wish the Candians would- it would save the U.S. the expense of building it! Wallism is becoming quite popular these days- India's just built one with Bangladesh, Russia's looking at one with Chechnya- everyone who bitched about the Israeli wall is starting to see the light. Godd fences make good neighbors- and good walls make good borders. The one in San Diego has had a marked positive effect on crime in San Diego- look it up.
Question: "First of all, if past mistreatment were the cause of crime, would it not be logical to expect crime rates to have been higher in the past (when slavery was still a relatively fresh experience) than now, 150 years later?"
Answer: Not necessarily. My personal point of view (not based on any serious study) is that it is very dangerous to try to assess a whole group of mulatto people without considering the evolution of the society as a whole in which they live. And surely American social norms have evolved considerably since our "founding fathers" first thought there was nothing inconsistent about claiming to be Christian while dehumanizing, torturing and raping other people. It has often been said that the real social decline of African Americans began after desegregation when "black" youth expectations of racial justice came face-to-face with systematic social and economic discrimination.
But I know you don't seriously mean to suggest that "whites" are somehow less violent than "blacks". I am sure you don't really feel it was reasonable to kill 100,000 innocent civilian in Iraq just so that a few of Dubya's rich "white" oil cronies could get a bit richer on someone else's oil.
You are obviously very smart and I need not refer you to the bloodied road of "white" Christendom from Jerusalem to the Crusades and the Holocaust not to mention slavery itself.
And the fact that it is hard to find a "predominantly white" country in the world that hasn't engaged in genocide repeatedly against its neighbors is surely not a testimony against "whitedom" in toto.
Well, call it "suggest" or "statement" or whatever, but a very major cause of racial problems in the U.S. and other multi-racial societies is differing crime rates among diferent races, especially violent crime rates. So yes, I'll throw you the bone you're slavering for:
"On a per-capita basis, blacks commit more violent crime than whites."
Come on- everyone who has ever looked at crime statistics knows this is true. Read the U.S. FBI crime statistics, hell, read anyone's statistics. This is the elephant in the living room that we in the U.S. won't discuss. But not discussing it will not make it go away. Most white americans simply start to flee when the black percentage of their neighborhood goes much above 12-15%. This is called "white flight". In other parts of the world, it's called a mild form of "ethnic cleansing".
Why is there this disparity, and what can we do about it? Blacks, of all immigrants to the U.S., have a right to live here- hell, they didn't even ask to live here! The lunatic Neo-Nazis who speak of deporting blacks are nuts. No-one is going anywhere. So the first thing we must do is stop lying to ourselves about the problem. As a black man once told me in regards to black criminals-"Hell, you think whites don't want these people in their neighborhoods? We don't want to live with them either!"
As far as genocide- well, sadly, almost all countries and races have organised to kill others of differing races and ethnicities at some point. Some are more technologically advanced than others and use gas chambers, others use machetes. The desire to live exclusively among one's kind seems to be a very basic human trait.
Civilisation is a slow process. The first step toward living peacefully together is an honest analysis of problems, not denying them and smearing those who speak the truth.
On deaths in Iraq- estimates of pre-war deaths caused by shortages of basic supplies due to sanctions ran about 5000 children per month. In 18 months, the deaths from the pre-war situation equalled the alleged war numbers you quote. I believe the war thus far has saved, and continues to save, lives.
The crusades were a military counter-attack against non-stop muslim incursion into the lands of Europe. What should Europe have done- become dhimmis (as they are now in danger of becoming)?
Ok Wanderer, let's take a breather here. Three questions for your consideration and an observation.
1) "On a per-capita basis, blacks commit more violent crime than whites." Where is your documentation?
2) What is a "black" and what is a "white"?
3) Do you understand the difference between correlation and causality?
This last point is very important to me because I have noticed that many deconstructionist writers such as yourself seem to ignore the evil committed in the name of your faith (that “white people” are superior to everyone else) such as colonialism, slavery and proxy wars while continuing to ascribe the direct resulting cultural, economic and social pathologies (e.g., wars of independence, illiteracy, crime, etc.) induced by those same policies to the victims. That I find to be intellectually unappealing if not wholly irrational.
The "white race" as you refer to it (and I assume you are a card carrying member of this elite establishment) has been hell bent for at least the last 500 years to proving that it is superior to all other "races". Thus was born the whole field of phrenology and other "pseudo-scientific" justifications in support of self-serving policies of slavery, sexism, racism, segregation, apartheid, colonialism, proxy wars, etc. That the history of "white" oppression and destruction of others is somehow correlated with the "white" faith in its own supremacy, I must confess, is not a surprising finding to me.
It's getting a little heated in the backroom regarding my original post "A Pathological Liar (Part II)" so I thought I would share the most recent exchange with you. Fill free to jump right in!
Posted by: Frederick Ferguson | January 02, 2006 at 10:41 AM
So what do you suggest actually? Should Jamaicans (or others you deem unfit) be banned from Canada? I suppose Americans felt the same way about the Irish and Italians who came to the US a century ago.
You refer to a "racial component" to crime. I can only suppose that you find no historical correlations (let alone causality) between crime and America's sordid and continuing record of racial discrimination. Or maybe you are making a more profound observation. Please elucidate.
And aren't you jumping to conclusions on gun control? I have not made any mention of Canadian or American gun control laws. I was merely stating the irrefutable when I point out that virtually all of these Canadian handguns are manufactured in and smuggled out of the US. Maybe Canada should build a wall to keep out Americans and their guns like some less right thinking Americans advocate building a wall to keep out migrant labor from Mexico.