No doubt you’ve heard of and seen Nate Silver. He’s the genius of statistical data who correctly predicted the last two Presidential elections and was even exactly right when he projected how 49 of the 50 states would vote in 2008. The guy is simply amazing.
Now Silver is speaking out on how much more likely black Americans are to be killed by violent means than whites.
Silver, the editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight, recently told?Katie Halper, on her radio show:
?If you’re a white person your chance of being murdered every year is 2.5 out of 10,000?If you’re a black person it’s 19.4, so almost eight times higher.?
Some context for those numbers:?The murder rate for white Americans is similar to the murder rate for people living in Chile, Finland, or Israel. The murder rate for black Americans, however?is analogous to the rate found, according to Silver:
?In?developing countries that are war zones even, like Myanmar, or Rwanda, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, places that have vast disorder. To me that stat was so striking that I thought this was a case where even if you kinda zoomed out, that was a data point that helped to inform the discussion.?
During the interview, Silver also discussed the issue of police brutality in the United States, saying:
“So I’m an editor now as well as a writer so we think when a story occurs is this a quote unquote ‘random act of violence’ or is this representative of some broader trend and I think these stories about police brutality, it’s uncovering things that have been going on for a long time and that are very common experiences?Now that we do have video cameras everywhere it’s not a coincidence that all of a sudden now that we have means to record these things all of a sudden these things crop up all the time.”
Also appearing on the show with Silver was comedian Ted Alexandro, who remarked:
“You said [the murder rate for black Americans is] more in keeping with places that have ?vast disorder.? Maybe vast disorder is the right term for the experience of black folks living here in the United States. That is their reality. So, when you said those words it kind of struck me.?
Sadly, that seems to be truer than ever. And it must change.
