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Lesson 1: Introduction to Race and Crime
Racial Disparities in Crime and Victimization
Before discussing the remaining contents of the lesson, I want each of you to do the following exercise. There are eight index offenses, which each of you should know by this stage of your academic career! Nonetheless, as a reminder, they are:
- homicide
- forcible rape
- aggravated assault
- robbery
- burglary
- auto-theft
- larceny-theft
- arson
Also, as recently noted, there are several major American racial and ethnic groups: Whites, Latinos, Blacks, Asian American and Native Americans. Since 2013, the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) has included Latinos in their statistics. Prior to that time Latinos were subsumed under either the White or Black category. It has been noted that during this period, Latinos were mostly categorized as White. In the current UCR reports, the statistics are still categorized by race including the following categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. Currently, the UCR provides figures that separate the arrest statistics by ethnicity using two categories: Hispanic and Latino or Not Hispanic or Latino. For this exercise, we are going to leave out the Hispanic/Latino and not Hispanic/Latino statistics. Your task is to complete the Race Matrix exercise below.
After you submit, read the text on the next page to give you more insight about your answers.
Race Matrix Instructions:
To complete the exercise, you need to record what percentage of index arrests YOU BELIEVE is attributable to each of the groups below (PLEASE DO NOT USE OUTSIDE SOURCES).
For example, Whites comprise what percentage of homicide arrests? How about Blacks? The percentages must total 100%. In other words, Whites can’t commit eighty percent of the homicides if you list blacks committing sixty percent.)
As you look at the actual percentages from this exercise, how close were your estimates? Also, how did you come to your conclusions on the percentages? If you’re like the hundreds of students who have taken my race and crime course over the past decade, the answer is typically the media, family, or conventional wisdom. In most instances, these will lead you down the wrong path. It might surprise some of you that Whites have committed most of the crime since the founding of America. Well, if you think about it, this fact makes sense since, except upon their arrival, when Native Americans comprised the largest population in North America, Whites have had the largest share of the US population.
As you can imagine, given the disparities across the various crime categories, the reason why people study race and crime is apparent. These disparities persist as you examine the crime victimization statistics presented in Chapter 2 of Race and Crime.