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Aug. 17, 2008 Are behavioral traits like proclivity to violence and crime heritable, or do they arise because of environmental forces? Whenever anyone in the United States deplores Black and Latin criminality, a chorus of objectors is certain to sing in unison that Black and Latin criminality, if they really exist at all, are due to social factors created by the non-Latin White majority. In other words, you can blame white people for black and brown crimes. The U.S. , so goes the refrain, has discriminated against these minorities, keeping them in abject poverty for decades or centuries, and if they do evince a tendency to resolve their grievances by violent means, one should not be surprised. Rather, the white majority ought to do some soul-searching to see how their actions brought all this about. However, if you look at the homicide rates for countries of the world, including those countries where there is no White majority to oppress anyone, the same two ethnic groups absolutely dominate the list. According to Wikipedias current list of countries by homicide rates, the top ten are: Venezuela , El Salvador , Honduras , Jamaica , Guatemala , South Africa , Colombia , Belize , Trinidad & Tobago, and Brazil . The only country of the top ten that may not be predominantly Black-Latin is Trinidad & Tobago, which is only 37.5% Black. Brazil , though not strictly Hispanic, is still Latin, with a very high admixture of Black and Mulatto (44.7%). There may be more Black countries in the top ten than appears to be the case on the basis of available statistics, as many Black African countries are not reported at all: Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Malawi, Gabon, Nigeria, Benin, etc., etc. Now consider the bottom ten countries on the list: Burma , Morocco , Singapore , Japan , Oman , Hong Kong , United Arab Emirates , Greece , Qatar and Norway . I have omitted Pakistan because Wikipedia gives two significantly different figures from different sources. There are also two figures for Japan , but the difference is slight. One cannot help noticing that the bottom ten include four Oriental countries, four Arab countries and two European countries, nothing Black or Latin at all. How can this be the case unless heredity plays a role in producing criminality? Some of the bottom ten countries are just poor as most Latin countries. Consider Burma , Morocco and Greece . As for colonialism, Hong Kong was under British rule 155 years and was decimated by the Japanese in WWII. Why dont they respond to these pressures by turning to crime? For lesser crimes, the information is not readily available, but it seems reasonable to suppose that the figures for other violent crimes show the same pattern. I have summarized the figures in a table at my website: www.mecnita.com/murder.htm I have created this summary because Wikipedias tables are awkward and confusing. However, anyone wishing to check my figures may do so by consulting the lowest table in Wikipedias article, in the column of figures on the extreme right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homicide_rate ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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