Fox News’ Will Cain asks “how much is race a part of the problem in juvenile crime?”

WILL CAIN (HOST): First, let’s follow up on a story that we brought you yesterday, the rise in youth violence across America. We brought you these jaw-dropping stats showing juvenile offenders and crimes against other people surging over the last five years. Now, we use a lot of euphemisms in pleasant conversation and in the media. Those euphemisms often hide the truth. We refer to inner-city when talking about minorities, and juvenile crime is the problem, but the question is how much is race a part of the problem in juvenile crime? 

Well, the FBI doesn’t break down juvenile offenders by race, but it does for adults. Over the last five years, overall there were more white offenders than Black offenders in total crimes against persons, but there are more white people than Black people in America. The only stat that really matters is per capita and those numbers are much higher for Black Americans. We could advance this and go into more serious crimes, like homicides, that show more Black offenders than white offenders, again this is according to FBI data. But that is the total number, as well. Again, it doesn’t adjust for per capita, where Black Americans make up about 11% of the population. 

But the point of this conversation isn’t to malign one particular race. It’s not to place society’s ills and blames on one group versus another. But you cannot fix a problem unless you first recognize a problem. You can’t use euphemisms to paper over something that is a truth. 

So, if those are the numbers for adults, do they not correlate the same among young offenders? That’s certainly what we seem to see in some of the videos coming out of Washington D.C. or Cincinnati. And why doesn’t the FBI provide that data when it comes to juveniles? 

Let’s have the conversation now and bring in the civil rights activist and founder of the Woodson Center, Bob Woodson. Bob, it’s great to have you on the show, I always appreciate the candid conversation. Bob, I don’t think we do anyone a service by using euphemisms or dancing around subjects. The question is whether or not we have a problem of crime among Black youth? When you see what happened in Cincinnati or Washington, D.C., that seems to be the anecdotal suggestion. And it does suggest there is also data to back it up and we can’t solve that unless we first acknowledge it and have the conversation.