Why is the Black murder rate so high?

Friends —

Some topics you circle for years before you’re willing to touch them. This was one.

The numbers on Black homicide in America are staggering. The rate runs about seven times higher than for white Americans, and it’s been roughly that wide for fifty years. But you can’t say that out loud without half the room deciding you’re either excusing something or attacking someone. So most people don’t. This topic is the kind of thing that gets you misread no matter how carefully you handle it.

So I decided to actually dig in. Not a hit piece — you can find plenty of those — and not a defense either. I just wanted to see how much of it holds up.

What surprised me was how much of the popular explanation falls apart when I looked at it. Poverty correlates weakly and inconsistently. As for gun ownership, it doesn’t explain things at all.

The murder rate overall rises and falls in huge waves. It can double in a decade and halve the next, usually tracking how tough or lenient we’ve decided to be on crime during that time. But those waves explain the swings. They don’t explain the racial gap.

Something slower is underneath it — and it’s not what most people on the left OR the right assume.

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I also learned that most of the violence comes from a small number of men on a small number of blocks. Which means most people in those neighborhoods aren’t committing it. They’re living inside it.

Watch the video here.

– Ken

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