Kansas City Star Columnist Unpacks Poverty, Crime & Race

First off, Toriano Porter deserves a lot of credit for taking on this topic in an honest way that genuinely seems like he wants to work toward solutions rather than just espouse rhetoric. 

One of the main points in his column that needs to be repeated over and over again so that nobody forgets it:

"The vast majority of Black Kansas Citians are law-abiding citizens,  Rosilyn Temple said."

 The stats proves this out, the data backs up this assertion. This is fact, even if your feelings or pundit preferences say otherwise. 

Another great bit of of op/ed writing provides an important bit of info and works to put it in context: 

"Black men ages 18 to 24 commit 23% of Kansas City homicides. What are we doing to protect or encourage this group?"

An EXCELLENT QUESTION . . . At the end of this deadly Summer we really do hope there's some kind of answer offered . . . Again, amongst our exceptionally diverse collection of elected leaders there's mostly SILENCE or useless canned answers on this topic.

We admire Mr. Porter taking us behind the scenes of a forum on the topic because most of us don't have time to spare to solve longstanding problems that not even our Mayor or Council seem interested in addressing . . . 

HOWEVER, one of the assertions of a source for the column needs to be fact checked . . . 

"Most crimes are committed by people who have the least access to services and a support system. And that tends to be minority groups, according to Henrika McCoy, the UT professor. “We are not more prone to violence,” he said. “That is the trope of America.”

Mr. Porter gives these words credence but, again, the data doesn't prove this sentiment . . .

Here's a recent bit of statistical proof that the crime/poverty connection doesn't always hold up . . . 

"Many analysts, along with the general public, believe that poverty is a major, if not the major, cause of crime. But a new study from a Columbia University research group should remind us of something that history has consistently shown: that the relationship between poverty and crime is far from predictable or consistent. The Columbia study revealed the startling news that nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of New York City’s Asian population was impoverished, a proportion exceeding that of the city’s black population (19 percent). This was surprising, given the widespread perception that Asians are among the nation’s more affluent social groups. But the study contains an even more startling aspect: in New York City, Asians’ relatively high poverty rate is accompanied by exceptionally low crime rates. This undercuts the common belief that poverty and crime go hand in hand.

"Asians had consistently low arrest rates for violent crime—usually lower than their proportion of the population, lower than those of blacks and Hispanics, and in one category (assault), even lower than that of whites, who, as a group, are far less often impoverished."

Again . . .

Rather than goofball social media gloating for morons . . . The point here is to work toward a solution and it seems like drawing a straight line between poverty and violence might not be effective given that even the Big JC assured us that there will always be poor people yet KC threatens to break another historic homicide record this year.

Again, Mr. Porter wrote an EXCELLENT column for The Star today and that's something that's becoming infrequent in their shrinking page count  . . . We hope you take our lead and at least consider his words . . .

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Most Kansas City homicide victims are Black men. But that's far from the whole story | Opinion

Rosilyn Temple, founder of KC Mothers in Charge, talks of "Black on Black crime." White people are the biggest U.S. offenders by far.