Put differently, poor and minority neighbourhoods are reverting to historically high rates of violent crime at the same time as affluent white areas are becoming safer. The gaps are even worse now than they were in the early Nineties, long considered the nadir of America’s violent-crime problem. As criminologist Aaron Chalfin recently noted, in 1991, the least-safe communities in Chicago had rates of gun violence 13 times higher than those of the safest communities; in 2020, gun violence in the least-safe neighbourhoods was 25 times higher.

Violence inequality appears particularly pronounced when you break down the statistics by race. Homicide has long been one of the the leading causes of death for African American young men, topping unintentional injuries, suicide, and heart disease. The Violence Policy Center estimates that the ‘black homicide victimisation rate’ is six times as high as the overall ‘white homicide victimisation rate’. And yet this form of inequality is barely mentioned by the media, despite their obsession with nearly every other type of racial disparity. Why is that?

One explanation is that ordinary neighbourhood violence doesn’t fit neatly into the prevailing narrative, in which the primary problems faced by minorities are the result of systemic racism and white supremacy. Outside of the conservative media, it’s practically taboo to discuss the levels of violence that exist in parts of the United States without lengthy throat-clearing about how the real culprit is racism, capitalism or the police.