Why is the black murder rate so high in the middle of the country?

From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:

Of course, the murder rate correlates closely with the black share of the population, but in this century the black homicide rate is particularly high in the middle of the country, whether south, border, or north, such as the cities of New Orleans, St. Louis, and Milwaukee: in other words, the vast Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds.

In contrast, black murder rates in recent years have been lower in some places in the east, such as Boston, New York, and Charlotte, and some fast-growing Sunbelt states, such as Texas and Florida.

My initial explanation for this has been that the now-decaying industrial Rust Belt was located on water routes so barges could bring heavy raw materials like coal and iron.

… But I now think that the middle of the country’s current troubles with homicides may have deeper roots than technological and policy changes that have left industrial cities washed up.

Looking at this map, it appears that in 1860 there were far fewer free blacks in the cotton-growing slave states that had opened up in the 19th century than in the older states, slave or free.

My guess would be that free blacks tended to accumulate in a place generation by generation, due to masters freeing their children, manumissions by humanitarians, and self-buyouts.

But the south-central Cotton Belt was populated by a large-scale migration from the southeast as the Indians were pushed out in the 19th century. This migration from the Eastern Seaboard west appears to have served as a selection event, with free blacks and blacks with the most sophisticated urban talents being left behind.

The authors argue that there wasn’t selection of slaves who were forced to migrate by their masters’ moving west to plant cotton. But, in truth, there was clear selection on the black population as a whole, with very few free blacks and other members of the Talented Tenth moving into the Cotton Belt.

Read the whole thing there.