I have been trying to find what the statistics say on inter-racial rape for quite some time. It is very difficult, probably because most people know what the results will show.
Today I found an article from a University of Chicago paper from 1982 that summarized some previous studies on the amount of interracial rape, that is, black on white rape, or white on black rape. The article is called:
Gary D. LaFree, “Male Power and Female Victimization: Toward a Theory of Interracial Rape,” American Journal of Sociology 88, no. 2 (Sep., 1982): 311-328.
Each of the rows in the above table is a reference to a study measuring the amount of inter-racial rape, and the results of those studies. The Table is titled: “Table 1 Frequency of Interracial Rape By Year of Offense”, from Pg. 313 of the LaFree Article.
The figures are about like what I suspected. That is, the rates of black men raping white women were much higher than the rates of white men raping black women. One study in particular, was astounding to me. The fourth row down is a sample taken in Berkley, California, where it was found that 60.8% of all rapes were a black offender and white victim, from 1968 to 1970.
The article is also interesting because it accepts the fact that black men are raping white women at much higher rates as a given, and then presents two possible theories for why that would be. That suggests to me that, at least in 1982, the fact that black men raped white women at an unusually high level was a known fact, that nobody questioned.
Parenthetically, the two theories presented in the LaFree article are the “normative” theory, and the “conflict” theory. The “normative theory suggests that the amount of black on white rape had gone up since the time of desegregation because more white women were interacting with black men socially, creating greater opportunities for rape. The “conflict” theory suggested that black men rape white women more frequently as a form of revenge for supposed “white male power”. The article finds that the “conflict” theory is more supported by its findings.
I had to pay ten dollars for the article, which I found here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu. I consider it worth the $10.
From there, I found another article that appears to be freely available online:
“The Racial Pattering of Rape”, South, Scott J., Felson, Richard B., University of North Carolina Press, “Social Forces”, September 1990, 69(1):71-93.
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=635F7907F6F07771D7C4D815160167BC?doi=10.1.1.839.5948&rep=rep1&type=pdf
This article posits another theory for the much higher rate of black on white rape than white on black rape. It seems to say that it is due to increased opportunity of black rapists to rape white women in a less racially segregated society than in the past. The article notes that cities with higher rates of racial segregation have less black on white rape. This seems plausible to me, and suggests a definite solution for avoiding becoming the victim of a crime…but I’ll leave that for another time.
