How more likely for a white con to kill a white person
Executive summary
Contemporary government data and peer-reviewed research show that violent offending in the United States is overwhelmingly intraracial: white victims are much more often attacked or killed by white offenders than by people of other races, but the magnitude depends on the crime measure used (victimization surveys, homicide tables, or arrest data) [1] [2] [3]. Interpreting “how much more likely” therefore requires specifying the outcome—nonfatal violent victimization versus homicide—and accounting for measurement and classification caveats [4] [5].
1. The headline: most violence is same‑race violence
National victimization surveys and DOJ analyses consistently find that a majority of violent incidents involve victims and offenders of the same race; for example, a national victimization survey found about 77 percent of white victims were victimized by white offenders, and roughly 77 percent of black victims were victimized by black offenders [1], while Bureau of Justice Statistics reporting for 2017–21 counted more violent incidents with white victims involving white offenders than any other offender group (8,721,450 incidents) [2].
2. Translating percentages into “how more likely”
Using the 1981 victimization-survey snapshot cited by OJP, a white person’s violent assailant was white in roughly 77% of incidents versus black in about 17.1%—a white-on-white incident was therefore roughly 4.5 times as common as a black-on-white incident in that dataset [1]. For homicide specifically, the difference narrows: DOJ and FBI-derived analyses show that in recent years the share of white homicide victims killed by Black offenders (about 16% in 2017) versus the share of Black victims killed by white offenders (about 9% in 2017) are within single‑digit percentage points, not the extreme asymmetry sometimes claimed in viral posts [4]. Those figures imply that while intraracial homicide is still the norm, interracial homicide shares are nontrivial and the gap is smaller for murder than for overall violent victimization [4].
3. Arrest counts and population shares complicate the picture
FBI arrest data shows that white individuals comprise a large share of arrests for violent crime—for example, white people accounted for 59.1 percent of violent‑crime arrests in one FBI table—yet arrest totals combine many offense types and reflect policing, reporting and demographic patterns as much as underlying offending rates [3]. Researchers caution against equating arrest counts with true offending prevalence because of selection effects and local variation in enforcement [6].
4. Measurement caveats: definitions, Hispanics, and survey limits
Official categories and data sources matter: prior to 2013 the UCR did not separately categorize “Hispanic,” and many Hispanics have been classified as white in law‑enforcement records—an errand that can inflate “white” totals in official statistics [5]. The National Crime Victimization Survey excludes homicide and relies on victim recall; FBI homicide tables and arrest records capture different slices of violence, so percent shares vary by source [2] [7].
5. Structural explanations and alternative readings
Scholars emphasize that race gaps in violent crime reflect structural disadvantage, neighborhood context, and social dislocation more than innate propensities: research linking poverty, unemployment, and family structure to variation in homicide and violence shows that structural gaps predict violence gaps between groups [8]. Civil‑rights and watchdog reporting also warns that overreliance on arrest or police‑reported data can mislead, because policing practices and bias shape who gets arrested and recorded [6].
6. Bottom line: short, data‑conditioned answer
If the question is “how much more likely is a white offender to kill a white victim than someone of a different race?” the empirical answer depends on method: victimization data historically shows white victims are roughly four to five times more likely to have white than Black offenders in nonfatal violent incidents (based on the 77% vs 17.1% split) [1], while homicide data show a much smaller interracial gap—figures from recent DOJ/FBI analyses place shares within single digits (approximately 16% of white homicide victims killed by Black offenders vs 9% of Black victims killed by white offenders in one year) [4]. Any claim that whites almost never kill whites or that almost all white victims are killed by whites should be tested against these distinct measures and the documented limitations of the data [1] [4] [2].