The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a big increase in murder and manslaughter (aka homicide) in the U.S. By the accounting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the homicide rate went from 5.8 per 100,000 Americans in 2019 to 7.5 in 2020.
Who suffers when the homicide rate goes up like that? Black Americans, mainly.
In 2020 those identifying or identified as Black or African American made up 13.5% of the U.S. population, according to CDC estimates. They also made up 55.6% of the homicide victims, and 65.6% of the increase in homicides relative to 2019. To put it another way, the homicide rate for Black Americans rose from 22.9 per 100,000 in 2019 to 30.7 in 2020. For all other Americans, the rate went from 3.2 to 3.8.
It also doesn?t neatly slot into the debate since mid-2020 over crime and the role of police. According to the Mapping Police Violence project, police killed 249 Black Americans in 2020, which amounts to just 1.8% of the year?s 13,654 Black homicide victims. But if police presence reduces violent crime, and the evidence that it does is reasonably strong, then the lack of police poses far greater risks to Black men in their teens through early 40s than the police do.