If you have been in the Political debate sector on the Internet, especially around the topic of Racism and Racial Inclusivity. I am sure that you have heard the famous argument from famous Right-Winged activist Charlie Kirk that can be displayed in a syllogism below.
P1: Black People are 13 percent of the U.S population (US Census 2016).
P2: 53% of Convicted Felons are Black (FBI, 2019).
C1: Black people commit more crimes than whites.
Despite this arguments eye catching construction, there are a few key elements that are not taken into consideration when further evaluating this claim. This first issue being that we are unaware of what percentage of the Black population commits violent crimes. It would be foolish to assume that 13% of the population are convicted felons. Even the statistics do not say this. According to Table 43 of the FBI, there was 129,346 violent crimes committed in 2019 by Black people1. Also, according to Pew Research there was around 46,800,000 people that identified as Black2. When calculation the ratio between violent crime committed by Black people and the Black population, we actually see that 0.28% of the Black population makes up 53% of convicted crime.
This argument that Charlie Kirk proposes actually seems to be unintentionally racist, since the argument assumes that the whole black population makes up 53% of convicted crimes. When in reality this is not true, rather a small percentage of the black population (0.28%) makes up 53% of the convicted felons in the United States.
It is true when comparing violent Whites (0.08%) and violent Blacks (0.028%), Blacks commit more “violent crimes” per capita. This is a striking issue that famous Economist Thomas Sowell has analyzed, and his conclusion has been that many factors have caused this discrepancy. Factors such as the Welfare State, The Lack of Two Parent Households in Black Communities and Minimum Wage Laws. Which will be topics further analyzed in the future.
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