If you believe that crime is just an invention of social conditions, you’re probably an upper-middle-class white leftist.
Not always.
You can be a minority upper-middle-class brat like the ones that populate the professional ranks of critical race theory. Or you can be Kevin Williamson at the National Review and write gibberish like this that could just as easily have come from some academic Marxist.
We should understand these as genuinely distinct phenomena rather than approach them as “crime,” categorically, drawing only superficial correlations with community features. While it is easy to lampoon the stale “root causes” talk of vintage-sweater-vest progressivism, understanding what is actually going on with crime is going to require a deeper and richer engagement with local leaders — leaders with local knowledge — in a variety of communities that we might describe genuinely as “diverse.”
Horseshoe theory doesn’t just link the far-left and the far-right, it can also link progressives and libertarians for whom crime is theoretical.
You know who crime isn’t theoretical for? People who live in the ghetto.
If you want to see actual white privilege, take a look at this poll.
For the first time, crime ranked ahead of the pandemic as the top issue for all voters. Even more surprisingly, it was an issue that voters of both parties ranked highly: 57 percent of Republicans called the issue a major crisis while 52 percent of Democrats concurred. Most significantly, 70 percent of African-American voters called violent crime a major crisis.
More black voters call crime a major crisis than Republicans.
Narrow majorities of Republicans and Democrats, who prove not to be very far apart, call crime a major crisis, but they’re both dwarfed by a solid majority of black people.
Leftist social experiments have their greatest impact on those with the lowest incomes, who live in dense areas, and who can’t just walk away as easily when things get bad.
That kind of privilege is real, but it’s not really racial. Plenty of black millionaires and their kids were happy to promote this garbage. And plenty of working-class white people knew it was insane.
You’re not born into it, you live it.
Over the past 5 years, I watched plenty of libertarian-leaning Republicans and then actual Republicans embrace pro-crime policies because they really don’t understand crime, the inner city, or life outside their bubble. The damage they did in a few years may take generations to undo. Or it may never be undone.
But the bulk of the damage comes from the AOC crowd. The white wealthy lefties who embrace the DSA and yet have no idea how reality works because they grew up in a bubble. Sandy from the Bronx is really Sandy from Westchester. The kids crowding Williamsburg grew up in the suburbs. But it’s their new neighborhoods that will pay the price.
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