The paper included a decade’s worth of data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention among Black women ages 25 to 44 across 30 states.

The paper included a decade’s worth of data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention among Black women ages 25 to 44 across 30 states.

In the U.S., Black adult women are six times more likely to be killed than their white counterparts, troubling new data reveals.

A paper published Thursday in The Lancet medical journal analyzed homicide rates of Black women ages 25 to 44 across 30 states. The data was collected between 1999 and 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System.

Homicides were classified in this study as death by shooting, piercing, cutting and other forms of violence. Racial disparities varied among states; in Wisconsin, for example, Black women were 20 times more likely to be killed than white women. Black women living in Midwestern and Northeastern states were also more likely to be killed by a firearm, the paper found.

The study was designed to provide more comprehensive data about homicide rates among Black women and fill in the gaps in the existing literature, said Bernadine Waller, the paper’s lead author and a postdoctoral psychiatry research fellow at the Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center.

  • agent_flounder@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    I don’t think it is necessarily “selecting”. I’m not exactly sure what it is. But what I found in the article that at least starts to get at your questions is:

    Approximately 45% of Black women experienced stalking, physical and sexual violence in their lifetimes, and an estimated 51% of Black female adult homicides were related to intimate partner violence, according to The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Intimate partner violence was also a key contributor of homicide in Black women, Waller’s paper notes.

    …Karma Cottman, chief executive officer for Ujima Inc., a resource center focused on ending domestic, sexual and violence within Black communities. Cottman said the statistics are a direct result of economic instability and a large access to firearms.

    It goes on to talk about the relationship stresses of economic instability.

    Also

    Many Black women also have a fear of calling law enforcement, Cottman added, which puts them “at greater risk for experiencing violence” since they do not ask for police intervention until a situation turns deadly.

    I’m just passing along relevant bits of the article. I think the above quote would need more study as it strikes me as complex factors interacting. How many black women are killed by the police? I have no idea. How many die as a secondary result of police encounters? How does that compare to not getting police intervention sooner?

    A 2020 study published in the National Library of Medicine found that Black and Latina women who experienced intimate partner or sexual violence were two to three times more likely to experience abuse or a neglectful response from law enforcement when reporting the incident.

    Finally, what to do?

    Waller is calling for more gun legislation and said more work needs to be done to dismantle inequities that directly impact Black women.