When Poverty Doesn't Correlate With Crime, No One Notices

The Chicago Reader recently ran a piece attempting to link poverty and homicide rates. Like in many cases where a media outlet tries to make a badly generalized correlation involving crime, race and class, this article displayed a complete failure in even basic logic. The author of the piece missed a crucial finding in the U.S. Census data upon which he relied: of the five poorest neighborhoods in the city from 2005-2009, the poorest neighborhood (Riverdale) had the second lowest homicide rate. This one statistic completely undermines the author's premise that poverty is linked to homicide rates. Yet, somehow the author (and his editor) didn't even realize it in their rush to get another "inner city crime" story to print.

To make matters worse, the article attempts to correlate homicide rates with the percentage of African-Americans living in a neighborhood. This correlation also fails, as the neighborhood with the second highest percentage of African-American residents (also Riverdale, at 98%) has the second lowest homicide rate. Yet, the author fails to note this disconnect*. More importantly, the author can't explain how he derives his statistics regarding African-American residents, since the Census does not break down its racial statistics by nationality in a way that would allow researchers to separate African-American residents from, say, residents of Dominican or Nigerian descent (they would all be lumped under the much broader descriptor "black"). With that being the case, how does the author derive this statistic unless he lazily believes that African-American is synonymous with black, as if the latter does not encompass every person of African descent around the world?

The author refers to the five poorest neighborhoods as black and the five wealthiest neighborhoods as white and middle class, which I won't bother to argue about, since Chicago's residential segregation has been well-established in various studies, to the point where the situation is even occasionally referred to as "American apartheid". Yet, when the author has sentences in his closing paragraph like "We hate hearing about the murders, but it's not us", it's miraculous that he seemingly believes the ordinarily inclusive "we" and "us" can exclude the residents in the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. The problem is so deep, that even the writers who think they want to help are infected with a segregationist mentality.

* Even the neighborhood with the highest proportion of African-American residents (Englewood, at 99%) only has the second highest homicide rate, behind the neighborhood with the highest homicide rate by roughly 20%.

Fox News Uses Nader Statement Against Him

Fox News is no champion for race relations, so for them to use a poorly thought-out racially charged statement from Nader to castigate him is pathetic. I strongly disagree with Nader's usage of the racially loaded term 'Uncle Tom' against the first African-American President (as I would if he used it against any black person) because I think racially loaded terms constitute ad hominem attacks when we should be LASER-FOCUSED ON ISSUES at this crucial juncture in American history. Still, shame on Fox for its continued attempts to undermine anyone who doesn't strictly follow the corporatist line and in pretending to be morally above it all as they do it.

Obama made judgments I questioned when he was a Senator and statements I questioned when he was a candidate. I will continue to make my resistance known (and hopefully felt) if he speaks or acts in a manner I find to be anti-progressive, pro-corporatist or pro-militaristic. I still deplore Nader's head-shaking-ly horrible choice of words, but I deplore Fox News (aka Faux News or Fixed News) even more.

Washington Post Biased Against Obama?

FEEL FREE TO COPY THIS AND EMAIL IT FAR AND WIDE

Obama made a major speech on race on March 18. By the morning of March 19, washingtonpost.com was covering the speech heavily with a feature article as the second story on the front page and three editorials. Within a few hours, the three editorials were gone and the article on the speech was replaced with the non-story of Clinton releasing her White House schedule (initially posted without any analysis of the released materials, just an announcement of the release). While the editorials may indeed rotate that quickly to add new content (I never noticed the turnaround speed), the decision to replace the story on the speech (considered important enough for CNN to carry live in its entirety) with a Clinton story initially lacking any analysis seems absurd (why not wait until the materials could be reviewed by reporters and an actual angle for the story could be developed before yanking the Obama story, his response to the Paster Wright debacle which dominated several news cycles?).

On Monday, March 17 (on page A-5 of the physical paper and prominently featured as the second story on washingtonpost.com for most of that day), the Post ran a story on whether Obama could win the white male vote (an odd query considering how many overwhelmingly white states Obama has won with double digit margins). This story, weak premise and all, included an accompanying sidebar that omitted factual data that favored Sen. Obama. The story's accompanying sidebar, entitled "White Men Can Jump", was supposed to summarize the race so far and present how well Sen. Obama has performed so far in winning the white male vote, but shockingly the sidebar only covered 29 of the 42 contests held to date, not discussing a significant number of Sen. Obama's wins in overwhelmingly white states like Colorado and making the race appear much closer than it is as far as the white male vote is concerned as well as generally (Obama has been ahead in pledged delegates since Iowa, ahead in total delegates and the popular vote for weeks now, has won 30 of the past 42 contests, including margins of 20% or greater in 20 of his victories, yet the Post refuses to properly designate him as a front runner in this race).

Post, why has thou forsaken Barack?

The offending sidebar in question:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/03/17/GR2008031700173.html?sid=ST2008031701338

A list of who has won which state so far is in the upper right corner of the following page (note that Obama has won by a margin of 20% or more in 20 of his wins so far):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29_presidential_primaries%2C_2008

WRITE THE AUTHOR OF THE MARCH 17 ARTICLE HERE: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/dan+balz/
If you agree that the sidebar is misleading due to its random selection of contests and the editorial decision to remove states where Obama won a sizable white male vote, please write the author at the link above and urge him to encourage his fellow employees at the Post to report on this campaign more fairly in the future. The race is not a tie, Clinton has been behind in pledged delegates since Iowa (usually parallel to the popular vote, where she is also losing to Obama).

The Post coverage on this campaign has been inherently tilted towards Clinton, who they treated as the frontrunner when she was ahead and as tied when she fell behind.