A young black man being shot to death by another black man who is an acquaintance continues to be the most typical homicide in the U.S., the new FBI national crime compilation shows, says the New York Times. Nearly as many black people as white were homicide victims in 2008, even though 80 percent of Americans are white, compared with 13 percent who are black. A black man was roughly six times as likely to be a homicide victim as a white man.
Of more than 16,000 people arrested last year for homicide, 5,943 were black and 5,334 white, with several thousand other suspects classified as belonging to other races or as race unknown. For both whites and blacks, men ages 17 to 30 were the most “typical” victims and killers. Men were several times more likely than women to be the victims and the killers. Some of the 17,000 law enforcement agencies did not provide complete totals for the year. While 14,180 homicides were documented, the FBI estimated the actual number at just over 16,700.