"The worst part is that when we students expressed our fears and demanded more policing of the neighborhood to keep us safe, left wing student activists called us racists and demanded, once again, that the campus police department be defunded. Similarly, Democrats in office refuse to believe that there is a crime problem and won't advocate for any policies that would make us safer because this opposes the interests of the Democratic base. "

Ian Bamford is right, but I would go further. Both Democrats and left wing student activists KNOW there is a crime problem. They KNOW that the crime problem mostly originates in the black underclass. They don't know what to do about it because they, like the unabashed white supremacists they claim to abhor, suspect that the cause is genetic. IF the cause is genetic, then the only "solution" is to silence the people who dare to complain about crime and want something done about it. In other words, they do not have the courage of their alleged convictions regarding racial equality. Once you realize this, you can see the attraction of bowing before the likes of Ibram X. Kendi or Nikole Hannah-Jones. THEY will tell you what ALL "blacks" think. Dissenters such as John McWhorter or Glenn Loury can be dismissed as "race traitors," and you don't have to worry about asking ordinary, hard-working blacks what they think. They might tell you they care about the economy and the high crime rate - just like whites. If Democrats acknowledge both the cultural roots of the black crime rate and the agency of black individuals (as opposed to allegedly being helpless victims of "racist" white gods), they will have to make some drastic decisions about what to do. They would prefer not to do anything.