So … when you see people not blaming black people enough for crime, this produces a “literal compulsion” to intervene, so strong that rather than doing “the smart thing” you have to intervene in the name of justice “no matter what that costs me”.
(Even in a case like this one, where so far as I can see no one is being treated unjustly at all, and the sort of concerns you raise are explicitly acknowledged by the OP.)
But if it’s a matter of black people being treated unjustly by white people, you don’t intervene “without good cause”, and you can comfortably ignore them because it’s “not my problem”.
You might want to think some more about whether your compulsion to intervene in the first sort of case is actually about injustice.
For example, you suggest that blaming black people is something that is being done too much, as if black people cannot and should not be held responsible for the crimes they voluntarily commit. You also suggest White Man’s Burden as if the black identity grouping is more important than individual circumstances.
So far as I can see, I have suggested neither of those things, still less suggested them “as if”. I have said that you apparently think black people aren’t blamed[1] enough for crime; I haven’t mentioned my own opinions on that point at all. Regardless of whether they should be blamed more or less, or treated as more or less responsible, I certainly do not think that black people can’t or shouldn’t be held responsible for the crimes they commit. (Though of course there are circumstances in which a person’s responsibility for a thing they do is greater or less—e.g., if I kidnap your children and threaten to torture them unless you put some graffiti on a wall, then you should be held less responsible if you do in fact go and graffiti the wall—and some such circumstances may vary systematically with race somehow.)
I don’t know what you mean by “You also suggest White Man’s Burden”. The original “white man’s burden”, in Kipling’s poem with that title, was the obligation to take over and rule places full of not-white people, For Their Own Good. I’m certainly not suggesting that and I can’t see why you’d think I am, so you must mean something else, but I don’t know what. Regardless of what you mean by that and whether I’m suggesting it, I don’t know what it would even mean for it to be true that “the black identity grouping is more important than individual circumstances”. Sometimes individual circumstances are what matter. Sometimes things affecting a whole group are what matter. Sometimes both.
I completely agree that neither you nor anyone should be punished or advantaged for what your ancestors did in their bedrooms, nor for who those ancestors were. I have the impression that you think I think otherwise, but I don’t know why.
I don’t know what you think I think about crime in black communities. (I remark that your use of the phrase “the black community” seems to me to have the same sort of problems you are complaining about elsewhere. Are Thomas Sowell and Cornel West part of “the black community”? Are they murdering their neighbours?) It seems as if you are picking a stereotype and assuming I fit it, and I wish you wouldn’t do that. As for “demand genuflection to you and your neighbourhood”, that seems to me much more paranoia than reality.
[1] I take your point that blame and responsibility are not the same thing, and perhaps it would have been more accurate if I’d said “When you see people not putting enough of the responsibility for crime on black people …” instead of “When you see people not blaming black people enough for crime …”.
So … when you see people not blaming black people enough for crime, this produces a “literal compulsion” to intervene, so strong that rather than doing “the smart thing” you have to intervene in the name of justice “no matter what that costs me”.
(Even in a case like this one, where so far as I can see no one is being treated unjustly at all, and the sort of concerns you raise are explicitly acknowledged by the OP.)
But if it’s a matter of black people being treated unjustly by white people, you don’t intervene “without good cause”, and you can comfortably ignore them because it’s “not my problem”.
You might want to think some more about whether your compulsion to intervene in the first sort of case is actually about injustice.
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You say
So far as I can see, I have suggested neither of those things, still less suggested them “as if”. I have said that you apparently think black people aren’t blamed[1] enough for crime; I haven’t mentioned my own opinions on that point at all. Regardless of whether they should be blamed more or less, or treated as more or less responsible, I certainly do not think that black people can’t or shouldn’t be held responsible for the crimes they commit. (Though of course there are circumstances in which a person’s responsibility for a thing they do is greater or less—e.g., if I kidnap your children and threaten to torture them unless you put some graffiti on a wall, then you should be held less responsible if you do in fact go and graffiti the wall—and some such circumstances may vary systematically with race somehow.)
I don’t know what you mean by “You also suggest White Man’s Burden”. The original “white man’s burden”, in Kipling’s poem with that title, was the obligation to take over and rule places full of not-white people, For Their Own Good. I’m certainly not suggesting that and I can’t see why you’d think I am, so you must mean something else, but I don’t know what. Regardless of what you mean by that and whether I’m suggesting it, I don’t know what it would even mean for it to be true that “the black identity grouping is more important than individual circumstances”. Sometimes individual circumstances are what matter. Sometimes things affecting a whole group are what matter. Sometimes both.
I completely agree that neither you nor anyone should be punished or advantaged for what your ancestors did in their bedrooms, nor for who those ancestors were. I have the impression that you think I think otherwise, but I don’t know why.
I don’t know what you think I think about crime in black communities. (I remark that your use of the phrase “the black community” seems to me to have the same sort of problems you are complaining about elsewhere. Are Thomas Sowell and Cornel West part of “the black community”? Are they murdering their neighbours?) It seems as if you are picking a stereotype and assuming I fit it, and I wish you wouldn’t do that. As for “demand genuflection to you and your neighbourhood”, that seems to me much more paranoia than reality.
[1] I take your point that blame and responsibility are not the same thing, and perhaps it would have been more accurate if I’d said “When you see people not putting enough of the responsibility for crime on black people …” instead of “When you see people not blaming black people enough for crime …”.