If you’re looking for a tranquil place to live, the Institute For Economics and Peace has published a table of the most and least peaceful U.S. states.
The top 10 are: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Iowa, Washington.
The bottom 10 are: Maryland, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
Full list here.
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North Dakota is the world’s third largest nuclear-missile power. But what explains the other top 10 states, I haven’t a clue.
Yeah, it’s a poser.
Ha! We Virginians have long known that Maryland sucks.
Actually, to stop being coy, it’s not a mystery at all. The states at the top of the list are among the whitest, and significantly the least black, states in the Union. Given that high diversity creates tension, and in particular that blacks commit violent crimes at per-capita rates an order of magnitude higher than whites, the “peace index” rankings make perfect sense.
No news organization seems willing to mention this obvious fact; they are all scratching their heads and trying to interpret it in terms of “red” states vs. “blue” states, etc. Presumably this is because they wish to avoid the inevitable charges of racism that would ensue if they acknowledged reality in this way; presumably also I am now being a racist, and therefore morally culpable, by pointing it out.
Now you’ve done it, Malcolm. Prepare for a barrage of tiresome, argumentative and obtuse indignation from your monocular friend.
Not to worry, Henry. I am armed with Truth, and I have the strength of ten men because my heart is pure.
Bless you, Malcolm. And God bless America!
Not so, Henry. I have no problem with Malcolm’s inference, which seems sensible to me. The facts are what they are, not what one wishes them to be.
Right. It’s not racist to recognize disproportionate violence among blacks (or any other group), and to examine how this affects the general level of violence in various locales. What would be racist is to _assume_ that the high level of violence among blacks compared to the general population is to be explained in terms of some intrinsic property (i.e., a “racial character”).
But that doesn’t mean Malcom gets a free pass with his suggestion that relative peacableness in the northern tier of states can be explained in terms of diversity causing tension causing violence. Even if fine-grained statistical analysis showed that the relatively small number of blacks in the north accounts for the differential, it wouldn’t necessarily implicate diversity in the way Malcolm suggests. Indeed, since most violence perpetrated by blacks is directed toward other blacks, the dynamical/causal role of diversity in all this is very suspect.
Right, Bob, it wouldn’t necessarily implicate diversity, though a glance at history suggests that high diversity isn’t generally near the top of the checklist for setting up a peaceful community.
Ah, but is it morally culpable to consider it possible that such characteristics may have a significant statistical effect? That seems to be the prevailing view.
I would disagree with Bob insofar as I do not see anything inappropriate about forming judgments about the moral nature of racial groups based on their actions. The crime rate among blacks is disproportionately high. People who commit crimes do immoral things. Therefore the median moral character of blacks as a race is lower than the moral character of most, or possibly all, other races. It’s a simple syllogism: no reason to be afraid of it.
This is not to say that all blacks are lazy and shiftless, Jews never pick up a check, or conservatives all have bad sex lives. However, when there are indisputable data — be it crime rates, speed on a running track, or distribution of intelligence between the genders — then you have to go where they lead, regardless of whether their inescapable conclusion is comforting or discomforting.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of rational discourse. And it is good.
“Ah, but is it morally culpable to consider it possible that such characteristics may have a significant statistical effect?”
In a word, “No.”
But I’m not nearly as interested in the question of what constitutes racism as I am in the methodological issues that need to be addressed when we propose dynamical/causal explanatory hypotheses. And as I said, the notion that diversity is an important “driver” in the case before us is very suspect.
Good. It seems we are all in broad agreement here.
I think we can also agree that this consensus is not one we are likely to see anytime soon in the mainstream media, academia, or political discourse.
Henry: I’m a reasonable guy, and a big believer in ratiocination. I’m also very much against dogma, whether it is religious dogma or ideological dogma. Dogma is the enemy of free thought. So, like the apocryphal umpire said, I call them like I see them.
Malcolm: you mean you didn’t see the article in yesterday’s New York Times (“Schvartzes exhibit lack of moral fiber, some say”)?
I should probably add, Peter, that there is an important nuance missing from your syllogism: namely the question of responsibility. A common response to the indisputable statistics about black crime is to ascribe external causal factors that mitigate the moral case: discrimination, poverty, etc.
The need to be open to the possibility of actual statistical differences in the innate characteristics of groups arises when those other factors can’t (or shouldn’t) be isolated as the underlying cause.
Perhaps Rodney King was on to something …
Mac: If your point is that poor people, as an economic class, commit more crime and hence have a more dubious moral character than higher economic classes, then you’ve made a statement which is correct but tangential to the statement that blacks, as a racial group, have lower moral standards. These are both statements of facts and logic. Whether the first statement mitigates any moral culpability which accretes from the second statement is a moral question. Not to get all ontological on you, but issues of underlying cause (does poverty cause crime?) and moral responsibility (if poverty causes crime, therefore does it mitigate moral responsibility?) rely on judgments which are, by and large, made independently of statistics and data.
I think there are two other points worth making.
1) Facts and logic are the basis of resolving moral questions insofar as, combined with experience, they form the moral calculus which people use to make those judgments. To channel my inner John Rawls: I would argue that, if faced by a veil of ignorance, the moral judgments which are made by the greatest number of people are probably the correct ones. (Of course, if the real John Rawls were to post on this blog — like Marshall McLuhan’s cameo role in Annie Hall — I’m screwed.)
2) The argument that poverty mitigates crime is basically that trust fund kids don’t have to steal car radios. As Anatole France said: the Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets, and stealing bread. I don’t buy this argument, however, due to the many people — including His Awesomeness himself! — who have risen from humble backgrounds to achieve great things.
Arkansawyers violent?! Says who? I’ll punch him in the nose for that insult!
Jeffery Hodges
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Of course, there is also the Occam’s Razor approach, which suggests that hot climates have more crime than cold ones because, well, they’re hot. There are a lot more hot, steamy nights on the Bayou than Minnesota, which only has two seasons (winter and July). One could reasonably posit that crimes of passion and crimes of opportunities have more fertile ground when it is hot and sweaty than cool and temperate.
Jeff’s actually onto something – if one were to draw lines equally cutting up Arkansas into thirds – the northernmost third has very few blacks.
Yet it also has a pretty doggone high number of violent crimes. (Admittedly most are not random as such crimes “seem to be” in the southermost third, adjoining Louisiana.)
Indeed, in the northernmost third, a very high number of the residents are immigrants from one of the Top Ten listed states: Iowa – followed closely by Illinois and Wisconsin.
On Missouri’s border with Arkansas (US 65) there used to be a sign, “Give us your retired, your fugitives, your voters for wet counties.” Oddly enough, Missouri back when that sign stood – that state also had [may still] have an “Adopt a Highway” program – a big lawsuit was won in Missouri’s Courts by a group that wanted it’s name listed on the “This mile of highway was adopted by…”
In this case – The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/370/735/522110/
I also wanna know why you all’re lookin’ at me . . . ’cause you oughta know, you’re lookin’ at trouble.
Jeffery Hodges
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Twarn’t lookin’ at yerself – you bein’ Arkie True – those signs (tho’ close to the Arkansas border) were situated on the Misery side.
As fer that “Happiness Scale” I question the methodology in the firstest place. Malcolm say’s it’s because of the blacks while Peter say’s it’s because of the heat – I don’t see many blacks, and lessin’ I emerge from the Underground to get to the liquor store – heat ain’t much of a factor in my sperience.
Heat, demographics, that old Southern culture of honor — it’s all in the mix.
Honor societies.
Now we’re gettin’ someres.