I appreciate that you took the time
I discard the idea that black on black crime is anything more than a non sequitur with regard to this case. It seems it's being used to deflect attention from the fact that racism is still an issue in your country. And mine. And everywhere else. The answer to "does the US have a racism problem?" isn't "well, black men are more likely to kill other black men". It doesn't even make sense. I would argue that racism didn't play much of a role in the Z/M case, if any, but at least it started up a dialog. It would be best to leave the trial behind and talk about overarching issues rather than shoehorning them where they might not fit. (we can disagree on this)
Are black people more dangerous than white people? Inherently, no. Is there a rather large statistical difference between violent crimes between races? yes. Is it
because people are of different races? I don't see how that could possibly be. I'd be interested in seeing the stats further broken down into income levels. That would be more revealing.
Do statistics show that black people are more violent to one another than to white people? Yes. Is it
because black people have some sort of ingrained nature to be violent to one another? I don't see how that could possibly be the case. More than likely, it's because people in poorer neighbourhoods are more likely to commit crime on those around them and statistically, black families have a lower median income than white families.
It's economic, not racial. But the economics are determined racially (and racist-ly). I'm sure if we took a census of all the black people living in upper class neighbourhoods, the crimerates would be indistinguishable from their neighbours.
Well this is the million dollar question. I guess I would say children in lower class neighbourhoods (of all skin colours) need that extra mentoring. There's obviously some sort of pull toward violent crime that becomes less powerful the further up the economic ladder you go. A proportionate pull in the other direction seems like it could provide some sort of answer... but how do you gauge that? And where do you find all these mentors? I'm not sure I'm qualified to give that kind of advice. I'm not close enough to it to fully understand the dynamics
But despite everything, the boys in your classroom aren't statistics; statistics are in the past. Statistics are has-beens. It's important for them, and people in general, to remember that