Talk:black-on-black crime

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A real term, although I'm not very familiar with it. Sense being checked is "The crime which occurs when the poorest, weakest members of a population turn on each other out of desperation" - I can see where it would come from based on the literal meaning, but I think we need something to back it up. Globish 02:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a set phrase, with a large literature and little agreement about the subject. SB's def is much less PoV: Crime, especially violent crime in an inner city, carried out by black people against their peers. Let me propose an even simpler one: "Crime carried out by black people against peers and neighbors who are black." Crimes like burglary, theft, vandalism are not inherently violent, but are included. No theory or limits needed. Any objections? DCDuring 11:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Any topical essay would describe the incongruity and senselessness of such inner divisiveness, but I don't see how a dictionary definition can hope to cover that adequately. While it covers non-violent crime as well, it is being called a noun of its own (despite being sum-of-parts) to disparage the entire concept. I think your removal of "especially crime in an inner city" would detract from the sense significantly (but perhaps removing the single word "violent" is more of what your were trying to say?) --Connel MacKenzie 21:50, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
AGF. The topical essays cover a wide variety of points of view and theories. I was trying to remove the implicit and conjectural theories and isolate the common element, which is IMO something like what I have proposed. I saw no reason for my own suburban city and our three neighboring suburban cities to be excluded from the definition, nor the neighboring suburban towns with significant black populations, nor the boroughs of New York outside Manhattan, which include some very crime-ridden places, but don't fit most definitions of inner city (or inner + city). The meaning of BoBC is largely SoP, once you have a def. for "black-on-black" {which WT does not), but it is certainly a set phrase. It seems possible to say "violent black on black crime", but not "black on black violent crime". I called it a "noun" solely because it functions as a noun grammatically, including having a plural form. I have been operating under the assumption that, per WT documentation, the list of valid English PoSs does not include "Phrase", "Verb Form", "Idiom", "Transitive verb", and "Intransitive Verb", but does include "Proverb", which this is certainly not. DCDuring 22:40, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why you cry "AGF" above. I don't see anything untoward I wrote (nor any way that what I wrote could be misconstrued as such.) I don't think that "inner city" in any way excludes any other region, but it does round the context out to typical uses of the phrase. Are you suggesting the set-phrase is used especially in suburban references? That is news to me (and frankly can't see how that could have evolved that way, linguistically, as it seem to have started out as a term exclusively classifying inner city crime.)
About headings, yes, I've for several years used ===Phrase=== as a heading; in this case I think ===Noun=== fits a little better, but don't care too much which heading is chosen (at this point in time.)
--Connel MacKenzie 00:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you want to delete this because the person who added it was black.

How is this idiomatic? It's crime. Committed by black people, on black people. "White-on-white crime" or "hispanic-on-Asian" crime would be equally instantly understood. bd2412 T 01:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]