Title: Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren't Neutral | HuffPost
Headings: Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral
Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral
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Content: Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren't Neutral | HuffPost
Kim Farbota, Contributor
Partner, mom, attorney, scientist, and human, working to live my own values
Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral
09/02/2015 03:28 pm ET Updated Sep 02, 2016
Prison Cell Bars - Black and White
There is a common conservative narrative that indicates the disproportionate incarceration of black people is not the result of systemic racism, but rather of shortcomings within the black community. It is also common to hear the supposedly neutral statement that “black people commit more crimes than white people.” This “fact” is used to justify a belief that black people have a natural criminal propensity, or that a “culture of violence” is to blame for problems faced by black people in America. Black people make up roughly 13% of the United States population, and white people make up 64%. Black people make up 40% of the prison population, and white people 39%. Therefore, even though there are roughly five times as many white people as black people in this country, blacks and whites are incarcerated in equal numbers. But the fact that black people are incarcerated five times as frequently as white people does not mean black people commit five times as many crimes. Here’s why: