Myth #2: Black-on-Black violence proves that Black Americans are inferior and primarily to blame for racial disparities.

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A frequent question I hear in response to discussions of racial disparities is, “What about black-on-black violence?”  You are asking a great question if you wonder why the media focuses on police shooting unarmed black men but rarely discusses the underlying factors that contribute to the higher rate of homicide in some black communities.  But often the question is associated with blaming black people for higher black incarceration rates instead of also reasonably taking that person’s situation into account.  We think black communities are plagued with black-on-black crime.  Mass incarceration is the sad but obvious result.  It is their own fault.  This is attribution bias.  We attribute blame in lopsided ways.  Because of attribution bias, we blame the victim and overlook the victimizer.  We blame the oppressed and overlook the oppressive circumstances.  We blame a community’s culture and overlook a community’s history.

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Michelle Sanchez says in Color Courageous Discipleship, “When looking at a predominantly Black neighborhood riddled with poverty and crime, some might harbor thoughts like these: Black people must not be as smart or hardworking as others.  The fact that more Black people are criminal than others is sad but true.  I wonder what it is about Black culture that keeps them in the gutter.  Of course, there are exceptions, but in general, these people need to get their act together.  These assessments are all characterized by attribution error, and they do very little to get at the root causes of our society’s challenges so that we can find effective solutions together.”