Greenfield should be more direct. How about pointing out that 3 percent of Americans commit 50 percent of violent crimes?
No wait. Don’t do that. That would be racist.
I have, in my analysis in the past, looked at that figure. Black males make up around 6% of the population.
And while I have read that 70% of black males in an age range have a felony conviction, not all of those are for violent crimes. (the number isn’t 50% of violent crime, it is more like 40%, but that is using the definitions of violent crime at the FBI UCR Database (which anyone can access) which specifically defines it as murder, rape, armed robbery, assault and battery, etc. (It has been a while since I looked, I can’t remember, but there is some category of assault or battery, possibly involving use of a weapon the classifies it as a felony violent assault)
But still pretty bad.
My guess is the problem is even more stark: it is 1-2% of the population accounting for nearly 40% of the violent crime, which is damning.
Imagine if you live in a small village of 100 people, and 2 people were responsible for 40% of the violence? That wouldn’t last long, at least at some points in the past.