The Intimate Homicide Fallacy

With the recent multiple stabbing death of Chiquita Tate, the Something Screwed Crew and other self proclaimed "Black Woman Empowerment Bloggers" have a new tool in their efforts to pin an exaggerated and hypocritical image on black men. They use each incident as 'evidence' of the alleged thousands of black women "slaughtered" by black men each year. Of course, we know that they have no real concern over Ms. Tate. If you go over to the What About Our Daughters blog, you will notice that they spend a small amount of time giving any semblance of grief over this young woman's death and a large amount of time doing what they do so well; bashing black men.

If we actually take a view of the national statistics concerning intimate homicide, you will notice that in 2005, 337 black women were killed by intimate partners. While 337 violent deaths is nothing to shrug your shoulders at, it is a far cry from the alleged "thousands" claimed by these dishonest women. With around 14 million black Women in America over the age of 18, the chances of a black woman being killed by an intimate is around 1 in 41,543 annually. So when they talk about how dating is such a life risking activity, they clearly have no idea of the numbers.

Also, lets look at the enormous hypocrisy of their assertions. In 2005, while 337 black women were killed by intimates, 138 black men were killed by intimates. This means that 2.4 times as many black women are killed by intimates than black men killed by intimates.

In that same year, 789 white women were killed by intimates while 183 white men were killed by intimates. Based on stats, black women were killed by intimates at a rate 2.6 times greater than white women. But black men were killed by intimates at a rate 4.5 times greater than white men. Put another way, 4.3 times more white women were killed by intimates than white men, while 2.4 times more black women were killed by intimates than black men.

So what does this have to say about the RELATIVE rates of intimate homicide for black women compared to black men? More women of all races are killed by intimates than men. In the case of black Americans, black women are significantly more deadly toward intimates compared to white women than black men are compared to white men.

ADDENDUM: It is interesting to note that from 1976 to 1989, the number of black men killed by intimates exceeded the number of black women killed by intimates each year save for three. Seemingly, no other racial or ethnic group in America, besides blacks, has ever had a single year whereas more men were killed by intimate partners than women.