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Comment by athenot | Hacker News Reader

> In terms of murders I think it was something like 30 - 1 in terms of per capita likelihood of a suspect being black vs asian for example.

Suspect perhaps, but not convicted offender. And therein lies the bias & prejudice.

This table shows Race, Sex, and Ethnicity of Victim by Race, Sex, and Ethnicity of Offender, 2019

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

One thing that stands out is that more often than not, the offender and the victim are the same race.

And overall numbers are similar between white and African American.

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>And overall numbers are similar between white and African American.

Am I reading this wrong?

3,299 total murders committed by whites when they make up 76% of population, vs 2,906 by Black or AA when they make up 13.4% of population?

I'm getting the population estimates from here: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219

For government statistics it should be noted that 'white' often includes hispanics and arabs.

> Am I reading this wrong?

It should be noted that table counts Hispanics as white (as does the 76% of population you cite). It has separate columns for if the offender is Hispanic.

You're not reading it wrong. That's actually a low value for the black share of murders; it's often above 50%.

The per capita rate of murder commission for blacks is about 8 times the general rate. It's true in the US, with its legacy of slavery, and also in England, with its equally bad legacy of slavery.

Or something.

EDIT: Actually, you are reading it wrong. That's 3,299 murders of whites, not 3,299 murders by whites.

The table shows 2,948 murders committed by whites ("Race of offender"), vs 3,218 murders committed by blacks.

And that's counting Hispanics as whites. Prepare to get banned :P

>And overall numbers are similar between white and African American.

But we're talking about percentages here, not absolute numbers, and African Americans are ~13% of the US population (and ~23% of Oakland).

Very interesting.

Here is Oaklands rough data for robberies.

Black 8228 Hispanic 575 Unknown 462 White 107 Asian/Other119 -------------- Total 9491

Per 100K Black (non-hispanic) 8,000 Hispanic 575 White (non-hispanic) 89

This is something like a 100-1 difference? Can these numbers be right - I was having some trouble finding good data from Oakland though I know they look at this closely.

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