Columbia Professors Blame Racism for Increased Murder Rate of Black Women
Jose Nino
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Several Columbia University academics Bernadine Waller, Victoria Joseph, and Katherine Keyes published a post in The Lancet arguing that black women are murdered at higher rates than white women likely owing to racism.
The scholars studied murder figures from 30 states during the timeframe of 1999 to 2020 and reached the conclusion that “Black women aged 25–44 years are disproportionately murdered compared with their White counterparts.”
“Although Black women represent only 10% of the overall female population, they account for 59% of murders in the USA,” the researchers argued in The Lancet on February 8.
The professors made the case that tougher gun control measures and additional “green spaces” are several ways to stop these murders. “Enacting federal legislation that reduces gun access is a crucial step,” the academics contended. On top of that, they called for additional spending on affordable housing to tackle inequalities that racism might bring about.
Matt Lamb of The College Fix noted that “Waller is a research fellow, Joseph is an analyst, and Keyes is a professor.” The National Institutes of Health helped bankroll the report.
The scholars wrote the following:
Structural racism might provide insight as to why Black women, regardless of their ethnicity, face disproportionately high rates of homicide. Structural racism is institutionalized and offers a comprehensive societal understanding of the pernicious, mutually reinforcing systems that strengthen discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources. Specifically, educational attainment, employment, poverty, residential segregation, and home ownership are well known indicators influencing disproportionately high rates of homicide in areas where Black women largely reside. Structural racism also underscores many of the psychosocial framings for homicide inequities, including inequalities in education, income, and scarcity.
The professors also called attention to the so-called “Ferguson effect” as a contributing factor to the high murder rate of black women. “The Black community has a tenuous relationship with the criminal legal system, evidenced in highly publicized abuses ranging from over-criminalization and harsher penalties to unrestrained police misconduct that largely goes unpunished,” the professors highlighted.
This deterioration of trust has “resulted in a general refusal to engage with law enforcement during IPV victimisation even when Black women believe their lives are in imminent danger.”
The “Ferguson effect” refers to the concept that a reduction in proactive policing after the highly-publicized killing of Michael Brown Ferguson, Missouri has brought an increase in violent crime.
The fact is that the majority of black women are much more likely to be murdered by another black person.
Lamb noted that in 1999, there were 2,869 black murder victims per Federal Bureau of Investigation data. Of those black murder victim cases, 2,674 of the perpetrators were black.
A Department of Justice report that studied black murder deaths from the timeframe 1980 to 2008, discovered similar figures. In that period, “93% of black victims were killed by blacks” whereas “84% of white victims were killed by whites.”
At the end of the day, blacks are their own worst enemies. The black community will need to pause and reflect on its dilapidated state. From there, a new generation of black leaders must emerge to move forward with proactive measures that will lift blacks out of poverty and bring stability to their households.
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