From Justice Department statistics, here are the arrest rates for various types of crime. They are adjusted for population, and each one shows the arrest rate for Black suspects as a percentage of the arrest rate for white suspects:
For example, the arrest rate for robbery is 500% higher for Black suspects after accounting for their share of the population. At the other end, the arrest rate for drunk driving is slightly lower for Black suspects compared to white suspects.
These statistics are well known. The big question is whether Black arrest rates are higher because (a) Black people commit more crimes or (b) they are targeted at far higher rates by the police. Or, alternatively, because (c) if you adjust for income and education and so forth, the difference goes away. The only way to say for sure is to somehow know the "real" crime rate, but that's not possible. Researchers have nonetheless tried a variety of clever methods to tease out the difference, but the results have been all over the map and are mostly of dubious quality anyway. So we still don't know.
UPDATE: The original version of the chart was a little unclear, so I've relabeled it.
Seriously? Come to our area while black. Try out a few behaviors that could get you pulled over, but be sure to wear a vest and a football helmet.
But a vest and helmet wil definitely get you pulled over...
You could also try the reverse experiment: Where do you feel safer walking around with a $100 bill hanging out of your pocket? North Chicago or South Chicago?
In North Chicago they'll ignore the $100 bill in your pocket while they clean thousands out of you bank accounts. Different kinds of crime.
You still carry cash? How ... quaint.
"... So we still don't know."
I don't think there is much doubt that there is an actual difference in murder rates.
The difference in murder victimization rates (see here for example) is hard to explain otherwise.
"The big question is whether Black arrest rates are higher because (a) Black people commit more crimes"
C'mon KD. Are you suggesting the possibility that violence/crime is endemic to specific races? You know better.
It's not endemic to specific races, but rather to specific social conditions. In the U.S., race and poverty are highly correlated. Black Americans are much more likely than white Americans to be living in poverty. A lot of the crimes highlighted in the chart are crimes associated with poverty.
This is one of those topics where we lefties start to look a bit divorced from reality.
Do low income neighborhoods naturally produce more crime? Of course the answer is common sense. Do minorities disproportionately live in poverty? Given that every progressive idea revolves around lifting minorities out of poverty we can assume so.
So then why is it impossible for us to look at crime statistics without assuming this is all an artifact of racist policing and clearly all crimes are committed equally?
We can't have it both ways.
You seemed ... confused about the differences between correlation and causality.
You also apparently believe witches are a thing. I'm really glad I'm not you.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I’ll file it under ‘derp’.
Have a nice day! 😀
Well said, lefty friend!
I don't know about "lefty"; I tend to think of myself as independent of the political spectrum, but I'm a "both of the above" person. Poor people commit more crimes AND the police are racist.
Yea, just for the record... there's no doubt in my mind that policing needs some major reform. But then we take it a step further and reflexively suggest that all disparities in crime statistics must be racist in origin.
My point was that we'd get a lot farther in the police reform effort if we were able to acknowledge that yea, many of our low-income neighborhoods (which are low-income for reasons that need to be fixed) are in fact pretty rough.
Black gang warfare is a big reason for murders
It was... until MS13 came to town.
It's enough to send the Crips into the arms of the White Aryan Resistance to team up & defeat the invasive species that El Jefe wanted to keep out with Wall.
You could look at crimes that we do know the race of the perpetrators of, like drug use and robbery, then extrapolate.
Seems like a good idea. But even there, we only know things about the perpetrators of those crimes if they are arrested (drug use) or the crime is reported to police (robbery). So that raises the possibility of differential apprehension/reporting by race as well.
Should the title of the graph be "As % **In Excess** of Rate for White Suspects"?
The body text says "500% higher than", not "500% of"
Over towards the right there is "all offenses" which seems to show only a small excess, although it's impossible to say exactly how much because of the compression of the vertical scale (Why does Kevin squash everything down? Does he pay for space by the vertical inch?). It would probably be informative to know the actual frequency of these different crimes. Evidently the ones on the left which show a large excess account for only a small fraction of total crimes.
It isn't middle class Black people committing these crimes just as it wasn't middle class Italians joining the Mafia. Solve for poverty and the crime rates will go down. Also legalize drugs to keep the gangs out of business.
Good ideas.