What Really Grinds My Gears
What really grinds my gears is narrow, poorly focused, and racist news. Recently I read a series of articles from the New York Times through their Freakonomics pages. And while Freakonomics has some interesting and fair ideas on this country's news and social sciences, they miss the mark severely in this article on increased crime and its correlation with public transit expansion.
Dubner discusses an East St Louis crime 'boom' -- along a new corridor of public transit. He uses the crime as a sign of what's possible when urban riff-raff is shuttled to nicer areas. And from interviews with store staff at a suburban mall, he gathers that crime has "gotten exceedingly worse since August 2006, when MetroLink opened a stop just 500 yards from the high-end shopping center."
Its important to hold the phone here and note the racial implications of what is being said and how. First off, public transit (urban) and high-end shopping center (suburban) speaks volumes to me, first off, of the economic and racial division being portrayed. Its a division embedded in US geography of the last 50 years - undesirables in the city and high-class shit in the suburbs.
Secondly, at no point in the article does Dubner refer to the young people, who presumably recently arrived at the mall, as 'students' or 'citizens.' The young people are instead labeled 'them,' 'juveniles,' or 'troublemakers.' This is a common tool used to de-humanize another class or race; and it reeks of privilege/bias.
But the most important mis-framing that Dubner has done here is to isolate crime in this mall and neighborhood -- as opposed to the community/city/region as a whole. What he ignores is the crime rate and experiences of all folks (urban and suburban) over the last few decades. What I read here is that East St Louis residents have been victims and witnesses to crime for a while now... much higher than the national average... not just as a result of public transit's expansion.
And although crime (at the suburban mall included) is inexcusable; what is equally inexcusable is a display of journalism based solely on white or upper-class experiences - responding to trends felt by white communities only. By ignoring crime in all of East St Louis, historically and presently, Dubner reminds us that the suburbs are treated as sacred space... sacred to white people, like Freakonomics author Dubner.
You may be thinking: "not all journalism can tackle everything in one article; this is a trend worth looking at." And I agree that an increase in crime is worth looking at. But what isn't written/recorded, at the expense of this news piece, is the experience of the rest of St Louis. More likely, the silenced majority in inner St Louis that has experienced crime on the regular, is not written about.
Comment please.
This post's title - the cliche phrase - comes to mind ever since I saw a Family Guy episode where Peter gets a segment on the evening news. Peter basically opines about shit that pisses him off. Here's one clip.
6 comments:
I first want to commend you on the reference to Grinds my Gears.
I think this is a fair point, has crime really increased as a whole in the area? and why is crime is upper class suburbs worse than other crime?
I don't think the author has a valid point when considering public transportation or infrastructure in general. As any place becomes more accessible more people will travel there, and some of those people will commit crimes.
I'm not really sure what the epiphany of the article truly is, is it surprising that making it easier to travel from any area with a higher crime rate to an area with a lower crime rate with lower the variance? Your comments on the author's rhetoric are particular interesting in this regard, because it is unclear why he is using it.
I am a big fan of infrastructure, and maybe it's a good thing that the the upper class get removed from there ivory tower and have to consider the realities of crime.
Very thoughtful. I agree and would like to write more. I'll try to get to it tonight or tomorrow.
- Rhani
I don't really have a problem with the author comparing crime rates in one mall/neighborhood, because he's got to start somewhere, right?
However, there are some additional problems with the statistics:
1. Arrests went from juveniles: 39 to 276 and total: 172 to 345. This means that it is correct to say that transit is correlated with a crime increase, because it is statistically correlated.
2. The problem is in the analysis (which is mostly speculation from shop owners in one mall). As you rightly point out, there is at least one reason not to treat this as representative because E. St. Louis has lots of crime. Second, transit = more shoppers = more crime seems obvious. Before I based policy decisions on this analysis, I would want to know the crime rate as a percentage of total shoppers. If the mall now has twice as many shoppers, than a crime rate that is twice as high would not be unexpected.
nice ben
Ben,
you're attacking Dubner for an article he is linking, not one he wrote. the point of Freakonomics (at least the book) was to explore statistical correlations that aren't properly analyzed in quantative terms. Here, there is a public perception of crime that may or may not be linked to transportation numbers (i.e. is there a causal relationship?). I think Dubner is raising these points so others can look at them (i find his blog boringly devoid of hard quants analysis, the part of the book I enjoyed).
Also, did you read the whole article? I didn't, but just from looking over the first few pages, it's not as totally one-sided as the excepts on freakonomics makes it look.
Look, I totally feel you on the subconscious dehumanization and linguistic tics. But in your response, you need to make sure you're pointing the finger at the right person; in this case I feel you pointed wrong. Also, reading the entire article might be worth it if you plan on blogging about it.
just some constructive criticism on the blog. I think Joe is on the right path with his response, those are the right questions to ask here.
First off, thanks to everyone for reading and commenting on this post. Its all needed if this blog, and our collective thinking, are going to progress.
Okie Joe, your points 1 and 2 are important. But the comment about 'he's got to start somewhere' is, frankly, part of the problem. Starting somewhere is looking at larger trends instead of just White America trends. Atlanta is facing this kind of issue in gentrifying neighborhoods, where white people are now faced with crime; and its getting more coverage. This trend of |white experience --> news| only brings to light how suppressed community's of color experiences have been, and continue to be, in the mainstream media.
Willis, I appreciate the constructive criticism here.
You are right that Dubner did not write the Riverfront Times article; I'm sorry if I implied that in my post and criticism of the Freakonomics piece.
What's funny about the crimes, discussed more in depth deeper on page three of the article, shows that arrests at the mall spiked at 902 in 1998. This makes 2008's projected number of arrests, 690, look pretty modest. So, Willis, you're right when you say that The Riverfront Times article isn't "as totally one-sided as the excepts (sic) on freakonomics makes it look." Freakonomics and Dubner are more so the one-sided analysts here, as shown in their selection of stats and quotes.
Still, I believe the reporting does accent this communities' woes and troubling divisions (us vs. them), particularly white privilege. Here's a Riverfront Times quote from a mall-goer that highlights what I mean:
"Then more and more people started coming. Now, it's a lot of the same people from the Galleria who hang out in the Loop. It's like you have two groups. There are people like us, and then there are the dropouts. I don't know where, or if, they go school. But they're ruining it for all of us."
Not yet have the most important questions about public transportation been asked. My belief is that public transportation is intended to increase people's quality of life, on the whole. And if we can keep crime to a minimum (which I agree is an important goal), then
*the added benefits of increased diversity and exchange,
*the greater access to jobs and products for everyone,
*equal opportunities and a greater distribution of resources,
---all lead to improved well-being in America and the world, not just white parts of St Louis (easily accessible Census maps show the drastic difference in demographic makeup from St Louis city and St Louis county, with the dividing line right about where this newly opened MetroLink station is).
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