Get this: A new study by three UC Irvine criminologists has concluded that Los Angeles is not on the brink of a major interracial crime wave. Surprised? That's understandable. Because for the last several years, the media have been increasingly fixated on the specter of black-versus-brown violence.
Last January, a CNN anchorwoman asked a visibly perturbed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa whether Los Angeles was "in the middle of a race war." That same month, this newspaper published an opinion piece claiming that "Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods" was an "increasingly common trend."
Yes, there have been high-profile incidents of Latino-black violence (mostly involving gang members in and outside of prison), but, as the new study's authors suggest, those stories tend to be sensationalized in the media to make those crimes seem like the rule rather than the exception. Furthermore, whereas the antics of white thugs are generally treated as unreflective of the opinions of whites at large, the media often interpret the actions of black and Latino criminals as the logical extension of the sentiments of the majority of their law-abiding ethnic brethren.
Granted, the study's findings are nothing to brag about. A murder is a murder is a murder. But other than "a blip" in black-on-Latino homicides in 2005 and another in Latino-on-black killings in 2006, the study's authors conclude that there is no upward trend in interracial violent crime.
According to the study, which focused on six years of data from four precincts in the Los Angeles Police Department's South Bureau, street violence has been overwhelmingly intra-racial rather than interracial. According to scholars John R. Hipp, George E. Tita and Lindsay N. Boggess, "blacks are about 500% more likely to assault a fellow black than a Latino and about 650% more likely to murder a fellow black." For their part, Latino offenders are also much more likely to assault or murder a fellow Latino than an African American.
So why has the media been so quick to embrace the specter of full-scale black-Latino warfare?
Well, let's face it, newspapers and other media are not above playing on readers' fears (or maybe even their wishes). In this paper, a January story titled "Racial attacks by gangs rising, L.A. officials fear" ran on the front page, whereas the article on the new study of racial crime was published on the fourth page in Section B.
