Different Worlds of Violence

Over the past two years the Black Lives Matter movement has done an extraordinary job of focusing public attention on the tragic deaths that too often result from young black males’ encounters with law enforcement. From Ferguson to New York City to Baltimore the movement has impacted how these incidents are viewed and responded to.

Less attention has been paid to the disturbing phenomenon of gun deaths within the Black community that are several orders of magnitude greater than the gun deaths related to cops or gun deaths in the white community.

This week the Brookings Institution published a study,“>observed this week,

The nation’s consciousness has been raised by the repeated acts of police brutality against blacks. But the problem of public space violence—seen in the extraordinary distress, trauma and pain many poor inner-city families experience following the killing of a family member or close relative—also deserves our special attention. [Emphasis added]

The data for the age cohort of Black 20-29 year olds is almost beyond belief. Where white men in that age grouping die by guns at a rate of 20 per 100,000, Black men die at a rate of 90 per 100,000. That is four and a half times the white male rate. Both Black and white women of that age cohort are at low levels of under 10 deaths per 100,000.

Where white men overall (not restricted to the 20-29 year olds) in the United States suffer gun deaths at a rate of 16 per 100,000, black men suffer such deaths at a rate more than double that at 34 per 100,000. Again, Black and white women are clustered together at around 3 per 100,000.

The level of black male gun deaths in the 20-29 year old category approximates the death rate in Honduras (90.4 per 100,000) which has the highest recorded homicide rate in the world.

The impact of that level of violence on a community is clearer when one realizes that nearly 82% of Black gun deaths in the 2011-2013 period were from homicides as contrasted with 77% of white gun deaths in that same period being suicides. Clearly, suicides are tragic but they don't engender fear of violence among others as homicides do.

The violent crime rate in the Black community is predominantly centered on poor Blacks. In 2008, poor Blacks were the victim of violent crime at the rate of 75 per 1000 while affluent Blacks encountered violence at a rate of 23 per 1000 (one third the rate).

Parenthetically, it is important to note that the vast majority of homicide victims are killed by someone of the same race—whites are predominantly killed by whites and Blacks by Blacks.

The causes of this epidemic are undoubtedly complex and deeply rooted, but the need for a solution is obvious. A community can’t continue to suffer deaths by violence at rates that are almost unmatched in the world. This problem does indeed, “deserve our special attention.”