January 27, 2007

Long Beach Nightmare convictions

From the LA Times:

8 convicted of hate attack in Long Beach

"A judge Friday found that eight black teenagers beat three white women in Long Beach [just south of LA] out of racial hatred, ending a divisive trial that was muddled by conflicting testimony and accusations of witness intimidation."

"Judge Gibson Lee upheld nearly all of the prosecution's counts in a case that roiled this diverse city with its core allegation: that nine girls and a boy visited a well-to-do part of Long Beach on Halloween night and beat three women to the ground because they were white."

he Long Beach racial attack turns out to illustrate perfectly what the prominent Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam was talking about when he admitted that his 20001 study found that the LA area is the most diverse and least trusting and cooperative place in America. (See my "Fragmented Future" article.)

The neighbors on this street in Bixby Knolls in Long Beach had a charming tradition of decorating like crazy for Halloween, which brings big crowds of trick-or-treaters. It's a wonderful thing you can't accomplish on your own -- you need to work with your neighbors to make something like this happen. Neighborliness makes life better for you and, especially, your children.

And look what happens -- a race riot, a hate crime, a pogrom breaks out. Indeed, the peculiar horror of the Long Beach incident was that girls attacked girls.

So much for trust and cooperation. Time to move to the gated community.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

This news finally seems to be getting national attention. For a while it was hidden.

Anonymous said...

Steve, did you see this study when it came out?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46381-2005Jan29.html

According to this, one could be forgiven in thinking that having more blacks/poor people in a neighbourhood had no effect on social conditions/crime whatsoever - that it's all a case of false perception.

Anonymous said...

Ross, good link. Apparently, even blacks are racist against other blacks these days. What's a fella to do? ...

"But racial bias is not the whole answer, claim Sampson and Raudenbush. If it were, why were blacks as likely as whites to see more disorder than was really there?

The answer, they argue, seems to be that blacks had bought into the same negative stereotypes as whites, and have come to associate black neighborhoods -- any black neighborhood -- with decay and dysfunction, regardless of the objective condition of the area."

Unknown said...

It seems to me that the WP article could be interpreted to mean that all races correctly anticipate that the high crime rate of blacks means that *true* disorder is higher when the share of black residents increases ... regardless of graffiti.

Do others agree with this perception or am I misreading the article?

Steve Sailer said...

There's nothing in the write-up in the Washington Post that says that the residents' ratings of the crime danger level in their neighborhoods were objectively wrong. It just says that residents' ratings of the danger level were tied more to the racial makeup of the neighborhood than to the number of broken windows.

The funny thing is that every single adult in America takes racial differences in crime rates into consideration when looking for a house or apartment, but you aren't supposed to take this hulking huge fact into consideration when intellectualizing in the press -- which is one of the reasons intellectual discourse in America is so vapid, and consists mostly of status-posturing.

I suspect the broken windows theory works better within races than across it -- a black neighborhood with broken windows will have more crime than a black neighborhood without broken windows.

The good thing about the broken windows theory is that it offers practical advice: one way for blacks living in high crime neighborhoods to get down to being, say, a medium crime neighborhood is to build traditions that broken windows and grafitti must be repaired immediately or you will be badmouthed by your neighbors.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Sailer sounded quite good on the radio last night. A clear friendly voice. I only caught the last segment. Clear analysis and command of the information.


This California story is just plain sad. I wish an interview could be set up where the victims got to tell there side of what happened. The story struck me as odd because of my experience here in Nashville, blacks and whites seem to have been getting along better in the last few years that in the early/mid nineties. There is friction here between the Asian and Kurdish youths and some between the Hispanic and Black youths (the black youths sometimes contain a white kid who thinks he's black). Whites, with their overwhelming fear of the pokey, rarely seem to pop up in these stories of youth trouble in our town.

Prison just aint' no place for a white boy.


In my city, Nashville, there are more and more gated communities also, even if they only have one guard or even no guard..........there will be a brick wall around the outside, small lots, and McMansions spaced so close, they might as well be 3-4000 foot condos.


Quick, how do you spell "racial tension relief"?
S-P-R-A-W-L

Leonard said...

Tthere's an interesting idea in that Anon 5:38 posting. He writes: McMansions spaced so close, they might as well be 3-4000 foot condos... I've noticed this myself, and not really thought of this angle on it. If you drive out into the exurbs around Washington, DC, you'll see this weird phenomenon of McMansions in the fields. Little subdivisions of huge houses, all packed in close, with open space (farms and woodlots) in all directions.

Perhaps the explanation here is that close-packing is what people fleeing the cities want, as a form of crime prevention.

Anonymous said...

Lets face facts:negroes are by nature violent,criminal and racist. Look at tribal warfare in Africa. They hate whites,especially,if for no other reason than the hatred of whites is "respectable" in our society. The only solution is to somehow persuade these ignorant savages to have less children.Of course,that wont be easy...

Anonymous said...

Diversity is our strength. Just ignore this and it will go away. Pop in a DVD of "Mississippi Burning"; it is more relevant than the things occurring outside in the real world. Better yet, turn on the ball game and crack open a cool one. Back to sleep.

DUI Attorney said...

As a Local Long Beach Criminal Defense Lawyer I have handled many cases in that Court. I have to say I do not think race was a factor in the Judge's Decision. Long Beach is a racially diverse community with racially diverse attorneys and judges.