Good post Ivy. We constantly hear about the desire to have a real "conversation on race", but that discussion has start with the fact 13% of the population commit more than 52% of the murders. But we want to have a intellectual dishonest conversation on race- one that pretends like all groups have the exact same crime rate. And unlike the pretend small studies that claim that all races do drugs at the same rate (which is bullshit), its hard to argue with the national crime victimization survey and FBI stats on murders, aggregated assaults, robberies or rapes.

For folks that are against stop and frisk and are convinced about racial inequities in the police force- start with the fact that in NYC, blacks commit 70% of the murders. It's not random black males get targeted more. They are orders of magnitude more likely to kill. You can still make a coherent and I think good arguments against such a policy- but don't pretend there isn't massive disparities on who actually carries out the crimes. Its a fact.

It's got to start with the community- the family structure, valuing an education, values. It's pure utopianism to pretend the cops stand down and we are going to get good outcomes. Of course one of these involves difficult self-reflection and change- the other involves the always easy blame game.