Title: Homicide Fact: Race Matters | Psychology Today
Headings: Homicide Fact: Race Matters
Scott A. Bonn Ph.D.
Homicide Fact: Race Matters
Murder is an intra-racial crime

Content: Together, this represents less than five percent of the 16,929 murder victims that year. By the way, the "white" category in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) includes non-black Hispanics. In very rare instances of murder where an alleged offender and victim are of different races, such as George Zimmerman (white offender)-Trayvon Martin (black victim) or OJ Simpson (black offender)-Nicole Brown (white victim), the news media transform them into global spectacles through exhaustive media coverage and debate. The news reporting of rare inter-racial murder cases typically becomes racialized and politicized in tone, which has the calamitous effect of dividing the public along racial lines. This can lead to anger, resentment and inter-racial violence, as was the case after the murder trials of both George Zimmerman and OJ Simpson. Also, lengthy, massive media coverage of such incidents makes inter-racial homicide seem much more common than is the case. This result may suit the agendas of racist opinion leaders or those in the media looking to exploit public fears for their commercial gain, but promoting the myth of inter-racial murder is a gross social injustice that harms everyone. Nevertheless, homicide risk is highly correlated to race. More specifically, being black in the U.S. dramatically increases one’s homicide risk. It is an empirical fact that the risk of homicide is much higher for blacks than whites, in general, and young African-American males, in particular, have the highest homicide risk of all demographic groups.