White lies about black crime.

IN the Fall 1994 edition of this journal, Glenn C. Loury, James Q. Wilson, Paul H. Robinson, Patrick A. Langan, and Richard T. Gill commented on my essay "The Question of Black Crime." I am very grateful to each of them, to the many others who have communicated their ideas and criticisms, and to the editors for inviting me to offer additional data and arguments on this challenging subject.

There are at least three white lies--diplomatic, well-intentioned falsehoods circulated mainly, but not exclusively, by white intellectuals--about black crime and what can and should be done about it: (1) the black community differs greatly from the rest of the American community in terms of its views on crime and punishment; (2) the inner-city black two-parent family can be rebuilt via changes in public policy; and (3) a color-blind policy of incarcerating violent and repeat criminals would not cut crime.

Hearing blacks

In his thoughtful comment on my essay, Loury argues that we must listen to the black community, which, he insists, is "deeply ambivalent about these issues." He faults my analysis as "politically naive and morally incomplete" because, he asserts, I fail to recognize that there are religious and other people within the black community "who are positive forces for change." He also takes issue with my call to remove severely abused and neglected children from inner-city homes, noting that we do not know "how to create nurturing institutions on a large scale through government agency." Finally, he finds in my essay no answers to "the fundamental moral questions" about "how the power to remove children from their parents will be exercised, by whom, and for what cause."

On all but one of these points, Loury is preaching to the faithful. As I discuss plainly in the essay's penultimate paragraph, "the ultimate solution to the black crime gap will come (or not) from within the black urban community itself." Likewise, I could not be clearer in pointing out that "no one has even begun to research what kinds of institutions for at-risk children might work best under what conditions." I caution that we must probe the administrative, legal, and budgetary issues related to whether the institutions are "public or private or public-private," how they might "be structured, where they are located, and whether they are to be voluntary or mandatory."

Additionally, I do address the core moral questions. In my view, they concern the national community's responsibility to "our children" and the government's duty to govern. I argue that, when other government entities have failed to act, the courts must do so to enforce "existing, democratically enacted federal, state, and local laws, policies, and procedures governing ... the administration of foster care and child welfare systems."

Take heed: if the responsible government agents had merely acted in accordance with their existing legal authority to remove severely neglected and abused kids from the parents who neglected and abused them, if our welfare bureaucracies or family courts de-emphasized family preservation and merely enforced existing "criteria for deciding when, where, and for how long a child is to be placed outside the home," then not one of the morally outrageous horror stories about inner-city children killing inner-city children that have grabbed national headlines in recent months would have occurred. In all of these cases, and in countless others that never make the news, inner-city children are victims before they become victimizers, have numerous contacts with the pass-the-buck youth and family services system, and are ultimately left to suffer what they suffer.

Loury asks rhetorically "whether the failure of parents to adequately care for their children is limited to high crime-generating communities." The answer is obviously not. However, the serious point is that the incidence of abuse and neglect is many times higher, the ultimate human and financial toll is much greater, and the social and moral duty to act is far weightier in predominantly poor, black, and crime-plagued Newark, New Jersey, than it is in predominantly white, affluent, and relatively crime-free Princeton, New Jersey.

Yes, let's listen to the black community. Let's listen to black men who are well into long prison terms. As I have learned from such conversations, many black prisoners are abused or neglected as children, bounce between dysfunctional homes and mindless social welfare bureaucracies, and end up behind bars. Listen to these men talk about what it's like …