THREAD

Correlating murder rate in 20 US cities using:
% Black pop
vs.
"Socio-economic" factors

% Black is by far most predictive variable. R-squared of 0.90 = 90% of variation btwn cities is explained *solely* by diff in Black pop. Poverty rate (0.48 R-squared) grossly inferior

I averaged 2018-2019 murder rates to smooth the data and nullify potential outlier years. Demographic data is all 2019.

All of this data is prior to the 2020 nationwide murder explosion from the BLM riots.

source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-6

source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219

According to FBI, in 2019 National Black murder rate was ~8x higher than White non-Hispanic rate, and ~4x higher than Hispanic rate (involves some estimation to separate hispanic from white)

The most striking example is the trio of smaller rust belt cities: Allentown-Akron-Flint

Socioeconomically, Allentown & Akron are quite similar.

Allentown is just 32.4% White non-Hispanic. But subtract ~10k Arab community (mostly Syrians), & its really closer to just 25% White

Akron OTOH is ~58% White. Yet, Akron's murder rate is 2.2x higher than Allentown's. Why?

Akron is 2.1x blacker than Allentown. Its murder rate is 2.2x higher.

Flint is even starker: median HH income is far superior to Allentown (likely from remaining auto industry jobs) & poverty rate lower.

But Flint is 3.7x blacker than Allentown. Its murder rate is 3.9x higher

Two cities were incredible outliers and not included in OP: St. Louis and Baltimore

Adding these, R-squared drops to 0.64. But this is still quite good for a single variable. Meanwhile Poverty Rate R-squared (0.48 in OP) also plummets to 0.23

What happened to StL and Baltimore?

Both of these cities' murder rates exploded in 2014 w/the Michael Brown, Eric Garner etc deaths in the original BLM wave.

Both opted to double-down, electing Soros-backed DAs. Both cities have 2020 murder rates that now make the 2018-2019 ones look conservative

Detroit took a diff approach. After Kwame Kilpatrick it elected its 1st white mayor in decades, w/more traditional law enforcement policy.

One of the iconic images to come out of the 2020 BLM riots was mostly white rioters clashing w/mostly black Detroit police

Besides the Allentown-Akron-Flint trio, another striking example presents itself: Washington DC vs Philadelphia

These Mid-Atlantic cities are incredibly similar in racial breakdown. But DC is far wealthier, w/a lower poverty rate.

This is NOT just b/c of DC's wealthy elites...

Philly's 2019 City budget: $4.9 billion. DC's budget: $15.5 billion. Yet Philly has >2x more ppl than DC!

Philly budget: $3,093 per capita. DC: $21,960 per cap. 7x higher!

*25%* of DC pop works in gov't (District & Fed), highest % nationwide. Only 2.7% of Philly works for City

This huge bureaucracy (DC + Fed Gov) creates immense opportunities, where blacks are well represented thru quotas. A substantial chunk of DC's black pop is lifted into the middle class-- including make-work & even no-show paper jobs etc.

It shows up in the economic indicators...

But the murder rates, incredibly, are nearly equal between the two cities.

DC is 10% blacker than Philly, and its murder rate is 3.5% higher.

All of that money floating around DC, yet that variable is the only one that seems to matter!