From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:

The most scientific-sounding excuse is that blacks commit more killings because they were raised in lower-income households (which can in turn be blamed on slavery or whatever).

After all, it is true that the poor do shoot each other more than the rich do, and blacks are, indeed, less well-paid than are whites.

So, do differences in income explain all of the black-white gap in serious crime?

No.

The conclusive data was assembled by the remarkably industrious Harvard economist Raj Chetty in his 2019 paper “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective.”

Black men raised at the 98th percentile of affluent upbringing, the best-behaved black cohort, are jailed as often as white men raised at the 50th percentile of parents’ income. Similarly, the black rate at the national median of income is 7.2 percent, a little higher than the white rate at the single lowest percentile.

That suggests that there is approximately a two standard deviation difference in racial propensity to be prison-bound even when controlling for affluence when young.

In the social sciences, a one standard deviation difference, such as in IQ, is very large. Two is almost unheard of. Two standard deviations after adjusting for childhood income is off the charts.

Read the whole thing there.