Which U.S. states or cities had the largest racial disparities in 2024 homicide rates per 100,000?
Executive summary
National 2024 data show that homicide victimization remained highly unequal by race, with Black Americans disproportionately affected compared with White Americans — multiple syntheses report Black homicide victimization at roughly six times the White rate and Black victims accounting for roughly half of all homicide victims in 2024 [1] [2]. City-level patterns amplify that national disparity: several midsize and large Southern and Midwestern cities with very high per‑capita homicide rates (New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis, Baltimore) are repeatedly highlighted in 2024 reporting as places where absolute racial gaps in victimization are especially large [3] [4] [5].
1. National context: the scale of the racial gap in 2024 homicide victimization
Aggregate analyses of 2024 homicide reporting conclude that racial disparities remain stark — one independent compilation states Black Americans experienced homicide victimization at a rate more than six times that of White Americans in 2024 and that Black people comprised roughly 47–52% of homicide victims despite being a much smaller share of the population [1] [2]; long‑run trend data compiled by other researchers and government series also show persistent, though evolving, ratios between Black and non‑Hispanic White homicide rates over recent decades [6].
2. Which cities concentrate the largest absolute disparities: the usual suspects
City‑level lists of high‑homicide jurisdictions single out a small set of places with extremely high per‑100,000 homicide rates — New Orleans, Memphis and St. Louis are routinely at the top of 2024 per‑capita rankings, with New Orleans and Memphis cited as having some of the nation’s highest homicide rates per 100,000 residents in visualizations and city rankings [3] [4]. Reporting that ties county or city rates to disparities notes that large metropolitan counties such as Cook (Chicago) and Los Angeles have very different profiles when adjusted for population, but the cities with the highest per‑capita homicide burdens (and therefore where racialized victimization in absolute terms tends to be largest) are concentrated in the South and Midwest [5] [7].
3. Interpreting disparities: absolute versus relative differences and data limits
Available sources stress two measurement points that matter for answering the question: absolute per‑100,000 differences in homicide rates (which make the largest total difference in lives lost within a place) and relative ratios between racial groups (which express how many times higher one group’s risk is compared with another). National summaries emphasize a high relative ratio (roughly sixfold) for Black versus White homicide victimization in 2024 [1], while city rankings emphasize absolute per‑capita homicide burdens that concentrate in a handful of cities [3] [4]. Publicly available 2024 FBI and CDC data can produce city‑by‑race rate breakdowns, but the compiled news and visualization sources provided here do not publish a comprehensive city‑by‑city table of 2024 race‑specific homicide rates, so precise rankings of “largest racial disparity” by city cannot be reproduced conclusively from these reports alone [8] [9].
4. Explanations and alternative views: structural drivers and reporting caveats
Analysts point to structural inequality, concentrated disadvantage and segregation as key drivers of racial homicide disparities — scholarship cited in overviews argues socioeconomic differences, residential segregation and differential access to resources better explain homicide differentials than inherent group traits [6]. Media and data outlets note that large cities tend to produce the largest absolute racial gaps simply because they have higher homicide counts and more concentrated disadvantaged populations [1] [3]. However, some outlets emphasize geographic politics (noting many high‑rate cities are in Republican‑run states while run by Democratic city governments) as a framing device that can distract from structural explanations [7].
5. Bottom line and limits of available reporting
Bottom line: the largest racial disparities in 2024 homicide victimization, by both absolute counts and relative risk, are centered on Black versus White victims nationwide (with national ratios cited at about six to one) and are concentrated in a short list of high‑homicide cities such as New Orleans, Memphis and St. Louis where per‑capita murder rates are highest [1] [3] [4]. The reporting assembled here does not include a single, authoritative city‑by‑race ranked table for 2024, so precise numeric rankings of racial disparity by every state or city cannot be produced from these sources alone; producing that definitive list would require combining 2024 FBI/CDC disaggregated counts with local population denominators [8] [9].