There will always be those who perceive violence in racial terms, from whites who are angrily convinced that the media underplay what they perceive as an epidemic of black-on-white violence to blacks who immediately call a protest rally when a Trayvon Martin is killed by a man with light complexion.
So it’s helpful now and then to take another look at the actuality:
Bureau of Justice Statistics data show that from 1976 to 2005, white victims were killed by white defendants 86% of the time and black victims were killed by blacks 94% of the time.
Then there is the matter of who is dying. Although the U.S. murder rate has been dropping for years, an analysis of homicide data by The Wall Street Journal found that the number of black male victims increased more than 10%, to 5,942 in 2010 from 5,307 in 2000.
Overall, more than half the nation’s homicide victims are African-American, though blacks make up only 13% of the population. Of those black murder victims, 85% were men, mostly young men…
The carnage is rendered more tragic, although not in the Greek sense, by the fact that most killings are over “nonsense,” as Hillar Moore, the district attorney for East Baton Rouge Parish, put it in the above-referenced story.
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Math and statistics are clearly racist.
Thankfully you didn’t attempt to offer a solution…because there isn’t one.
Good thing that there is no gang problem in Columbia.
Brad, I am working with Dr. Don Sterns, Director of Dept. of Health for the state of VA. He launched an initiative in Richmond that has had significant results in addressing the fractured condition of families, teen pregnancy, homicide etc. We hope to have an initial event here in Columbia by March 2013.
Better to light a candle – – –
Tom
Is there a fix to be had? This is a lot like trying to fix bad school districts. It’s about fixing families. I’m not sure there’s a governmental remedy to single parent families and parental disinterest. Government might can fix poverty and drug use, but they haven’t done it yet.
You make the correct point that homicide is overwhelmingly intraracial, but the article you cite also shows that there most certainly is a racial component to homicide, in that African-Americans constitute over half the homicides while making up less than 13% of the population. The problem is less a matter of society’s misplaced belief that there is lots of black-on-white or vice-versa violence, and more a matter of a lack of outrage, or a shrugging of the shoulders, about the epidemic levels of death-by-homicide among young black men, especially. I have mixed feelings about gun control, believe in regulation but as an ardent civil libertarian also in the Second Amendment…but one has to wonder if so many of these deaths over “nonsense” as Mr. Moore put it, would be deaths in countries where guns were not so plentiful and easy to obtain.
If you look at homicide rates by nation per capita, there are plenty of nations “above” us in the rankings, but the vast majority of those are Third World nations. Among the major industrialized nations of the world, we have one of the highest murder rates per capita. Why is that and is that just something an “exceptional” nation should accept?
But of course, Phillip, as Doug just said, there isn’t a solution…
You need to add the income level and family demographics components into the statistics. Young black males in two parent middle income or higher homes are probably not committing intraracial murders anywhere close to the rate that low-income, fatherless black males are.
So I guess there is a potential soluton – decrease the number of out-of-wedlock births as that contributes to both the economic level and the lack of parental guidance that creates the environment.
Imagine if we had a black President who could address this issue. I have a dream…
Nah, there is always a solution. Or at least benefits to be gained from changing course. The issue is more what are we prepared to do to effect such change?
The answer doesn’t lie in restricting guns – as much as I would like to see handgun availability drop by 90% – as that train left the station about 1937, but in developing ways to give children a chance in life. The root of the problem is not the existence of an underclass; it is the fate of a perpetual, inescapable underclass.
Give hope, get life.
I doubt the wedlock status has nearly as much to do with it as pure economic level. Maternal age, too. A thirteen year old mama isn’t likely to be able to do much quality parenting.