US today stands at the brink of a precarious situation whereby criminality has become one of the main attributes of its operating society. The multi-racial factor of the nation is perhaps one of the paramount causes for the civil unrest that has time and again led to local and national safety concerns. Black on black crime, black on white crime, white on black crime, and white on white crime are the frequently heard controversial phrases in which the blame game incessantly remains heated up.
Fact or a mere controversial supposition
With prime focus on the law-breaking by black people, many scholarly individuals and activists attributed the inclination of the people of color towards crime as a matter of their race-error. It’s a controversial supposition propagated by white supremacists that identify the black race to be inherently more criminal and unlawful. David Wilson, professor at, the University of Illinois implied that the black race itself was the core of the criminality process. On the other hand, this claim is opposed by many who perceive it as a camouflage for diverting and justifying the maltreatment and oppression the black people have been subjected to in their racist structuralism.
According to a viral and unofficial listing that has surfaced and is trending on the social platform, the statistical rates of homicide in the US are asserted as white on black crime 2%, white on white crime 16%, black on white crime rate 81%, black on black crime rate 97%, police killing white people 3%, and police killing black people 1%.
Though this post has turned several heads to attention, yet they tend to raise a brow in terms of their authenticity that can and has been challenged; especially on account of the evident shifts of criminality taking place in the US civil arena where daily incidents are on fingertips that instantly help to tentatively gauge who is doing what.
The above-stated data is indeed skeptical and false as per intraracial analysis as it is foremost not officially endorsed and in fact, it stands contrary to the officially declared reports according to which homicide rates in the US of the intra-racial, and the white on white and black on black crime were relatively at par. The U.S Department of Justice Survey between 1980 and 2008, stated that 93% of the black victims were targeted by black individuals, and around 84% of white victims were targeted by white offenders.
Black on White Vs White on Black Crime: Degree of Inter-racial Crimes
In the context of the official record of the U.S Department of Justice of 2017, out of the total crimes committed by black individuals (22.7%) from the year 2012 to 2015, 63 percent were reported to be towards their own race ( black individuals), while the remaining 27% were towards white people. In contrast, the offenses committed by the white people were indicative of 57 percent against their own race, while the remaining were carried out against the blacks. Under both circumstances, it was determined that both inter-racial crime offenses (the black on white crime and white on black crime) figured to be around the same degree.
Comparatively, as per the Federal Bureau of Investigation 2018, the figures run around the same criteria of 81% white people targeted by the white themselves, and 89% of the black individuals targeted by blacks. Identical scores of homicides were released in the FBI 2017 report, with 80% white people targeted by white people and 88% of black people targeted by black people.
Analyzing the same viral claim on grounds of black on white crime rate and white on the black homicide rate, the report tends to indicate a glaring difference of 81% & and 2% respectively of the under considerate indicators. Supporting black on white crime the observed analysis, the FBI statistical reports of 2017 and 2018 highlighted that the rate trended at a percentage of 16 in both 2017 and 2018, while of white on black crime rolled up to 9% in 2017 and 8% in 2018, which is almost equivalent to half on comparative analysis. Thus, as evident, the numbers evince a smaller gap than the glaring 79 percent claimed in the unofficial viral post. Hence, the viral meme purporting the statistical data tends to fail on the official front be it to gauge the inter-racial or intra-racial homicide degrees.
Does US Police Really Target Black People?
Evaluating the claimed homicide rates in terms of police killings, it is highly evident that black people are being targeted by the law enforcement authorities in a lop-sided manner. In fact, there is a mass movement within the US claiming the escalating systemic brutality of the police department against the people of color as evident from Floyd and many other similar targeting killings by police officers. As per the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, out of the many occurring incidents from 2009 to 2012 in 17 US states, 812 resulted from the use of lethal measures by on-duty police personnel. The fatality rate was estimated to be 2.8 times higher amongst the black victims as compared to the white victims also stating that the black individuals in these incidents were arms-free and vulnerable.
A study published in 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences also concluded a similar analysis of black individuals being the more vulnerable section of the society that fell prey to police targeting than their white national counterparts. It further moved on to determine the rates of gender targeting of black people by the police which figured to black men being 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men, while black females were 1.4 times more likely to be a victim of police killing than white females.
These official recordings yet again stand at a glaring contrast to the claimed 1% of police of the black people and 3% killing of the white people.
Last but not the least, it can be concluded that under the latest political scenario of the USA, the crime quota of all inter-racial (black on white crime and white on black crime rate) and intra-racial (white on white crime and black on black crime) together culminate into a ridiculous figure which seems to have amped up after the Trump era.
