One other comment:

Hip Hop first started in the early 1980s. Gangsta Rap first started in the late 1980s and did not become nationally popular until the early 1990s. Your statistics show a consistantly high murder rate among blacks since the mid-1970s, so I would have to say that based on your statistics, hip hop and gangsta rap are non-factors.


If anything, your numbers show a decline in the murder rate after the introduction of Gansta rap on the national scene:

1992 5.3 37.2 5.4
1993 5.3 38.7 5.5
1994 5.0 36.4 4.6
1995 4.8 31.6 4.9
1996 4.3 28.3 4.1
1997 3.9 26.0 4.1
1998 3.8 23.0 2.9
1999 3.5 20.5 3.3
2000 3.3 20.5 2.7
2001 3.4 20.4 2.8
2002 3.3 20.8 2.7
2003 3.4 20.9 2.8
2004 3.3 19.7 2.4
2005 3.3 20.6 2.5

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