Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
‘Super predators’ were not created by the Clintons
A repeated political advertisement for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blasts Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for past comments about the term “super predators.”
“Shame on Hillary Clinton” for using such a racially charged word and depicting black children with such derogatory language the ad chastises.
First, some clarity about the term coined by Princeton University Professor John Dilulio, whose insights about a new wave of criminals published in the 1995 Weekly Standard entitled “The Coming of the Super-Predators.”
The New Jersey connection continued as Dilulio credited a Garden State inmate who described upcoming youth criminals as “stone-cold predators.”
Dilulio researched criminal statistics and interviewed attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, etc for an assessment that social conditions tied to moral poverty produced a new breed of criminal: more violent and showing almost no remorse for heinous crimes.
Dilulio predicted concentrated criminal activity in black neighborhoods where numerous factors, including social and financial deterioration impacted neighborhoods but his theory included all ethnic groups.
Dilulio wrote “While the trouble will be greatest in black inner-city neighborhoods, other places are also certain to have burgeoning youth-crime problems that will spill over into upscale central-city districts, inner-ring suburbs, and even the rural heartland.”
While the word “gang” conjures up black youth, these groups fester in urban, suburban and rural enclaves.
The National Gang Center made these determinations.
- Law enforcement agencies report a greater percentage of Hispanic/ Latino and African-American/black gang members compared with other race/ ethnicities.
- The most recent figures provided by law enforcement are 46 percent Hispanic/Latino gang members, 35 percent African-American/black gang members, more than 11 percent white gang members, and 7 percent other race/ethnicity of gang members.
Now, about that “super predators” quote used by Hillary Clinton.
Hardly anyone can deny that our youth and young adults display more violence than any other humans before them.
Never has such fear reverberated through black communities as adults
In November 2007, two city teen super predators ruthlessly killed 84-yearold World War II veteran Jerry Eure, Sr.
Eure, Sr. had lived an amazing life but succumbed to deplorable violence by two young thugs who got away with a watch, a few dollars and the victim’s car.
Each super predator received more than 40 years in prison.
Stupid, too. They could have robbed a bank, partied on wine, women and song for several days and received considerably less prison time and perhaps Eure, Sr. would still be around as a pillar in the black and white community. A super predator broke into the Ewing Twp. home of 91-year-old Doris Geisel in March, brutally beat her, tossed or dragged the loving woman down basement stairs, tied her up and left her to die there.
Ask Geisel’s family and friends whether they think the thug who perpetrated this attack registers as a super predator.
Stalkers, domestic violence perpetrators and stone-cold murders have infiltrated our lives with such ferocity that elderly black folk shudder and think the worse when engaged on sidewalks, in parks and on buses with youthful versions of themselves.
We can shuck and jive this conversation seven ways from The Sabbath but truths exist throughout the universe and country.
Dylann Roof, 21, showcased super predator behavior when he seated for a Bible Study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in June 2015.
Roof killed nine parishioners who had befriended him inside God’s home.
Thousands of other super predator stories exist throughout our nation.
So, don’t hate on Hillary for using the term.
And watch out for super predators.