In 1995 UK Police Commissioner Paul Condon made a statement saying “the majority of robberies in London were committed by black people.”. Although a true statement based on police statistics it obviously caused outrage.

Fast-forward to 2000 and the UK’s Telegraph published an article starting out “MORE than a quarter of people accused of crimes in London, ranging from muggings to burglary and fraud, are black”.

The article based on police statistics went into the details of how the roughly 10% black population were committing over 25% of the crimes. Jump over the pond to the USA and similar statistics are thrown around in the media, within politics, by NGOs and all over the place. Things like the stat that “60% of those incarcerated in the USA are people of color”, and “37% of those arrested for drug offences are African American”, despite only 14% of drug users being African American”.

Now these statistics go on and on and on. The fact is there is a serious problem. The numbers don’t lie (although they can be bent to represent interests) and they can be used for positive reasons, to show how bad African Americans and minorities are treated. Of course they can used to try and fix some of these terrible issues. However black youth have to hear this stuff all the time.  Being a promising student but knowing the likelihood of you graduating is statistically lower than your white classmates, knowing that statistically you are more likely to be stopped and searched simply walking down the street, knowing a number of negative numbers related simply to your color is certainly depressing. Arguably, detrimental to the mental health of an individual. In Malcom Gladwell’s book Blink (Amazon affiliate link here Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking) Gladwell talks a lot about the negative affects of race on performance. One excerpt states:

“When black students were administered questions from the Graduate Record Examination, students asked to indicate their race beforehand answered half as many questions correctly. “

Many more examples of race being primed and that causing a drop in performance have been recorded. Simply put, there is strong evidence that even acknowledging being black or a minority can push a student to perform a lot worse. I’m sure this goes way beyond academics. It could potentially affect every aspect of daily life. So, is it time we just stop mentioning negative information, even if trying to help! Should media be encouraged not to publish black statistics? Should organisations be concentrating on pushing only positive information? Or is this simply too simplistic? Will things get worse if statistics are not published and people are not made aware? I think it’s unrealistic to try to shut out negative statistics and the wider public needs to be aware of these things in order to protest them, make them a public issue and create change. However the youth need to be showered with positive statistics and information too. Historical achievements should be celebrated, role models should be revered and the good needs to be at very least equally represented along with the bad. Join the discussion and leave your thoughts below.

Further reading and sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_Kingdom#Race_and_crime_in_London
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1371691/Quarter-of-men-accused-are-black.html
• http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Image Credit: Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History