Episode 11 - This Is Race and Crime in America

In this week's episode, host Franklin Shelby reviews the state of crime in America, and more specifically, how crime is concentrated based on race. He also takes a look at the intra-race crimes among white and black Americans. We also break down the unique problem of black on black violent crime, and murder, that is facing the African American communities across the country and the need to get serious about solving this problem.

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Transcript

This week, we are going to further discuss the state of crime in American. In last week’s episode, we discussed statistics regarding police interactions with the black community. If you go back and listen, you’ll see that we talked about how not only do cops get victimized by black at a far higher rate than blacks are victimized by cops, but also that the probability of any given black person in the country being killed by the police is minute.

Now, we are going to delve more deeply into crime in America. While last episode framed the conversation from the side of black communities in what actual threat, or lack thereof, cops pose to their communities, this episode will cover crimes across the country to depict what threat cops are even responding to in the first place.

Violent Crime 

That leads us into a particular problem regarding black crime rates, whether there is a black victim or not. Blacks greatly outnumber other races in violent crimes specifically. So, these crimes pose a particular physical threat to the victims on top of the general anxiety one faces with knowing crime is around them. For our discussions, we’ll use the FBI’s definition of violent crime. In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. These offenses are categorized as violent crimes because they involve force or threat of force.

Let’s take a look at some statistics regarding violent crimes during 2018. We’ll 2018 since there is some lag in the FBI compiling annual statistics. Here’s a brief overview of the 2018 Uniform Crime Report, or UCR, regarding violent crimes in America.

In 2018, an estimated 1,206,836 violent crimes occurred nationwide, a decrease of 3.3 percent from the 2017 estimate. (See Tables 1 and 1A.)

When considering 5- and 10-year trends, the 2018 estimated violent crime total was 4.7 percent above the 2014 level but 9.0 percent below the 2009 level. (See Tables 1 and 1A.) So, while violent crime had been slightlyvdecreasing for several years, it’s back above the levels is was from a few years ago.

There were an estimated 368.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, a rate that fell 3.9 percent when compared with the 2017 estimated violent crime rate and dropped 14.6 percent from the 2009 estimate. (See Tables 1 and 1A.)

l Aggravated assaults accounted for 66.9 percent of violent crimes reported to law enforcement in 2018. Robbery offenses accounted for 23.4 percent of violent crime offenses; rape (legacy definition) accounted for 8.4 percent; and murder accounted for 1.3 percent. (Based on Table 1.)

Let’s dive in further. If you navigate through the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, a type of database, you find out more. For example, in 2018 white people were responsible for 2.7 million violent incidents. Black people for 1.15 violent incidents. The next highest entry here is “unknown” races accounting for a little over 36,000 violent crimes. So the white and black entries shows us the two biggest perpetrators of violent crimes.

However, we must contextualize these numbers. 46% of violent crimes were committed by whites, while 43% were committed by blacks. In other words, 46% of the violent crimes were committed by a group that makes up about 77% of the population, while 43% were committed by a group that makes up about 13% of the population. So, therefore, while the raw numbers appear comparable, in simple terms of number of occurrences, the contextualization of per capita bases shows that the violent crime rate among blacks is far more profound in America than that of white. Blacks commit almost as many violent crimes as whites, despite there being more than five times as many whites in the country than blacks.

So, from there we should cross-reference our numbers regarding the perpetrators of crimes to those regarding the victims. Bureau of Justice stats show that 70% of victims of violent crimes committed by blacks are also blacks. BJS data also compiles what it calls “percent ratio”, which is The percentage of incidents committed by offenders of the same race/ethnicity of the victim divided by the percentage of the U.S. population of the same race/ethnicity.” Not surprisingly, the ratio for black on black violent crime is far higher than intra-race crimes for any other race. Thus, while violent crime against each race is most often committed by a member of the same race, the proportion of black on black crime is higher than other intra-race violent crime. This idea will also come into play later in the episode when speaking of murders.

We also see that of the remaining 30% of violent crimes committed by blacks, that were not part of the 70% committed on other blacks, 10.5% of the violent crimes were committed on whites. 

Before we move on to murders, lets tie a bow around the discussion on violent crimes more generally. First, we see that through the percent ratio of violent crimes, the rate of violent crimes by blacks is far higher than any other race. In fact, the raw numbers show that almost more violent crimes were committed by blacks than by whites despite being a fraction of the population. Next, we see that a strong majority of the victims of black crime are also black. Over 10% of the remaining victims were white.

Hate Crime

One more note regarding hate crimes. According to the FBI, hate crimes “A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” However, the FBI website does mention that hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.

Based on the reporting presented to the FBI, 59.5% of hate crimes in 2018 were motivated specifically by race (as opposed to religion, gender, or some other characteristic). Regarding the race of the offenders, 54% of the people who committed hate crimes in 2018 were white, and 24% were black. So, again, we see that blacks are over represented, while whites are underrepresented, when looking at hate crimes.

Murder

Now, let’s talk about murder. The FBI’s most recent annual report here is from 2018 so we’ll use those numbers. All in all, across 2018 blacks accounted for 54.9% of the murders in the country despite being only 13% of the population. In contrast, whites accounted for 42% when they make up about 75% of the population.  

A common refrain from the left when confronted with the stats we’ll discuss is that because the overwhelming majority of whites are killed by other whites, the fact that the overwhelming majority of blacks that are killed by blacks is not an anomaly, and in fact, is more like a simple byproduct of largely segregated neighborhoods. However, what this argument ignores is the frequency in which the murders occur. In other words, in terms of white-on-white murders, what total number of killings is the 73% taken from? And the same question goes for the 88% of black on black crimes.

Homicide-victimization rates for black men were 3.9 times the national average and that 52 percent of all known homicide victims were black (2017 data). The perpetrators of these crimes were overwhelmingly African Americans. In 2018, where the homicide victim was black, the suspected killer also was 88 percent of the time. And this is not a novel problem in the country as of late. From 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by other African Americans. In fact, high rates of black-on-black killing have been the norm for well over a century.

Moreover, as already noted, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of the killers of black murder victims were other African Americans. White-on-white homicide is similarly highly intraracial, but, the rates are not astronomically high like black on black homicide. 

So let’s take a break here to digest some more information. In regards to murder, we’ve established two general concepts: (1) murder victims are almost always killed by a member of the same race; and (2) despite that truth, black on black murders, and black murders of any race in general, occur far more often. When those on the left seek to equalize, and thus, nullify the black on black murder rate, they simply rely on nearly all murders being intra race crimes and so the black rate is not an outlier. However, as we’ve seen this is akin to claiming that because you at 88% of you dinner and your friend at 73% of his dinner, then you both ate the same amount of food - never mind the fact that he ordered a side salad and you ordered a whole pizza.

So, why do these numbers matter right now? Because a common defense from black lives matter is that bring up black on black crime is a deflection at the least, and racist at worst. However, when detractors of the group bring these numbers, it really is to proposed a very simple logic exercise that poses a whole in the group’s advocacy and fervor. We saw in last week’s episode that 235 blacks were killed by police total in 2019 (whether justified or not), and only 9 unarmed blacks were shot and killed by the police the whole year. In 2018, those numbers were 229 and 23. Those numbers, especially only the ones where the officer was wrong to shoot, are dwarfed by the 2,600 some odd number of blacks killed at the hands of other blacks each year.

Even if we took the 235 total shootings, black on black murders kill about 11 times as many blacks each year. Those same murders are about 289 times more frequent than unarmed blacks being killed by the police.

The argument from there is rather simple. If BLM is this outraged at a fatal threat to the black community that really amounts to a statistical anomaly, then wouldn’t it follow that when faced with a fatal threat that is several hundred times more deadly to that community your advocacy should be that much more intense? Moreover, shouldn’t wiping out the latter fatal threat at least be somewhere in your agenda? The answer to both questions is obviously yes. Instead, while BLM’s main website is sure to use all caps in claiming to fight for ALL black lives, black on black murder, or black on black violent crime more generally, is nowhere to be found. The website lists 12 areas of focus for the group during 2020. Reducing these numbers is not mentioned. LGBT rights and “common sense” gun laws are mentioned, but BLM has somehow left the biggest deadly threat in the murder of black lives off their radar this year. The years since BLM's inception in the wake of the George Zimmerman acquittal in connection to Trayvon Martin’s death have been no different. There’s never been an affirmative mention of the problem, and its raised to supporters of the group, it’s met with deflection and baseless claims of racism even though the entire proposition necessarily implies compassion for saving black lives. When it comes to the murder of innocent black Americans, as BLM supporters are wont to say, being silent is being complicit.