Unlike the FBI, the CDC collects just homicide victimization stats and doesn't try to get homicide perpetration numbers. But also unlike the FBI, the CDC does a pretty good job at its limited task.
A young black male has just under a one in a thousand chance of being murdered every year until age 34. When you add in deaths by car wrecks and drugs, it has to affect their life insurance premiums and marriage prospects. Who'd want to marry someone who may not be around when the kids are teenagers?
I would hope all local PDs keep track of exactly where their murders occur. Someone should chart our most deadly zip codes, or single square miles, or half-miles, over the decades, but it might embarrass certain cities/reservations too much to cough up the data.
Back in the 80s, my then boss and I ran FEMA's database of livestock populations by county through a human nuclear weapons effects model at Los Alamos to estimate what would be left alive to eat after a full Soviet attack under prevailing winds. Fun times.
-- 0.4% cumulative Hispanic males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 19.6 per 100,000 Hispanic-male 15-34 rate
-- 4.3 per 100,000 all other Hispanics (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
(Whites)
0.22%: White lifetime homicide-victimization rate
-- 0.092% cumulative White males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 4.6 per 100,000 White-male 15-34 rate
-- 1.8 per 100,000 all other Whites (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
(Asians)
0.14%: Asian lifetime homicide-victimization rate
-- 0.046% cumulative Asian males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 2.3 per 100,000 Asian-male 15-34 rate
-- 1.2 per 100,000 all other Asian (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
----------
.
Comments:
.
AMERINDS: The Amerind rate is strikingly high.
.
The high Amerind rate, including outside the young-male cohorts, must come down to domestic violence and dysfunction among older Amerind men, likely alcoholics and drug-addicts. While Amerinds are likely genetically predisposed to violence at a higher rate, the numbers here are probably a proxy for well-known social dysfunction and cultural-pessimism.
In a test of genetic-determinism theory, the around-half-Amerind "Hispanic" population-pool in the USA does fall right at the midpoint between the "White" and the "Amerind" rates. The higher young-Hispanic-male rate is only slightly above the expected midpoint, and the lower Hispanic-female and older-Hispanic rates are only slightly below the expected midpoint. The Sailerian theory of "Hispanic macho culture" has a mild effect at most.
.
- - -
.
HISPANICS: The Hispanic young-male rate is circa 4.25x higher than the White young-male rate. This runs against those who love to twist data to insinuate that Hispanics, and by extension illegals, are more law-abiding than Whites.
.
In more law-abiding White regions, where the Hispanics tend to accumulate themselves to plug into the cheap-labor economy, the Hispanic Young Male homicide ratio will often be 10x+ the comparable White rate. This fact, grasped intuitively just from simple direct experience, creates major social distortions, of a kind Regime discourse is not equipped to even discuss, and so polite conversation lacks the vocabulary to do so. The social distortions are obvious enough, easily observed.
.
The dumbification and mediocritization of many areas ties to the arrival of Hispanics and others. It's not entirely tie-able to them and their arrival in and of itself. It's a systemic change, in which the good civic-core elements (which long ago learned how to avoid Blacks) see the 5x, 10x, or (in safest White areas) 15x more-dangerous aliens. The core-civic elements of Whites withdraw. Fortress-mentalities evolve. The dysfunction of Indian reservations gets re-created in thousands and thousands of local places.
.
The above is the story of the USA over the past few decades (cf. "Bowling Alone"). Things shuffle along; there is no apocalypse. But things are worse than they were x decades ago in important ways, GDP-per-capita numbers notwithstanding. This homicide-victimization data is useful as a quantification of an often-nonquantifiable phenomenon.
.
- - -
.
BLACKS: The sky-high Black homicide rate is not news to anyone. Even the 2.2% 'lifetime' implied-chance of death-by-homicide may not be shocking -- in the drug-overdose era of the past decade, directly attributable White deaths of despair are even higher, in implied 'lifetime' terms, a subject Steve Sailer has not given much attention.
But consider this: The Black homicide rate -- already so high at 2.2% 'lifetime' -- would be considerably higher still using any earlier generation's level of medical capability. The same level of violence would have meant more deaths and fewer survivals. All else held equal but medical technology and such, today's 2.2% could easily be 5% a century ago, or higher.
.
Considering these homicides do not involve formal tribal warfare, the 2.2% rate is really high, of course. As Steve Sailer wrote in a previous comment here, the most-dangerous areas will be several times the national rate. and some will approach an implied 10-15% lifetime chance of homicide for any random Black male living there, an astonishing figure.
.
The social distortions that come from this level of violence and instability are well known. No one wants to live around Blacks; if possible, non-Blacks will almost always choose a less-Black neighborhood. Those few non-Blacks who seek out Black neighborhoods are often going to be odd people, or cynical people (like the many Asians who run liquor stores and the like in all-Black areas, spreading vice and ripping off gullible, low-information shoppers).
.
If 2% of Black males are murdered before their 35th birthdays, that means several times that are actively involved in lifestyles of the worst kind. The normalization of those lifestyles obviously craters social trust.
.
But these same low-trust, institution-corroding people are also, of course, Regime clients. The Regime and the ruling ethnopolitical coalition likes Blacks very much. The Regime promotes Blacks at every level. The Regime's pro-Haitian agitation-propaganda, recently, is merely its pre-existing programming kicking in. But with these levels of violence and dysfunction, it's a little embarrassing. Or, it would be embarrassing to people who knew the concept of shame.
.
Blacks are treated by the Regime in a way that must be compared to imperial colonial-management systems and policies from the 19th-century up to the mid-20th century in places. The Regime manages Blacks as one of its major "client-state-like ethnic protectorates" (as I wrote in an essay earlier this year). "Their rambunctiousness is looked upon with motherly care, the client-populations cast as small children who have gone and accidentally broken another toy or two again, or made a playmate cry." (See: "A study of White ethnic-dispossession and ‘replacement’: Maryland’s Prince George’s County, 1970s to 1990s" https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2024/06/27/a-study-of-white-ethnic-dispossession-and-replacement-marylands-prince-georges-county-1970s-to-1990s/)
.
- - -
.
WHITES vs ASIANS: There are a lot of people out there, now, who praise Asians as superior to Whites. OR make insinuations in that direction. I would argue there is no contest, that the best human-capital possible, which builds and maintains the best "commons" or institutions, is White NW-Europeans. Except there is the big caveat that we often do not do well "in captivity."
.
Asians, meanwhile, often DO do well in captivity, as their social institutions evolved in such conditions. They can exploit niches and 'game' institutions, but creating and maintaining them is always harder.
.
The homicide-victimization rate is a small piece of the puzzle of the "Asians vs. Whites" debate (a debate which I suppose will continue for the rest of this 21st century much as it did in the 19th and 20th centuries under different iterations but with always-consistent themes). The overall lifetime-homicide rate rounds approximately to the same rate. Yes, the national Asian rate is only half the national White rate. But both are so low as to be effectively the same, especially when compared on global scale.
.
And this despite some serious problems with Whites these days. The phenomenon of a decade- or two's-worth of declining life-expectancy ("deaths of despair") is not over.
.
It's possible the inter-racial murder rates tilt higher against Asians, meaning Asians are more likely victims than perpetrators. Even so, Asians are not necessarily on some order-of-magnitude ;lower degree of proneness to crime, all else equal, than Whites. Those boosters of Asians>Whites in the debate, including the advocates of racial blending of the two, do not have a strong leg to stand on here. The difference in disorganized violence is small and statistically insignificant. The difference in damage done to the commons, to social institutions, may be considerably higher.
.
.
(Life-expectancies used in these "implied lifetime risk" calculations: Blacks, 77; Amerinds: 73; Hispanics 82.5; Whites: 78.5; Asians: 86.5.)
Great work. Not intended as any kind of refutation, but a recent story about one of those small storeowners:
In 2017 in Bakersfield, a black guy with a criminal background went into a bodega owned by a Cambodian, and demanded to be sold a can of beer for .25. The owner refused, the guy punched him in the face, and the owner shot him dead. When the D.A. refused to prosecute, blacks began massing around the store, and the Cambodian family fled to L.A.
One aspect of this is that obviously a portion of the high black victimization rate is just being in the wrong place or around the wrong people when someone else decides a derisive Instagram post demands they spray down the entire party in the hope the offender is in there somewhere.
From my experience, blacks are the most conformist group in America, in which one must not be seen to be apart from the dominant culture or ruling clique in a neighborhood (this also extends to the total lack of honor in fighting in which things should be handled one on one as opposed to everyone jumping on a single victim). Unfortunately the dominant cultural themes/behavior in American black culture all skew towards deviancy and even those for whom this is not the default setting, there is huge pressure to prove one's authenticity by being near and/or participating in sexual promiscuity or violent/dangerous activities. The results are appalling.
So while the majority of black victims probably brought on their fate thanks to their own behavior, the share that truly didn't deserve it in any way probably exceeds the total killed under any circumstances for higher functioning groups.
Steve, thanks for highlighting this each year. Have you done a per capita comparison? I.e., take the census data and FBI/CDC homicide data from 2010, and compare it to census and FBI/CDC data from 2020. Since the Ferguson Effect started in 2014ish, you should see an increase in per capita homicide data, correct? All else being equal, if the per capita homicide rate of the 2010 US population is X, even when the population increases over the decade, the 2020 US population per capita homicide rate should be near that X number from 2010, correct? If it is larger by some order of magnitude, then you could hypothesize the Ferguson and Floyd Effects, etc. have had a significant impact on homicides.
I see from the .gov census website that the 2010 population was 308,745,538, while the population in 2020 was 331,449,281, an increase of 22,703,743 (that we know of), about +7.4%..
Your table starts at 2014; I found the total homicide deaths from 2010 CDC data here (page 40):
The data table lists 16,259 homicide deaths; 16,259 / 308,745,538 = .000053 for a per capita amount.
Using the 2020 CDC count of 24,576 in the numerator and 2020 population of 331,449,281 in the denominator produces a homicides per capita of .000074.
As I stated above, all else being equal (i.e. no Ferguson Effect or Floyd Mass Psychosis, etc.), the rate of homicide per capita should remain about the same; .000053 X 331,449,281 ~ 17,455 homicides. That would be consistent with the 7.4% population increase. However, the actual per capita rate (.000074) is ~41% higher than the predicted rate. So, yeah, some other cause(s) have contributed to the spike in per capita homicide rate. If I have the time, I'd go get the data for the last 100 years (using each decennial census data and available national homicide data) to see what the greater trend is. But alas, my day job intrudes.
There seem to be some discrepencies between the FBI crime statistics and the crime victimization surveys recently. The FBI says crime is down dramatically while the crime victimization survey suggests crime is still elevated if declining slightly. In the past, these two metrics have been consistent.
Think Sailer addressed some of this here. The FBI rolled out a new system - NIBRS - which not every local law enforcement agency has switched over to or plans on switching over to. So currently federal crime statistics are "off" since 2021.
A young black male has just under a one in a thousand chance of being murdered every year until age 34. When you add in deaths by car wrecks and drugs, it has to affect their life insurance premiums and marriage prospects. Who'd want to marry someone who may not be around when the kids are teenagers?
Chance of being murdered for a black man trying to live his three score and ten in St. Louis might be over 10% lifetime.
I would hope all local PDs keep track of exactly where their murders occur. Someone should chart our most deadly zip codes, or single square miles, or half-miles, over the decades, but it might embarrass certain cities/reservations too much to cough up the data.
Back in the 80s, my then boss and I ran FEMA's database of livestock populations by county through a human nuclear weapons effects model at Los Alamos to estimate what would be left alive to eat after a full Soviet attack under prevailing winds. Fun times.
Extrapolated "lifetime chances of being murdered," based on the 2023 rates:
.
(Blacks)
2.19%: Black lifetime homicide-victimization rate
(i.e., there is a 1-in-45 chance any Black person's cause-of-death is homicide)
-- 1.97% cumulative Black males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 98.4 per 100,000 Black-male 15-34 rate
-- 16.7 per 100,000 all other Blacks (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
(American Indians)
0.99%: Amerind lifetime homicide-victimization rate
-- 0.62% cumulative Amerind males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 31.1 per 100,000 Amerindian-male 15-34 rate
-- 8 per 100,000 all other Amerinds (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
(Hispanics)
0.55%: Hispanic lifetime homicide-victimization rate
-- 0.4% cumulative Hispanic males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 19.6 per 100,000 Hispanic-male 15-34 rate
-- 4.3 per 100,000 all other Hispanics (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
(Whites)
0.22%: White lifetime homicide-victimization rate
-- 0.092% cumulative White males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 4.6 per 100,000 White-male 15-34 rate
-- 1.8 per 100,000 all other Whites (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
(Asians)
0.14%: Asian lifetime homicide-victimization rate
-- 0.046% cumulative Asian males killed before reaching their 35th birthdays
-- 2.3 per 100,000 Asian-male 15-34 rate
-- 1.2 per 100,000 all other Asian (females, males ages <15, 35+), aggregate (approx.)
.
----------
.
Comments:
.
AMERINDS: The Amerind rate is strikingly high.
.
The high Amerind rate, including outside the young-male cohorts, must come down to domestic violence and dysfunction among older Amerind men, likely alcoholics and drug-addicts. While Amerinds are likely genetically predisposed to violence at a higher rate, the numbers here are probably a proxy for well-known social dysfunction and cultural-pessimism.
In a test of genetic-determinism theory, the around-half-Amerind "Hispanic" population-pool in the USA does fall right at the midpoint between the "White" and the "Amerind" rates. The higher young-Hispanic-male rate is only slightly above the expected midpoint, and the lower Hispanic-female and older-Hispanic rates are only slightly below the expected midpoint. The Sailerian theory of "Hispanic macho culture" has a mild effect at most.
.
- - -
.
HISPANICS: The Hispanic young-male rate is circa 4.25x higher than the White young-male rate. This runs against those who love to twist data to insinuate that Hispanics, and by extension illegals, are more law-abiding than Whites.
.
In more law-abiding White regions, where the Hispanics tend to accumulate themselves to plug into the cheap-labor economy, the Hispanic Young Male homicide ratio will often be 10x+ the comparable White rate. This fact, grasped intuitively just from simple direct experience, creates major social distortions, of a kind Regime discourse is not equipped to even discuss, and so polite conversation lacks the vocabulary to do so. The social distortions are obvious enough, easily observed.
.
The dumbification and mediocritization of many areas ties to the arrival of Hispanics and others. It's not entirely tie-able to them and their arrival in and of itself. It's a systemic change, in which the good civic-core elements (which long ago learned how to avoid Blacks) see the 5x, 10x, or (in safest White areas) 15x more-dangerous aliens. The core-civic elements of Whites withdraw. Fortress-mentalities evolve. The dysfunction of Indian reservations gets re-created in thousands and thousands of local places.
.
The above is the story of the USA over the past few decades (cf. "Bowling Alone"). Things shuffle along; there is no apocalypse. But things are worse than they were x decades ago in important ways, GDP-per-capita numbers notwithstanding. This homicide-victimization data is useful as a quantification of an often-nonquantifiable phenomenon.
.
- - -
.
BLACKS: The sky-high Black homicide rate is not news to anyone. Even the 2.2% 'lifetime' implied-chance of death-by-homicide may not be shocking -- in the drug-overdose era of the past decade, directly attributable White deaths of despair are even higher, in implied 'lifetime' terms, a subject Steve Sailer has not given much attention.
But consider this: The Black homicide rate -- already so high at 2.2% 'lifetime' -- would be considerably higher still using any earlier generation's level of medical capability. The same level of violence would have meant more deaths and fewer survivals. All else held equal but medical technology and such, today's 2.2% could easily be 5% a century ago, or higher.
.
Considering these homicides do not involve formal tribal warfare, the 2.2% rate is really high, of course. As Steve Sailer wrote in a previous comment here, the most-dangerous areas will be several times the national rate. and some will approach an implied 10-15% lifetime chance of homicide for any random Black male living there, an astonishing figure.
.
The social distortions that come from this level of violence and instability are well known. No one wants to live around Blacks; if possible, non-Blacks will almost always choose a less-Black neighborhood. Those few non-Blacks who seek out Black neighborhoods are often going to be odd people, or cynical people (like the many Asians who run liquor stores and the like in all-Black areas, spreading vice and ripping off gullible, low-information shoppers).
.
If 2% of Black males are murdered before their 35th birthdays, that means several times that are actively involved in lifestyles of the worst kind. The normalization of those lifestyles obviously craters social trust.
.
But these same low-trust, institution-corroding people are also, of course, Regime clients. The Regime and the ruling ethnopolitical coalition likes Blacks very much. The Regime promotes Blacks at every level. The Regime's pro-Haitian agitation-propaganda, recently, is merely its pre-existing programming kicking in. But with these levels of violence and dysfunction, it's a little embarrassing. Or, it would be embarrassing to people who knew the concept of shame.
.
Blacks are treated by the Regime in a way that must be compared to imperial colonial-management systems and policies from the 19th-century up to the mid-20th century in places. The Regime manages Blacks as one of its major "client-state-like ethnic protectorates" (as I wrote in an essay earlier this year). "Their rambunctiousness is looked upon with motherly care, the client-populations cast as small children who have gone and accidentally broken another toy or two again, or made a playmate cry." (See: "A study of White ethnic-dispossession and ‘replacement’: Maryland’s Prince George’s County, 1970s to 1990s" https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2024/06/27/a-study-of-white-ethnic-dispossession-and-replacement-marylands-prince-georges-county-1970s-to-1990s/)
.
- - -
.
WHITES vs ASIANS: There are a lot of people out there, now, who praise Asians as superior to Whites. OR make insinuations in that direction. I would argue there is no contest, that the best human-capital possible, which builds and maintains the best "commons" or institutions, is White NW-Europeans. Except there is the big caveat that we often do not do well "in captivity."
.
Asians, meanwhile, often DO do well in captivity, as their social institutions evolved in such conditions. They can exploit niches and 'game' institutions, but creating and maintaining them is always harder.
.
The homicide-victimization rate is a small piece of the puzzle of the "Asians vs. Whites" debate (a debate which I suppose will continue for the rest of this 21st century much as it did in the 19th and 20th centuries under different iterations but with always-consistent themes). The overall lifetime-homicide rate rounds approximately to the same rate. Yes, the national Asian rate is only half the national White rate. But both are so low as to be effectively the same, especially when compared on global scale.
.
And this despite some serious problems with Whites these days. The phenomenon of a decade- or two's-worth of declining life-expectancy ("deaths of despair") is not over.
.
It's possible the inter-racial murder rates tilt higher against Asians, meaning Asians are more likely victims than perpetrators. Even so, Asians are not necessarily on some order-of-magnitude ;lower degree of proneness to crime, all else equal, than Whites. Those boosters of Asians>Whites in the debate, including the advocates of racial blending of the two, do not have a strong leg to stand on here. The difference in disorganized violence is small and statistically insignificant. The difference in damage done to the commons, to social institutions, may be considerably higher.
.
.
(Life-expectancies used in these "implied lifetime risk" calculations: Blacks, 77; Amerinds: 73; Hispanics 82.5; Whites: 78.5; Asians: 86.5.)
Great work. Not intended as any kind of refutation, but a recent story about one of those small storeowners:
In 2017 in Bakersfield, a black guy with a criminal background went into a bodega owned by a Cambodian, and demanded to be sold a can of beer for .25. The owner refused, the guy punched him in the face, and the owner shot him dead. When the D.A. refused to prosecute, blacks began massing around the store, and the Cambodian family fled to L.A.
One aspect of this is that obviously a portion of the high black victimization rate is just being in the wrong place or around the wrong people when someone else decides a derisive Instagram post demands they spray down the entire party in the hope the offender is in there somewhere.
From my experience, blacks are the most conformist group in America, in which one must not be seen to be apart from the dominant culture or ruling clique in a neighborhood (this also extends to the total lack of honor in fighting in which things should be handled one on one as opposed to everyone jumping on a single victim). Unfortunately the dominant cultural themes/behavior in American black culture all skew towards deviancy and even those for whom this is not the default setting, there is huge pressure to prove one's authenticity by being near and/or participating in sexual promiscuity or violent/dangerous activities. The results are appalling.
So while the majority of black victims probably brought on their fate thanks to their own behavior, the share that truly didn't deserve it in any way probably exceeds the total killed under any circumstances for higher functioning groups.
Their voting behavior is further evidence of the conformist nature component you adduce.
Steve, thanks for highlighting this each year. Have you done a per capita comparison? I.e., take the census data and FBI/CDC homicide data from 2010, and compare it to census and FBI/CDC data from 2020. Since the Ferguson Effect started in 2014ish, you should see an increase in per capita homicide data, correct? All else being equal, if the per capita homicide rate of the 2010 US population is X, even when the population increases over the decade, the 2020 US population per capita homicide rate should be near that X number from 2010, correct? If it is larger by some order of magnitude, then you could hypothesize the Ferguson and Floyd Effects, etc. have had a significant impact on homicides.
I see from the .gov census website that the 2010 population was 308,745,538, while the population in 2020 was 331,449,281, an increase of 22,703,743 (that we know of), about +7.4%..
Your table starts at 2014; I found the total homicide deaths from 2010 CDC data here (page 40):
https://stacks.cdc.gov/pdfjs/web/viewer.html?file=https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/21508/cdc_21508_DS1.pdf#tab01
The data table lists 16,259 homicide deaths; 16,259 / 308,745,538 = .000053 for a per capita amount.
Using the 2020 CDC count of 24,576 in the numerator and 2020 population of 331,449,281 in the denominator produces a homicides per capita of .000074.
As I stated above, all else being equal (i.e. no Ferguson Effect or Floyd Mass Psychosis, etc.), the rate of homicide per capita should remain about the same; .000053 X 331,449,281 ~ 17,455 homicides. That would be consistent with the 7.4% population increase. However, the actual per capita rate (.000074) is ~41% higher than the predicted rate. So, yeah, some other cause(s) have contributed to the spike in per capita homicide rate. If I have the time, I'd go get the data for the last 100 years (using each decennial census data and available national homicide data) to see what the greater trend is. But alas, my day job intrudes.
Is that per 100k total population or per 100K of people who fit each category?
Per category. If it were per total population, the 15-34 male subgroup death rate could not be larger than all ages/sexes.
Hi Steve,
There seem to be some discrepencies between the FBI crime statistics and the crime victimization surveys recently. The FBI says crime is down dramatically while the crime victimization survey suggests crime is still elevated if declining slightly. In the past, these two metrics have been consistent.
Any idea why this is?
https://www.stevesailer.net/p/fbi-homicides-up-over-40-since-ferguson
Think Sailer addressed some of this here. The FBI rolled out a new system - NIBRS - which not every local law enforcement agency has switched over to or plans on switching over to. So currently federal crime statistics are "off" since 2021.
How convenient!
How cynical of me--it probably took the FBI ten years to prepare the new system--back to the early, peaceful BO years.
WSJ has an article saying the same thing.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/contrary-to-media-myth-u-s-urban-crime-rates-are-up-violence-cities-9ce714f6
Archived copy:
https://archive.ph/WYmpI