Race-Based Crime Statistics are Useless

Imagine if a news report found 80 percent of cars that broke down within a year were blue while the remaining 20 percent were red. It might be tempting to think that blue cars are inferior or dangerous. But obviously, paint color does not have anything to do with a vehicle’s performance. So should anyone take such a report seriously?

Imagine if someone took their broken-down car to a mechanic. And after inspecting the vehicle for an hour, the mechanic said, “Yeah, most of the cars I work on are blue.” That information is worthless. But that is, effectively, how race-based crime statistics work. Statistics can help people make sense of events. However, statistics lack context, and people can only reach sound conclusions by considering appropriate data.

Psychological factors, for example, can influence behavior in the same way that engine specifications can affect car performance. Likewise, race-based crime statistics do not offer any meaningful insight into criminal behavior and often feed racial stereotypes. For these reasons, they are useless. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said that people should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Either we accept that, or we do not.