man who would never have committed a crime had he not correctlyrnbelieved that in his territory one must kill to survive, orrnmurder by those who would not have become murderers hadrntheir lives not been formed in homes, neighborhoods, andrnschools plagued by violent crime.rnThese destructive forces are in part the result of the historicalrnAmerican attitude toward and treatment of blacks {howrnlarge a part being an issue of considerable controversy). Thus,rnthere is much to say for the view focused on an “American traditionrnof violence” if this means a historical American traditionrnof violence toward blacks. After all, we did enslave them andrntreat them for a hundred years thereafter as people unfit to bernin the same schools as our children. This fact does undercutrnany self-righteous and self-congratulatory dismissals of thernview that attributes black social problems to the experience ofrnslavery and its aftermath.rnHowever, to characterize the white treatment of blacks asrnrepresenting a “tradition of violence” unqualified by color is tornmake—and is meant to make—an entirely different argument:rnit implies, indeed means, that a “tradition of violence”rninfuses so much of American culture that it would engenderrnenormously high rates of violent crime even if America werernall-white. This is, in fact, what most of those who speak of arn”tradition of violence” have in mind.rnThe truth is that crimes in which both perpetrator and victimrnare white give us little reason to believe that the Americanrntradition of violence is much greater than that of other nations.rnInternational homicide statistics are difficult to interpret;rndifferent nations’ differing methodology and the accuraterncollection of data are but two of a host of methodologicalrnproblems. Interpol figures show that America’s homicide raternis only slightly higher than those of Canada and the Scandinavianrncountries (and only an eighth that of Lesotho and arnsixth that of the Philippines), while the World HealthrnOrganization posits an American rate at least double that ofrnother modern societies. Moreover, as David Ward points out,rnany comparison of the United States with homogenous societiesrnis rather silly. There are American states with homicidernrates lower than that of nearly any European nation andrnstates—especially the most heterogeneous ones—with ratesrnthat dwarf any European nation’s.rnWere it not for the disproportionate black contribution (ofrnvictims as well as perpetrators), the United States would havernan enviable record according to some data and a poor, but notrndramatically so, record according to others. The Interpolrnstatistics, for example, imply that, if the black murder rate werernthe same as that of whites, the resulting American murder raternwould be below that of Luxembourg and only slightly abovernthat of Malta. Even according to the WHO statistics, the raternwould not be dramatically out of line even when comparedrnwith relatively homogenous industrialized countries.rnWhatever the fears of whites, it is blacks who are in fact thernvictims of black murderers. Ninety percent of white victims arernmurdered by whites and 95 percent of black victims are murderedrnby blacks. The near halving of the murder rate thatrnmight result from reducing the black murder rate to the samernlevel as that of whites would benefit blacks far more thanrnwhites.rnTo avoid an effect, you need to eradicate one necessaryrncomponent in the configuration of causal factors. If thisrnwere not the ease, we would still be dying of a host of diseasesrnthat have long since been cured by the discovery and annihilationrnof a single factor. The common argument that “you cannotrndo anything about crime until you solve the cause ofrncrime” is correct only in the trivial sense that to “do somethingrnabout crime” you must do something about at least one of therncausal elements. The choice of which element to deal with willrndepend on how one assesses the moral and economic cost of removingrnone or the other. But the causal logic is the samernwhichever element one prefers to attack; the proponent of expenditurernfor enforcement and the proponent of expenditurernfor education are both attempting to eliminate a necessaryrncondition for crime and neither can meaningfully accuse thernother of not attempting to deal with “the cause of crime.”rnhe rate of violentrncrime canrnbe lowered—rnreducing the slaughter that kills blacksrnand the terror that grips whites—onlyrnif it is acknowledged that blacks arernresponsible for most violent crime.rnThe problem-which is not merelyrnthe problem of crime but the problemrnof the black community’s survivalrnand success—can be solved. Butrnit cannot be solved without facingrnthe fact that a small number ofrnirredeemably violent people arerndestroying the possibility of solution.rnEven if the liberal assumption is correct, that poverty, lowrnself-esteem, poor education, and the like are all causes ofrncrime, this does not conflict with the view that emphasizes ineffectivernlaw enforcement and lenient sentencing. Conservativesrnoften confuse liberal assumptions about the causes ofrncrime with a willingness to view these causes as somehow disprovingrnthe ability of better law enforcement to decrease crimernand to see the causes as rendering rigorous enforcement (andrnharsh punishment) morally unjustified. The second is a moralrnquestion, and I would rather wait for the cows to come homernthan to try to answer a moral question; at least the cows will,rnsooner or later, come home. The first is a logical and empiricalrnissue, and neither logic nor experience gives us reason torndoubt that better law enforcement reduces crime. Even if wernignore the deterrent effect of punishment, a murderer in prisonrnobviously cannot commit another murder outside of prison.rnJANUARY 1995/21rnrnrn