Rates of crime for Blacks in the United States in the post-slavery era have always been high relative to Whites. But explaining, or minimizing, this fact faces a major problem: individual excuses for bad acts point to deficiencies, in the agent, which are perhaps forgivable, such as mental deficiency or a deprived childhood, but at the price of treating the agent as less than a full member of the moral community. Collectivizing excuses risks implying group inferiority. The history of attempts to provide an explanation of crime that mitigates blame without undermining full participation to the moral community is long and convoluted, leading to the presently widespread claim that crime is itself a product of victimization through pervasive racism. Three basic strategies – rejection of comparison, attribution to racially invariant causes and explanation by reference to uniquely Black conditions, such as subculture or extreme stigmatization – are identified and their ethical implications distinguished.

在奴役后时代，美国黑人的犯罪率一直高于白人。但是，解释或最小化这一事实面临着一个主要问题：不良行为的个别借口指出了代理人中的缺陷，这可能是可以原谅的，例如精神上的不足或被剥夺的童年，但代价是将代理人视为少而不是道德社区的正式成员。集体化借口有暗示群体自卑的风险。试图提供一种犯罪解释以减轻罪魁祸首而又不损害道德社区充分参与的尝试的历史由来已久，而且令人费解，这导致了目前广泛的说法，即犯罪本身就是普遍种族主义的受害者。三种基本策略–拒绝比较，