Hate Crime Statistics.

[gary williams]

Do preconceived notions about other people in other states bear any merit?

For instance, take this statement -

to rise above this prejudice so common in Texas.

Is prejudice common in Texas?

I decided to find out.

Since I can not track individual prejudices in peoples thinking I will use something that tracks their actions. Hate crime statistics.

Note: This is not about being pro or con to the hate crime designation being placed on certain crimes.

I want to emphasize 2 states for brevity. Say....Texas and Maryland.

The following information is for 2004 and can be found here -

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_re...rime/index.html

STATE ..................... POPULATION ............. # OF INCIDENTS

Maryland .....................5,558,058 ........................245

Texas .........................22,466,217 ...................... 309

As you can see Texas had a whopping 64 more incidents than Maryland in 2004.

But look at the populations. Texas has almost 17 million more people than Maryland and yet they are almost neck n' neck in hate crimes.

Marylands incident rate was - 4.4 incidents per 100,000 people.

Texas' incident rate was - 1.38 per 100,000 people.

In 2004 the possibility of your neighbor being a hate criminal is almost 4 times greater in Maryland than in Texas.

That was 2004. I wonder what the numbers were, say at least 10 years ago?

Lets try 1995.

Numbers can be found here -

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hatecm.htm

STATE .................... POPULATION ............. # OF INCIDENTS

Maryland ..................5,041,200 ........................ 353

Texas ..................... 18,659,819 ....................... 326

Wow! Maryland actually beat Texas by 27 incidents that year!

More hate crimes than Texas!

Maryland that year had an incident rate of - 7 per 100,000

Texas? - 1.74 per 100,000

I find that amazing!

So, if someone from Maryland said

to rise above this prejudice so common in Texas.

Does their statement have merit?

gw

[Roger Bissell]

I think the real explanation for Gary's reported statistics on hate crimes in Maryland vs. Texas is simple and obvious.

The people in Maryland, being relatively much more intelligent and enlightened than those in Texas, are better able to recognize (and thus report) hate crimes than the people in Texas. And thus, the vast majority of hate crimes in Texas go unreported.

Makes sense to me. After all, George W. Bush is a Texan, and we all know how smart he is. Taking him as typical...

Heh-heh. //;-))

REB

P.S. -- If I were really cynical about human beings, I'd say that people in Texas, being much more malevolent on average than those in Maryland, were engaging in a deliberate coverup--suppressing the true figures of hate crimes. But I'm giving them the charitable analysis by assuming them to be (on average) more cretinous, rather than more evil, than the people of Maryland. It could actually be both, of course. //;-))

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

LBJ was a Texan.

(ducking...)

Michael

[Charles R. Anderson]

Gary,

You make an interesting point. Nice work!

The liberal culture in Maryland probably does cause a higher fraction of crimes to be reported as hate crimes. There are also more crimes of all kinds per person in MD than in TX, I believe. You might check that out for me!

Can you tell me about the relative numbers of people who hear sermons against homosexuality in Texas versus those in Maryland?

Maybe the larger fraction of Christians in Texas leads to less violence, or is it the larger number of guns, or is it the smaller fraction of African Americans?

While all of these questions need to be answered to really understand the significance of your statistics, I give you points for looking into this.

Now, do you remember when you first decided you did not like me? Wasn't it after I said good things about Sarah House and then later disagreed with her on an issue. I still think well of Sarah House, but you have been going after me about one thing or another ever since. Well, I understand wanting to impress a fine lady and I understand that you love her. Please remember that I am not her enemy! Neither do I hate Texas.

[gary williams]

Makes sense to me. After all, George W. Bush is a Texan, and we all know how smart he is. Taking him as typical...

Oh.

Great.

Roger is a Dixie Chick. #-o

Okay, funnyman! Keep it up! [-X

The people in Maryland, being relatively much more intelligent and enlightened than those in Texas, are better able to recognize (and thus report) hate crimes than the people in Texas. And thus, the vast majority of hate crimes in Texas go unreported.

No, it is because we have lots and lots of places to hide the bodies!

MSK said -

LBJ was a Texan.

(ducking...)

Somebody get a rope!

Chuck,

I only started this thread to pull yer chain.

You then said -

Now, do you remember when you first decided you did not like me? Wasn't it after I said good things about Sarah House and then later disagreed with her on an issue. I still think well of Sarah House, but you have been going after me about one thing or another ever since. Well, I understand wanting to impress a fine lady and I understand that you love her. Please remember that I am not her enemy! Neither do I hate Texas.

As far as I can remember my only contact with you started here-

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Dissent/0022_3.shtml

and ended here.

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Dissent/0022_6.shtml

As far as I can tell our exchange was just kid n' play for the most part.

That was almost a year ago & I do not remember hounding you beyond that. I could be wrong! But I simply do not wish to sift through acres and acres of RoR posts to find out.

And if you recall, you initiated contact on this site. Until you did, I hadn't thought of you at all.

About Sarah House.

Sarah is my favorite poster of all time! (Sorry MSK)

Sarah can take care of herself.

I adored reading her thoughts on just about everything. I adore her intellectual ferocity. I adore her viciously sarcastic wit. I adore and I am amazed at her ability to disect fallacy. I adore her brutal interogative style.

I guess you could say that I......I.........hmmmm, whats the right way of putting this?..........Oh, yes! I adore her!

Other than that, she's just an ordinary poster.

I adore others too. Other men and women. Most are here. (Did I just say I adore men? Oh, great here comes another gay thing! Damn it!)

Sarah no longer posts around these parts anymore, as far as I know anyway. It's a shame really because in someway I am the loser in that deal because she added so much to my thinking. I learned from her.

Know this Chuck. If I thought you were in anyway out of hand with her or any of my other adored friends YOU WOULD KNOW IT!

You would not have to speculate if that is what our problem of late is. If you think Paul's and Mike E's defense of their friend was fierce.......well, I hope you never really end up on my bad side.

I do not have any problem in how you dealt with Sarah House whatsoever!

I offer you this.

Let's forget the past. Let's forget our history. I think it is possible we are both, in some way, getting it wrong.

I apologize if I have offended you in any way.

Basically, I want to say this -

Hi Charles. My name is gary. It is a pleasure to meet you!

Sarah House,

In the remote chance that you are reading this.......

Get your ass back here girl!

There is no excuse for you not to be HERE!

gw

Note to self: Remember to get back at the rabid anti Tex-ite scoundrels known as REB & MSK!

[Charles R. Anderson]

Gary,

I am having a hard time remembering any time when we had a disagreement of major proportions. Everything seemed very minor to me, though you have given me the impression at times that our disagreements were more important from your perspective. Maybe it is just your gung-ho style!

Anyway, my own perspective is that we agree on more of the important things than we disagree on. That is not so bad.

I would like to save some of my time for more major and important arguments, business, science, and family. Moving on sounds like a good idea to me.

[Aggrad02]

These are just my experiences and my opinions. But since I have lived in both places, Texas for 24 yrs and Annapolis, Maryland for 1 year, and my wife is from the Dominican Republic, I would like to weigh in.

I personally feel that there is less racial tension in Texas than there is in Maryland. While growing up in Texas I have very rarely witnessed racism, almost nonexistent, and neither has my wife who looks to most as african (she has african ancestory, but is from the dominican republic), nor did I experience any when I lived in south Texas when I was in the minority. Most people in Texas are rather friendly. Also there is very little segregation in Texas (the big cities might be different) and people of all races were friends in school. Also there is not that many private schools in Texas and people rarely send their children their but instead send them to public school. On the other hand, I felt that the racial tensions were rather higher in Marlyand, racism was in the news and the way that people treated each other, especially people of different races where different. My wife also noticed the same thing in regard to the way people treated her. Also I would not call the majority of people in Marlyand as friendly, they are polite but not friendly like people in Texas. For example, our daughter was 1 when we lived in Maryland. When my wife was alone and had difficulties in opening a door at a store or getting the stroller down a difficult curb, people were very reluctant to help, while in Texas she has people always helping her out. Also people rarely greeted you in passing there and I never even me my neighbors, the one who I did meet and was what I would call friendly was from California. Lastly in Maryland it seemed that people segregated themselves by race, most people of the same race lived in the same place, as well as worked at the same places.

Like I said before, this is not scientific and is only my experience and how I felt in both places. One reason that Texas may have less Racism is that in about 10 to 20 years, Hispanics will be in the majority in Texas. Maybe it is because people are more friendly, I am not sure. Also one thing that I think that people mistakenly do is to lump Texas into the South. Texas is not part of the South, that starts in Louisiana. Texas is where the South meets the West, the Plains, and Mexico. Texas is just Texas.

Well that is my rant.

Dustan

[gary williams]

Charles,

I would like to save some of my time for more major and important arguments, business, science, and family. Moving on sounds like a good idea to me.

Amen Brother!

Dustan,

Texas is just Texas.

Amen Brother!

gw

[Charles R. Anderson]

Dustan,

I would agree that people are generally more friendly in Texas than in Maryland. Actually, people are generally more friendly almost everywhere in the US than they are in the Northeast, which these days is from Washington, DC north. I have little recent experience with the Pacific Coast, so I should leave it out of my personal evaluation.

I suspect there is a tie-in here with socialism. This area is very socialist, which pits group against group and neighbor against neighbor. Society becomes meaner when an impersonal use of force becomes commonplace and one's person means less and less. Once you sign on to socialism, your role is that of a child and you feel more helpless. This makes people feel desperate and angry. When something goes wrong, it is more likely to be seen as the fault of others.

In the Washington, DC suburbs people seem rarely to talk to one another anymore. It was friendlier in the 1980s and has become steadily less friendly. The county governments require all approved housing developments to have homeowner's associations, so there is constant warfare even in the neighborhoods now over their policies. The public schools are ever more bureaucratic and they are run for the sake of the teacher's unions, not for the children. This puts parents more and more in conflict with the schools. The social services programs of the counties are more and more likely to interfere with parents raising their children and this causes tension. The roads are poorly designed and inadequate and this causes tension and leaves people with less time to be friendly.

In this area, people take the post-modern claim that one can only see things from the perspective of one's own race very seriously. Many of the African Americans are inclined to believe in all sorts of conspiracies against them. For example, many are convinced that the public school system of DC is awful because white people want it to be awful. They fail to note that they have been running the school system for decades now. The mayor, the city council, the school board, and the school administrations have been in the hands of African Americans for decades now. The schools spend more than is spent in the wealthy suburbs, yet they are bad, really bad. But the white man is the cause of this! There is a lot of bad will between the races here and much of it is fed by socialism and by the Democrats.

The blacks always vote for the Democrats, but the Democrats do little for them and what they do is generally hurtful to them. In this sense, the African American sense that there is a conspiracy against them is correct, but surprisingly few of them ever understand the nature of that conspiracy of dependency and ignorance. Nonetheless, the good news is that more and more are moving into the suburbs and they are slowly coming to understand better what has been going on. There is progress, though it is slow.

My neighborhood has become a mixed neighborhood, though it is predominantly black. My black neighbors stand off a bit, but their kids are good kids. While the adults stand off a bit, they are not inclined to interfere as much in the lives of their neighbors through the homeowner's association as was a previous set of more elderly white neighbors, especially the widowed and divorced women among them. They were super meddlers! The good news is that kids now growing up in the suburbs are likely to be less angry adults than were their parents.

[starmoony06]

Makes sense to me. After all, George W. Bush is a Texan, and we all know how smart he is. Taking him as typical...

Heh-heh. //;-))

REB

. //;-))

I just wanted to let you know that Bush is actually from New Haven,Conneticut. Next time I advice you to do your research.