There is no debating that, as in so many other areas, Americans are racially segregated when it comes to homicide. There is also no debating -- at least among people who are actually familiar with the numbers -- that homicide is especially concentrated in the black population. The FBI reports that in 2010, a year in which whites outnumbered blacks six-to-one in the population at large, there were nearly as many black-on-black homicides as white-on-white homicides: 2,459 vs. 2,777. Interracial killings paled in comparison; there were 447 black-on-white homicides and 218 white-on-black homicides.
By contrast, what to do about this problem is hotly debated. Some say aggressive "Broken Windows" policing and increased incarceration have helped to bring homicide down over the past two decades. Others, even some who concede these strategies can work up to a point, see cops and prisons as a threat to black lives rather than as a protector of them, saying the only acceptable way to reduce homicide is to address its root causes or rehabilitate criminals.
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