If it’s the fall of a year ending in an even number, you can be pretty sure Republicans will try to scare you with paranoia about crime — specifically, violent crime committed by dark-skinned people.
Right on schedule comes Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a former football coach, declaring at a Donald Trump rally in Nevada over the weekend that Democrats want reparations for descendants of enslaved people “because they think the people who do the crime are owed that.” To this false epiphany he added an epithet: “Bulls---!”
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Indeed it was, but the clownish Tuberville, who once claimed that the three branches of government were the “the House, the Senate and the executive,” is not the only one making such assertions. Blake Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, attributed the nation’s gun violence problem to “Black people, frankly.” (Disclosure: My wife polls for his Democratic opponent.)
The election-season crime scare has become so routine that some Republicans don’t even flinch at the racism. Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about Tuberville’s Bull Connor moment, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said that while Tuberville could “be more polite” in his phrasing, “I’m not going to say he’s being racist.”
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Across the country, Republicans and allied groups have spent tens of millions of dollars running tens of thousands of crime-related ads over the past two months — often with racist undertones or worse. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, has emphasized crime more than any other topic but the economy in its ads.
“Murder, shooting, stabbings, rapes, carjackings are skyrocketing. Bloodthirsty criminals are laying waste to Democrat-run cities,” Trump said at one typical rally last month. “Crime is rampant like never before.”
Though the MAGA crowd is not one to let facts get in the way of a good attack, let’s pause the fearmongering for a moment to consider a few relevant truths:
Violent crime is not soaring. In fact, it might be declining.
Most violent crime is committed by White people.
Violent crime is generally worse in Republican-run states.
Crime did soar in 2020 during the pandemic, which also happened to be Trump’s final year in office. But in 2021, the FBI found in its annual report on crime last week, crime was stable. In fact, overall violent crime declined slightly, by 1 percent, from 2020, largely because of a 9 percent drop in robbery. Homicides increased slightly, by 4 percent.
The numbers aren’t highly reliable because a change in data collection requirements in 2021 led fewer jurisdictions to cooperate and forced the FBI to rely more than usual on estimates. Still, the FBI findings are consistent with others. The Council on Criminal Justice found that homicides increased in the cities it studied by 5 percent in 2021, about the same as the FBI found. Also, year-to-date statistics from 90 big U.S. cities compiled by AH Datalytics show homicides are down about 5 percent this year.
Those “who do the crime,” as Tuberville put it, aren’t the color the Alabamian supposes they are. A report last year from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, using 2018 data, found that White people were offenders in 52 percent of nonfatal violent crimes overall (and 56 percent of rapes or sexual assaults) in which the victim identified the race of the offender. Black people were offenders in 29 percent of nonfatal violent crimes (22 percent of rapes or sexual assaults). Hispanics were offenders in 14 percent of nonfatal violent crimes. The proportion of Black offenders was high relative to the Black proportion of the population (likely a reflection of poverty) but not the stuff of Republican ad-makers’ crime fantasies.
If MAGA leaders are truly concerned about violent crime, they might look inward. Earlier this year, the centrist Democratic group Third Way crunched the 2020 homicide figures and found that per capita homicide rates were on average 40 percent higher in states won by Trump than by Joe Biden. Eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates have been reliably red states for the past two decades. Republican-led cities weren’t any safer than Democratic-led cities.
Among the 10 states with the highest per capita homicide rates — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee — most were in the South and relatively rural. The findings were broadly consistent with other rankings of states (and counties) by violent crime.
This isn’t the fault of Republican leaders, of course, any more than Democratic leaders are to blame for crime in blue states. The South, for reasons sociologists debate, has been more violent than the rest of the country for centuries. But those who are truly worried about violent crime should consider decamping to blue America. Living in a Republican state is much more likely to get you killed.
Right on schedule comes Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a former football coach, declaring at a Donald Trump rally in Nevada over the weekend that Democrats want reparations for descendants of enslaved people “because they think the people who do the crime are owed that.” To this false epiphany he added an epithet: “Bulls---!”
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
Indeed it was, but the clownish Tuberville, who once claimed that the three branches of government were the “the House, the Senate and the executive,” is not the only one making such assertions. Blake Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, attributed the nation’s gun violence problem to “Black people, frankly.” (Disclosure: My wife polls for his Democratic opponent.)
The election-season crime scare has become so routine that some Republicans don’t even flinch at the racism. Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about Tuberville’s Bull Connor moment, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said that while Tuberville could “be more polite” in his phrasing, “I’m not going to say he’s being racist.”
Follow Dana Milbank's opinionsFollow
Across the country, Republicans and allied groups have spent tens of millions of dollars running tens of thousands of crime-related ads over the past two months — often with racist undertones or worse. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, has emphasized crime more than any other topic but the economy in its ads.
“Murder, shooting, stabbings, rapes, carjackings are skyrocketing. Bloodthirsty criminals are laying waste to Democrat-run cities,” Trump said at one typical rally last month. “Crime is rampant like never before.”
Though the MAGA crowd is not one to let facts get in the way of a good attack, let’s pause the fearmongering for a moment to consider a few relevant truths:
Violent crime is not soaring. In fact, it might be declining.
Most violent crime is committed by White people.
Violent crime is generally worse in Republican-run states.
Crime did soar in 2020 during the pandemic, which also happened to be Trump’s final year in office. But in 2021, the FBI found in its annual report on crime last week, crime was stable. In fact, overall violent crime declined slightly, by 1 percent, from 2020, largely because of a 9 percent drop in robbery. Homicides increased slightly, by 4 percent.
The numbers aren’t highly reliable because a change in data collection requirements in 2021 led fewer jurisdictions to cooperate and forced the FBI to rely more than usual on estimates. Still, the FBI findings are consistent with others. The Council on Criminal Justice found that homicides increased in the cities it studied by 5 percent in 2021, about the same as the FBI found. Also, year-to-date statistics from 90 big U.S. cities compiled by AH Datalytics show homicides are down about 5 percent this year.
Those “who do the crime,” as Tuberville put it, aren’t the color the Alabamian supposes they are. A report last year from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, using 2018 data, found that White people were offenders in 52 percent of nonfatal violent crimes overall (and 56 percent of rapes or sexual assaults) in which the victim identified the race of the offender. Black people were offenders in 29 percent of nonfatal violent crimes (22 percent of rapes or sexual assaults). Hispanics were offenders in 14 percent of nonfatal violent crimes. The proportion of Black offenders was high relative to the Black proportion of the population (likely a reflection of poverty) but not the stuff of Republican ad-makers’ crime fantasies.
If MAGA leaders are truly concerned about violent crime, they might look inward. Earlier this year, the centrist Democratic group Third Way crunched the 2020 homicide figures and found that per capita homicide rates were on average 40 percent higher in states won by Trump than by Joe Biden. Eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates have been reliably red states for the past two decades. Republican-led cities weren’t any safer than Democratic-led cities.
Among the 10 states with the highest per capita homicide rates — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee — most were in the South and relatively rural. The findings were broadly consistent with other rankings of states (and counties) by violent crime.
This isn’t the fault of Republican leaders, of course, any more than Democratic leaders are to blame for crime in blue states. The South, for reasons sociologists debate, has been more violent than the rest of the country for centuries. But those who are truly worried about violent crime should consider decamping to blue America. Living in a Republican state is much more likely to get you killed.
