Just seems to make sense that violence requires proximity and most people's social circles (and neighborhoods) are more racially homogenous than expected by random distribution.
More illuminating data (to me) would be rates of violence across class lines. Even the Cash App founder's murder was by someone in his social circle.
Noah, I am curious what you think about Kareem’s points on age adjusting the data.
Given that Black folks are younger, and crimes are more likely to be committed by the young, and they are poorer, and many crimes are driven by poverty.
Thanks for doing this, btw. Jordan Neely’s death was tragic, but the way it’s being characterized and the reaction is beyond belief.
While I agree with your analysis about the rareness of interracial crime and how anxiety about such occurrences is blown out of proportion, I think you’re glossing over one of the central arguments of the debate being discussed. It is about how information is being presented. Using the above data, on the basis of race, who is more likely to commit interracial crime on a per capita basis? Why can’t we discuss such an answer comfortably in an open forum? That is the question being presented to liberal America by the right. I don’t know how to answer such a question, but I think that it is something we as a country might have to work through.
Your numerator is based on the only 40% of total murders. Assuming that the other 60% of murders have the same ratio of black/white white/black murders then your numerators should be the 615 and 1415 respectively.
This would make the actual risk of a white person being murded by a black person of 0.54 per 100K and of a black person being murdered by a white person at 1.28 per 100K. Same 2.3 ratio, but different individual rates.
Still pretty low, but not as low.
Your violence table at 84% of reported crimes would also change I would imagine.
But one thing is for sure, for a modern country it's a crime that we don't have better data. Why not have a standardized reporting system for everything.
Regardless of stats, I use my own personal experience. I don't know anybody that has been murdered by anybody else, so I am going with overall risk of being murdered is low.
I will however be staying away from South Korea just in case.
My comparison would be hate crimes. I would guess hate crimes are a vanishingly small number of overall crimes, but they punch above their weight because of their intent. Activists are equating every time interracial violence occurs as a hate crime, would be my hypothesis.
I think that by basing this argument on aggregate nationwide statistics you are entirely missing the point. The black population in the US is not only smaller, but highly concentrated. There are very few blacks in many parts of the country, and relatively few remaining white inhabitants of central cities. This has to affect the risk calculation, simply because of relative opportunity for contact at the border where they meet.
Consequently, I'd like to see the numbers for central cities and suburbs of large metropolitan areas, where black populations are larger and actually-resident whites (especially moderate-income whites) are fewer. This is what the crime reporting focuses on. It's cold comfort to a New York subway rider that there are almost no black people in rural Kentucky, or even the more prosperous parts of New Jersey, to do or suffer violence. Many suburbanites segregate themselves specifically because they want to avoid elevated personal risk that they, or people they know, or their families in the past, previously experienced. They are safe at home, and will fight to preserve that. It is only human.
It would be interesting to do the same calculation for the Seventies, when the attitudes and media tropes were formed. Crime was much higher then, more white people lived in cities proximate to black people, and racial tension was higher. Under those conditions, it would not be inaccurate to describe "white flight" as forced exile. New York, for instance, lost more than a quarter of its white population in this period. Note that this is not ancient history. It was experienced by the parents and grandparents of people who are now alive.
People who feel this way have not been brainwashed by the media and it's insulting to them to argue this is so. Maybe their perceptions are less accurate under current conditions, but the mechanism for thinking otherwise needs to be acknowledged.
Even if it doesn’t spark actual riots and pogroms, it could lead to the breakdown of social cooperation between people of different racial groups, and paralyze the government via racial polarization of politics.
------------------------
Not to rain on your parade but that's already a massive problem in US politics with many people opposing programs that would help them on the fear that it might help "those people" (meaning Black and Brown people) more...
In other words, in order to succeed as a diverse society, we have to find some way to remind people that interracial violence is actually rare, and that the incidents that get shoved in their face on social media are being selected in order to fan their outrage and fears.
------------------------------------------
I don't know what you guys study in middle school but, in France, French (and language) teachers will spend a fair bit of time looking at media sources/articles etc. on common topics (on racism, immigration, integration, gender etc etc) and try to make the students think/build up a critical mind capable of analysis. The results are so-so but I'd say Le Pen has to be a notch better than Trump to be successful in France. Sure, a fringe needs nothing more than naked racist appeals, but many more voters need it to be at least half competently dressed up before they allow themselves to go for it.
And, personally, I think one massive failing of the French is that we study all kind of pretty useless maths (like geometry) but don't do much probability/statistics. It's changing (my kids are doing/did way more than I did) but it needs to be ramped up further. Stats is the only way you defeat appealing narratives.
Good morning Noah, I think that this post is the most important thing that I’ve read recently. Why is this? I believe that no one wants to change their perceptions of the causes of the tension that we all feel. Personally, I want to forward this post to my small (a couple of dozen) circle friends who still read anything longer than an iPhone message or Twitter posting. When I do this, too often I get a two word reply stating “too long,” which at first offends me and makes me wonder why I bother with the forwarded email or why I don’t improve the attention of my circle of friends. But then, I persist because not doing so feeds into the problem. News is sound-bite journalism even including my standard bearers of PBS and MSNBC. Broadcast news is ratings based not thought based. It’s circular and frustrating. Keep,doing what you are doing. It must feel like shoveling analyzed data against a tide of ignorant bullshit. Sorry.
It was widely reported in October of last year by AP, NPR, Reuters, etc. that only about 60% of the crime stats had been submitted to the FBI for 2021. Notable states and cities included FL, CA, NYC, LA. I am not aware of the stats for 2022 and whether they have even been submitted.
"We pay a vastly inordinate amount of attention to these incidents of interracial violence, relative to how frequently they actually occur."
This is definitely true. It's important for people to have perspective about these things, and this logic also applies to all sorts of things: White Supremacist violence, mass shootings, police shootings etc. The media should in general report less on those acts of violence given the statistics underlying those events.
As @KetamineCal mentioned below, I'd love to see a breakout of violent crime by class/income strata. I feel that would be much more interesting although I'd bet we'd find outliers (like first gen immigrant communities that are poor but tightly-knit with relatively low crime). Good point on proximity, too.
I wonder if there is anything in the white/Hispanic interracial violence that is caused by the social integration of Hispanics into white America, which I think Noah has discussed before?
I think what you’d see there is mutually particularly high interracial violence, since integration mean proximity (if nothing else, interracial relationships would drive interracial murders of women, not because interracial couples are more violent but just mechanically).
Just seems to make sense that violence requires proximity and most people's social circles (and neighborhoods) are more racially homogenous than expected by random distribution.
More illuminating data (to me) would be rates of violence across class lines. Even the Cash App founder's murder was by someone in his social circle.
So who shoves it in our faces and why?
Must be somebody shoving and must be for s reason.
Noah, I am curious what you think about Kareem’s points on age adjusting the data.
Given that Black folks are younger, and crimes are more likely to be committed by the young, and they are poorer, and many crimes are driven by poverty.
Thanks for doing this, btw. Jordan Neely’s death was tragic, but the way it’s being characterized and the reaction is beyond belief.
Noah,
Good article as usual. However, if one is looking at "risk" all of this is way down in the chart from other risks such as
1) Cronic Health... largely driven by diet choices "programmed" by food industry
2) Automobile related accidents
3) Suicides
An article which outlines these risks relative to crime would be interesting I think.
/Rahul
While I agree with your analysis about the rareness of interracial crime and how anxiety about such occurrences is blown out of proportion, I think you’re glossing over one of the central arguments of the debate being discussed. It is about how information is being presented. Using the above data, on the basis of race, who is more likely to commit interracial crime on a per capita basis? Why can’t we discuss such an answer comfortably in an open forum? That is the question being presented to liberal America by the right. I don’t know how to answer such a question, but I think that it is something we as a country might have to work through.
I think your risk of interracial murder is wrong.
Your numerator is based on the only 40% of total murders. Assuming that the other 60% of murders have the same ratio of black/white white/black murders then your numerators should be the 615 and 1415 respectively.
This would make the actual risk of a white person being murded by a black person of 0.54 per 100K and of a black person being murdered by a white person at 1.28 per 100K. Same 2.3 ratio, but different individual rates.
Still pretty low, but not as low.
Your violence table at 84% of reported crimes would also change I would imagine.
But one thing is for sure, for a modern country it's a crime that we don't have better data. Why not have a standardized reporting system for everything.
Regardless of stats, I use my own personal experience. I don't know anybody that has been murdered by anybody else, so I am going with overall risk of being murdered is low.
I will however be staying away from South Korea just in case.
My comparison would be hate crimes. I would guess hate crimes are a vanishingly small number of overall crimes, but they punch above their weight because of their intent. Activists are equating every time interracial violence occurs as a hate crime, would be my hypothesis.
I think that by basing this argument on aggregate nationwide statistics you are entirely missing the point. The black population in the US is not only smaller, but highly concentrated. There are very few blacks in many parts of the country, and relatively few remaining white inhabitants of central cities. This has to affect the risk calculation, simply because of relative opportunity for contact at the border where they meet.
Consequently, I'd like to see the numbers for central cities and suburbs of large metropolitan areas, where black populations are larger and actually-resident whites (especially moderate-income whites) are fewer. This is what the crime reporting focuses on. It's cold comfort to a New York subway rider that there are almost no black people in rural Kentucky, or even the more prosperous parts of New Jersey, to do or suffer violence. Many suburbanites segregate themselves specifically because they want to avoid elevated personal risk that they, or people they know, or their families in the past, previously experienced. They are safe at home, and will fight to preserve that. It is only human.
It would be interesting to do the same calculation for the Seventies, when the attitudes and media tropes were formed. Crime was much higher then, more white people lived in cities proximate to black people, and racial tension was higher. Under those conditions, it would not be inaccurate to describe "white flight" as forced exile. New York, for instance, lost more than a quarter of its white population in this period. Note that this is not ancient history. It was experienced by the parents and grandparents of people who are now alive.
People who feel this way have not been brainwashed by the media and it's insulting to them to argue this is so. Maybe their perceptions are less accurate under current conditions, but the mechanism for thinking otherwise needs to be acknowledged.
How come Asians are never included in these statistics?
Even if it doesn’t spark actual riots and pogroms, it could lead to the breakdown of social cooperation between people of different racial groups, and paralyze the government via racial polarization of politics.
------------------------
Not to rain on your parade but that's already a massive problem in US politics with many people opposing programs that would help them on the fear that it might help "those people" (meaning Black and Brown people) more...
In other words, in order to succeed as a diverse society, we have to find some way to remind people that interracial violence is actually rare, and that the incidents that get shoved in their face on social media are being selected in order to fan their outrage and fears.
------------------------------------------
I don't know what you guys study in middle school but, in France, French (and language) teachers will spend a fair bit of time looking at media sources/articles etc. on common topics (on racism, immigration, integration, gender etc etc) and try to make the students think/build up a critical mind capable of analysis. The results are so-so but I'd say Le Pen has to be a notch better than Trump to be successful in France. Sure, a fringe needs nothing more than naked racist appeals, but many more voters need it to be at least half competently dressed up before they allow themselves to go for it.
And, personally, I think one massive failing of the French is that we study all kind of pretty useless maths (like geometry) but don't do much probability/statistics. It's changing (my kids are doing/did way more than I did) but it needs to be ramped up further. Stats is the only way you defeat appealing narratives.
Good morning Noah, I think that this post is the most important thing that I’ve read recently. Why is this? I believe that no one wants to change their perceptions of the causes of the tension that we all feel. Personally, I want to forward this post to my small (a couple of dozen) circle friends who still read anything longer than an iPhone message or Twitter posting. When I do this, too often I get a two word reply stating “too long,” which at first offends me and makes me wonder why I bother with the forwarded email or why I don’t improve the attention of my circle of friends. But then, I persist because not doing so feeds into the problem. News is sound-bite journalism even including my standard bearers of PBS and MSNBC. Broadcast news is ratings based not thought based. It’s circular and frustrating. Keep,doing what you are doing. It must feel like shoveling analyzed data against a tide of ignorant bullshit. Sorry.
It was widely reported in October of last year by AP, NPR, Reuters, etc. that only about 60% of the crime stats had been submitted to the FBI for 2021. Notable states and cities included FL, CA, NYC, LA. I am not aware of the stats for 2022 and whether they have even been submitted.
"We pay a vastly inordinate amount of attention to these incidents of interracial violence, relative to how frequently they actually occur."
This is definitely true. It's important for people to have perspective about these things, and this logic also applies to all sorts of things: White Supremacist violence, mass shootings, police shootings etc. The media should in general report less on those acts of violence given the statistics underlying those events.
That sort of misinterpretation of statistics and other numerical data is all too common. I highly recommend Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos.
Very good, thanks Noah.
As @KetamineCal mentioned below, I'd love to see a breakout of violent crime by class/income strata. I feel that would be much more interesting although I'd bet we'd find outliers (like first gen immigrant communities that are poor but tightly-knit with relatively low crime). Good point on proximity, too.
I wonder if there is anything in the white/Hispanic interracial violence that is caused by the social integration of Hispanics into white America, which I think Noah has discussed before?
I think what you’d see there is mutually particularly high interracial violence, since integration mean proximity (if nothing else, interracial relationships would drive interracial murders of women, not because interracial couples are more violent but just mechanically).