First, I will respond to his point that black people are "more likely to be victims of violent confrontations with police officers than whites because they commit more violent crimes than whites per capita." Now this hypothesis can be tested, by seeing not just if black people are more likely to be shot by police than white people, as even Watson acknowledges is the case, but also by seeing if there is a relationship between crime rates in an area of the US, whether by black people or overall, and racial bias in police shootings in that area. As it happens, a study has been done testing this hypothesis, and it found that:
- "the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average." Alright, so Watson seems to be right so far, but it's the next finding that seems to contradict his narrative:
- "There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates." Well that would seem to be inconvenient for someone who wants to portray a disparity as the fault of black people. I'm sure Watson will pull some other factor out of his ass to claim that this disparity isn't the result of systemic racism, b/c he's dug himself too deep into this "politically incorrect" hole to climb out now.
Next I will address Watson's claims about blacks committing more crime than whites relative to their share of the population. His claims in this regard are as follows:
"Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks commit around half of homicides in the United States. DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, blacks committed 52% of homicides, compared to 45% of homicides committed by whites.
More up to date FBI statistics tell a similar story. In 2013, black criminals carried out 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, again despite the fact that there are five times more white people in the U.S.
From 2011 to 2013, 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black. This figure is three times higher than the 13% black population figure. When you account for the fact that black males aged 15-34, who account for around 3% of the population, are responsible for the vast majority of these crimes, the figures are even more staggering."
This is all true, but misleading: for one thing, black people are much more likely than white people to be the victims of murder. From 1980 to 2008, the homicide victimization rate was 6x higher for blacks than for whites. Why? Well, there is some evidence that racial disparities in poverty and the prevalence of families headed by women are a factor. However, this does not explain the entire Black-White homicide gap. Other factors proposed to explain at least part of it include that, according to one theory, "Individuals belonging to groups perceived to have low marginal penalties for killing will be feared, and they will accordingly also be killed with greater frequency. By the same token, individuals whose own deaths are less likely to be investigated and prosecuted vigorously will fear being killed, and may therefore be induced to kill preemptively. This means that social groups with high victimization rates will also have high murder rates, even if there is no racial segregation in social interactions." This theory predicts that more segregated neighborhoods will have higher racial disparities in murder rates, a theory which a number of studies have found evidence for.
Black people are also more likely than white people to be victims of all other kinds of crime besides homicide. The evidence suggests that "differences in disadvantage that explain the overwhelming portion of the difference in crime, especially criminal violence, between white and African American communities."
Moving on:
"Despite the fact that black people commit an equal or greater number of violent crimes than whites, whites are almost TWICE as likely to be killed by police officers.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, between 1999 and 2011, 2,151 whites died as a result of being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks."
The word that renders the above claims bogus is "likely". This implies that a higher percentage of white people were killed by police than black people, which, given that there are about 5x more whites than blacks in the U.S., is not the case at all. Even though almost 2x as many whites were killed by police as blacks during the above time period, when you account for their share in the general population, blacks were 3x more likely than whites to be victims of such killings. This is comparable to the 3.49x figure for being unarmed I cited above.
The word that renders the above claims bogus is "likely". This implies that a higher percentage of white people were killed by police than black people, which, given that there are about 5x more whites than blacks in the U.S., is not the case at all. Even though almost 2x as many whites were killed by police as blacks during the above time period, when you account for their share in the general population, blacks were 3x more likely than whites to be victims of such killings. This is comparable to the 3.49x figure for being unarmed I cited above.
Now Watson acknowledges that blacks are overrepresented among police shooting victims, but argues that they are underrepresented with respect to perpetrators of violent crime. Yet as I noted above, there is no association between race-specific crime rates in an area and the racial disparity in police shootings in that area, so this explanation doesn't hold up. Another recent study found that with regard to police shootings, "Race does matter but only insofar as it increases the level of firearm violence and, even then, only to a point."
Watson's next argument is that "Despite being outnumbered by whites five to one, blacks commit eight times more crimes against whites than vice-versa, according to FBI statistics from 2007. A black male is 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse. These figures also show that interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white."
I will tackle the first of these claims first: that there are way more whites than blacks but for some strange reason blacks commit more crimes against whites than vice versa. Yet this is misleading because it is precisely because there are more whites in the U.S. that we expect more white victims of interracial crime than black ones. As Sampson and Lauritsen put it, "In felony homicides,as in robberies, black offenders are more likely to victimize whites than white offenders are to victimize blacks.Yet this is still what we should expect because blacks are the smaller group and have more chances to interact with whites. Variations in the relative sizes of the black and white populations thus explain the patterning of interracial violence." (see page 329)
As for the interracial rape claim, this comes from a column by Pat Buchanan in which he says that "Interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans in 2007. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study." The study in question was not actually conducted by the FBI, but by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). As Media Matters has pointed out, "The BJS study is not a tally of every single violent crime committed in 2007, but, rather, an estimate based on a nationwide household survey. The study makes clear that its estimates for the overall number of blacks who were raped and for the number of whites who were raped by blacks are both based on interviews with 10 or fewer respondents."
Michael Rand, a statistician who worked on the study, has said that Buchanan is interpreting it incorrectly, noting that, according to Media Matters, "these small sample sizes [of 10 or fewer respondents]-- which result from the fact that blacks make up less than 13 percent of the overall population and from the fact that rape is a relatively infrequent crime -- prevent the BJS from accurately calculating margins of error" and that for this reason, the BJS data cited by Buchanan "are not reliable as exact point estimates of the actual levels of such crime."
Watson's next argument is that "Despite being outnumbered by whites five to one, blacks commit eight times more crimes against whites than vice-versa, according to FBI statistics from 2007. A black male is 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse. These figures also show that interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white."
I will tackle the first of these claims first: that there are way more whites than blacks but for some strange reason blacks commit more crimes against whites than vice versa. Yet this is misleading because it is precisely because there are more whites in the U.S. that we expect more white victims of interracial crime than black ones. As Sampson and Lauritsen put it, "In felony homicides,as in robberies, black offenders are more likely to victimize whites than white offenders are to victimize blacks.Yet this is still what we should expect because blacks are the smaller group and have more chances to interact with whites. Variations in the relative sizes of the black and white populations thus explain the patterning of interracial violence." (see page 329)
As for the interracial rape claim, this comes from a column by Pat Buchanan in which he says that "Interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans in 2007. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study." The study in question was not actually conducted by the FBI, but by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). As Media Matters has pointed out, "The BJS study is not a tally of every single violent crime committed in 2007, but, rather, an estimate based on a nationwide household survey. The study makes clear that its estimates for the overall number of blacks who were raped and for the number of whites who were raped by blacks are both based on interviews with 10 or fewer respondents."
Michael Rand, a statistician who worked on the study, has said that Buchanan is interpreting it incorrectly, noting that, according to Media Matters, "these small sample sizes [of 10 or fewer respondents]-- which result from the fact that blacks make up less than 13 percent of the overall population and from the fact that rape is a relatively infrequent crime -- prevent the BJS from accurately calculating margins of error" and that for this reason, the BJS data cited by Buchanan "are not reliable as exact point estimates of the actual levels of such crime."
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