Giuliani chimes in, on the killings of black men

by confuzzled dude Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:06 pm

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) offered some now-infamous analysis of the situation in Ferguson, Mo., on "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "White police officers wouldn't be" in black neighborhoods, killing black men, "if you weren’t killing each other."

This wasn't Giuliani's only point, but it was the one that spurred most online reaction. Giuliani also reiterated a version of a statistic that has been common in the wake of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown earlier this year. "I find it very disappointing," he said, "that we are not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks are killed by other blacks."

Ninety-three percent of black homicide victims are killed by other black people. That figure is from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2010. The corollary is that 84 percent of whites were killed by whites -- a lower number, but one that has fluctuated over time.

Why is this the case? Because homicides usually involve people who know each other. Between 1980 and 2008, 78.1 percent of homicides were committed by people who knew the victim, as a family member, friend, or other acquaintance. Because people's social networks (and, obviously, families) tend to reflect their ethnicity, this should not be a surprise.

Both Coates and Dyson point out that there's a distinct difference between a homicide involving two people in a community and a killing by a police officer. "Those people go to jail," Dyson said of black-on-black crime, unlike many instances in which a white police officer kills a black man. A report from ProPublica last month noted that white police officers are far more likely to kill black men than white men -- 21 times as likely, in fact.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/24/what-rudy-giuliani-gets-wrong-about-the-deaths-of-young-black-men/

by Hellsangel Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:24 pm

Sure. That aquaintance theory explains black on black gang murders in places like Chicago very well.

Giuliani chimes in, on the killings of black men

Giuliani chimes in, on the killings of black men

Re: Giuliani chimes in, on the killings of black men