The 13/50 Myth About Black Americans and Crime
Black American history and my choosing pro-blackness as a raison d'etre has guided me across many white supremacist dog whistles. The most interesting one to me right now: the 13/50 myth. What is 13 50? No, it's not about a 13:50 Bible verse. It isn't about the perfect width and length for something. It isn't a reference to the US flag's 13 stripes and the 50 stars .
What is the 13/50 Myth?
The 13/50 myth claims that Black Americans make up 13% of the US population, yet are responsible for 50% of violent crimes - "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault" - in the country. Instead of "13/50," cone heads will sometimes state "13/90" or "13/52," according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Regardless of percentage anti-Black racists claim, one can debunk the 13/50 myth in seconds just by reading the chart (latest one being from 2019), specifically where it reads "Total arrests," on the FBI website.
Is There Truth to the 13/50 Statistic?
Sure. The 2020 Census reports that 12.4% of the US population was "Black or African American alone" and 14.2% was "Black or African American alone or in combination."
However, a Pew Research article from 2021 about the growing diversity of Black America reminds us that a "growing share are foreign born."
"The foreign-born Black population has nearly doubled since 2000, rising from 7% then to 10% in 2019. In numbers, 2.4 million Black people were born in another country in 2000, and by 2019, that had risen to 4.6 million." - Christine Tamir
Put plainly, Black Africans and Caribbeans are slowly displacing Black American descendants of slavery (ADOS). Yvette Carnell was the first person I recall hearing this from.
But what about the "arrests" part?! Short vocabulary lesson, courtesy of Conyers & Nix:
- Arrest: "when an individual has been detained by police for suspicion of committing a criminal act. Arrests are usually the first step in a criminal case, but an arrest is not required for the government to charge you with a crime."
- Charge (or indictment): "an accusation that someone committed a crime that must be proven in court. A charge is not indicative of guilt; you are innocent until proven guilty and the government must prove each and every element of the charge."
- Conviction: "when the person was found guilty in court. A person may be found guilty by a judge, a jury, or by pleading guilty."
In summary, being arrested does not equate to being proven guilty and punished.
What Does the 13/50 Statistic Ignore?
The FBI crime report states nothing about how or why Black people are only 13% of the US population but 50% of violent crime arrests. There is no deeper analysis on the data collected bringing the data into perspective. I believe that is on purpose. Of course, there are many online discussions exploring what led to this conclusion.
Blacks Are Exonerated Most
Remember, being arrested does not equal found guilty or convicted. The table in question states nothing about arrests that ended in the detained individual being released without penalty, better known as exoneration. Innocence Project defines exoneration as:
"...when a person who has been convicted of a crime is officially cleared based on new evidence of innocence [such as] a pardon based on actual innocence, an acquittal at retrial, a conviction being vacated and indictment dismissed."
The National Registry of Exonerations "collects, analyzes and disseminates information about all known exonerations of innocent criminal defendants in the United States, from 1989 to the present" and "study false convictions." Below are some notable remarks from their Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States (2017) report:
"African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in 'group exonerations.'"
"African-American prisoners who are convicted of murder are about 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers. Part of that disparity is tied to the race of the victim. African Americans imprisoned for murder are more likely to be innocent if they were convicted of killing white victims. Only about 15% of murders by African Americans have white victims, but 31% of innocent African-American murder exonerees were convicted of killing white people."
"Judging from exonerations, a black prisoner serving time for sexual assault is three- and-a-half times more likely to be innocent than a white sexual assault convict. The major cause for this huge racial disparity appears to be the high danger of mistaken eyewitness identification by white victims in violent crimes with black assailants."
"Assaults on white women by African-American men are a small minority of all sexual assaults in the United States, but they constitute half of sexual assaults with eyewitness misidentifications that led to exoneration. (The unreliability of cross-racial eyewitness identification also appears to have contributed to racial disparities in false convictions for other crimes, but to a lesser extent.)"
"The main reason for this racial disproportion in convictions of innocent drug defendants is that police enforce drug laws more vigorously against African Americans than against members of the white majority, despite strong evidence that both groups use drugs at equivalent rates. African Americans are more frequently stopped, searched, arrested, and convicted—including in cases in which they are innocent. The extreme form of this practice is systematic racial profiling in drug-law enforcement."
The American culture changed a lot post-COVID. From the executive summary of Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States (2022):
"Black people are 13.6% of the American population but 53% of the 3,200 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations. Judging from exonerations, innocent Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes."
"Black people who are convicted of murder are about 80% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers."
"The convictions that led to murder exonerations with Black defendants were almost 50% more likely to include misconduct by police officers than those with white defendants."
"Innocent Black people are almost eight times more likely than white people to be falsely convicted of rape. A prisoner serving time for sexual assault is more than three times more likely to be innocent if he is Black than if he is white."
"Exonerations of misidentified rape defendants are much less common than they used to be. There have been only two from rape convictions in the last 12 years. That’s because DNA testing is now routinely used to determine the identity of rapists before trial. This technology has prevented convictions of hundreds or thousands of innocent rape suspects, mostly Black men who were accused of raping white women."
"Sixty-nine percent of drug crime exonerees are Black and 16% are white. That means that innocent Black people are 19 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent whites—a much larger disparity than we see for murder and rape—despite the fact that white and Black Americans use illegal drugs at similar rates."
Over-Policing in Black Communities
The racist dog whistle gives no mention to the fact that Black communities are under-resourced but over-policed. California is the most notable example of how much more Blacks are subject to police stops.
"Predominantly Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over-policed when it comes to surveillance and social control, and under-policed when it comes to emergency services." - Daanika Gordon
Studies confirming this get more attention for a short time every time a cop murders an innocent Black person. George Floyd is the most well-known example in 2024 but there are countless others. Such unfortunate events are oftentimes kept hush and you'll have to search for them. Some victims' last moments reach nationwide news such Sonya Massey in Springfield, Illinois. Over-surveilling will only become a greater threat with the rise of "smart cities," artificial intelligence (AI), and discriminatory facial recognition.
Black Jobs and the Black Dollar
The reductive "13/50" myth also ignores the financial health of the Black American community, or lack thereof. Three topics come to mind in regards to this:
- Employment
- Reparations
- Generational Wealth
Approximately one third of Black adults report worrying daily about being able to pay bills, debt, and having enough for retirement. Racist hiring practices only make current economic challenges more difficult, especially for Black men. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) seems to be a remix of Affirmative Action which helped white women more than anyone, especially Blacks. Joblessness of course increases homelessness and, partially due to new anti-homeless laws, more jailed citizens. More Black women are heading to college, and not for the "MRS degree," but debates about its return on investment, and student loan debt, have only grown throughout recent years.
In the video below, Yvette Carnell explains the connection between low income and what former president Donald Trump meant by "Black jobs."
Lineage-based Reparations for American descendants of slavery is a centuries-old legal fight that is currently trending more than it ever has in decades. That includes healthcare experiments such as the Henrietta Lacks case. Black Americans supporting Black-owned businesses is great for community building. However, pro-Black consumerism alone won't repair the racial wealth gap. We must be more politically active.
Black men should start by reading Dr. T. Hasan Johnson and the Onyx Report's Black Male Political Agenda.
Finally, three notable challenges that have affected the generational wealth of black families and deserve mentioning:
- Eminent domain
- Heirs' property
- The lack of accountability after scams like the Freedman's Bank collapse and "drowned town" tragedies including in Tulsa and Rosewood
IBM and Cisco have entrepreneurship-related Credly badge courses. Take them. We need more Black entrepreneurs.
I know, these all seem like excuses to those who refuse to read, analyze data, and challenge what they want to believe.
Fatherless Homes
There a lot of stats concluding that children from single mother homes are most likely to become homeless, rapists, and prison inmates. Many of these percentages come from unfamiliar sites (e.g., photius.com and FixFamilyCourts.com) citing sources from the 90s. One exception - "Father Absence and Youth Incarceration" by Cynthia C. Harper and Sara S. McLanahan in 2004 - added some interesting perspective regarding single-parent homes:
"...youths living in stepparent families faced odds of incarceration 3.2 times as high as those in mother-father households, compared with the incarceration odds of 2.0 of youths in single-parent families"
"A Tale of Two Fathers" by Pew Research Center in 2011 reports that "Black fathers are less likely to live with their children than other races in America." Not surprising to me at all because of over-policing. Some notable differences in opinion regarding fatherhood alludes to how strong feminism was, even a decade ago, well before sociopolitical commentary (red pill) content was a thing.
77% of men versus 61% of women polled agreed that children need fathers. Okay. This reminds me of the 1986 documentary "The Vanishing Black Family" where many sisters claimed their children didn't need a father because they didn't have one. Little was said about why the fathers were absent (e.g., pushed away by the mother, imprisonment). They did parade one brother who foolishly boasted having children with multiple women.
63% of fathers versus 48% of mothers said fatherhood is more difficult around 2011 than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. That's 57% total. I think stances on the societal impact of the internet was a quiet X factor there.
46% said fathers play a greater role around the 2010. 45% stated they play a lesser role. The remaining claim there was no change.
I wonder how many men who disagreed have a poor relationship with their own father or rarely consume red pill or manosphere content. I suspect the women who disagreed also have poor relationships with their dad, identify as feminist, and practice misandry (anti-male hate) or hembrism (female superiority). It is easy to villainize the father when you've not heard his side while your mother blames him for any hard times. For you folks whose only counter argument is "no all," my point isn't to say the mother is always wrong. My point is that you most likely cannot know why a absent father wasn't around unless you've heard both sides of the story. If haven't investigated both sides, how do you know who to hold accountable for what?
The researchers' reporting shape this alluded anti-father stance. They don't discuss possible reasons why the father isn't in these homes. They don't mention women getting pregnant on purpose - sperm-jacking (e.g., Drake's hot sauce condom), rape/made-to-penetrate (MTP) - for child support money. There's no talk of no-fault divorce, divorce rates, or why who initiates what percent of divorces. The study keeps men in the spotlight while women are absolved of any accountability for their actions. I've never seen a stat concluding that most single mothers conceived their offspring due to rape. That means they had a say in access to their body, condom usage, the plan B pill, abortion, whether the child is transferred to foster care, and raising the child with the father.
Anti-Black Male Misandry and Feminism
White supremacy in the US is deep-rooted in anti-Black male misandry. Black male slaves were the primary target for "buck breaking." Numerous stats above prove that Black men are imprisoned at a disproportionate rate. Feminism deserves some credit here.
The feminist movement has persisted since it derailed the Civil Rights era. Black feminism has evolved into hembrism, misandry, and solipsism (self-centered mindset). This mess is evident in females' rarely discussed high usage of proxy violence - getting other men to commit violence on her behalf - which quietly boosts black-on-black crime. Its evident in dating and destruction of families. I and many other male college graduates have shared experiences with anti-Black misandry from Black female faculty and staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
"[Black men] ain't shit!" - A lot of Black women for the past 50 years
Obviously, black men should work harder to combat these issues. But again, my point is that XX chromosomal females should not be presumed innocent and absolved of accountability.
The Need for Black Male Studies
All of the above justifies the prominence in Black Male Studies. We need more Black academics committed to studying how issues truly impact Black American men, no propaganda. That includes Black youth joining gangs for a sense of community and family, drugs, intersectionality, and major medical issues like prostate cancer and HIV/AIDS. This research helps community activists direct resources to necessary community programs to make up for the lack of local and federally-run social safety nets for Black communities. Black churches aren't doing enough.
Yes, I understand that many stat reports are BS malinformation because the data collected is discriminatory by nature - notable example being facial recognition - but ignoring the data altogether instead of scrutinizing it only leaves Blacks further ignorant to how others choose to view us. The 13/50 myth could be further analyzed regarding clearance rate. Entertain the data. Question it. And take it for whatever its worth.
You can find a lot of different perspectives on the 13/50 myth from Quora, Reddit, and lesser known sites such as Detester Magazine. Good luck on finding people truly dedicated to understanding and explaining anti-Black racism.
Tags: black-community
