The results of importing black students into a college town

August 13, 2008
Letter from a US police officer ...

I am a police officer in the upper northwest and have been a cop for 16 years. Like many in my current community, I came here originally to attend college. Our city is small and predominantly white, and the university population is mostly kids from white, upper middle class families.

Our university tries its damnedest to recruit and attract minorities, but the demographics seem to remain constant. Our local community college is a different story. They have been recruiting athletes from large urban areas for years and have contributed significantly to our community's young black population. It seems for every young black male recruited to play basketball or football, several male friends follow him from his community to ours. Subsequently, there are a large number of young, non-enrolled, unemployed black males living in our community.

One of the most obvious effects of this trend is the ghettoization of one of our older student neighborhoods. In the last twenty years, this multi-square block area has become almost exclusively subsidized housing, attracting the rest of our community's dysfunctional welfare class. This neighborhood abuts our university's east side and still houses many students. The predictable result of this is a significant increase in black on white crime...

The allure of black ghetto street culture amongst the white middle-class youth is a significant factor in this dynamic. There is an almost child-like expectation that the affection for that culture by the majority group will somehow be reciprocated when it plays out on street level, face-to-face encounters. It almost never is. It is amusing in a cynical way to see the repeated shock expressed by these white college kids when that affection is met with unrepentant violence. Whether it is the white male student who is beaten down for taking issue with a black male making a pass at his girlfriend, or the girl herself who is assaulted for rebuking such an advance, these kids are often attacked for just looking at a group of black males the wrong way...

And this won't happen here because ... ???