Some white people have trouble reading American rape statistics.
White commenters will say stuff like this:
Fact – blacks rape white women 2000 (yes 2000) times more than whites rape black women.
or this:
In the United States in 2005, 37,460 white females were sexually assaulted or raped by a black man, while between zero and ten black females were sexually assaulted or raped by a white man.
They back this up with the infamous Table 40 or 42 of the US Department of Justice’s yearly “Criminal Victimization in the United States, Statistical Tables”.
Here are the latest numbers for black-and-white rapes from Table 42:
Table 42. Personal crimes of violence, 2008:
Percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, by type of crime, race of victim, and perceived race of offender
…
Rape/sexual assault (a), Race of victim:
- White only 117,640: perceived race of offender: 74.9% white, 16.4%* black
- Black only 46,580: perceived race of offender: 0.0%* white, 74.8%* black
The star means “Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases.”
So if you take 16.4% of the 117,640 white women raped in 2008 that gives you 19,286 white women raped by black men! That means that even if as many as ten white men raped black women that year, the highest number allowed by the table, blacks rape white women 1,927 (yes 1,927) times more than whites rape black women.
So our commenters seem to be pretty much right.
Well, no:
Misreading #1: The numbers are not about “rape” but “rape and sexual assault (a)”. Sexual assault means any kind of unwanted sexual touching, like groping or kissing. And the “(a)” means “Includes verbal threats of rape and threats of sexual assault”. So it is way more than just rape. Rape is probably just a small part of it.
Misreading #2: Notice that the star meaning “ten or fewer” applies not just to white-on-black “rape and sexual assault (a)” but to black-on-white cases too! So if we claim that ten or fewer black women were raped by white men then we should also say that ten or fewer white women were raped by black men!
Misreading #3: The star means “Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases”, the key word here being “sample”. They did not ask everyone in the country but a sample of 77,852 people, about one in 4,000. So there could have been as many as 40,000 black women raped by white men that year!
Misreading #4: The reason for the star is because ten or fewer sample cases are way too few to draw any firm statistical conclusions. Mere chance could throw the numbers way off.
As it turns out, of the 77,852 people surveyed, only 56 people reported “rape and sexual assault (a)”. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) only 7.5% of sexual assaults are rapes and of those only 6.7% are between whites and blacks. So out of the 56 sample cases, maybe only 4 were rape and of those probably none were interracial.
So this is a case of white people seeing what they want to see, of misreading facts to fit racist stereotypes.
See also:
- US Department of Justice: Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2008 Statistical Tables
- “The average African IQ is 70″ – another case of reading facts to fit racist stereotypes
- black rape statistics
- The black brute stereotype
- The pure white woman stereotype
- confirmation bias
- reading while white: history and news
- reading while white: this blog
Abagond 