"Black-on-Black" Crime: Debunking the Myth

The term “Black-on-Black Crime” is nothing but a racist narrative used to deviate from the root of the issue.

In this new era of the Black Lives Matter Movement there is so much to focus on; the police brutality that was the catalyst for it, the systemic racism that paved the way for that brutality, and the need for systemic societal change, just to name a few. However, there is a constant deviation from these issues with this question: “Well what about Black-on-Black crime?”.

The subtext behind this question is this: “Why are we protesting police brutality when Black people kill other Black people all the time? We kill each other anyway so why should anyone care when the police kill us!” This is what that question is really asking, which makes it a ridiculous question to ask.

So what about “Black-on-Black” crime? It’s not a thing. It is simply a racist narrative used to deviate from the systemic root of the issue.

First and foremost, all races commit crime, and all races commit the most crime against their own race. Homicide data collected by the FBI in 2016 revealed that most homicide cases were intra-racial. Out of the 2,870 Black victims that year, 2,570 of the offenders were also Black, and out of the 3,499 white victims that year, 2,854 of the offenders were also white (fbi.gov). White people kill other white people. Yet that is not called “white-on-white” crime. Why? Because that kind of label is only reserved for Black people to perpetuate the old-as-time stereotype that Black people are inherently violent. That is not true. Crime is crime, and all races commit it more against their own race.

Moreover, crime is a product of poverty. According to a special report done by the U.S Department of Justice, there is a direct correlation between poverty and crime. “For the period of 2008–12, persons living in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000)”. (Harrell et al., 1). Moreover, Black people have the 2nd highest poverty rate in America behind Native Americans while white people account for the lowest rate; 22% of the Black population is in poverty compared to the 9% of white people in poverty (kff.org). Therefore, logic dictates that predominately Black neighborhoods experience more crime because those neighborhoods tend to be more impoverished than others, not because Black people are naturally more violent or prone to crime.

In addition, Black people seem to account for a lot of the crime in the U.S because they are disproportionately incarcerated. “The most recent data to emerge from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency… (NCCD) indicates that just over 50% of drug cases involving white youth result in formal processing, against more than 75% of such cases involving black youth…[and] black offenders are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites” (Piquero, 2). In fact, “The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid” (Alexander, 6). Now the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that “35% of state prisoners are white [and] 38% are black”, but when looking at “a national view of the concentration of prisoners by race and ethnicity as a proportion of their representation in the state’s overall general population…[,] we see that overall Blacks are incarcerated at a rate of 1,408 per 100,000 while whites are incarcerated at a rate of 275 per 100,000. This means that blacks are incarcerated at a rate that is 5.1 times that of whites” (Nellis, 2016). The statistics show that Black people are imprisoned five times more than white people, making it undeniable that they are disproportionately targeted and arrested. There is a clear disparity, and that is perpetuated and fostered by the policing system.

It is because of these crooked systems that about 97% of people in prison today never had a trial (innocenceproject.org). This is a gargantuan problem, and it’s easiest to see the nefarious bigger picture by taking a look at a specific case, Kalief Browder's to be exact. His story is told really well in the TIME documentary on Netflix, The Kalief Browder Story. He was a Black teenager who, in 2010, was accused of stealing a backpack. He maintained his innocence in court instead of taking a plea bargain. As a result, he had to wait for a trial. However, he could not afford to post his bail so he had to await his trail on Rikers Island. He spent 3 years on Rikers, 2 of those in solitary confinement, while awaiting his trial. The courts basically punished him for having the audacity to want to go to trial. He suffered so many beatings that he tried to commit suicide multiple times. In 2015, two years after being released, he hung himself in his home. He was only 22.

Too many people are in jail right now who are just too poor to get out (post bail), and that data reveals that most of those people were (and will be) Black people because they are the 2nd poorest community in the U.S. Bryan Stevenson, in the Netflix documentary 13th, said, "The criminal justice system treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent... Wealth, not culpability, shapes the outcome”(13th). The result of this is that an American citizen’s constitutional right to a “fair and just trial” is not actualized 97% of the time because they do not have the monetary means. This is a massive issue because the statistics disclose that majority of those imprisoned became felons not because they were these evil, crime-committing people, but because they could not afford any other option.

Crime in Black communities and Black people being heavily incarcerated are certainly important issues that need to be addressed. There is no way Black people will be able to truly and thoroughly thrive if they are not. However these issues have deeper systemic roots, like poverty and (the running thread through most—if not all—problems in America) systemic racism. Thus, they need to be addressed alone and solely from this angle, not in conjunction with police brutality discussions, in order to be properly combated.

So when the Black Lives Matter Movement highlights police brutality, the systemic racism that enables that brutality, and the need for systemic societal change, there should be no talk of “Black-on-Black” crime.

Black people are not killing each other for being Black, the police are.

Black people are not more incarcerated because they are, by nature, more violent. It’s because the criminal justice system is unjust.

Do not shift the conversation to pin the blame on Black people for their current plight in society. The focus needs to only be on dismantling the systems that created this plight centuries ago and have been cultivating it ever since.

Sources Cited

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The

New Press, 2012.

“Crime in the U.S.” FBI, FBI, 2016, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls

Harrell, Erika, et al. “Household Poverty and Nonfatal Violent Victimization, 2008–2012.” Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Nov. 2014, www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail.

Nellis, Ashley. "The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons." The

Sentencing Project.14 June, 2016, http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/.

Piquero, Alex R. "Disproportionate Minority Contact." The Future of Children, vol. 18, no. 2,

Fall 2008, pp. 59-79.

“Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity.” KFF, 4 Dec. 2019, www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0.

“Report: Guilty Pleas on the Rise, Criminal Trials on the Decline.” Innocence Project, 7 Aug. 2018, www.innocenceproject.org/guilty-pleas-on-the-rise-criminal-trials-on-the-decline/.

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Time| The Kalief Browder Story