statistics is race.
He's not saying, in this case, that being Black causes the higher incidence of murder that the numbers describe.
Statistics, by themselves, do not formulate cause and effect relationships. Statistics are used to count things and then organize the count, so that people can look at what people's experiences are.
In describing whatever is counted, sometimes co-relations manifest themselves. The data can sometimes show that changes in one thing that is counted, changes that can be either increase or decrease, can be accompanied by changes, increase or decrease, in something else that is counted. One type of change associated consistently with another type of change is called co-relation. Co-relation is not assumed to be a cause and effect relationship. Researchers are not saying that the changes are due to one thing causing changes in the other. They are not saying that being Black causes one to engage in violent crime and being "White" causes one to NOT engage in violent crime. Co-relation ONLY means that, because changes in one are associated with changes in the other, there MIGHT BE somekind of relationship between different sets of data and it is not assumed that that relationship is cause and effect.
To be able to hypothesize cause and effect, other, very different, kinds of research must be carried out, not just statistical co-relations and that kind of research may not actually be possible, because it may have to do with information that cannot be captured so that we can look at it, e.g. transient biochemical events.
One thing that is done about these kinds of research problems is to look for additional co-relational data. Look for other related factors in the experiences in question. It is often discovered that some OTHER factor(s) is more strongly related to the question. In the case of the kinds of statistics the DOJ has compiled here, I strongly suspect that at least two other factors, which may ALSO be co-related with race, things such as economic justice, or handicapped personal develop due to inappropriate education, are more strongly co-related with violent crime than race is.
Looking for other such factors CAN contribute to understanding, but as long as it reveals only co-relation that is not causation, iow, it's only description of the rates of change between things and it doesn't conclude that one of those things, being Black in this case, causes the other, violent crime.
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