Dick Young, Paris, France
Walter E. Williams, writing at LewRockwell.com, tells readers:
Some of the most dangerous big cities are St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and Philadelphia.
The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by liberal Democrats.
Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia — haven’t elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century.
On top of this, in many of these cities, blacks are mayors, often they dominate city councils, and they are chiefs of police and superintendents of schools.
Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite their large, and growing, school budgets. Consider Baltimore, Maryland. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s math exam.
Violent crime and poor education are not the only problem for Democratic-controlled cities. Because of high crime, poor schools and a less pleasant environment, cities are losing their economic base.
Academic liberals, civil rights advocates and others blamed the exodus on racism — “white flight” to the suburbs to avoid blacks. But blacks have been fleeing some cities at higher rates than whites.
White liberals and black politicians focus most of their attention on what the police do, but how relevant is that to the overall tragedy?
According to Statista, this year, 172 whites and 88 blacks have died at the hands of police. To put police shootings in a bit of perspective, in Chicago alone in 2020 there have been 1,260 shootings and 256 homicides with blacks being the primary victims. That comes to one shooting victim every three hours and one homicide victim every 15 hours. Three people in Chicago have been killed by police.
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Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist.
