JOHN DILULIO’S ESSAY provides a useful summary of the appalling disparity between the rates at which black and white Americans are victimized by violent criminals. The statistics are staggering; the moral and political problems raised by them are profound. While this situation is not new, Dilulio shows that “America’s black crime gap” has grown worse in the last decade.  He reports, for example, that the homicide victimization rate for black youth, already three times the rate for white youth in 1986, doubled in the five years between 1986 and 1991, while the white rate remained unchanged.