The "excess" murder victims from 2015 through 2020 who were black -- that is, the additional black victims each year beyond the 2014 baseline -- add up to 11,005. Compare that to the number of lynchings during the heyday of Jim Crow. According to the Tuskegee Institute, the number of blacks lynched from 1882 through 1968 was 3,446.
Here are the numbers of black murder victims from 2014 through 2020:
| Year | No. of Blacks Murdered | "Excess" Victims |
| 2014 | 6,095 | -- |
| 2015 | 7,039 | 944 |
| 2016 | 7,881 | 1,786 |
| 2017 | 7,851 | 1,756 |
| 2018 | 7,407 | 1,312 |
| 2019 | 7,484 | 1,389 |
| 2020 | 9,913 | 3,818 |
The numbers come from the FBI, though the FBI report for 2020 was visible online for only a short time in 2021. Crime analyst Jeff Asher reported the 2020 figures before the FBI took the report down.
One might object that 2014 is an unfairly low baseline against which to compare the ensuing years. 2014 seems a natural starting-point for the analysis, as that was the year of Ferguson and the founding of BLM. But the homicide figures in 2014 represented an historic low, a fact that might make the "excess" death figures for the ensuing six years look artificially high by comparison. With the rise of "stop and frisk" policing, the number of homicides had been trending downward each year, with minor exceptions, from 1992 through 2014.
But even if one were to pick a more typical pre-Ferguson year, the analysis would not be much different. Take 2010, for example, the first full year of Obama's presidency, when the number of black murder victims totaled 6,470. If "excess" black murder victims from 2015 through 2020 were gauged against a baseline of 2010 instead of 2014, the number would be 8,755. That still vastly outstrips the 3,446 blacks killed by lynch mobs from 1882 through 1968.
Another objection might concern the inclusion of 2020 in the analysis. That year saw the biggest annual increase in the number of post-Ferguson murders. The 3,818 "excess" murders of blacks that year alone exceeds Tuskegee's 86-year tally for lynchings of blacks. But 2020 was also the first year of the pandemic. Many commentators argue that the big jump in the homicide numbers that year had more to do with the lockdown and the governmental shutdown of the nation's economy than with policy choices urged by BLM.
But 2020 was also the year of George Floyd. His death in police custody triggered a wave of protests and riots more widespread and violent than those seen over the four years before it. Only after Floyd's death did the push to defund police departments, an idea hitherto confined to the most radical margins of public life, become a mainstay of urban Democrats. The result was not a break with...
Read more: HERE
Might want to edit that table. I had to scroll my cursor over it with the left-click button down before it would display the numbers. I'm using Brave, so it may be a browser issue.
ReplyDeleteThose are rookie numbers. We really need to get those up.
ReplyDeleteI worked my way through college in the late 70s in Southern California. My parents showed me the door when I graduated from HS and I went to work for the phone company. I worked in bad areas, first the Mexican Slums of East LA. Later the Black Slums of South Central LA. I an white and worked on multiracial crews. I found no racism in East LA, but South Central was open warfare. In South Central an old lady I went to install an extra phone said I was the first white person she had seen in 3 years. In both areas we got extra pay for the danger we were in, but I was never attacked in East LA and I found people to be nice and even the gangs left us alone.
ReplyDeleteIn South Central all of us were attacked. My boss was shot. I almost got killed eating lunch at a Jack-n-a-Box when a gang saw another gang guy near a bus stop and did a drive-by that killed 5 and wounded several. There were areas the police would not go and we would only go certain times, after they went to sleep and before they woke up, and we went in threes. Black crime is the worse and it is bad on everyone including their own race. I still saw the damage from the Watts riots of the 60s that were never fixed.