Debunking Buchanan: Violent crime and racial fearmongering (Post 5 of 5)

In my fifth and final post today on Pat Buchanan's response to Barack Obama's speech, I'll address his assertion that the most pernicious form of racism is interracial crime and that black Americans are guilty of the vast majority of such racism.

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

First, Buchanan's central thesis is illogical. Interracial crime is not in and of itself racism. It should be obvious to a six year old that there is a huge difference between crime that happens to be interracial and crime that is racially motivated.

As it turns out, most crime -- including the two most heinous crimes, rape and murder -- are mostly intraracial. That fact reflects our society's racial divisions -- in a completely colorblind nation, interracial crime would be much higher. So actually, the relative lack of interracial crime is a manifestation of our racial problems.

The statistics that Buchanan cites on rape are absurd. He doesn't cite a source, but if he is using the FBI's Unified Crime Reports, which I believe he may be, then should note that the statistics in those reports reflect only a fraction of all rapes. Still, even though Buchanan would have you believe most white women rape victims are raped by black men, the opposite is true.

Buchanan's statistic about the relative rates at which criminals choose victims of a different race is also misleading. First, most crime statistics treat white non-Hispanics and white Hispanics in the same category, so we're talking about roughly 80% of the population. Assuming his 45% statistic is correct, blacks are therefore less likely to pick a white victim than they would be in a color-blind society.

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I know more about the statistics on race and murder than on race and other violent crimes, so I'll close with some thoughts on that topic.

First, while it is true that murder offenders are disproportionately black, it is also true that murder victims are disproportionately black. It is an undisputed fact that if avoiding murder is your number one goal, you are far better off being white in America than being black.

Second, if you look at stranger-on-stranger murder, it does turn out that there are a little more than 3 times as many whites killed by blacks are there are blacks killed by whites. Now, Pat Buchanan would see this as racism, but let's step back for a second.

Assume for a moment that the distribution by race of murder offenders were to remain constant, that is, assume that a little over half of all murders are committed by whites and a little less than that by blacks. (Again, whites includes white Hispanics.)

If you do the math, in a color-blind society, about 37% of all murder victims would be whites killed by blacks. Why? Because there so many more whites than blacks! Simple math. The reality is however that in stranger-on-stranger murder, just 17% are whites killed by blacks and overall just 9% are. In other words, the murder victimization rate of whites by blacks is far lower than you'd expect.

None of this is an argument that crime isn't a major problem, especially for black Americans. But on balance, on just about every single measure -- with the possible exception of rape -- on balance white Americans are less at risk than black Americans.

And even though black men may be far more likely to commit murder than white men, both races are about equally likely to not commit murder. Here's what I mean.

In 2005, the homicide offending rate for black men aged 18-24 was 203.3 per 100,000. For white men of the same age it was 22.4. In other words, black men of that age group were 9 times more likely to be murderers (or at least convicted of murder) than white men. (This is somewhat complicated by the fact that more black men are involved in multiple offender single victim murders, but I that will only serve to strengthen the point I'm making.)

What this means is that if you are walking down the street, and you see a white man of that age group, there is only a 0.18% greater chance that he is not a murderer. And even if he is, he's still probably not going to murder you -- most murder victims know the person who killed them.

Indeed, if you happen to be a white non-Hispanic man, you are fare more likely to be murdered by yourself (i.e., commit suicide) than by a black man. The suicide victimization rate amongst white men is about 22 per 100,000. The homicide victimization rate is about 4 per 100,000, and maybe about 1 of those are committed by blacks. So simply put, if you're a white man like Pat Buchanan freaking out about black men trying to kill you, you should be aware that you are 22 more times likely to be killed yourself than to be killed by a black man. And I'll bet if you worried a little less about getting murdered, you 'd be less likely to harm yourself.

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The point of all this is not to dismiss the realities of crime; rather, it's to emphasize the truth behind who is most at risk.

The statistics that Buchanan cites are at misleading, designed to stoke fear and conflict when we actually need less.

The community hit the hardest by crime in America is the black community, both in terms of victimization, and because of the wasted potential of so many black men who enter the justice system, only to become even more hardened criminals.

It's an American tragedy, and while Barack Obama seeks to address it so that we can continue healing the wounds of racism, Pat Buchanan sees an opportunity to sow further division, purely in pursuit of his orthodox conservative agenda.

This is post 5 of 5 posts on this topic:

Post 1: Suddenly, Pat Buchanan makes Bill O'Reilly look moderate
Post 2: Debunking Buchanan: Jeremiah Wright served in the Marines, but Pat Buchanan didn't serve his nation
Post 3: Debunking Buchanan: Taxing and spending edition
Post 4: Debunking Buchanan: False characterization of Barack Obama's speech
Post 5: Debunking Buchanan: Violent crime and racial fearmongering