Astonishing murder rate amoung african americans.

[dude1394]

I've come to really enjoy Bill Emgrams blog. Today he takes up the recently reported murder rate among african americans. No answers but it's an absolutely stunning statistic.

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/...-americas.html

The news article notes that most of the black murder victims in 2005 were men who fell into the age range of 17 to 29, and about 4000 of the 8000 black murder victims came from this group. Using the 2000 census figures (found here), I estimate that there were 3.5 million black males falling into that age range in 2005. Thus, for this group of black males, the murder rate is an incredible 114 per 100,000. By way of comparison, there are about 1.4 million active personnel in the U.S. military, about 700 of whom are killed by hostile fire each year. That comes to a hostile death rate of 50 per 100,000 (half the rate for young black males in America). For soldiers serving in Iraq, however, the hostile-fire death rate is more like 466 per 100,000, so it is 4 times more dangerous to be a solder in a war zone than a young black male in America. Still, the situation for blacks in America seems quite dire to me based on the murder rate alone. Other statistics bear this out, as I will describe in future posts. What surprises me is the lack of attention that presidential candidates pay to this issue, as if it is a minor consideration compared to, say, Bush trampling on our civil rights (an issue that seems trivial by comparison). That's probably because it is really hard to think of a solution to the problems that plague black America, but it is really easy to bash Bush for partisan political purposes. To be fair, the Republican presidential candidates do not have this issue on their radar screens either, but I really think they should. No one has a good solution, but the problem is there, it is severe, and it would seem to require our attention.

[MavsX]

interesting.