As the protests against police brutality rage on, the tiresome and fatigued debate resounds yet again: “What about Black-on-Black crime?” Like a moth-eaten blanket unearthed from a forgotten corner, this hackneyed argument is often wielded to undermine the righteous grievances of the Black community and trivialize the urgency of this issue.
Let us take a closer look at how this tired argument is deployed in the media. In a recent interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to dismiss the murder of Michael Brown by stating, “Ninety-three percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. We’re talking about the exception here.”[1] Similarly, in 2015, former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, tweeted that 97% of Black people are killed by other Black people.[2] These statements are not only misleading, but they also contribute to the harmful rhetoric that perpetuates the flawed argument of “Black-on-Black crime.” Even news outlets such as Breitbart.com have dedicated a tag to “Black-on-Black crime,” further perpetuating the flawed and misleading narrative.[3]
Conservatives often wonder why African Americans are not equally outraged when a gang-involved African American male kills another Black person, compared to when a police officer kills a Black person. However, as with the other flawed arguments addressed in this book, the reference to “Black-on-Black crime” is not a genuine concern for the lives of Black people or the social well-being of the Black community.
Conservatives obsessively fixate on gun violence in inner cities to downplay the issue of police brutality against Black Americans. This focus allows them to propagate the baseless belief that Blacks are incapable of introspection and taking responsibility for their personal lives and communities. They also shamelessly accuse African Americans of ignoring violence committed by their own people while exaggerating police brutality. However, as we will unpack in this chapter, this is a baseless myth.
Empirical Evidence of Police Brutality against African-Americans
Conservative pundits such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have frequently claimed that Black people are exaggerating or even fabricating the extent of police brutality against them. Carlson, for example, once said that, “Very few unarmed Black men are killed by white cops these days. Where’s George Floyd when you need him?”[4] Hannity has similarly asserted that “there is no systemic racism in policing. It doesn’t exist.”[5] However, evidence shows that police brutality against Black people extends beyond police homicides and that racial bias plays a significant role in how Black people are perceived and treated by law enforcement.
A study titled “A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States” conducted by Cody Ross found that “[T]he probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average.”[6] The study concluded that “Tragically, across a large proportion of counties, individuals who were shot by police had a higher median probability of being unarmed black individuals than being armed white individuals.”[7]
What this study verifies is that not only are African Americans more likely to be shot by the police relative to their percentage in the American population, but they are more likely to be shot when they pose less of a threat to the police than white Americans. This is significant because it debunks the idea that Blacks are shot by police more than whites due to threatening behavior that would precipitate a police shooting.
Another study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled “Prejudice and Perception: the Role of Automatic and Controlled Processes” further investigated the influence of racial cues on the perceived identification of weapons.[8] Participants were shown images of Black people and white people holding an object and were asked to determine whether it was a weapon. The study found that participants identified weapons faster when shown Black faces instead of white faces. Moreover, when the participants were required to respond quickly to the image of the person they believed was holding a weapon, they more often misidentified tools as guns when shown a Black face than when shown a white face.
An additional psychological study titled “The Evidence from Racial Bias Task Studies: A Smoking Gun?” from Emory and Georgia State University investigated racial prejudice in shooting reaction time. The study found that people were quicker to shoot Black targets with a gun than white targets with a gun.[9] The study also showed that “relative to White targets, participants were quicker to shoot armed Black targets.”[10]
A study titled “Racial Disparities in Police Shootings: An Empirical Analysis” found aggressive policing strategies that applied excessive force were more likely to be deployed in impoverished Black neighborhoods that became segregated as a result of federal, state, and local governmental housing policies. The authors uncovered that “The level of racial residential segregation was significantly and positively associated with the Black-White disparity in fatal-police-shooting rates.” The conclusion was that racial disparities in police violence are driven more so by the history of structural racism in the segregation of African Americans in cities than individual biases among police officers.
A study titled “An Analysis of New York City Department’s Stop and Frisk Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias” by The Journal of the American Statistical Association analyzed data on racial disparities in New York City’s stop and frisk policy to determine whether complaints of racism in the application of this policy were valid.[11] Some would argue that higher stops of Black people by police simply reflect higher crime rates by Black people and are not a manifestation of structural racism. However, the study analyzed 125,000 pedestrian stops by the New York Police Department over 15 months, then disaggregated these stops by precinct and compared the stop rates by race and ethnicity while “controlling for previous race-specific arrest rates.”[12] The researchers found that African Americans were stopped more frequently than whites, despite geography or race-specific estimates of crime participation.
Police stop African Americans more often than whites, but what happens during many of these encounters helps explain Black incarceration rates. A study by the Stanford Open Policing Project showed that not only are Black motorists pulled over at rates that exceed those for whites, but once stopped, Blacks and Hispanics are three times as likely to be searched and twice as likely as whites to be arrested.[13] The study traces these stops and searches’ outcomes, showing that police officers have a “lower contraband hit rate” for Black individuals than when they search whites.[14] This means police are more likely to find illegal contraband when they search whites than when they search Blacks. Furthermore, the Black people who were subjected to stops and searches represented a broad range of demographics, the overwhelming majority of whom were not in the commission of a crime.[15]
More significantly, this study showed that the overwhelming majority of stops did not lead to arrests (despite frequent legal and illegal searches). The research yielded that 1 in 7.9 whites stopped was arrested, compared with 1 in 9.5 in African Americans; in other words, more whites were actually arrested through these stops than Blacks—thereby demonstrating that whites were actually more likely to be engaged in criminal activity.
According to the National Registry of Exonerees, the vast majority of exonerees framed by the police for drug offenses were African Americans. They were exonerated upon discovering that the officers who testified falsified police reports and willfully lied in court. This report looked specifically at “The exoneration of a group of defendants who were falsely convicted of crimes as a result of a large-scale pattern of police perjury and corruption” and concluded that more Blacks than whites were subjected to wrongful convictions due to police perjury.[16]
While it is a fact that police shootings of unarmed Black people are less common than other forms of police brutality, this does not undermine the legitimacy of the African American protests against police brutality. The empirical evidence is clear: Black people are more likely to be subjected to excessive force, invasive and harassing searches, unwarranted stops, and wrongful convictions as a result of police misconduct.
Conservative Media Propagates Baseless Beliefs About Black Unaccountability
Why should African Americans focus on police brutality when there is internal violence in the Black community? The reality is that conservatives use the refrain of ‘but what about Black-on-Black crime?’ to spread the myth that Black people fail to take responsibility for their own lives. The reality is Black communities have always taken proactive measures to address violence within their neighborhoods. However, they understand that it is a complex issue deeply intertwined with the legacy of institutional racial discrimination. As a result, they tackle the problem from both within and without—always mindful of the root causes. Black people do indeed address violence in their community, but they do not do it in a manner that placates the conservative mythology—they do not ignore the role of structural racism in facilitating and fostering so-called Black-on-Black crime.
As an attorney, I have dedicated myself to fighting against police brutality and excessive force in lawsuits against law enforcement. However, my work extends beyond the courtroom. Through my faith-based organization, Uplift Your Brother, I work directly with young Black men who have been convicted of gang-related homicides and have found redemption by embracing the transformative power of faith and community. Through Uplift Your Brother, I not only help these individuals transform their lives but also empower them to become advocates against gang life in their communities. By providing support and guidance, I am helping young Black men find a way out of gang life and giving them the tools to build a better future for themselves and their communities.
This is not a unique story: Black leaders and organizations have always taken a stand against violence and criminality in the Black community. However, we must acknowledge the role of systemic racism and oppressive policies that have fostered crime and violence in the Black community. The deployment of excessive police force against African Americans and “Black-on-Black” crime stems from the same source—structural racism. We cannot decontextualize Black-on-Black homicides from the larger history of structural racism. This is a common theme among Black radicals who challenge the system: they fight against the institutions that directly undermine Black people’s agency and social mobility while also promoting individual change to improve behavior within their communities.
Malcolm X, a man who rose above criminality, was a powerful voice for Black grievances. He was a vocal critic of police brutality and addressed many issues facing Black America. As a Minister in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X was once asked about the Fruit of Islam: the security arm of the Nation of Islam. He responded by stating that they were reformed and rehabilitated brothers who abstained from vices such as crime, drinking, smoking, fornication, and adultery.[17]
Malcolm X understood that crime in the Black community was a symptom of the underlying conditions that fomented it. He highlighted the worst housing conditions in America, which were often present in the so-called Negro community. White liberals, who owned these dilapidated houses, forced Blacks to pay exorbitant rent for substandard housing. This overcrowded environment destroyed children’s sense of shame, lowered their moral standards, and left them exposed to every form of indecency and vice imaginable.[18]
Malcolm X saw that many Black people were trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, disease, sickness, and death—with unemployment and poverty forcing many into a life of crime. He recognized that some were even used by white overlords to push drugs in the Black community. Malcolm X was an important figure who acknowledged the systemic issues that contribute to crime and poverty in the Black community and he spoke out against them.
Malcolm X also had a deep understanding of the bigger picture when it came to crime in the Black community. He recognized that the true criminals were not necessarily the individuals committing crimes but rather those in positions of power who created the conditions that led to crime. In his words, “the real criminal is in the City Hall downtown, in the State House, and in the White House in Washington, D.C. The real criminal is the White Liberal, the political hypocrite. And it is these legal crooks who pose as our friends, force us into a life of crime, and then use us to spread the White man’s evil vices in our community among our own people.”[19]
Malcolm X also understood that crime in the Black community was both a fact and a fiction. While it was a real issue, it had also been used to create racial myths and perpetuate systemic racism. He framed the problem of crime in the Black community in a way that included white culprits, saying, “They take the statistics, and through the press, they feed them to the public. They make it appear that the role of crime in the Black community is higher than it is anywhere else.”[20]
Martin Luther King Jr. shared a similar perspective: he recognized that criminal responses were environmental rather than racial. He argued that many whites who opposed open housing denied being racist, using sociological arguments to justify their opposition. Both King and Malcolm X believed that the root causes of crime in the Black community were systemic—with landlords, merchants, and politicians all complicit in perpetuating poverty and inequality.
As Malcolm X remarked, “They are victims of organized thievery, organized landlords who are nothing but thieves, merchants who are nothing but thieves, politicians who sit in the city hall and who are nothing but thieves in cahoots with the landlords and the merchants.”[21]
Imam Jamil Abdullah El Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was a founding member of SNCC and led the Muslim community in Atlanta’s historic West End to combat drugs and prostitution.[22]
Imam Siraj Wahaj led a campaign to stop the damage caused by crack cocaine in Brooklyn by working with the police to raid drug houses and occupy them to prevent their return.[23] These are just a few examples of the many grassroots community-led organizations and initiatives that focus on combating gang violence and crime. However, conservative media outlets like FOX News have ignored their work and continue to perpetuate the false notion of Black unaccountability.
Imam Jamil Abdullah El Amin and Imam Siraj Wahaj are not the only examples of Black leaders and organizations that have spoken out and taken action against criminality and violence in the Black community. Ameena Matthews, for instance, is an anti-violence activist who grew up in Chicago’s notorious gang culture. She became a leader in the movement to reduce violence in urban communities. The organization’s work is often overshadowed by the conservative media’s focus on Black-on-Black crime.[24] There are many grassroots community-led organizations and initiatives that focus on combating gang violence and crime, but conservative media outlets such as Fox News have seen fit not to highlight them as if they don’t exist. The reality is that conservatives don’t want to find and shine a light on their work because it would mean they couldn’t continue lying about Black unaccountability. It would also mean that they do not have to confront and engage the real political voice of Black America, which condemns Black-on-Black violence and the racist-inducing factors that facilitate its existence.
Black leaders and communities have always addressed the issue of crime and violence in the Black community, but they do not do it in the way that conservatives would like. They do not leave out the role of racial discrimination and corruption in the creation of crime and violence. This approach recognizes the bigger picture—and it is one that conservatives refuse to engage in because it would mean confronting the real political voice of Black America that condemns the racist factors that facilitate its existence!
Structural Racism and the Creation of Distressing, Crime-Prone Settings for African Americans
The roots of excessive police force against African Americans and “Black-on-Black crime” can be traced back to one common source: structural racism. This pervasive issue has contributed to a society that perpetuates a cycle of violence and poverty for Black communities. But, it is important to note that Black-on-Black homicides don’t exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are a product of a larger history of systemic racism.
The tragic issue of gang violence in Chicago is often used by right-wing pundits to distract from the real struggle against police brutality and racism. In one segment of Fox News, Michael Tobin and Sean Hannity shamefully confronted African American protesters who were demanding justice for the brutal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer.[25]
The victim was shot in the back, and there was a subsequent cover-up attempt by city officials. Tobin tried to deflect the conversation by asking about Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old African American boy who was murdered by rival gang members who held animosity towards Lee’s father.[26]
To truly understand the root of this problem, we must look at the historical forces in play in Chicago long before these young men were even born. In 1949, Englewood was predominantly white and affluent. When rumors spread that a Black family was planning to purchase a house in the area, white residents carried out arson, physical assaults, and even bombings against Black residents who were simply trying to live their lives. Today, Englewood is one of the poorest and most predominantly Black communities in the United States.
The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) played a significant role in the creation of segregated neighborhoods for African Americans, starting with its inception in 1937.[27] The CHA imposed a neighborhood composition rule, which required Black migrants to live in segregated areas of the city. The housing provided for Black residents was often decrepit and lacking basic necessities like plumbing and garbage disposals.[28] Researchers David Greetham concluded that the CHA was a tool of segregation, confinement, and concealment of Chicago’s Black population—thereby leading to poverty and a lack of social mobility for individuals living in the city’s South Side.[29]
The roots of gang violence in Englewood can be traced back to the Englewood Race Riots of 1949, which were initiated by white racists who put up posters saying “NEGROES INVADING” to protest the integration of Black residents into the neighborhood. White gangs attacked Black residents, pulling them out of streetcars and automobiles and beating them. This act of racial terror has had long-lasting effects on the community, contributing to a destructive and nihilistic outlook among gang-involved African American men in Englewood over 60 years later.
Conservatives who constantly point to “Black-on-Black crime” and criticize protests against police brutality must consider the systemic racism that has contributed to the poverty and violence in Black communities. The right-wing argument that crime-ridden inner cities are solely the result of personal choices ignores the fact that the environment and structures that surround individuals have a significant impact on their lives options. The racial segregation imposed by the CHA, which denied Black residents access to basic necessities, created a culture of poverty and hopelessness that has contributed to the cycle of violence in Englewood.
While it is true that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, the studies and research on the link between racially discriminatory policies, poverty, lack of education, lack of job skills, and gun violence cannot be dismissed. Criminologists have been able to identify social conditions that are criminogenic—meaning they tend to produce crime. Poverty, lack of education, and lack of job skills are well-established criminogenic factors that give rise to criminal behavior like gun violence. These risk factors are even used in corrections facilities algorithms to determine the likelihood that an individual may recidivate. Judges consider an offender’s job prospects and lack of education in determining whether they will recidivate, and racially discriminatory policies that block Black communities from educational opportunities and employment tend to produce social conditions that perpetuate crime.
A study conducted by Michael Poulson and Miriam Neufeld titled “Historic redlining, structural racism, and firearm violence: A structural equation modeling approach” establishes a link between racially segregated housing caused by redlining and the rate of gun violence in these segregated areas. While correlation does not necessarily equal causation, it is important to acknowledge the long-term impact of discriminatory policies that have created conditions that are conducive to gun violence.[30]
Furthermore, the decline in employment opportunities in inner-city African American neighborhoods directly increased the incentives to engage in illegal activities such as drug dealing, robberies, and other activities that contribute to the cycle of violence and poverty. Sociologist John M. Hagedorn’s work highlights how the rise of Black street gangs and their reliance on the drug economy initially emerged in response to deindustrialization, mass unemployment, and police harassment.[31] These are all structural factors that contribute to the cycle of violence and poverty.
The Supreme Court has acknowledged the scientific evidence supporting the role of the environment in creating crime-prone conditions. In the case of Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), the Court recognized that children have little control over their surroundings and lack the ability to escape from distressing, crime-producing environments.[32] As a result, they are considered less deserving of the most severe penalties. However, the Court has yet to acknowledge the manner in which structural racism contributes to the creation of distressing, crime-prone settings for African American teenagers.
Moreover, the decline of employment opportunities in inner-city African American neighborhoods directly increased the incentives to engage in criminal activities, including drug dealing, robberies, and other illegal actions. This phenomenon is not unique to Chicago but can be observed in many urban areas across the country. The loss of blue-collar jobs due to automation and outsourcing has disproportionately affected Black communities and led to the creation of a permanent underclass who are struggling to make ends meet.
The lack of economic opportunities and social services has created a vicious cycle of poverty, crime, and imprisonment—disproportionately affecting African Americans. Research shows that in many low-income neighborhoods, young people have limited access to quality education, job training, and health care, which makes it difficult for them to break out of the cycle of poverty and crime.
Therefore, to address the issue of gang violence in Chicago and other cities, it is crucial to address the root causes of poverty, joblessness, and lack of opportunities in the Black community. Focusing solely on individual behavior ignores the systemic and institutional factors that contribute to the criminogenic environment in which many young African Americans find themselves.
The issue of “Black-on-Black crime” fails to acknowledge that the root causes of both issues are the same: structural racism. To suggest that “but what about Black-on-Black crime?” in Black communities is a legitimate response to police brutality is to ignore the fact that Black-on-Black homicides do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are a product of a larger history of systemic racism, which has contributed to the poverty and violence in Black communities.
Focusing solely on individual behavior or criminal history ignores the structural and institutional factors that create a criminogenic environment in which many young African Americans find themselves. Therefore, it is important to address the root causes of poverty, joblessness, and lack of opportunities in the Black community—while also fighting against police brutality and systemic racism. The issues of police brutality against Black people and gang violence in Black communities are not mutually exclusive, and both need to be addressed.
Imagine two households: a good neighbor and a bad neighbor, where the bad neighbor continuously dumps trash and debris on the good neighbor’s lawn. The bad neighbor intentionally throws their own garbage on their neighbor’s lawn instead of disposing of it in their own bin. Not only this, the household responsible for the dumping actively prevents the other household from keeping their property clean. They vandalize the other household’s cleaning tools and supplies, making it difficult for them to clean up properly. They also pressure nearby stores to boycott selling cleaning supplies and tools necessary for the good neighbor to keep their household clean. The bad neighbor’s pressure on nearby stores to boycott cleaning supplies and tools leads to a shortage of these essential items in the community.
The good neighbor is repeatedly turned away from stores that have run out of cleaning supplies, and those that do have them available are charging exorbitant prices due to the demand. The bad neighbor’s tactics also include vandalizing the good neighbor’s cleaning tools and supplies. The good neighbor’s broom, mop, and bucket are often found broken or missing—while the bleach and wipes are tampered with or emptied. The vandalism only adds to the difficulty of maintaining a clean and sanitary living environment—leaving the good neighbor feeling helpless and frustrated despite their best efforts.
The good neighbor is left without any means to keep their property clean and sanitary. They resort to using old rags and scraps of paper to wipe away the garbage that the bad neighbor has dumped on their lawn. They also use water and lemons as a makeshift cleaning solution, as they cannot afford expensive disinfectants and cleaning agents.
Periodically, when the bad neighbor pours their trash on the good neighbor’s lawn, the good neighbor asks the bad neighbor to stop, but the bad neighbor says, “How dare you complain about this mess I’m putting on your lawn? Look at all the mess in your own house.” The bad neighbor’s tactics of preventing the good neighbor from accessing cleaning supplies and vandalizing their cleaning tools parallel the systemic racism faced by Black Americans in the United States. Historically, Black Americans have been denied access to basic resources and opportunities, leading to an environment where crime is more likely to occur.
Just as the good neighbor tries to keep his house clean with meager resources, Black people have long been at the forefront of cleaning up their communities of crime without government support despite the overwhelming criminogenic conditions imposed by the government. They have formed grassroots organizations, established mentoring programs for at-risk youth, and advocated for better education and employment opportunities. They work tirelessly to address the root causes of crime, such as poverty, lack of access to education and healthcare, and systemic racism.
The bad neighbor’s periodic dumping of trash on the good neighbor’s lawn and refusal to take responsibility for their actions by deflecting blame onto the good neighbor is similar to the diversionary tactic of bringing up “Black-on-Black crime” as a response to police brutality. The argument of “Black-on-Black crime” detracts from the pressing issue of police brutality against Black Americans, which is perpetuated by systemic racism and biases within law enforcement. Poverty, lack of access to quality education, inadequate healthcare, and fewer job opportunities are all products of racism—these foster crime, including violence in the Black community. Redlining and housing segregation led to the clustering of Black people in under-resourced neighborhoods with high levels of violence.
Further, the fact that police officers are funded by tax dollars is significant for a few reasons. Primarily, it means that they are accountable to the public in a way that gang members or common criminals are not. Taxpayers are effectively the employers of police officers, and as such, they have a vested interest in ensuring that these public servants are upholding their duties with ethical and moral integrity. However, when police officers engage in brutality and excessive force, they are behaving no better than gang members or common criminals. This not only violates their duties as public servants but also erodes the trust that the public has placed in them.
If the public servants are behaving no better than gang members or common criminals, then what recourse do citizens have against crime in their communities? If law enforcement has criminalized individuals because of race and does not distinguish between those breaking the law and those who are victims of crime, then not only is the public servant not doing their job, but they are also assisting the criminals in victimizing members of the community.
A study titled “Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans” analyzed responses from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a national survey that interviews more than 400,000 adults, selected at random each year, about their health.[33] The authors juxtaposed responses to mental health questions with data from Mapping Police Violence, a database of police killings around the country. The researchers discovered that Black Americans reported more “not good” mental health days in the time period after a police killing of an unarmed Black person and that the killings accounted for up to 1.7 additional days of poor mental health a year.
The impact of police violence on Black communities cannot be overstated. Not only does excessive force result in physical harm, but it also has a profound effect on mental health and community trust. Research, such as the study “Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community” by Matthew Desmond of Harvard University, has shown that police violence contributes to fewer Black people calling the police and reporting crime.[34]
This is a significant concern, especially if we assume what conservatives believe is true: that police exist to serve and protect civilians from crime and violence; police brutality and excessive force would only serve to escalate crime in Black communities. If individuals in Black communities are fearful of police and thereby afraid to call them due to fear of excessive force, it can lead to a rise in crime and violence. This is yet another reason why police brutality and so-called Black-on-Black crime cannot be separated from each other.
The narrative of Black-on-Black crime is a diversionary tactic that detracts from the pressing issue of police brutality against Black Americans. The evidence clearly shows that systemic racism and biases within law enforcement perpetuate excessive force, invasive searches, and wrongful convictions. Moreover, poverty, lack of access to quality education, inadequate healthcare, and fewer job opportunities are all products of racism—which fosters crime, including violence in the Black community. Redlining and housing segregation led to the clustering of Black people in under-resourced neighborhoods with high levels of violence.
Despite these challenges, Black leaders have always been prominent in tackling both so-called Black-on-Black crime and police violence against Black Americans. Therefore, instead of using the “Black-on-Black crime” argument as a distraction, we must address the root causes of violence within the Black community while simultaneously fighting against systemic racism that facilitates both police brutality and the conditions that produce crime in the Black community.
[1] Lee, M. Y. H. (2014, November 25). Giuliani’s claim that 93 percent of black murder victims are killed by other blacks. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/11/25/giulianis-claim-that-93-percent-of-blacks-are-killed-by-other-blacks/
[2] PolitiFact – Trump’s Pants on Fire tweet that blacks killed 81% of white homicide victims. (2015, November 22). @Politifact. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/23/donald-trump/trump-tweet-blacks-white-homicide-victims/
[3] Regnery, A. S. (2023, June 5). Black-on-Black Crime: Blame It On The System And Ignore The Evidence. Breitbart. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/05/24/black-black-crime-blame-system-ignore-evidence/
[4] Dicker, R. (2023, February 1). Tucker Carlson Makes Wildly Offensive (Even For Him) Crack About George Floyd. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tucker-carlson-george-floyd_n_63da337fe4b0c2b49adfc387
[5] Farley, R. (2023, February 3). Hannity’s dubious claim about studies showing “No systemic racism in policing” – FactCheck.org. https://www.factcheck.org/2023/02/hannitys-dubious-claim-about-studies-showing-no-systemic-racism-in-policing
[6] Ross, C. T. (2015). A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014. PLOS ONE, 10(11), e0141854. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141854
[7] Ibid
[8] Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 181–192. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.181
[9] Mekawi, Y., & Bresin, K. (2015). Is the evidence from racial bias shooting task studies a smoking gun? Results from a meta-analysis. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 120–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.08.002
[10] Ibid.
[11] Fagan, J. (2004). An Analysis of the NYPD’s Stop-And-Frisk Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias. Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.846365
[12] Ibid.
[13] Pierson, E., Simoiu, C., Overgoor, J., Corbett-Davies, S., Jenson, D., Shoemaker, A., Ramachandran, V., Barghouty, P., Phillips, C., Shroff, R., & Goel, S. (2020). A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(7), 736–745. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0858-1
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Gross, S. R., Possley, M., Otterbourg, K., Stephens, K., Paredes, J., & O’Brien, B. (2017). Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States 2022. Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4245863
[17] A. Atwa, S. (2000). Malcolm X Collected Speeches, Debates And Interviews 1960 1965.
[18] BlackPast, B. (2013, January 22). (1963) Malcolm X, “Racial Separation”. BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1963-malcolm-x-racial-separation/
[19] BlackPast, B. (2013, January 22). (1963) Malcolm X, “Racial Separation”. BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1963-malcolm-x-racial-separation/
[20] Gray, K. A. (2008). Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics. AK Press.
[21] MALCOLM X “Not just an American problem, but a world problem.” (1965, February 16). National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox the Making of African American Identity: Vol. III, 1917-1968. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/community/text10/malcolmxworldproblem.pdf
[22] Rucker, W. C. (2010). Encyclopedia of African American History (Vol. 1). ABC-CLIO.
[23] Smith, G. S. (2020, December 7). American Religious History: Belief and Society through Time [3 volumes].
[24] Danephron. (n.d.). From Gang Member to Gang Mediator. Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/negotiators/ameena-matthews-chicago-gang-violence/
[25] Watch This Chicago Protester Flawlessly Explain Why Police Shootings Warrant Such Outrage. (2015, November 25). https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/news/watch-chicago-protester-flawlessly-explain-210154273.html
[26] Ibid.
[27] Chicago ’s Wall: Race, Segregation and the Chicago Housing Authority. (2013). The College of Wooster Libraries Open Works. https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4800&context=independentstudy
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Poulson, M., Neufeld, M. Y., Dechert, T., Allee, L., & Kenzik, K. M. (2021, November 1). Historic redlining, structural racism, and firearm violence: A structural equation modeling approach. The Lancet Regional Health – Americas. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2021.100052
[31] Hagedorn, J. G. (2006). Race Not Space: A Revisionist History of Gangs in Chicago. Journal of African American History, 91(2), 194–208. https://doi.org/10.1086/jaahv91n2p194
[32] Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005),
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