A nice essay.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/649288.html
Academia is hardly going to
study an issue this racially tinged and provocative. Even if you wanted to do your own work you'd find the data has never been compiled into statistical form and the raw data itself is difficult to obtain. (I'll post the LA Times data later) Hell just getting rates properly broken down by race
without income is difficult.
There are two major, major flaws in the racial compilation of homicide stats.
For one, the FBI is the "official" source of U.S. homicide numbers. It sounds simple, black or white. But who is white? Well for starters most Hispanics. And since the FBI doesn't consider Hispanics a race and hence doesn't segregate them from whites in the data-Pedro shooting Maria in East L.A. is filed in the same White docket as Bruce stabbing Hans in West Hollywood. Criminologists estimate that a bit over one half of "white" homicides are actually committed by Hispanics.
While the "Hispanic flaw" in data reporting is fixable-from many municipalities the data breaking down Hispanics is obtainable-the other problem is less solvable. We know two things about race and a particular homicide. We know the victims race and we know the race of the person
arrested. Operative word is cleared. These days only half of all murders in the U.S. are solved and in black areas the rate can be as low as 30%. A rule of thumb:the further removed in relationship from your victim the harder to finger you. White guys killing their boss or wife? Done. Black gang banger killing a toddler in a drive-by? Fat chance finding the shooter.
So knowing that black murderers are under represented by arrest stats and knowing that American whites are over represented by Hispanics makes it appear that whites and blacks are evenly matched in numbers. Not even close.
Victimization data has the same problems. Criminology assumes that the race of victims and killers are closely correlated. Whites overwhelmingly kill whites but blacks kill whites at a rate of about 7x more frequent than vica versa (Fifty times more
per capita so a fair percentage of whites murdered are indeed victims of black killers.
But getting back to your original question Hap. All we can go by is empirical observations.
Personally I have my own view on the relationship between murder and poverty. I'll post it later but in advance I dispute that there's even poverty involved. I've been in every black neighborhood of Chicago-Murder Capital-and I've yet to see a teenager on the brink of starvation.....
Quote from hapaboy:
ZOG, I have not put forth the proposition that low income causes this and that.
You, on the other hand, HAVE posted that middle and upper-income blacks commit crimes at a higher rate than middle and upper-income whites.
I'm hardly a Marxist, and believe me, I've had my share of encounters with black thugs and punks, but to be objective the facts have to be established.
So I'm just asking for proof.
If you don't have it, just say so.