What They Don’t Tell You About Black Crime and American Violence
Aaron-F W
I am looking at the facts surrounding crime and arrests, how that data is often misused and my opinion about it.
You’ve probably heard the claim: "15%of the population, 60% of the crime," referencing Black crime in America. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, or UCR, is frequently cited in political debates, but it’s crucial to understand what these numbers actually reflect. This is a gross simplification of complex data.
The UCR reports arrests, not convictions or guilt. Arrest rates can be heavily influenced by various factors, including over-policing and socioeconomic conditions, not solely by criminal activity.
In 2019, 69.4% of all individuals arrested were white, while 26.6% were Black. For juveniles under 18, 62.5% of those arrested were white, while 33.9% were Black. Among adults, 70% were white and 26% were Black.
Looking specifically at violent crime arrest data, white individuals were arrested for violent crimes more often than any other race, making up 59.1% of those arrests, while Black individuals accounted for 36%.These numbers, at face value make sense when you understand that white people are the majority race and black Americans are the largest minority.
Despite the prevalence of sensationalized content in the media, the data shows that Black Americans are not the majority of violent crime offenders. In fact, white youths statistically commit most violent offenses.
However, there is one violent crime category where Black Americans do outpace any other race in the US: Homicide. Which is cause for concern. This is where the misleading "60% of the crime 15% of the population" narrative often originates. In 2019, 51% of all homicides were committed by Black American individuals, and 45% by white individuals.
What often gets omitted is that while Black Americans may make up only about 15% of the U.S. population, Black people account for 55% of all homicide victims. In comparison, 42% of homicide victims were white. This shows that Black Americans are disproportionately targeted when it comes to homicide. Unfortunately the data suggests that black people are killing each other at an alarming rate that outpaces every other race. Black Americans murder our own people at a rate seven to eight times more than White Americans who kill their own the second most. There is this common misconception that income “equality” will result in social equality. As the gap in wages between whites and blacks steadily shrinks, the wealth gap continues to widen.
The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances reported that from 2019-2022, for every 100$ in wealth held by a white family black families only held 15$. The report continues to explain that even though there was more wealth generated in home ownership among black families, black businesses weren't able to find the same success as white families.
Black families have a harder time getting loans, and historically black neighborhoods still suffer the ramifications of redlining, by setting them up in locations that are disconnected from the wider community, whether it be a lack of transit infrastructure, telecommunications, or literal highways to nowhere designed only to depress a community. All these factors make these neighborhoods hostile environments for thriving businesses nor attractive to investors.
Even with these hurdles and local and federal governments doing nothing to address these factors, Black American wealth is still growing just very slowly, so why is the violence in our community not following the same trend nationwide? It must be addressed that some major cities have seen a significant drop in violent crime specifically in black communities; the overall nationwide trend still tends to bend toward violence. This shows how economics isn’t the only factor for communal violence.
Unfortunately culture does play a part. Worst of all is the internalized hate that black Americans have been programmed with. We are berated with conscious and subliminal messaging that black life isn’t worth as much as a white life. There is a sentiment among some black people that look at other blacks as cheap, and dispensible. We see harmless resonances of this through fashion, as the bourgeois negro glorifies Italian and French designers and shun their own peoples creation even when the European companies are copying our culture, it’s only worth a luxury price if “luxury people” are producing it.
Internalized self hatred is a personal journey that every American negro has to face. The government as well as private companies take advantage of this black self consciousness at every moment, to the point of developing entire special intelligence operations, where the government funded subversive ads, sold drugs, supported terrorists, and committed treason all in the efforts to destroy the black community. You see, if we are going to understand about black on black crime today, we have to understand the Iran-Contra Affair and our government's effort in dismantling the black community.
The civil rights era is re-imagined as this great victory for black people when in reality the counter intelligence program or COINTELPRO, had successfully dismantled the Black Panther Party and murdered every prominent black leader in America by 1968. The Civil Rights era was a failed revolution led by the Black Community in America. By the 70’s the Black Community was more of an idea than an actual organization. The old social groups for young boys turned into street gangs and COINTELPRO evolved into something even more sinister if you could believe it.
By the 80’s Ronald Reagan ordered Oliver North to fund terrorists in Nicaragua by purchasing cocaine from them, selling that cocaine to black neighborhoods and then using the proceeds to buy weapons to sell to Iran. Then Ramp up anti drug propaganda to have an excuse to expand the prison system by locking up all the negros they just sold drugs too.
Black on Black violence exploded during the crack epidemic of the 80’s and to add insult to injury the governments bloody and destructive War on Drugs legitimized the brutality and mass incarceration they were wholesale shipping to black communities.
Today we have no leaders, our own government betrayed us with iran-contra thru drugs and mass incarceration, we have yet to heal our neighborhoods from redlining, and internalized self hatred has the youth glorifying anything European.
With all these factors combined it’s no wonder we have a homicide issue in our community.
All of this data still doesn't show a full picture however. We have only scratched the surface on over-policing, poverty, lack of access to opportunity, and that black people are disproportionately targeted as victims of most crimes in the US. Cities like Baltimore have been able to reduce homicide and violent crime without over inflating the police budget by implementing strategies like the Group Violence Reduction Strategy GVRS. A nationally tested program that has Baltimore City Police working directly with the community and social services while focusing resources on individuals at the highest risk for gun violence.
When data is reduced to simplistic talking points and stripped of context, it obscures the reality that Black Americans are disproportionately the victims of crime and paints us as the primary cause.
If someone repeats the claim "15% of the population, 60% of the crime" without acknowledging the broader context, it is either a sign of ignorance or a deliberate attempt to push a misleading and harmful narrative.
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https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-wealth-is-increasing-but-so-is-the-racial-wealth-gap/
https://www.mercatus.org/marginal-revolution-podcast/1970s-crime-wave
https://monse.baltimorecity.gov/gvrs
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