Aporia: "What explains the black–white homicide gap?"

The IQ gap can't be the only explanation.

In Aporia magazine, Noah Carl asks:

What explains the black–white homicide gap?

The common theories are incomplete at best.

Sep 13, 2025

Written by Noah Carl.

… When it comes to murder, their age-adjusted victimisation rate is about eight times that for white people. (Because homicides are overwhelmingly intra-racial, victimisation rates are a good proxy for offending rates.2) And this disparity has been remarkably consistent over time: as far back as the 1920s, the black homicide rate was at least seven times higher. What explains it?

I should look up what the white Southern homicide rate was before WWII. The black-white ratio is smaller in the south today than elsewhere.

At this point, some readers are probably thinking, “I know what you’re going to say: IQ is the real explanation”. Actually, no. What’s interesting about the black–white homicide gap is that IQ cannot explain most of it. Yes, people with lower IQs are more likely to engage in violence, and black Americans have a lower average IQ. But they commit homicide at much higher rates than you’d expect from their average IQ.5

The chart below plots the relationship between average IQ and age-adjusted homicide rate across the five major “racial” groups in the US.6 The blue line shows the relationship among the four groups other than blacks. It predicts that blacks should have a homicide rate of around 8 per 100,000. Their actual rate is over 20 per 100,000. According to this (admittedly crude) analysis, IQ can only explain about 30% the black–white homicide gap.

The black murder rate is ridiculously high.

Carl offers three theories but doesn’t find any of them definitive:

Paywall here.