The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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I don’t know, that is something that we have talked about because that
certainly holds true for BlackHawk county. The numbers of minorities on
probation and secure institutions and on placements in general is far too
high of a percentage of the minority population in this community. I have
no scientific answer but it could be labeled racist and it isn’t intended to be
but one of the things that seems to be very common to the black youth that
we see on probation is broken families and most of them are being raised
in matriarchal families where it is either a mom or an aunt of grandma or
some combination, so I certainly think that plays a part in it. Part of it, in
my mind and this is very sensitive, is the role of self—victimization. The
system is against me because I am black. To some degree, I think it is true,
to some degree I do not buy it because I think that it becomes an excuse. I
have seen it when it has been handled exactly the same for the white kid
and the black kid, yet the black kid will scream. That is a very fine line to
walk because certainly there is cause to believe that racism is alive and
well, but sometimes it is almost like they are looking for it and the only
reason something is racist is because there has been a bump in the road for
them. It is going to be a very difficult process for both black and white to
resolve because white or black, we all have our ups and downs and I think
that is one thing that the black population itself is going to have to wrestle
with and resolve.
I think that probably more of them are committing crimes. . .That isn’t to
say that society is color blind. I know it isn’t and there might be some
people that would be harder on a black but from personal experience, I
would say that if there are more blacks in prison that either more blacks
committed a crime and more got caught and for whatever reasons, the real
question is why are more of them committing crimes.
Well, I think that it goes back to the fact that there is a lot of disintegration
in the family unit and I don’t know the statistics but I guess I think that
there are a higher percentage of babies being born out of wedlock in
minority populations. And when you see a family like this, you are
looking at economics