The fact is that there is an alarming level of violent crime committed by and towards black people in inner cities, regardless of cause and effect based on standard of living which is very difficult to establish and not a debate I want to get drawn in to.
As far as I understand it, this is one of the issues groups like BLM are trying to highlight; our society consciously or unconsciously views these things (crime, gangs, drugs) as an inherently ‘black’ problem, rather than a socio-economic problem that disproportionately effects certain BAME individuals.
In the early to mid 2000's Scotland's rate of violent crime was amongst the highest in western Europe, and by some measures worldwide. Strathclyde had a significantly higher rate of knife crime than any other part of the UK. But at no point was skin colour or 'Scottish culture' assumed to be, or even suggested as, an underlying cause. The problem was recognised as a socio-economic class issue and addressed according (to various degrees of success).
The fact is that race is only ever considered a factor when it is non-white. Even the Home office has acknowledged that when other variables are accounted for, ethnicity is not a significant predictor of criminality, yet still the myth persists.
Profiled stop and search instinctively seems to make sense, but the point is whether it is done proportionately. The evidence suggests it’s not. For example, black people are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs despite using drugs at a lower rate than white people. Then there is the compounding issue that, when an offence has been committed, black people are on average more likely to be charged and convicted, and receive longer sentences, than white people for comparable offences.
LINK and
LINKThere is also the uncomfortable conclusion that these stop and search statistics suggest that a worrying proportion of police officers are unable to identify possible individual suspects much beyond a broad brushstroke of skin colour.
During that period I was "stopped and searched" 98 times..
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Being stopped (an incredibly specific) 98 times in two years is appalling, regardless of ones colour. I suspect you’d have had good grounds for police harassment in 1960; this kind of thing certainly shouldn’t be acceptable in 2020, for anyone.