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.”
Many complained that I was excusing black criminals or, worse, blaming whites (or southern whites) for their misdeeds. But a group’s culture — its shared beliefs, values, and behaviors — never excuses individual misconduct. Every offender is responsible for his own action, even if others in his group tend to behave the same way and he was under their influence. So whites aren’t to blame for black killers just because whites behaved violently generations ago and blacks adopted their ways.
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