It is probably a junk statistic, but for a different reason. It is a perfetly legitimate strategy to calculate the probabilities of being charged for different ethnic groups (as opposed to, say, looking into the ethnic distribution of the population of people being charged, as pundits often do).
Something else is troubling in this passage. First, these numbers are so small vis a vis the size of the national population, that they say virtually nothing about the respective ethnic groups. Assuming ca. 160 million white population and ca. 30 million black population, these figures represent the probablilities of 0.00146% for whites and 0.00239% for blacks. You have a greater chance of dying in a car crash than being involved in a hate crime, whether "black" or "white."
Second, I am surprised that NCVS is being cited as the source of these figures. NCVS is a population survey NOT a record of crimes reported to the police or prosecuted. In fact, the very purpose of NCVS is to correct the bias inherent in police statistics - it is supposed to measure vicimizations, whether or not reported to the police. It would be thus far more interesting to see the NCVS data on victimization rates by rate - because because number of people being charged reflect the politics of the criminal justice system more than anything else.
According to the NCVS report for 1994 (Table 42):
There were 6.8 million white victims of violent crime and 1.1 million black victims of violent crime.
Most of these people were victimized by members of their "own" race, thus
72.9% of whites were victimized by white offenders 80.4% of blacks were victimized by black offenders
However: while 16.7% of whites were victimized by black offenders only 12.3 of blacks were vicitmized by white offenders
The gap further widens when we consider completed (as opposed to threatened) acts of violence. Thus: 14.8% of white victims of completed violence wre victimized by black offenders and only 6.7% of black victims of completed violence were victimized by white offenders
By comparison, threatened violence stats are mor esimilar for both victim groups: 17.3 % of white victims threatened with violence were victimized by black offenders 15.4 of black victims of threatened with violence were vicitmized by black offenders
As far as type of crime is concerned, the gretates disparity exist in property crimes. Thus 36.7% of white robbery victims were victimized by black offenders 6.2% of black robbery victims were victimies by white offenders
for a comparison 10% of white rape victims were victimized by black offenders 10% of black rape victims were victimized by white offenders
20.4% of white aggravated assault victims were victimized by black offenders 14.9% of black aggravated assault victims were victimized by white offenders.
The following conclusions seem to be supported by these figures:
1. Whites are more likely to be victimized by blacks than the other way around. This is particularly startling given that white to black population ratio is about 5:1. This means that if whites were as likely as blacks to victimize someone of different ethnicity, black victimization rates would skyrocket.
2. In "cross-racial" crimes, black offenders thend to be more violent than white offenders as the different rates for completed and threatened violence indicate.
3. The crime category with the widest black-white disparity is robbery: white robbery victims are six times more likely to be victimized by black offenders than black victims victimized by white offenders.
So contrary to your claim
>be, though, but I suspect they may not give the politically convenient
>implication that black people are twice as violent as whites.
these figures suggest that black offenders are far more likely to violent against whites than the other way around. For that matter, black offenders are also more likely to be violent against blacks (89% black victims of completed violence were victimized by black offenders) than white offenders against whites (the corresponding figure is only 74.4%).
These are the facts - the problem is what we make out of them. The conservatives might use these figures as the fodder for their racist beliefs or racial inequality, but a growing number people see it as the evidence that the so-called "black culture" is a problem. Those who still fail to see that may start with counting popular hip-hop lyrics glorifying gangsters and compare it with the number of lyrics glorifying black scholars, activists, politicians, or professionals.
wojtek