More To Crime Than Numbers Show

"If you do the crime, you have to do the time."
                                             ~ Folmar

By Major W. Cox

During his 1997 State of the City address, Mayor Emory Folmar quoted from my recent column, "Hits And Misses From The Year Past." I am honored that the mayor referenced my work, I only wish he would have used material from my original column, "Institutional Racism Still Oppresses" (March 1996).

In his speech before the Lions Club on January 13, Mayor Folmar said he was taking a stand against accusations of racism. Using articles from the Montgomery Advertiser critical of some of his political tactics, he launched a volatile defense. In his speech, he responds to an editorial critical of his last reelection campaign, saying the "…election was over politics not over race." In that campaign, the mayor selected and supported a slate of five white candidates dubbed "Montgomery’s Team" and won control of the council. In response to the New Years Day editorial criticizing his decision not to include any non-white members on his Montgomery’s Team, he said, "It was white folks I was trying to beat."

This column is not about that election, I have expressed my opinion about the mayor’s Montgomery Team previously. The issue presently is the mayor’s use of my end of the year summation as a foil for his remarks on Montgomery’s crime statistics. In my original column, I discussed the decline of individual racist acts contrasted with some of the to-date irresolvable aspects of institutional racism. I defined and explained orthodox racism as "any theory or belief that a person’s inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, hair texture or facial features, determine human intellectual capacity and personality traits." I said, "racist ideology claims that existence of such genetic differences between population groups prove the existence of hierarchical race categories."

The Mayor quoted from my January column to explain Montgomery’s crime statistics. In that summation, I wrote:

"Institutional Racism Still Oppresses" (title of the March 1996 column) drew a line of distinction between individual and institutional racism. I discussed, for example, the challenge of eliminating racism embedded in our criminal justice system, which manifests a disproportionately high incarceration rate of nonwhite males. The column recognized gains in eliminating individual acts of racism while finding institutional racism more difficult to ferret out of society."

During his "State of The City Address" Mayor Folmar told listeners that he was reading from "Major Cox’s" article, when he read the above quoted material as follows:

"Institutional Racism Still Oppresses" (one or two unintelligible words) he discusses the challenge of eliminating racism embedded in our criminal justice system, which manifests a disproportionately high incarceration rate of nonwhite males."

After this selective editing of my words, the mayor presented the audience with a sheet depicting Montgomery’s 1996 serious crime statistics categorized by the race of both the victim and the perpetrator. This report showed a total of 832 serious crimes. Of the total, 642 or 77% were categorized as black on black crime. The mayor offered these statistics as mathematical proof that the "disproportionately high incarceration rate of nonwhite males" is not a function of institutional racism. "It’s a function of mathematics, not race," he told the audience.

Mayor Folmar knows very well, there can be no enlightened reading of crime statistics when categorized by race alone. It would be much more useful to classify crime perpetrators and their victims by variables other than race. They could be classified by their economic status or their educational level. It would also be helpful to know if the perpetrators were homeless or unemployed, or if crimes can be classed as drug-related. Just identifying these individuals as black or white is of no practical value in reducing the crime rate.

In contemporary society, race is a social and political term, with no biological significance. Unfortunately, skin-color race theory remains institutionalized in our society, and our use of the vernacular stemming from slavery and segregation continues to provide a level of social acceptance of racist ideology.

The problem we face today is how to rid society of vestiges of institutional racism without racially categorizing victims of it’s effect. I often experience this dilemma writing this column. And as with any dilemma, there is no easy solution. For example: how can I criticize Mayor Folmar’s racially categorized crime statistics without tacitly acknowledging racial classifications. So when I wrote about the "disproportionately high incarceration rate of nonwhite males," Ole Emory done leap’ed on dat comment like Brer Fox done Brer Rabbit. Oh! I only wish he had read what I had written, instead of sculpting my words into a political tar-baby.

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Originally Published: 29 January 1997, Montgomery Advertiser

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