The number of black people who killed whites and the number of whites who killed blacks climbed to levels not seen since 2008, accounting last year for their largest percentages of U.S. homicides of black and white victims since at least the start of the century, according to the crime data.
The statistics show that the 500 killings of white people attributed to blacks last year were the most since black perpetrators were determined to be responsible for the homicides of 504 white people nationwide in 2008. Last year's total was up 12 percent from the 446 recorded in 2014 and 22 percent from the 409 seen in 2013, a year that saw the lowest total this century and one that capped seven years of general declines in black-on-white homicides. Prior to that, 2006 saw the most black-on-white killings since 2001, with 573.
The 229 black lives taken by white killers last year, however, marked an even larger leap from 2014, jumping more than 22 percent from the 187 black victims killed by whites that year, which was the second-lowest total since 2001. The tally was last exceeded in 2008, when 230 blacks were slain by whites. The highest total in the last 15 years came in 2007, when 245 black people were killed by whites.
Overall, killings of blacks by whites and whites by blacks accounted for about 12 percent of the roughly 6,000 homicides last year in which police had information about the race of both victim and killer – a slight increase from around 11 percent in 2014. About 15.8 percent of white victims were killed by blacks last year, and 8.6 percent of black victims were killed by whites.
Those percentages changed only slightly from previous years: The share of black-on-white killings as a subset of killings of white people and the segment of white-on-black homicides in relation to killings overall of blacks each ticked up just 1 percentage point from 2014.
Black people have consistently accounted for close to half the country's homicide victims, making up more than 50 percent of the broader pool of those killed overall every year since 2010. The number of black victims increased 15 percent in 2015 over 2014.
Of the 13,455 cases from last year in which the FBI listed a victim's racial information, 7,039 victims – or 52.3 percent – were black. That compares with 5,854 cases – or 43.5 percent – in which the victim was white, an increase of about 8 percent from last year.
It's a disparity that becomes more pronounced in the context of population, as 2015 Census estimates suggest that whites account for 77.1 percent of the overall U.S. population of roughly 321 million, while blacks comprise 13.3 percent.
