What Role Does Culture Play in Crime Rates?
Jason Riley is correct that from the 1940s to the 1960s, before racial preferences became predominant in the U.S., black economic progress was immense ('The Tragedy of Affirmative Action,' op-ed, May 3). In 1940 the average yearly income of black males was $4,531. In 1970 it was $16,527, a 265% jump. Black family income rose from 41% of white family income in 1940 to 61% in 1970.
But this remarkable economic improvement, which was coupled with civil-rights advances unparalleled since the Civil War, came with an anomaly. African-American crime rates, especially for violent crime, soared starting in the late 1960s, and rose even more in the decades that followed. Between 1960 and 1990, murder arrests of African Americans, who were approximately 12% of the U.S. population, accounted for 65% to 78% of all big-city homicide arrests. Arrest rates of blacks for violent crime, including but not limited to murder, were five to nine times the white rates between 1965-90.
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