What “violence” means on a human scale
In criminal codes, “violent crime” usually means homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. But in a civilizational sense, violence also includes state and group atrocities such as genocide, enslavement, conquest/colonial wars, politically-engineered famines, and nuclear attacks. International law defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part, establishing that violence can be systemic and state-driven, not only individual. United Nations
In USA Politically charged culture, the dangerous trope that Black Americans are most violent is one that is constantly broached by "truth tellers" with the "purest intentions" like Charlie Kirk and others who point to FBI crime statistics that highlight what they describe as a higher propensity for violence amongst Black Americans.
In a vacuum and without proper context, you could make the argument that a certain group of people have higher incidents of certain types of violent crime within a specific time period. Surely, cherry picked data can and will always be manipulated especially when used for propaganda. The reality is more complex, and points to a "you got got" realization of the power of propaganda and a vulnerable population that has not fully grasped how to combat this ugly, difficult to defend narrative.
Two things we serve to provide to the Culture here at TUEPAC is context and truth. For this argument, we've decided to take a look into two egregious errors with this narrative and often cited argument.
First, the timeframe is cherrypicked, and second the definition of violence is restricted to suit the interests of the claimants.
- Violence is much broader than "interpersonal , inter community "petty" violence" which on a global scale given historical context is the lowest form of violent crime there is.
- This argument narrows the window to strictly the post Civil Rights era, and cherrypicks violence as something that didn't exist prior to the FBI crime statistics data.
The Truth and Missing Data: The Global Violent Crime Scale (GVCS)
- Tier 1 – Individual Violent Crimes: Personal acts of direct physical harm such as homicide, assault, rape, and armed robbery, committed by individuals or small groups with limited scope and intent.
- Tier 2 – Flashpoint or Community Terror Attacks: Short-term but high-impact collective violence such as mass shootings, bombings, or terrorist events designed to instill fear or make political statements, affecting many but confined in duration.
- Tier 3 (state-level, direct, sanctioned, or tolerated): pogroms, lynchings/apartheid, military massacres. Lynchings are properly understood as terror tolerated by the state (thousands documented). Equal Justice Initiative
- Tier 4 (civilizational): genocides, enslavement, conquest/colonial wars, politically-induced famines. Examples include the transatlantic slave trade, the Congo Free State atrocities, Holodomor, Great Chinese Famine. Encyclopedia Britannica
- Tier 5 (existential): nuclear bombings/war and similar civilization-level harms. ICANW
Myth vs. facts about “Black violence” in the U.S.
Myth: “Black Americans are 13% of the population but commit over half of violent crime.”
Facts (what the best federal data actually show):
- When victims report offenders (NCVS, the gold-standard victimization survey), Black people accounted for ~29% of violent-crime offenders in 2018, not “over half.” In police-reported incidents within that year, the figure was ~35%. Bureau of Justice Statistics
- Arrest data (FBI UCR) also do not show “over half of violent crime” by Black people. In 2018–2019, Black people comprised ~27% of all arrests; Whites comprised the majority. (FBI cautions against ranking or misusing these tables.) Federal Bureau of Investigation
- People are usually victimized within their own racial group. In 2018, 70% of violent incidents involving Black victims involved Black offenders; 62% for White victims involved White offenders — underscoring neighborhood proximity patterns, not a racial propensity to violence. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Where the “over half” claim comes from:
It typically cherry-picks only homicide, a small slice of violent crime, and often only years when the Black share of identified homicide offenders was unusually high. That’s then improperly generalized to all violent crime. (FBI homicide tables treat victims and offenders separately and warn against simplistic comparisons.) Federal Bureau of Investigation
What the stereotype leaves out: higher-tier violence
Under the GVCS, the highest-tier harms (Tiers 3–5) in U.S. and global history are not and have never been attributable to Black Americans as perpetrators:
- Genocide/enslavement/colonialism: Transatlantic slave trade (10–12 million transported; millions perished), Congo Free State atrocities, Native dispossession and killings. Black people were targets/victims, not the perpetrators. Encyclopedia Britannica
- Systemic terror tolerated by the state: Racial-terror lynchings (≈6,500 documented across Reconstruction and Jim Crow) used to enforce subordination and segregation. Equal Justice Initiative
- Politically-engineered famines / mass atrocities: Holodomor; Great Chinese Famine; Khmer Rouge genocide. Bureau of Justice Statistics
- Existential violence: Nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed well over 200,000 by the end of 1945 and many more from radiation-related disease. ICANW
- Wars of aggression / deception: The 2003 Iraq War was justified by claims about WMDs later refuted by the U.S. government’s own Duelfer Report. The war killed and displaced large numbers of civilians and destabilized the region a state-level (Tier 3–4) harm in GVCS terms. CIA
Bottom line: Measured across the full spectrum of violence, Black People particularly Black Americans as a group inside the U.S. are not the perpetrators of the highest-tier, civilization-level harms. Historically they have been priority targets of Tier-3 and Tier-4 violence (enslavement, lynchings, segregationist terror), not the authors of it.
How to respond succinctly when this trope appears
- Name the cherry-pick. Black Americans from the onset of the founding of the USA only up until recently have been subject to systemic and state sanctioned Level 3-4 violence.
- Restore the full spectrum.
“Violence includes state and civilizational crimes: genocide, enslavement, colonial wars, nuclear attacks, none of which are attributable to Black Americans as perpetrators.” United Nations - Re-center responsibility and actual violence perpetrators, specifically against Black Americans, and highlight the violence and degrees of it that Black Americans have endured above all other groups within the USA.
- Add historical and global context to violence and harm to humanity.
