Are uneducated whites more like blacks or educated whites? (#1--Crime): When talking about neighborhoods, people in my town change their tone of their voice and say, "Oh, you don't want to go over there," when the conversation turns to the black or poor white parts of town. But is this accurate to view these two communities as equally troubled? Once again, the Inductivist loves to see what the facts have to say. Using the General Social Survey to examine the question, 14% of white men with bachelor's degrees have ever been arrested. The number for white men who never finished high school--21%. For all black guys, it was 28%. So uneducated whites are right in the middle.

This will surprise all those people who assume that you see more crime in black neighborhoods because of poverty. But poor white men are less criminal than the general population of black men. In fact, the survey tells us that, in terms of crime, the group that matches whites with no high school diploma exactly is blacks with bachelor's degrees. So the moral of the story is that the poor white neighborhood is as dangerous as a neighborhood of black college grads.