Which Americans in denial about race? | Cogitating Duck

Link: http://cogitatingduck.com/2013/07/22/which-americans-in-denial-about-race/ (via shareaholic.com)

Over the past week, conservative media have consistently hammered away at the issue Elspeth Reeve and her Atlantic Wire colleagues deny: African-Americans, particularly young men, commit violent crimes at a grossly disproportionate rate.  Blacks make up about 10 percent of the population, but are responsible for half of all violent crimes, including murders.  And about 90% of those murder victims are African-American.  It's simple math then that nearly half of people murdered in America are black.
The Wall Street Journal has run a number of excellent editorials on the problem.  Black conservative Jason Riley opened the salvo by reminding us how far back the problem goes.  Consider his quoting of a prominent black civil rights leader:

"Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."

And this week, Shelby Steele–another Black intellectual off of the liberal reservation–explicated on the concept of "poetic truth," a cudgel with which today's morally diminished civil rights leaders try to exercise influence.  Steele authored one of the more compelling books I've read.  It's full title says it all: White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.