The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report.People are used to the idea of black people coming out on the truly horrific end of stats--and for good reason. We live poorer and die faster. Our SAT scores are lower and our dropout rate is higher, and so on. But that sense of black folks bringing up the rear, in addition to an uncritical allegiance to thin stats, is blinding and leads to fools talking super-predators and the Apocalypse. There's a thin line between understanding that black people are in a bad way, and believing every awful thing you hear.The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a "worrisome divergence," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.
The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14 to 17. In 2000, 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites, 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142, up 34 percent.
I didn't know why someone telling me that homicide rate for black tens had jumped 34percent struck me as wrong--I just heard my bullshit meter going off. Somewhat predictably, So did Steven Levitt:
The numbers in The New York Times graphic and most of the James Alan Fox report fail to control for the change in the population of young black males over this time period.According to U.S. Census data, the number of blacks aged 15 to 19 rose by about 15 percent between 2000 and 2007.
So even if any individual black teen's propensity for crime was unchanged over this time period, the aggregate amount of black-teen crime would have risen by 15 percent. In other words, in that New York Times graphic on perpetrators, just based on changes in population, the number of perpetrators would have been expected to rise from a little over 800 to nearly 1,000. Knowing that, the actual rise to roughly 1,150 doesn't seem that noteworthy.
I don't want to be glib about a very real problem. But the nature and tragedy of black on black crime doesn't excuse inflation and exaggeration. I've learned my lesson about this, after hearing people--black and white--parrot inane foolishness like "they're more black men in jail than college." Or better still the "70 percent out of wedlock" stat which every intellectual likes to whip out to show how gangsta rap destroyed the Negroes. Glib cuts both ways, you know.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Did the population of white youths stay flat? Because crime staying steady in one group while decreasing in another would still be a divergence.
Kudos for posting the vetting piece below the alarmist piece. I'm with you on this one, definitely. Let's see the entire picture, give me raw statistics and compare apples to apples.
The first thing that struck me there is that it doesn't appear that they controlled for income bracket or anything else other than white/black. That would be fairly typical crap journalism that seems to pass for professionalism at what is supposed to be a pinnacle institution. Just like that line about whites "in some places". That tells you exactly nothing and isn't worth the ink they wasted printing it.
Not sure. But even if it did--that's a different different argument and a different story. It basically says "Black Murder Rate Unchanged, While The Rest of the Country Declines" or some such. But you can see why that isn't the same as saying, that the black teen murder rate rose 34 percent, as the story claims.
Coates,
the hyperlink over the words "Steven Levitt" actually points to the original article by Erik Eckholm rather than to wherever Levitt's criticism is.
I'm also curious of the stats on single black women. I think there is something wrong with the numbers because I remember hearing that they included girls as young as 15 when stating that there is a huge amount of unmarried black women vs white women. Anyone know the real deal on this? I'm always hearing things I don't quite get. For instance, an NPR show was explaining the high rate of HIV among black women. They explained that black women are at a higher risk due to drug abuse and the high incarceration rate of black men (they get HIV in prison and bring it home to us). I'm like, what? I don't know anybody on heroin or dating an excon so why am I at a high risk just because I'm black?
Good lookin sv. Link fixt.
Steve Levitt appears to be innumerate.
115% of 800 = 920
x% of 800 = 1150
x=144%
144-115=29%
29% is rise not due to population size increase. If you would actually have read professor Fox's report you will note he did control for population size in his conclusions.
Interestingly I had a big discussion of this article with my girlfriend. I noted that the graph was misleading because there are so many fewer blacks than whites in this country. The murder rate for blacks is between 7 and 10 times as high as for whites (look it up). It looks like the black rate is double, but since there are more white people than blacks (7X) it really doesn't show the full magnitude of the problem.
My girlfriend suggested the numbers couldn't be that bad if you controlled for income. So I did some quick calculations, and discovered that its worse. Essentially the set of poor white people is larger than the set of black people as a whole.
This data shouldn't make anybody happy, I make no suggestions about what it means, or why the rates are so different. But this isn't scare mongering, you can't solve a problem unless you confront it. The times article and chart are misleading in exactly the opposite way Levitt's post claims.
But you can see why that isn't the same as saying, that the black teen murder rate rose 34 percent, as the story claims.
The story doesn't actually say that. It claims that the black teen murder rate increased, and that the total number of black teen homicides rose 34%. It doesn't claim that the rate rose 34%. But it is pretty stupid to even mention the raw numbers without corecting for population changes. That information is worthless at best, and misleading.
TNC said: "I don't want to be glib about a very real problem."
Then don't be. And stop changing the subject. The fact that you focused almost exclusively on a mathematical error rather than address the underlying issue of increasing black homicide (which remains true despite the error) is disappointing. It is also very similar to the shift of focus (or to call it what it is: excuse-making) that I heard from a lot of people endlessly nitpicking over the statistics on the Prop-8 vote while ignoring the underlying reality of black homophobia.
While I'm confident that you have done this in other articles and mediums that I haven't read or seen, I think that the proper course here is to address and confront.
TNC,
I think this is a wrong argument to make--the fundamental problem is rooting an argument to avert the room for this bogus stats next year. I get your point: the sensational tendency of the media corner crimes to rap. But let's do our part to keep our eyes on the larger picture. We are fucking killing ourselves: that is FACT!
Am I missing something?
851 to 539 --- That is 54% greater.
Now, I don't know the population of blacks and whites.
However, if there are 6 times as many whites as blacks then the rate is not 54% greater but 825% greater on a per capita basis.
Don't flame me. I really don't know the definition of white and black. (I assume my wife is black and I am white but my kids are probably white????)
matt,
Levitt's main point was that this spike is much smaller than the one seen in the early 90's. He does mention the population-controlled figures and re-posts Figure 4 (from page 12 of the PDF) from Prof. Fox's report, showing the graphs for black males in different age groups. (I'm assuming that in the graph entitled 'homicide offending rates per age, black males', 'rates per 100,000' means per 100,000 black males.) These graphs agree with the "10x higher" conclusion you came to; we're looking a current 14-17 yr. old male homicide offending rate of just under 10 for whites as opposed to just under 100 for blacks. The population-controlled rate seems to have stayed roughly flat among white teenage boys. So Levitt isn't innumerate, but I agree with you and others that he glosses over the alarming 29% increase you point out.
I don't know what should be done about this; personally I am in favor of more police and far fewer laws, so I would endorse Levitt's suggestion on ending the drug war. That won't magically create opportunities for these young men or entirely remove any criminal predilections, since it won't address the primary root causes of lack of achievement and integration into regular society - but it should reduce the violence and give people some breathing room.
I get what some of the commenters are saying about not glossing over the numbers. But I don't think a lot of the commenters are getting what Coates is saying. If you asked most folks they would tell you that the murder rate of black teens as victims or perpetrators has kept rising for time immortal and has never went down. But if you look at the truth after a spike in the early 90s the rates actually came down precipitously. Now there appears to be another spike but as Levitt points out in his column its nothing like some kind of major ground breaking upswing in violence. In fact he termed it a blip.
Now Coates can defend himself but to me these two lines addressed what most of the people are complaining about.
See the problem is when people start running with bullshit stats then perception starts to become reality. I can't tell you how many times I was told that there were more black men in jail than in school growing up. Now maybe for some black kids thats motivation to be the exception to the rule. But for many black kids its a crutch. They go around sayinig why should they work hard when statisically they are going to jail at some point anyway. Thats not just talk, thats a fact. And then come to find out it was all bullshit. We need to take violence perpetrated by and on black people seriously no doubt. But there is that fine line between actually helping and hurting with that focus. And believe me, bullshit alarmist statistics do not help. There is a such thing as a self fulfilling prophecy and that kind of study by the NYTimes helps to propagate them.
Mark my words you will hear over and over again by conservative white men in the months and years to come quoting from that article like its the gospel when they talk about minorities and crime and without people like Levitt and Coates to point out the fallacy of those numbers people will buy it with out any questions and every black kid will be looked at as a potential murderer or murder victim and many of them will start to think of themselves in those same terms.
Clarification: I'm assuming that 'per 100,000' means per 100,000 of that cohort, so 'per 100,000 black males aged 14-17 years' for that particular data set, etc.
Since most of the good points have already been made, I'll simply second what sgwhiteinfla wrote.
If we're going to work as a community to fix this stuff, we at least need to get our basic facts straight.
It occurs to me that the numbers for intervening years would also be helpful, if there was some sort of clear trend that would be one thing, but looking at those numbers I feel a bit uncomfortable treating them as statistics, it looks like the rise when you control for population growth is 17%, which seems significant, but another way to put it is that 163 more black youths than would be consistent with just following the increase in population murdered someone in 2007. 163 people in a country of 300 million and out of 41 million black people. I don't really know anything about crime statistics, but its not immediately obvious to me that that couldn't be a random variation.
OT and not an attempt at thread jacking
.
But Coates man are you watching Bobby Rush support Blagojevich on Tee Vee. A part of my heart just died.
Matt,
You're right. I should have read the report--especially given it's relative brevity. I just finished it. Levitt is still right when he saus that, "The numbers in The New York Times graphic and most of the James Alan Fox report fail to control for the change in the population of young black males over this time period."
If I missed something please point it out, and I will gladly print an update. I'm not in the habit of ignoring evidence.
Labor,
The story is based on math. The first three graphs of the story invoke math. In the Wall Street Journal version of the story, the headline is math. ("Murders of Black Teens Are Up 39% Since 2000-01")The entire study is based on math. My post looks at the math. You call that changing the subject. Fair enough. Next time, I'll use tea leaves, and leave math to the smart people.
If you're looking for a confrontation on black crime, please proceed to Amazon and cop The Beautiful Struggle. It's my memoir, in which I write, in personal detail, about the crippling effects of growing up during the great spike in gun violence during the 80s. When you know people who got stuck for Georgetown jackets, who were killed for not handing over their wallets, then this thing becomes more than theoretical.
I'm not easily offended. In fact, being offended isn't good for much. But accusing a dude who came up with this stuff on his back, who's got a son who's coming up with it on his back--of glossing over black men killing other black men--is getting close to that line.
The book is in paperback now, by the way. And the hardcovers are headed to remainder. You can probably cop it for five bucks.
further clarification: that means "just under" 10/100,000 (0.01%) and 100/100,000 (0.1%) respectively. Don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence, but sometimes people jump to conclusions.
also, matt, regarding this: "My girlfriend suggested the numbers couldn't be that bad if you controlled for income. So I did some quick calculations, and discovered that its worse. Essentially the set of poor white people is larger than the set of black people as a whole." what do you mean by this? if we control for income, say just using the percentage of blacks vs. whites below the federal govt. poverty line, shouldn't the rate disparity between these two races go lower than 10x, since a higher percentage of blacks are below that line than whites?
everyone check out "Table 9: Trends in Homicide Offending Rates among Males by Age and Race" on pg. 24 of the PDF. Note that the cohorts in question in the report are aged 14-17, whereas the 15% population increase among black teens, cited by Levitt and others, is for the age group 15-19 year olds - i'll bet the population increase among 14-17 year olds was greater. the rate for 14-17 black males went from 66.2 to 80.6, a 21.75% increase (for white 14-17 y.o. males it went from 8.2 to 8.1 - again i'm assuming these figures are per 100k of that cohort).
Again, still a troublesome problem, and i still endorse more cops and far fewer laws as the beginning of a solution, but let's get our facts straight to begin with.
Has anyone else noticed the explosion in the number of black Atlantic Voices?
It occurs to me that what we need is a thinktank, a Center for American Progress or Economic Policy Institute like entity concerned with African American studies. We certainly have enough scholars to fill the ranks, but we don't have the infrastructure (a problem that the Left in general suffered from until the dawn of the 21st century).
Until we have stats-making entities at our disposal getting the basic facts straight will be an uphill battle because as anyone who has studied stats will tell you numbers can be made to lie rather easily since columns of digits on a page can tell you nothing about context, but of course, that's where the entirety of meaning lies.
SV,
I took that to mean absolute numbers of individuals in that set, not percentages. Perhaps I misread, but that was my takeaway from Matt's comment and, if I'm correct, jives with raw demographic data for the country as a whole.
And the PDF is available online for free!
Scott,
That was my takeaway as well; i don't doubt that there are more 'poor white people' than black people as a whole in America. What I didn't see was the relevance of this statement. how does this fact result in an increase in the homicide offending rate disparity between blacks and whites when controlling for income? to make that adjustment, you'd simply use the relative proportions of poor among blacks and whites respectively, like 15% of blacks are poor vs. 10% of whites (for example). i imagine that a higher percentage of blacks are poor, so wouldn't adjusting for income make the black homicide rate go down? again, adjusting for income should happen simply because it lets us get a more accurate picture of what is happening among the set of people who are affected the most by this, poor young black males.
Whatever it takes. Just read the thing.
Even if the rise isn't as big as advertised, it's still unfortunate. And it may have a particular cause: Bush's gutting of Clinton's program to put an extra 100,000 beat cops on the street.
The paragraph talking about the 34% increase is NOT talking about murder rates. It's talking about real occurrences.
There were 851 occurrences in 2000 and 1141 occurrences. That indeed is a 34% increase in the real number of occurrences. Nowhere in that paragraph does it say the murder RATE has increased by 34%.
I'm not saying that's useful data (esp. given the change in population), and I'm not saying this fool of a journalist couldn't have done better with his little book report (in fact, I can't imagine how he could have done worse with several parts of it). He should have grouped the paragraphs together re: murder rates, and likewise grouped together the paragraphs about real occurrences.
But the fact remains that there were indeed 34% more murders by blacks (again not blacks-per-100,000 heads, just 34% more murders by black people) committed if you look at the diference between 2007 and 2000.
Anyone who reads that article with any care at all should be less impressed by the "shocking rise in black homicide" numbers than they were with the sheer ineptitude of the journalist summarizing the study.
That's intellectually dishonest, low-tech, and I'll not even go into the plethora of reasons why that's so. Possibly a bad choice of words, I don't know.
Even while I vehemently dislike our current first-among-equals, pinning this on his shoulders with lazy logic is a hold over from the blame game of the Boomer generation and, if I'm not mistaken, will find some backlash even among our fellow commentators here.
There are a wide range of reasons for the problem at hand. No "particular" reasons and, quite frankly, the problem spiked long before GWB took office.
My girlfriend was basically saying that if the set of white people had the same income characteristics as the set of black people the two groups would have more equal per/cap murder rates. My point was that is unlikely because a group of whites with the same income characteristics as the group of all blacks actually exists, (see note 1) and we know their murder rate makes up part of the whole white murder rate. Since the white murder rate isn't higher than the black rate, we can infer that income difference of the two groups is not a key factor.
note 1:because in the US whites are a much bigger group than blacks, and although they have higher incomes on average, their is much overlap between the groups earnings. Think the poorest 15% of whites is the same size as the whole population of blacks, and is much poorer than the black average.
TNC:
I would disagree as to whether or not you are easily offended, but I take your point and certainly didn't intend offense.
I haven't read your book yet and as I said earlier, you've likely addressed these issues elsewhere (it's on the list, right before "Heads in the Sand"). However, I still object to your response to the article.
Now this is obviously your blog and you can write about whatever you want. But when a study like this is published and the issue of black violence comes to the forefront where I don't think its been for some time and you choose to focus on a discreet mathematical error (perhaps not even included in the underlying study) rather than the (unaltered) conclusion of the study, this disappoints me (mostly because I consider you the spokesman for black people).
Shouldn't we be alarmed? Embarrassed? Rethinking policy? I realize you didn't intend this, but to my, perhaps biased, ears your post sounded like: "take it easy kids, it ain't so bad."
And, as I see it, taking a single exagerrated statistic offered in an article and using it to make a point about the media's exagerration of negative statistics about blacks is changing the subject.
Controlling for income generally only gives us part of the picture. In education, Dalton Conley has done some good work showing that wealth is a much more key factor, for fairly obvious reasons. Anyone who's tried to by a house knows the difference between earning 40k a year, and having no savings or investments, and having 40k a year, sitting on a nest egg, having parental help etc.
And that's just in the most simplistic terms. There's also a difference between, say, in going to college, getting a degree and a decent job--but having to care for siblings/nephews/parents etc. who basically were banking on you making it. My sense of this--and it's only my sense--is that black middle class folks have a level of contact with the black poor that's much more intimate than the white middle class. I don't even have to reach out of my immediate family to find people who are products of public housing, or people who've been to jail.
Call me blind, but I don't expect that to be the case 50 years from now.
I would have to debate you there, TNC. While I grew up lower-middle class, my father, God's Honest Truth, was literally born in a house made primarily of felled trees...a log cabin. Deep Ozark forest area in Missouri and a lot of the folks I'm closely related to still live in that state or none too far removed.
Again, since there are more poor white people, in terms of absolute numbers, there is a greater chance for those people to have relatives in the middle-class.
We've even got a couple of jailbirds out on the outer branches of the tree. I would never suggest, though, that I have a higher chance of knowing a convict, though, because of the body of evidence describing black male incarceration rates.
Labor,
I've stayed out of this one for the most part, but your argument makes zero logical sense.
A conclusion (unaltered or not) is based on the arguments that precede it. One of those arguments is mathematical. To say that doesn't matter is, and I am going to be blunt here: idiotic.
The statistics ARE the subject, without them there is no evidence for making a conclusion in the first place.
KevDog:
You would be right if the study didn't actually show that the homicide rate has increased. But the study does show that the rate has increased, only by a lesser rate than that indicated in the NYT article. So it's not the case here that we don't have a conclusion.
"But when a study like this is published and the issue of black violence comes to the forefront where I don't think its been for some time and you choose to focus on a discreet mathematical error (perhaps not even included in the underlying study) rather than the (unaltered) conclusion of the study, this disappoints me (mostly because I consider you the spokesman for black people).
Shouldn't we be alarmed? Embarrassed? Rethinking policy?"
Your assuming that because you haven't heard about it, it isn't on the forefront. But your wrong. This magazine published an exhaustive piece on the link between Section 8 and black on black crime. It was discussed on this very blog over the course of several posts. Here's just one of those links
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/the_failure_of_section_8_the_conservative_in_me.php
Furthermore, I wrote an 8,000 word profile about Bill Cosby confronting the problems of the black poor. The numnber one issues in that profile was black on black crime and the black drop-out rate. Look, I know we aren't the New Yorker or a newspaper like the Times, but I think we qualify as high profile. Your arguing that people should be embarrassed and alarmed. To which I'd say to you, welcome to the party. Some of us have been embarrassed and alarmed about this since the first day of middle school.
"I realize you didn't intend this, but to my, perhaps biased, ears your post sounded like: "take it easy kids, it ain't so bad.""
Right, that's what you heard--but that isn't what I actually wrote. Nor is it remotely close to what I've said in the past. For instance, taken from the link above:
"We have to change our approach to nonviolent drug offenses. Jail sentences for marijuana have got to go, and maybe even for crack-cocaine. But here's the catch--we have to bring the hammer down on violent crime. There is an utterly depressing story about a kid who's basically doing the right thing and is set upon by some gang members because he won't join there outfit. Perhaps because of my own story, I empathized deeply with that kid. We have to learn that there is a difference between a guy selling a crack on the corner, and a guy who's harassing innocent people because they won't help him sell crack on the corner. "
Scott,
Yeah. I didn't mean in absolute terms. But, I'd argue on average, there is more contact between the two groups.
Matt: "My point was that is unlikely because a group of whites with the same income characteristics as the group of all blacks actually exists, (see note 1) and we know their murder rate makes up part of the whole white murder rate. Since the white murder rate isn't higher than the black rate, we can infer that income difference of the two groups is not a key factor."
Math fail.
The murder rate has a numerator (# of murders by blacks/whites) and denominator (# of blacks/whites). I.e., rate = (# of murders) / (# of people).
Your argument suggests the numerator should be larger for whites than blacks. It also suggests the denominator should be larger. No conclusion can be drawn.
The proper comparison to make is (# of murders by poor blacks/whites) / (# of poor blacks/whites).
TNC:
I don't think the Atlantic qualifies as high profile outside of a very small, highly informed segment of the population. The Atlantic is my favorite publication and I wish more people would read it, but I would wager that I only know a handful of people that are familiar with the magazine, and these would be lawyers almost exclusively, along with some friends I've referred to you guys.
As to us arguing over what I heard versus what you wrote, I think my interpretation is valid. Both the sarcastic title ("The Shocking Rise in Black Homicide") and content of your post would indicate that you meant to express that the study was essentially hype since the article overstates the increase in homicide rate. Again, I find this glibness odd, and it truly surprised me. I acknowledge that you have addressed the issue elsewhere as you've graciously pointed me to previous articles, but I stand by my interpretation.
Scott: "That's intellectually dishonest, low-tech, and I'll not even go into the plethora of reasons why that's so."
One or two reasons might be helpful. Zero doesn't cut it.
"quite frankly, the problem spiked long before GWB took office."
The subject, Scott, is the increase in juvenile murders among blacks between 2000 and 2007. There's no possible way that problem could have "spiked long before GWB took office."
But thousands fewer cops on the beat in our cities over the past several years just might have something to do with it, no?
ninja,
I don't get what you are saying, you need to think more carefully about the problem.
I am in fact making the exact comparison you claim is the correct one.
Assumptions:
1. There are at least 6 times as many whites as blacks.
2. Even though blacks are poorer on average there are more poor white people then there are black people at all.
3. The white murder rate includes all those poor white people.
4. The white murder rate is lower than the black murder rate.
Thus:
Thus the poor white murder rate must be lower than the black murder rate rich or poor, either or both.
Shanilink,
Are you questioning whether African American women really have higher HIV rates than other women? Or just pointing out that you don't know anyone who injects drugs or whose sexual partner is an ex-con? The data showing that African American women have disproportionately high rates of HIV are pretty clear, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a good source for data on HIV in the US; revised HIV incidence estimates (estimated number of new infections each year) came out this summer. Of course, everyone's personal risk for HIV depends on their own behavior and the behavior of their partner(s), rather than on their race or ethnicity.
Besides incarceration and injecting drug use, one other major risk factor for African American women is having a male partner who is on the "down low".
It has been more than a decade since I worked in HIV domestically (I work internationally now, mostly in Africa). One thing that has emerged as a major risk factor in Southern Africa is the frequency of Multiple Concurrent Partnerships (people who have more than one partner at a time). When this is a cultural norm, a complex sexual network develops that puts everyone in the network at risk, even those people in the network who have only one partner but who are connected to the rest of the sexual network via their partner. One reason for this is that HIV is most easily transmitted during acute infection (the period in which someone is newly infected and has a very high viral load).
One other reason to explain the higher HIV rates in the Black (and Latino) communities in the US is that male circumcision is less common in these communities than among white Americans, and circumcision reduces the likelihood of female to male HIV transmission by approximately 60%.
Finally, there is some emerging genetic evidence to suggest that people of African ancestry (or more accurately, some people of African ancestry who carry a certain gene) are more susceptible to acquiring HIV.
The NYT graphs are also misleading in that they omit the relative size of the white and black populations.
This might lead a hasty reader to think that the black rate is about twice the white rate, when in fact it is about ten times the white rate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Other relative rates that never seem to get reported:
“The rate of chlamydia among African-American women was more than seven times higher than the rate among white women (1,760.9 and 237.0 per 100,000 population, respectively)”
“African-American women aged 15 to 19 years had a gonorrhea rate of 2,898.1 cases per 100,000 women. This rate was 14 times greater than the 2006 rate among white women of similar age (208.7)”
“the rate [of syphilis] among African-American women was more than 16 times higher than that among white women.”
http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/minorities.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/toc2006.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/figures/figure17.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Praise to Ta-Nehisi Coates for speaking honestly and compassionately about the black community without losing credibility within it.
Wow.
Time for me to stop having sex with black women....
/snark.
Bild,
To be fair, there was a lot of buzz in March of this year about a study showing that a quarter of girls aged 15 to 19 (and about half of African American girls 15 to 19) have a sexually transmitted infection. The rates are quite a bit higher when you just include girls who have had sex.
Parents of girls--get them the HPV vaccine!!!!
"Did the population of white youths stay flat?"
I don't have the stats on me, but I believe the population of white youths has stayed relatively flat. Comparatively speaking we're not getting that much immigration from *"white" countries and fertility rates for native-born citizens are largely flat. I believe this is true of native-born people across races, but that white fertility rates have slightly declined while black fertility rates stayed more stable. I think this was in a Pew Research study.
*Although what counts as a "white immigrant" has always been a tad confusing. In times past many did not see Italians or Greeks as white. Likewise according to some/many in this world Turks, Kurds, and Iranians are white. Somewhere around 40-50% of Hispanics identify, or additionally identify, as white. Whether they are including Iranians and "White Hispanics" as "white youth" I don't know.
Matt, here is a simple numerical example showing why you are wrong.
"1. There are at least 6 times as many whites as blacks."
1000 blacks and 8000 whites.
"2. Even though blacks are poorer on average there are more poor white people then there are black people at all."
250 poor blacks (25% poverty) and 1001 poor whites (12.5% poverty).
"3. The white murder rate includes all those poor white people."
Tautologically true.
"4. The white murder rate is lower than the black murder rate."
125 murders by blacks and 750 murders by whites. All murders are committed by poor people.
Black murder rate = 125/1000 = 0.125
White murder rate = 750/8000 = 0.09375
I've now satisfied all your assumptions.
"Thus:
Thus the poor white murder rate must be lower than the black murder rate rich or poor, either or both."
Black poor murder rate = 125/250 = 0.5
White poor murder rate = 750/1001 = 0.749
FAIL.
I've provided a counterexample, your reasoning is incorrect.
The real numbers may or may not play the same game, of this I have no idea. But your reasoning is just plain wrong.
"mostly because I consider you the spokesman for black people"
Actually, this is the most embarrassing thing posted here.
Its about to be 2009. I think its about time to bury the idea that any one Black person is the spokesman for Black people.
It speaks of intellectual laziness, and it is categorically unfair to Ta-Nehisi Coates.
"Thus the poor white murder rate must be lower than the black murder rate rich or poor, either or both." matt
Whether the rest of what you say is right or wrong this part seems to be involving things you have not discussed. You did not discuss the issue of rich blacks at all.
Although admittedly I think poverty is only one factor. Rural poor are more likely to commit many other crimes, but somewhat less likely to commit murder. (Or so I seem to recall reading) I think black poverty trends a bit more urban. I don't know how "poor urban murder" by race compares, but it might be more similar.
For edification the more rural crimes I believe include alcohol crimes and meth. Probably some others I'm forgetting.
Anon_x:
I was joking about TNC being the spokesman for black people. I was attempting to add some levity to an otherwise serious post. I would say however, that he is a significant black voice in the blogosphere.
I feel as though, having just perused these comments, that I'm back in Statistics 101 and my head is about to explode with REASONING analysis.
Most studies can be disproven and therefore once there is sufficient poking and prodding, the right questions being asked and assumptions proven faulty, all the air is out the tires.
50 years ago the same BS was flung at rock 'n roll, and racism was, of course, at the core of the complaints by Older White Church-going faux patriots. They burned Elvis records and called rock the "root of all evil and juvenile delinquency in America."
The teens who listened to Elvis were labeled "hoodlums," and they warned the (white) parents of this God-fearing nation that communism and --gasp--race- mixing would soon follow. They inadvertently got the 2nd part right because rock 'n roll, like jazz, was the most desegregated element in society. White kids listened to the "race stations" (R&R) when pops was gone and they bought up all the Chuck Berry, James Brown, Little Richard LPs they could find at the record shops, who were forced to cave in to their consumer demands.
When John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than JC again these folks went nuts. He was right; more people bought Beatles music than regularly attended church. Still,these reactionary wingnuts burned the Beatles' LPs.
This rap-as-evil is nonsense. All mediums have been blamed as agents of change from art, books, (Peyton Place, Catcher in the Rye), to music lyrics, (Tipper Gore) violence or sex in movies and TV. Media is a relection of society not a root cause of its problems. Movies didn't create Rosewood, Mississippi Burning,Malcolm X; movies depicted white violence that had the stamp of societal approval.
Ninja Zombie, while I hesitate to support Matt's general thesis, I think your counterexample fails if the *absolute* number of murders committed by blacks are higher than the number of murders committed by whites. Matt sabotaged himself by using the term "murder rate" which is ambiguous at best.
The only assumption that is questionable is whether the number of poor whites does outnumber of the number of poor blacks (of course, it depends on how you want to define 'poor').
From the original article:
In 2000, 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites, 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142...
However, it would seem self-evident to me that there is going to be more than simple poverty that affects the murder rate. Given the massively different murder rates between different countries with similar economic standings, that would be a no-brainer.
@KCN
My question has to do with this statement you made, "Of course, everyone's personal risk for HIV depends on their own behavior and the behavior of their partner(s), rather than on their race or ethnicity." I'm wondering if the many stats have been filtered by other factors beyond race. I'm curious of what % of black women engage in the high risk behaviors you cited since we don't all have the same lifestyles or culture. Basically, I would like these statements to dig a little deeper. Thanks for the references, I'll see if it helps.
"Matt sabotaged himself by using the term "murder rate" which is ambiguous at best."
It isn't ambiguous, the (yearly) murder rate is (# of murders in a year) / (# of people). Words have meanings.
Now for an argument by authority: both God and Utahraptor agree with me.
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001377.html
Now for an argument by authority: both God and Utahraptor agree with me.
I have no choice but to defer to your superior sources :-).