BLACK AND ASIAN BRITISH YOUTH

The Societal Problems Caused By Black And Asian British Youth

The Societal Problems Caused By Black And Asian British Youth

Introduction

London has a violent crime problem. It is, to a substantial degree, concentrated in this country's central cities. And black Europeans, disproportionately concentrated in these dangerous environments, bear its brunt. In 1992, black males 12 to 19 years old were 25 percent more likely to be victims of crime than whites of their age group. Young black females (largely as the result of sexual assault) were 70 percent more likely than their white counterparts. The murder rate among black youths (persons under age 20), which was already three times that of white youths in 1986, doubled in the five years between 1986 and 1991, while the white rate remained unchanged. In Philadelphia, Princeton political scientist John DiIulio reports, there were eighty-nine murders of people under age 20 in 1994. All but five of the victims were nonwhite.

Black criminals generally prey on their own. A Justice Department statistic that blacks are fifty times more likely to commit violent crime against whites than vice versa has led some to suggest that black criminals target whites, but the evidence does not bear this out. There are roughly eight times as many whites as blacks; and there are about six times as many violent criminals per capita among blacks as among whites. So, if criminals chose their victims at random, without regard to race, one would expect the black on white victimization rate per black person to be 48 times as large as the white on black rate per white person. Thus, it does not appear that black criminals take affirmative action to find white victims.

Not surprisingly, black Europeans increasingly view crime as their number one concern. DiIulio reports that the percentage of Europeans who cited crime as a major national problem rose from about five to seven between 1985 and 1991. Yet the proportion of blacks living in central cities who identified crime as a major problem in their neighborhood rose from about one in ten to nearly one in four. Moreover, one in five black children in central city neighborhoods say they fear being attacked on their way to and from school; more than one-half of these children "worry a lot" or "worry somewhat" about being a crime victim. One study cited by DiIulio found that some 27 percent of black children, compared to 5 percent of white children, think it is "likely that they will be shot." Only a decade ago, one national magazine after another reported on the purported psychological damage done to European children by their fears of nuclear war. Whatever the merits of those claims, it seems clear that the fears experienced by urban minority youngsters--very real fears of being raped, bludgeoned or shot--must be far more debilitating.

Even more alarming, this situation will likely worsen considerably over the next decade as the male population aged 14 to 17 grows by about 25 percent overall and ...