An Example of That Thing We Needed to Talk About (CW: Political Journal) · 7:48pm May 27th, 2021
To date, "Something We Need to Talk About" is one of my most engaged-with journals. It went about as well as I expected. That said, it has not and will not discourage me.
My beliefs on the political stage are a big part of who I am not only as a person but as a writer and a member of this community. Being silent about important issues that directly impact this fandom serves nobody. For this reason, I will continue to speak about these issues as I see fit.
Moving forward, I will mark all blogposts such as this with the "Politics" tag, so that any followers made uncomfortable by political discourse can avoid reading them. Any followers who find it offensive that I share my opinions on political topics at all are welcome to unfollow or block as they choose. Everyone is welcome to comment whether you agree or disagree, provided it is in good faith and not abusive.
Now then, what is that example of what we needed to talk about? As of writing, it is currently sitting in the Featured Box on the front page. This story is a fairly innocuous thriller about a conspiracy theory surrounding a Changeling infiltration of Equestria. The problem comes not from the story itself, but what the author chose as its title.
Keep in mind I have not downvoted the fic or complained in the comments about the title (save for a passing observation that was not directly critical). I also respect the right of the author to title their works as they see fit, and I will not demand they change it. I do, however, want this to be a teaching moment. As such, I made this post to talk about the title's meaning, and where those numbers came from.
The title is a reference to a white supremacist talking point that is pushed as "proof" that African-Americans are naturally more violent and prone to criminal behavior, and therefore aggressive policing of their communities is justified. The talking point (or meme, if that's what you want to call it) can vary in wording from place to place, but it usually reads out something like this:
"Despite being only 13% of the population, Black people commit more than 50% of all homicides."
Among pushers of this statement, it is frequently abbreviated to the numbers alone, with "13/50" being the most common.
The author claims that it is a "crime statistics satire copypasta," and that is somewhat accurate. However, I would not characterize it as satire when it references a claim that is being recognized as fact. This can be seen in the comments section of the fic, where one reader defending the title said as much in a longwinded retort to one of the title's critics:
Yeah. And the fact is 13/50 is the real world fact and your opinion doesn't change that. "Muh harmful ideas!" No, shut up. You just want to shut down talk because people don't give a shit about your moral appeal. Your logic here is literally "Ignore the problem cause it is offensive to me to discuss it." You want to shutdown discussion on a real problem on the argument it MAY cause SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, a possible offense. Unironically "talking about 13/50 statistic on a pony fiction website will lead to black people dying". No. Fuck off. I don't care.
The commenter then goes on to call Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization. As of writing, the comment has 4 upvotes and 6 downvotes.
So, let's focus on the assertion that "Blacks are 13% of the population and commit more than 50% of homicides." Where do these numbers come from? Curious, I set out to find them in authoritative sources.
Using U.S. Census data, and the Expanded Homicide data in the FBI's 2019 Uniform Crime Report, it appears that the numbers themselves are more or less accurate, but with a caveat. In 2019, roughly 12.2% of the population identified as Black. That same year, 55.9% of offenders were Black in cases where the race of the offender was known. As a percentage of all homicides, 39.5% of offenders are known to be Black.
Even so, these figures do establish that African-Americans are disproportionately more likely to be charged with homicide as a percentage of their population compared to whites. This is mirrored in the data for homicide victims. Again, African-Americans are disproportionately represented (54.7% in cases where the victim's race was known).
The conclusion is that homicide rates among African-Americans in the United States is higher. The tricky part is knowing the reason why this is.
The above crime statistics are a political Rorschach Test of sorts. Your worldview and ideology are going to shape the conclusions you draw from those numbers. Leftists and civil rights advocates (myself included) argue that the causes are environmental. Violent crime, we have concluded, is driven by poverty, unemployment, structural inequality, among other things. Additionally, we further argue that the increased scrutiny of Black communities by law enforcement is another contributing factor, making it more likely that Blacks will be arrested and charged with committing violent crime.
Conservatives and reactionaries, on the other hand, argue that the cause is cultural (or genetic, in the case of the out and proud white supremacists). They will also cite poverty and unemployment as symptoms rather than causes. In most cases, it is this conclusion that is embraced by those who quote the 13/50 meme.
This is getting long, so I'll wrap things up. The point is that a single politically-charged sentence is being thrown around willy-nilly, and the reasons behind why those numbers exist are complicated, sensitive, and the explanation will be in the eye of the beholder. Such things don't translate well into shorthand.
As technically accurate as 13% and 50% might be, they're being used to encourage harmful conclusions about an entire demographic during a period of record high racial tension in the United States. From reading the author's comments, English is a second language to them, and there's a chance that they didn't fully realize just how big of a brawl they would kick off by referencing that "edgy meme" floating around the internet. Regardless of intent, it was a pretty big lapse in judgment, and I hope that they take that into consideration while thinking of a title for future stories.
I'm not willing to give the author that much benefit of the doubt, given that their user icon is a ponified emblem of a fictional fascist government; and their home country's government has long had a history of fascist or at least reactionary hard-right politics. They had a military coup a number of decades ago that engaged in the wholesaler massacre of millions of people, focusing on those engaged in left-wing politics. Leftists there are still violently repressed and demonized. They also have a recent and ongoing history of genocide against ethnic minorities, as well as religious violence, that continue to the present day.
I'm certain the author at least has some idea what they're doing by using that title.
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Which country is that?
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Indonesia.
i hate politics.
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Ah, I see. Well, I guess we'll know if we see similar stuff from this person in the future. Right now I'm suspecting that the author might have chosen an inflammatory title to get folks to click on it. It got the story into the Featured Box, did it not?
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And that's okay. It's why I'll be tagging these blogposts accordingly, so people who don't like political journals can pass over them in their feed.
It's innocuous until you see the deliberate allegory for the racist mythology of an anti-white genocide (carried out by the supposedly savage, devious black things against supposedly peace-loving, civilized people).
The whole thing is racist propaganda along the lines of its dogwhistle title.
Thank you for continuing to put this stuff out there, though.
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Too bad being a social creature needs politics to survive