Examining all credible theories of crime helps us identify the true cause of the problem — which is what we should want.
I apparently touched a nerve when I wrote in a recent op-ed that exceptionally high homicide rates among young low-income black males in big cities can be traced to a “subculture of violence,” which I defined as “a propensity to resort to violence to resolve interpersonal conflict.” What really set off hundreds of readers was the following: “This traces back to the nineteenth century South, where whites manifested similar behavior, dubbed an ‘honor culture’ by historians. Blacks, overwhelmingly southerners in the nineteenth century, adopted the white southern subculture of violence and took it to northern cities in the Great Migration.”
