The paper included a decade’s worth of data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention among Black women ages 25 to 44 across 30 states.

The paper included a decade’s worth of data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention among Black women ages 25 to 44 across 30 states.

In the U.S., Black adult women are six times more likely to be killed than their white counterparts, troubling new data reveals.

A paper published Thursday in The Lancet medical journal analyzed homicide rates of Black women ages 25 to 44 across 30 states. The data was collected between 1999 and 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System.

Homicides were classified in this study as death by shooting, piercing, cutting and other forms of violence. Racial disparities varied among states; in Wisconsin, for example, Black women were 20 times more likely to be killed than white women. Black women living in Midwestern and Northeastern states were also more likely to be killed by a firearm, the paper found.

The study was designed to provide more comprehensive data about homicide rates among Black women and fill in the gaps in the existing literature, said Bernadine Waller, the paper’s lead author and a postdoctoral psychiatry research fellow at the Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center.

  • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    404·
    10 months ago

    Yep. When you normalize for poverty and population density, the crime rates are basically equal. The story isn’t about a race, the story is poor people are more likely to be murdered because they can’t choose to leave high crime rate areas.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
      392·
      10 months ago

      Well, it’s also about the fact that one race is a lot more likely to be poor than another. Intersectionality and all that.

      • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
        85·
        10 months ago

        Ignoring that cultural reasons may or may not be part of the picture doesn’t help any one solve the problem either

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Given this (from the grandparent of your comment)…

          When you normalize for poverty and population density, the crime rates are basically equal.

          …“cultural reasons” seem unlikely.

          • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
            11·
            10 months ago

            The idea of crime rates for every crime being even across all cultures is ridiculous if you take second to think about it

    • CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml
      7·
      10 months ago

      Well it is somewhat about race as that means more poor people are black and more non-poor people are not black. But yeah it’s stupid to make each and every observation of how black people are more affected by X when that X thing is already linked to poverty, instead of focusing on the core issue

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      When you normalize for poverty and population density, the crime rates are basically equal.

      I don’t disbelieve you, but could you cite a source?

      • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        This paper found that the two largest driving factors were single parent households and lack of a high school education. While they did not find that economic statis was the largest direct factor, it is important to note that things like education (one of the driving factors) increase as poverty declines:

        Much of the racial/ethnic homicide differentials in neighborhoods with high concentrations of African-Americans and Hispanics were explained by two of our four measures of social disadvantage, the percent female head of household and the percent persons with less than a high school education

        This older paper points the finger at income inequality:

        income inequality is the only independent variable with any appreciable explanatory power

        This much more recent article also points the finger at inequality:

        Inequality predicts homicide rates “better than any other variable”

      • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        10 months ago

        Could you quote the part you are referring to, where they normalize for poverty and population density?

        • HandBreadedTools@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          The first page is pretty much all you need for the context of the conversation. Basically, according to the paper, Black people in the US are significantly more likely to be exonerated of any crime, but especially murder. This inversely means they’re significantly more likely to be found guilty of a crime they did not commit.

          The reasoning, I assume, for the person to link you that article is because of your statement about crime rates. I believe the other commenter is trying to say that crime rates are not actually equal once you normalize for poverty because of the high rate of false convictions.

          Tbh, I’m not really sure what else to say about that. I just wanted to comment my thoughts on your question since I saw how rude the person you commented to was.

          • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            It’s an interesting concept, and it could certainly due with some studying. My main thought is that if a cohort (poor people) are more likely to commit crimes, it stands to reason they are more likely to be incorrectly convicted of crimes as well. If there are 7x as many crimes in a population, 7x as many incorrect convictions would be a reasonable baseline.

            So, my followup question then, if when normalized for poverty or crime rate, is there still a difference in the data? I unfortunately didn’t see any discussion of such in the paper, which left me wanting.