Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Blacks and white-collar crime
Charlie Rangel thinks it's odd that black politicians are disproportionately put in front of ethics panels. (He had Maxine Waters in mind as well as himself). Charlie is implying that he is an angel and white officials hate black people, but the fact is that blacks engage in white-collar crime at disproportionate rates. Even though they are only 13 percent of the U.S. population and are underrepresented in high status positions, the latest FBI data show that one-third of those arrested for embezzlement or fraud are black.
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Blacks,
White-collar crime
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9 comments:
Black will be found to engage in ANY opportunistic crime at a higher level because their morality is wholly externalized and shame based, not internalized and guilt based
is there an IQ cutoff for policing oneself in the absence of someone watching?
Maybe blacks just get caught more often?
the fact is that blacks engage in white-collar crime at disproportionate rates.
Disproportionate to the whole population, or disproportionate to the part of the population that even has the opportunity to commit white collar crime?
Even though they are only 13 percent of the U.S. population and are underrepresented in high status positions, the latest FBI data show that one-third of those arrested for embezzlement or fraud are black.
Yeah, I agree with Anonymous - you can't necessarily say that they're disproportionately committing a certain type of crime just because they're disproportionately arrested for that type.
I've often wondered what the statistics show for Jews and white collar crime. I would assume that Jews commit white collar crime at a higher percentage rate than does the general population but that would be a silly way to look at the thing considering how Jews are so much more likely to be white collar in the first place.
To see therefore whether Jews deserve the reputation in certain circles of being more unscrupulous in business than your average non-Jew it would be instructive to know what percentage of white collar Jewish Americans are convicted of white collar crimes vs. what percentage of white collar non-Jewish Americans are convicted of white collar crimes.
Do you have a way to parse that apart? I'm afraid that anything less scientific than hard data along these exact lines could be too easily cherry-picked in either direction by partisans on either side, what are your thoughts?
Anon 2: It is hard to find data on religion and street crime, and even harder to find it on religion and elite crime, but I'll look for it.
White-collar crime is a, well, mostly white activity at the very top end, things like insider trading and antitrust violations.
Peter
I wonder if the rate of Jews committing white collar crime varies from country to country, and whether conclusions could be drawn about how varying levels of assimilation might affect it.
"Genius", it has yet to be determined whether Jews are more likely than other white collar workers to commit white collar crime at all. Your pet brain farts can wait. Thank you for sharing though.
Here's what you do:
1. Pick out 100 random attorneys in New York City and estimate what percentage are Jewish based on their last names.
2. Make a list of all NYC attorneys who have been disbarred or suspended from the practice of law in the last 5 years and estimate the Jewish percentage in the same manner. (note that disbarments and suspensions are normally public).
3. Compare the two percentages.
The assumption is that disbarment or suspension as an attorney is a decent proxy to measure white collar crime.
I will guess that the percentage of disbarred and suspended attorneys who are Jewish is significantly lower than the percentage of attorneys who are Jewish.
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