Here is another good article over 1 million attacks on whites by blacks
September 2005 Update: A new issue of The Color of Crime has been released by American Renaissance. It is available at:
http://www.nc-f.org/findings.htm The Color of Crime: a report on 1994 crime statistics, the most recent available.
Major Findings
# There is more black-on-white than black-on-black violent crime.
# Of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, 90 percent are committed by blacks against whites. Blacks are therefore up to 250 times more likely to do criminal violence to whites than the reverse.
# Blacks commit violent crimes at four to eight times the white rate. Hispanics commit violent crimes at approximately three times the white rate, and Asians at one half to three quarters the white rate.
# Blacks are twice as likely as whites to commit hate crimes.
# Hispanics are a hate crime victim category but not a perpetrator category. Hispanic offenders are classified as whites, which inflates the white offense rate and gives the impression that Hispanics commit no hate crimes.
# Blacks are as much more dangerous than whites as men are more dangerous than women.
Copyright © 1999 by New Century Foundation
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Summary
The Color of Crime, a New Century Foundation study based on federal crime reports, has found significant differences in violent crime rates for different racial and ethnic groups. Blacks, for example, are many times more likely to commit crimes of violence against whites than vice versa. Of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial violent crimes involving blacks and whites reported every year, blacks commit 90 percent and whites commit only ten percent. Blacks are therefore more than 50 times more likely than whites to commit interracial crimes of violence. The differences are even greater for multiple-offender interracial crimes, with blacks 100 to 250 times more likely to be involved in gang attacks on whites than the reverse. Some people may argue that blacks attack whites because they expect them to be carrying cash or valuables. However, fewer than 20 percent of black attacks on whites are robberies; rape and assault do not usually have economic motives.
There is more black-on-white violent crime than black-on-black violent crime. When blacks commit violence they attack whites 50 to 55 percent of the time. When whites commit violence they attack blacks only two to three percent of the time.
Hate crimes are thought to be the most serious acts of interracial crime, but there were only 9,861 reported in 1997. Of these, 6,981 were race-related and 4,105 were violent. This very small number of crimes receives a disproportionate amount of attention, but it is likely that the millions of ordinary interracial crimes--90 percent of which are committed by blacks against whites--are more damaging to race relations. Although white-on-black hate crimes receive a great deal of attention, blacks are approximately twice as likely to commit hate crimes as whites.
Hispanics are considered a victim category for hate crimes but not a perpetrator category. A Mexican who is attacked because of ethnicity is recorded as Hispanic, but if the same Mexican attacks a black or white for racial reasons he is considered white. This inflates the figures for "white" hate crime perpetrators, and gives the impression that Hispanics commit no hate crimes.
For virtually all crimes, there are consistent and pronounced differences in arrest rates for violent crime by race and ethnicity. Blacks are five to ten times more likely to be arrested than whites, Hispanics are approximately three times more likely, American Indians are about twice as likely, and Asians are only one half to two-thirds as likely to be arrested for violent crimes as whites. The very high rates for blacks means that the single best independent predictor of crime rates for an area is the percentage of the population that is black.
Blacks are as much more likely to be arrested for violent crimes as men are more likely to be arrested than women. To the extent that arrest rates are a good indication of actual criminal behavior-- and there is very strong evidence that they are-- blacks are as much more dangerous than whites as men are more dangerous than women. If people feel more threatened by unknown men than by unknown women and are justified in taking additional precautions against them, from a statistical point of view they are equally justified in making the same distinctions between blacks and whites.
Interracial Crime
In June 7, 1998, white supremacists hitched James Byrd of Jasper, Texas, to the back of a truck, and dragged him to death. This appalling crime reminded the country in the most forceful way that racial hostility and interracial crime continue to be serious problems in the United States. The resulting national outcry demonstrated how deeply Americans feel about racial violence. Outrage over acts of this kind is entirely appropriate. However, to concentrate on one crime, no matter how sickening, is to present a distorted picture of interracial crime. If we are to respond appropriately to the problem of racial violence it is important to know its true nature and proportions.
Most Americans probably believe that whites commit most interracial crimes, and that blacks are the most frequent victims. The reverse is true: In approximately 90 percent of the interracial crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, blacks are perpetrators and whites are victims. In terms of crime rates (calculated as the number of crimes per 100,000 population), blacks are more than 50 times more likely to attack whites than the reverse. To use the common short-hand expression, interracial crime is overwhelmingly "black-on-white." Because statistics of this kind are surprising to most people, it is worth explaining them in some detail.
Every year since 1972, the U.S. Department of Justice has carried out what is called the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to determine the frequency of certain kinds of crimes. The NCVS survey sample is very large--approximately 100,000 people in some 50,000 households--and is carefully selected on the basis of census data to make it as representative as possible of the nation as a whole. The NCVS is an invaluable record of criminal victimization as reported directly by Americans, and it is the only significant nationwide measure of interracial crime.
The first page, Table 42, lists various categories of single-offender interracial violent crimes for 1994 (the NCVS is carried out annually, but the Department of Justice does not issue full reports every year; 1994 is the most recent year for this data).
The group of numbers at the top of the page represents totals calculated for single-offender violent crimes reported for that year. They are extrapolated from the actual crimes reported by the survey sample. We find that in 1994; 6,830,360 whites were victims of violent crimes, and that 16.7 percent (1,140,670) reported that the perpetrator was black. Blacks were victims of 1,100,490 violent crimes, of which 12.3 percent (135,360) were committed by whites. Adding these figures for interracial crime together (1,140,670 and 135,360) we get a total of 1,276,030 interracial crimes, of which 1,140,670 or 89 percent were committed by blacks.
To get the rates at which blacks and whites commit interracial crime we divide the number of crimes by the population to get crimes per 100,000 population. The Census Bureau reports that the 1994 white and black populations were 216,413,000 and 32,653,000 respectively. Whites therefore committed acts of interracial violence at a rate of 62.55 per 100,000 while the black rate was 3,493.63 per 100,000, a figure that is no less than 55.85 times the white rate. Put in the most easily understood terms, the average black was therefore 56 times more likely to commit criminal violence against a white than was a white to commit criminal violence against a black. Similar calculations show that the black rate for interracial robbery, or "mugging," was 103 times the white rate. These two rates are illustrated in the graph on the next page, and it is important to understand what these figures mean. The multiple of 56 does not mean that blacks commit 56 times as much interracial violence as whites. What it means is that if whites commit interracial violence at a rate of 10 crimes per 100,000 whites, the rate for blacks is 560 per 100,000, or 56 times the white rate. This is the kind of calculation that is represented in most of the graphs in this report.
The figures from Table 42 of the NCVS show other facts about interracial violence. If we once again concentrate on the group of figures at the top of the table we can calculate the total number of crimes committed by perpetrators of each race, and the percentage that is committed against the other race. We find that the 1,140,670 acts of violence committed by blacks against whites constitute 56.3 percent of all violent crimes committed by blacks. That is to say that when blacks commit violent crimes they target whites more than half the time or, put differently, there is more black-on-white than black-on-black crime. Similar calculations for whites show that of the 5,114,692 acts of criminal violence committed by whites, only 2.6 percent were directed at blacks. (Although homicide is a violent crime, the NCVS does not include it because victims cannot be interviewed. The number of interracial murders is small and does not affect the percentages and ratios presented here.)
Some may argue that blacks commit violence against whites because whites are more likely to have money and are therefore more promising robbery targets. However, of the 1,140,670 black-on-white acts of violence reported in 1994, only 173,374 were robberies. The remaining 84.8 percent were aggravated assaults, rapes, and simple assaults, which presumably were not motivated by profit. Rape, in particular, has nothing to do with the presumed wealth of the victim. More than 30,000 white women were raped by black men in 1994, and about 5,400 black women were raped by white men. The black interracial rape rate was 38 times the white rate.
The second page of Appendix A of this report is another page from the NCVS. Table 48 shows interracial crime data for acts of violence committed by multiple offenders. By doing the same calculations as before, we can determine how much group or "gang" violence (not in the sense of organized gangs) is interracial, and how much is committed by blacks and by whites. Of the total of 490,266 acts of multiple-offender interracial violence, no fewer than 93.9 percent were committed by blacks against whites. Robbery, for which there is a monetary motive, accounted for fewer than one third of these crimes. The rest were gang assaults, including rapes, presumably for motives other than profit.
Rates of group violence for each race can be calculated as before, and the difference between the races is stark. The black rate of overall interracial gang violence is 101.75 times the white rate; for robbery it is 277.31 times the white rate. Differences as great as this are seldom found in comparative studies of group behavior, and they cry out for study and explanation. It is probably safe to say that if the races were reversed, and gangs of whites were attacking blacks at merely four or five times the rate at which blacks were attacking whites the country would consider this a national crisis that required urgent attention.
Hate Crimes in Perspective
Ever since passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, the FBI has been charged with collecting national statistics on criminal acts "motivated, in whole or in part, by bias." The law does not compel local law enforcement agencies to supply the FBI with this information but most do. In 1997, the most recent year for which data are available, the FBI received hate crime information from 11,211 local agencies serving more than 83 percent of the United States population.
In that year, there was a total of 9,861 offenses, of which 6,981 represented bias crimes based on race or ethnic origin. The remainder were for reasons of religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
The FBI reports 8,474 suspected offenders whose race was known. Of that number; 5,344 were white and 1,629 were black. Their offenses--which included all categories of hate crime, not just racial bias--can, in turn, be divided into violent and nonviolent offenses, and by calculating the rate of offense by race we find that blacks were 1.99 times more likely than whites to commit hate crimes in general and 2.24 times more likely to commit violent hate crimes.
As for cases of racial bias, there were 718 blacks charged with anti-white (as opposed to anti-homosexual, anti-Semitic, etc.) crimes and 2,336 whites charged with anti-black hate crimes. Although the number of white offenders was larger, the black rate per 100,000 was twice as high. A larger number of whites commit these crimes, but blacks are 2.0 times more likely to commit them. This overrepresentation of blacks in hate crimes, not just in race bias cases but in all categories, runs counter to the common impression that whites are the virtually exclusive perpetrators of hate crimes and are certainly more likely to commit them than blacks.
But perhaps of even greater significance is the relatively small number of bias crimes to begin with. Of the 6,981 offenses based on race or ethnicity, only 4,105 were violent, involving murder, rape, robbery, or assault. The rest included such offenses as vandalism and intimidation. These numbers are almost insignificant compared to the 1,766,000 interracial crimes of violence (combining both single- and multiple-offender offences) reported in the NCVS.
Needless to say, part of this huge disparity in numbers is explained by the fact that the NCVS covers all crimes--whether reported to police or not-- whereas for a crime to be included in the FBI's hate crime statistics it must first be reported to police and then officially classified as a hate crime. No doubt there is some number of crimes never reported to the police that authorities would consider hate crimes if they knew about them.
However, how important is the distinction between interracial crimes that are officially designated as hate crimes and those that are not? For a crime to be considered a hate crime, the perpetrator must make his motive clear, usually by using racial slurs. It is not hard to imagine that of the 1,766,000 interracial crimes committed in 1994, some--perhaps even a great many--were "motivated, in whole or in part, by bias" but the perpetrators did not express their motives.
Given the realities of race in the United States, would it be unreasonable for a person attacked by someone of a different race to wonder whether race had something to do with the attack, even if his assailant said nothing? Such suspicions are even more likely in the case of the 490,266 acts of group violence that crossed racial lines in 1994. What is the psychological effect on a victim set upon by a gang of people of a different race? A white woman gang-raped by blacks or a black man cornered and beaten by whites can hardly help but think he was singled out at least in part because of race, even if the attackers used no racial slurs.
Many states have passed laws that increase penalties for people convicted of hate crimes. These laws recognize the harm done to society when people are attacked because of race or other characteristics. However, one might ask which does more damage to society: the few thousand violent acts officially labeled as hate crimes or the vastly more numerous interracial crimes of violence that go virtually unnoticed?
Hate Crimes Committed by Hispanics
The government's treatment of hate crimes is misleading in another, even more obvious way, in that the FBI reports hate crimes against Hispanics but not by Hispanics. Appendix B is the FBI's "Hate Crime Incident Report," which is used to record bias crimes. Although Hispanics are clearly indicated as a victim category in the "Bias Motivation" section, they are not a perpetrator category in "Suspected Race of Offender." The FBI therefore forces local law enforcement agencies to categorize most Hispanic offenders as "white" (see "Measuring Hispanic Crime Rates," below) and the figures for 1997 reflect this. The total number of hate crimes for that year--9,861--includes 636 crimes of anti-Hispanic bias, but not one of the 8,474 known offenders is "Hispanic" because the FBI's data collection method does not permit such a designation.
If a Mexican is assaulted for reasons of ethnicity he is officially recorded as Hispanic. However, he becomes white if he commits a hate crime against a black. Even more absurdly, if a Mexican commits a hate crime against a white, both the victim and the perpetrator are reported as white. And, in fact, the 1997 FBI figures duly record 214 "white" offenders who committed anti-white hate crimes. The offenders were probably Hispanic, but if that is the case the report should say so. If some of the "whites" who are reported to have committed crimes against blacks are also Hispanic, the report should indicate that, too.
An examination of specific crimes shows that official reports can be misleading. Murder is the most serious and shocking of all hate crimes, and the FBI lists five cases of racially-motivated murder for 1997--three "anti-black" and two "anti-white." The FBI report does not provide details about the perpetrators or the circumstances of the killings, but the local police departments that reported the crimes to the FBI have this information.
Two of the anti-black killings took place in the same town, a largely Hispanic suburb of Los Angeles called Hawaiian Gardens. Hawaiian Gardens has a history of black-Hispanic tension that is so bad many blacks have been forced to leave. In one of the murders, a 24-year-old black man was beaten to death by a mob of 10 to 14 Hispanics who took turns smashing his head with a baseball bat. In the other, a Hispanic gang member challenged a 29-year-old black man's right to be in the neighborhood. A few minutes later he returned and shot the man in the chest. In both cases, the victims and killers did not know each other and the motivation appears to have been purely racial. These crimes are typical of what we think of as hate-crime murders, and because no Hispanics are identified as perpetrators in the FBI report, it is safe to assume the killers were classified as white.
The third anti-black killing took place in Anchorage, Alaska. According to press reports, a white man, 33-year-old Brett Maness, killed his neighbor, a 32-year-old black man Delbert White, after a brief struggle. Mr. Maness, who was growing marijuana in his apartment and kept an arsenal of weapons, had been shooting a pellet gun at Mr. White's house, and the black man had come over to complain. Interestingly, a jury found that Mr. Maness killed Mr. White in self defense, but convicted him of weapons and drugs charges. The incident was considered a hate crime because Mr. Maness had brandished weapons and shouted racial slurs at Mr. White in the past. A police spokesman adds that racist literature was found in Mr. Maness' apartment after the shooting.
The remaining two killings were classified as anti-white, but only one fits the usual conception of such crimes. Four white men were walking on a street in Palm Beach, Florida, when a car came to a stop not far from them. Two black men got out with their hands behind their backs and one said "What are you crackers looking at?" One of the white men replied, "Not you, [censored]" whereupon one of the blacks brought a gun from behind his back and fired several times, killing one white and wounding another. Attackers and victims did not know each other, and the criminal motivation appears to have been purely racial. The other anti-white killing involved a Texas businessman from India, Sri Punjabi, who shot his Mexican daughter-in-law because his son had divorced an Indian wife to marry her. Mr. Punjabi was incensed that his son should marry anyone who was not Indian. (Presumably, this crime should have been classified as anti-Hispanic rather than anti-white.)
These five racially-motivated murders reported for 1997 do not fit the popular image of hate crimes, namely, of whites brutalizing non-whites. In fact, only one perpetrator was "white" in the usually accepted sense. What was the nature of the thousands of other officially-reported hate crimes? Without examining all 9,861 of them it is impossible to say.
It is clear, however, that the FBI report gives a false impression. It inflates the number of hate crimes committed by "whites" by calling Hispanics white. At the same time it gives the impression that Hispanics never commit hate crimes. The reason for gathering these data is to arrive at a better understanding of the extent of racial friction and violence in the United States. If statistics are to have any meaning they must reflect American reality, namely, that most Hispanics think of themselves as a separate group, distinct from non-Hispanic whites, and are perceived by others as a different group. It is impossible to understand or alleviate group friction without recognizing this. If the FBI wants to collect meaningful data, it must recognize Hispanics as a perpetrator category as well as a victim category.
Different racial groups in the United States commit crimes at different rates. Most Americans have a sense that non-white neighborhoods are more dangerous than white neighborhoods--and they are correct. However, it is very unusual to find reliable information on just how much more dangerous some groups are than others.
The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), published annually by the FBI, is the standard reference work for crime and crime rates in the United States. The UCR is a nationwide compilation of criminal offenses and arrest data, reported voluntarily by local law enforcement agencies. In the most recent UCR, which covers 1997, the FBI received reports from 17,000 law enforcement agencies, covering 95 percent of the country’s population. The UCR is unquestionably the most comprehensive and authoritative report on crimes brought to the attention of the police. News stories about rising or falling crime rates are almost always based on the UCR.
In trying to determine crime rates for different racial groups, it is important to understand the differences between the UCR and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) referred to above. The NCVS contains only one kind of information: crimes Americans say they have suffered. The UCR includes two different kinds of numbers: crimes reported to the police and arrests of perpetrators. Even for the same year and for the same crime, these three sets of numbers are different. The largest numbers are in the NCVS, because they include crimes not reported to the police. Somewhat smaller are the UCR figures on offenses reported to authorities, and smaller still are arrest figures, which represent offenses for which a suspect is arrested.
For example, in the 1997 NCVS Americans say they suffered a total of 1,883,000 cases of aggravated assault, but according to the UCR, only 1,022,000 were reported to the police. During that same year, there were only 535,000 arrests for aggravated assault. Racial data enter the UCR figures only when an arrest is made, so it can be argued that racial comparisons should not be based on UCR data. Different racial groups may report crime to the police at different rates, some groups may be more successful at escaping arrest, and the police may discriminate between racial groups in their arrest efforts. However, there is a great advantage in using UCR data because its racial categories are more detailed. Unlike the NCVS, which reports only on "black," "white," and "other," the UCR compiles arrest data on "black," "white," "American Indian/Eskimo," and "Asian/Pacific Islander." These are the only national crime data that make these distinctions. Also, as we will see later, UCR arrest data can be compared to other data in ways that make it possible to treat Hispanics as a separate ethnic category.
Another good reason to use UCR data is that although the racial proportions vary somewhat between the NCVS survey data (race of perpetrator as reported by victims) and the UCR arrest data (race of persons arrested), they are not that different. For example, according to the UCR, 57 percent of people arrested for robbery in 1997 were black, as were 37 percent of those arrested for aggravated assault. According to NCVS data on single-offender crimes, 51 percent of robbers were reported by their victims to be black as were 30 percent of those who committed aggravated assault (once again, using 1994 data). Since there is a greater overrepresentation by blacks in NCVS-reported multiple-offender crimes, combining the two sets of figures brings the racial proportions in the NCVS figures extremely close to the racial proportions in UCR arrest figures. Put differently, police are arresting criminals of different races in very close to the same proportions as Americans say they are victimized by people of those races.
By this measure, who is committing crime in America? The graph on the next page shows arrest rates (calculated, as before, as the number of arrests per 100,000 population) as multiples of the white arrest rate for various crimes. The white rate is always set to one, so if the black rate is three, for example, it means that blacks are arrested at three times the white rate. Once again, it does not mean that three times as many blacks as whites were arrested; it means that if 100 of every 100,000 whites were arrested for a crime, 300 of every 100,000 blacks were arrested for the same crime.
The data show a very consistent pattern: Blacks are arrested at dramatically higher rates than other racial groups. American Indians and Eskimos (hereinafter "Indians") are arrested at slightly higher rates than whites, and Asians are arrested at consistently lower rates. The popular conception of crime in America is correct; rates are much higher among blacks than among whites or other groups.
It is for this reason that the single best independent indicator of a jurisdiction's crime rate is the percentage of its population that is black. The scatter chart to the right plots homicide rate and black percentage of population for all the states and for the District of Columbia (which is the outlying data point at the upper right). The tendency is clear: The higher the percentage of blacks, the greater the number of murders.
It is worth noting that murder rates are a different kind of data from both NCVS reports and UCR arrest data. They are not based on victim reports nor can they be distorted by differences in arrest rates by racial group that could reflect possible police bias. Pure homicide rates tell us nothing about the race of either the killer or the victim. They are simply an expression of the level of homicidal violence in a community, and that level increases as the percentage of blacks increases.
Nevertheless, to return to the view that arrest data reflect police bias rather than genuine group differences in crime rates, police actually have very little discretion in whom they arrest for violent crimes. Except for murder victims, most people can tell the police the race of an assailant. If a victim says he was mugged by a white man, the police cannot very well arrest a black man even if they want to.
For this reason, many people accept that police have little discretion in whom to arrest for violent crime, but still believe drug laws are enforced unfairly against minorities. Drug offenses are beyond the scope of this report but here, too, there is independent evidence that arrest rates reflect differences in criminal behavior, not selective law enforcement. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services keeps records by race of drug-related emergency room admissions. It reports that blacks are admitted at 6.67 times the non-Hispanic white rate for heroin and morphine, and no less than 10.49 times the non-Hispanic white rate for cocaine. (Rates for Hispanics are 2.82 and 2.35 times the white rates; information is not reported on American Indians or Asians). There is only one plausible explanation for these rates: Blacks are much more likely to be using drugs in the first place.
Finally, if racist white police were unfairly arresting non-whites we would expect arrest rates for Asians to be higher than for those for whites. Instead, they are lower for almost every kind of crime.
Measuring Hispanic Crime Rates
Any study of group crime rates in America is complicated by the inconsistent treatment of Hispanics by different government agencies. For example, the Census Bureau's official estimate for the 1997 population of the United States divides all 268 million Americans into four racial groups: white, black, Indian and Eskimo, and Asian and Pacific Islander. The bureau then explains that among these 268 million people there are 29 million Hispanics who "can be of any race." However, it also counts non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, Indians, etc. Thus we find that although according to the strictly racial classification, there are 221 million whites in the United States, there are only 195 million non-Hispanic whites. When American Hispanics, approximately half of whom are Mexican, are apportioned to the four racial categories, the Census Bureau considers 91 percent to be white, six percent black, one percent American Indian, and two percent Asian.
The treatment of Hispanics can make for odd results. For example, according to the 1990 census, the 3,485,000 people of Los Angeles were 52.9 percent white, 13.9 percent black, 0.4 percent American Indian, and 22.9 percent Asian--which adds up to 100 percent. This makes the city appear to be majority white. However, Los Angeles was also 39.3 percent Hispanic, and if we subtract the 91 percent of them who were classed as whites, the non-Hispanic white population suddenly drops to only 16.6 percent.
What does this mean for crime statistics? Because the UCR figures do not treat Hispanics as a separate category, almost all the Hispanics arrested in the United States go into official records as "white." This is contrary to the usual understanding of the word, which is not normally thought to include most Mexicans and Latinos.
If violent crime rates for Hispanics are substantially different from those of non-Hispanic whites, putting Hispanics in the "white" category distorts the results. This is not as serious as in the case of hate crimes, in which the crime itself has to do with the very personal characteristics that are being omitted from the records, but there is no reason not to make ethnic or racial comparisons as accurate as possible. The UCR tabulates separate data on American Indians and Eskimos--who are less than one percent of the population--but it ignores Hispanics, who are 12 percent of the population.
Topic: RACE AND CRIME IN THE U.S.A. (Read 2766 times)