Still waiting NJNP and Autry. I love how you two avoid the posts you can't easily attack.
I've been responding to comments that are clearly wrong. If there's nuance, like there is on many of these questions that lax discusses, it takes a much longer response. and the answers are not always settled with evidence. but since you asked, let me try to respond quickly to some complex points:
LAX: -"America is hyper segregated by design"... is comical considering there have been laws on the books for decades and decades to mitigate or eliminate any implicit or explicit racism, sexism, etc. So BY DESIGN there is legally no segregation possible except by volition of person (i.e. choosing to live in the "gay" part of the city because you WANT to live there, etc.). No seller or renter can discriminate based on any of the protected classes (race/color/religion/sex/age/etc.). So even the most cursory understanding of laws in this country and the civil rights movement of the 60s would enable you to understand that anything that suggests that America is "designed" to be segregated doesn't pass the briefest sniff test.
RESPONSE: It's not comical. When discrimination became illegal other mechanisms began to be used to maintain segregation, most notably the use of restrictive zoning (altho that's been used to maintain segregation by income moreso than race). The location of highways and public housing are two other mechanisms that have been used to create physical separation by race, although most of the more blatant attempts were conducted prior to the civil rights period. and then blatant discrimination is still prevalent b/c HUD has never been given the capacity to effectively enforce fair housing requirements - but blatant discrimination is much less common now than it used to be. so the attempts to maintain segregation, by race and income, have most definitely been by design. but, it is not disputable that racial segregation has been declining for several decades, even if very slowly. economic segregation has been rising over the same time period, and it's never been illegal to disciriminate based on income.
LAX: If violent crime was race neutral, it would proportionally affect each chunk of the pie. Consider that the United States is 77.7% white and the 84% of white-on-white number... the rate only outpaces the expected "race neutral" number by 6.3% (raw) or 8.1% (relative proportional percentage). The United States, by contrast, is 13.2% black... so the 93% rate outpaces a race-neutral expected outcome by 79.8% (raw) or 604.5% (relative proportional percentage). That is... the ACTUAL rate of black-of-black crime (93%) is 604.5% higher than what you'd expect it to be if violent crime was race neutral... whereas the white-on-white crime level is relatively close to where you'd expect it to be.
RESPONSE: Black Americans are arrested for crimes at a higher rate than white Americans. That's not arguable. Whether behavior is different is more complex. Whites report similar levels of delinquent activities, higher levels of some like use of all drugs other than pot (which is roughly similar). Blacks are policed much more intensively, and are more likely to live in areas that are policed more intensively. That explains at least part of the discrepancy in crime. For violent crime, blacks are overrepresented.
Also true that black violent crime has been plummeting and has converged with whites, although not entirely. the reality of how much violent crime has dropped is truly stunning and means we're in an entirely different situation than we were 20 years ago. it's not often recognized just how much crime has dropped. Attempts to deny this (looking at Wooly) are silly.
LAX: The raw quantity of blacks in jail is IS NOT REFLECTIVE OF VIOLENT CRIME. Come on. This is absolutely common sense, which will be enumerated below. In fact, your image basically contradicts itself starting right now.
-Incarceration rates... also obviously irrelevant to a violent crime discussion for the same reasons... are you seriously not informed enough about mandatory minimums and drug sentencing guidelines that cause these statistics? Oh wait... you can't be... BECAUSE THE NEXT SECTION TALKS ABOUT THEM. These are non-violent or victimless crimes... explain how these raw statistics are remotely relevant to the discussion of "black-on-black crime" like the image purports to be about?
RESPONSE: racial discrepancies in incarceration are of course partly due to differences in criminal activity. but they're mostly explained by changes in sentencing policy and policing that took place from the 1970s through the 2000s. Blacks have always had higher rates of incarceration than whites, but they became astronomically higher when the nation took a turn toward mass incarceration in the 1970s. So: I'd say racial gaps in incarceration are mostly due to policy, partly due to crime - and again, the "crime" piece is partly due to activity, partly due to intensity of police oversight. again, complex stuff, not easy to simplify on a message board.
