I had an interesting debate with a fellow on Disqus concerning inter-ethnic homicide rates. OK, it's not one that looks particularly interesting at first glance, because he's pitching the tired assertion, with little attempt to veil it, that black people are more violent than white people. What makes it interesting is that he brought out some data that I was able to work with -- and from which I reached what I believe is an airtight conclusion refuting his assertion.
Transcript follows.
[Redacted]
These protests are centered around black deaths at the hands of white people, but more than twice as many whites are killed every year by blacks than the other way around;
2013; 409 whites killed by blacks, 189 blacks killed by whites
http://www.fbi.gov/...
2012; 431 whites killed by blacks, 193 blacks killed by whites
http://www.fbi.gov/...
2011; 448 whites killed by blacks, 193 blacks killed by whites
http://www.fbi.gov/...
2010; 447 whites killed by blacks, 218 blacks killed by whites
http://www.fbi.gov/...
2009; 454 whites killed by blacks, 209 blacks killed by whites
http://www2.fbi.gov/...
2008; 504 whites killed by blacks, 230 blacks killed by whites
http://www2.fbi.gov/...
2007; 566 whites killed by blacks, 245 blacks killed by whites
http://www2.fbi.gov/...
2006; 573 whites killed by blacks, 208 blacks killed by whites
http://www2.fbi.gov/...
2005; 516 whites killed by blacks, 230 blacks killed by whites
http://www2.fbi.gov/...
Geenius_at_Wrok > [Redacted]
White percentage of the population: 63 percent
Black percentage of the population: 13 percent
Ratio of white to black Americans: 4.8 : 1
What those statistics you cited show is that white people kill black people at a much higher rate, and black people kill white people at a much lower rate, than their respective shares of the population would predict.
[Redacted] > Geenius_at_Wrok
13% of the population kills more than twice as many people (of the opposite race) as 63% of the population does. Try again.
SPOILER ALERT: I did try again. :-)
Geenius_at_Wrok > [Redacted]
I'll acknowledge, I should have begun by making apples-to-apples comparisons.
We should expect that white murderers' victims comprise roughly 4.8 white victims for every black victim, and that the same should be true for black murderers. Is this true? Using your cited FBI data:
2013
White murderer, white victim: 2,509
White murderer, black victim: 189
Ratio: 13.3 : 1
Black murderer, white victim: 409
Black murderer, black victim: 2,245
Ratio: 1 : 5.5
2012
White murderer, white victim: 2,614
White murderer, black victim: 193
Ratio: 13.5 : 1
Black murderer, white victim: 431
Black murderer, black victim: 2,412
Ratio: 1 : 5.6
I won't belabor the point by going farther back, as the pattern is already obvious: Americans of any color are significantly more likely to kill someone of their own color than of a different one. No doubt because that's whom they encounter most often in everyday life. (Segregation and whatnot.)
But when they do cross paths, at what rate should we expect them to kill each other? Remember, there are 4.8 white Americans for every black American. If their propensity toward homicide is equal, we'll expect them to have an equal likelihood of killing any person they happen to meet. For every 100 people a person meets, if he's traveling among the whole population and not just within his neighborhood, 13 will be black, and 63 will be white. The national homicide rate in 2013, per the FBI, was about 2 per 100,000 (rounding off the population to 300 million). Let's imagine that five white murderers (not 4.8, for the obvious reason) and one black murderer were responsible for all of those, and that each of them murdered two people out of every 100,000 he met.
One white murderer, in 10 million encounters, will meet 1.3 million black people and will kill 26 of them. Together, our five murderers will kill 130. Let's correct our rounding from a moment ago and make that 125.
One black murderer, in 10 million encounters, will meet 6.3 million white people. At the same rate of 2 per 100,000 as the white murderers, he'll kill 126 of them. That's the exact same homicide propensity as the white murderers', yet he commits 4.8 times the number of cross-ethnic murders as any one white murderer -- because he has 4.8 times the number of opportunities. The white murderers encounter black people less often, and are simply dividing the labor among one another, while accomplishing the same amount of carnage.
Among 598 cross-ethnic murders, we should expect to see whites account for 495 of the victims and blacks account for 103. What we see is that whites account for only 409 of the victims, while blacks account for 189 of them. The discrepancy is consistent throughout [redacted]'s FBI data: black people are murdered by whites at a higher-than-predicted rate, and white people are murdered by blacks at a lower-than-predicted rate.
I believe this proves conclusively that any given black person in this country faces a greater risk of being murdered by a white person than any white person faces of being murdered by a black person.
P.S. I don't think of white people and black people as "opposite."