8 Stats That Dispel The Myth of Black Violence
Only about 1 percent of African-Americans — and no more than 2 percent of Black males — will commit a violent crime in a given year, according to a 2013 report, Race, Crime and Statistical Malpractice by timwise.org.
The actual rates of Black-on-white crime are lower than random chance would predict; No more than 0.7 percent (seven-tenths of one percent) of African-Americans will commit a violent crime against a white person, according to 2013 FBI expanded homicide data.
Most crime is intra-racial; 86 percent of white victims are harmed by white offenders.
Whites are six times as likely to be murdered by another white person as by a Black person. Overall, the percentage of white Americans who will be murdered by a Black offender in a given year is only 0.0002, according the FBI and Bureau of Justice statistics.
A Black person is 2.75 times as likely to be murdered by a white person as a white person is to be murdered by an African-American, according to timwise.org.
Credit: Yvonne Wenger / Baltimore Sun
Most Black youth, ages 14 to 21, aren’t committing crimes. Of all Black American youth, less than 7 percent have sold drugs, 4 percent have carried a gun, and 11 percent have attacked someone with intent, the Washington, D.C. Crime Policy Institute found in its 2011 interim report, Social Networks and Behaviors of Youth in the District of Columbia.
Crime prevention and enforcement policies target people of color disproportionately. Black Americans were arrested on drug charges at 2.8 to 5.5 times higher rate than whites since the 1980s, according to a 2008 report on drug law enforcement by Human Rights Watch.
In 2012, New York police officers made 532,911 searches under stop and frisk policies that authorized police to stop, question and search residents for contraband. Critics charged the policy disproportionately targeted Black citizens. In 89 percent of the stops, no criminal activity was found and in less than .2 percent of stops guns were found, the New York Civil Liberties Union said.
Photo: thedailybeast.com
Although Black men are viewed as inherently dangerous, they are actually more likely to be targets of danger as 96 percent of all shooting victims are Black or Hispanic, according to thedailybeast.org.
