How do homicide rates compare between white and Black populations in the US per capita?
Executive summary
Available sources show large, persistent per‑capita disparities in homicide victimization: recent CDC‑based reporting places the Black homicide victimization rate around 26.6 per 100,000 versus roughly 3.9–3.3 per 100,000 for White people, i.e., about six to seven times higher [1] [2]. Multiple analyses and datasets (CDC mortality summarized by advocacy groups, FBI counts and academic studies) converge on a picture of substantial racial gaps, though methods and timeframes differ across sources [1] [3] [4].
1. Stark per‑capita gap: the numbers reporters cite
National analyses that draw on CDC mortality data calculate the Black homicide victimization rate at approximately 26.6 per 100,000 in recent years and the White rate near 3.9 per 100,000 — a roughly 6–7× disparity [1]. Other compilations report similar multiples: one statistics site summarizes a Black victim rate of 20.6 per 100,000 versus a White rate near 3.3 per 100,000, again showing roughly sixfold differences [2]. These are per‑person (per‑100,000) rates, not raw counts.
2. Different sources, different years, similar story
Multiple sources reach comparable conclusions even though they draw on different datasets and time windows. The Violence Policy Center’s 2025 summary uses CDC WISQARS mortality data for 2023 to give the 26.6 vs. 3.9 figures [1]. Academic analyses (a Global Burden of Disease study published in JAMA Network Open) map homicide by race and county for 2000–2019, documenting persistent disparities across time and place [3]. The FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics provide complementary arrest/offender and victim counts used in other summaries [4] [5].
3. Offending, victimization, and intraracial patterns
Reporting on offenders also shows large racial disparities when expressed per capita: some sources say Black offending rates for homicide are many times higher per population than White rates (for example claims of roughly 6–8× higher offending rates appear in several compilations) [2] [4] [6]. Research and commentary stress that most homicides are intraracial — Black victims are most often killed by Black offenders and White victims by White offenders — so disparities reflect higher homicide exposure within communities rather than mostly cross‑race violence [7].
4. Causes and interpretations in the reporting
Commentaries and studies attribute the disparities to structural and contextual factors rather than to a single cause. Analyses invoke poverty, concentrated disadvantage, social disinvestment, and unequal public‑health and justice resources as explanatory frameworks in explaining why Black communities experience higher homicide rates [2] [8]. The academic literature frames the issue as a public‑health and social‑policy problem, not merely a criminal‑justice statistic [3] [8].
5. Limits, caveats and measurement issues
Available sources note several limitations: timing and data completeness vary (not all agencies report every year to the same system), definitions and coverage differ between CDC mortality files, FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, and BJS publications, and some secondary aggregators use different years or adjustments — producing slightly different rate estimates [2] [5] [9]. The Global Burden of Disease study and federal reports emphasize that local variation is large: county‑level and city‑level rates can diverge dramatically from national averages [3].
6. What the competing sources disagree about
Sources generally agree that sizable disparities exist; they disagree mainly on exact magnitudes and phrasing. Advocacy groups and summaries using 2023 CDC data present the Black rate as ~26.6 per 100,000 and White rate ~3.9 per 100,000 [1]. Some aggregators report slightly different numbers (e.g., 20.6 vs. 3.3) or present offending rates rather than victimization rates, leading to claims of “6×,” “7×,” or “8×” differences depending on the metric and year used [2] [10] [6]. These discrepancies reflect methodology and year selection, not a fundamental disagreement that disparities exist.
7. What reporting leaves out or doesn’t settle
Available sources do not provide a single, definitive national ratio that is constant across years; they also do not settle precise causal weights among poverty, policing, firearm access, and other drivers — those remain subjects of academic debate [3] [8]. Sources do not uniformly report age‑adjusted rates in every summary, and age structure can change per‑capita comparisons [1] [6].
8. Bottom line for readers and policymakers
The empirical record in these sources is clear: per‑person homicide victimization is substantially higher for Black Americans than for White Americans in recent years, with common estimates in the 6–7× range depending on dataset and year [1] [2]. Policy conversations should therefore focus on the structural drivers documented in epidemiologic and criminological studies and on improving data harmonization across federal reporting systems to reduce confusion over precise magnitudes [3] [5].