(This is a piece written by Frederick Foote, a prolific short story writer and contributor to these pages. There are good statistics and comments in this piece.)

If you have been following the news, you can see the escalating violence in the ICE/protester confrontations.

This reminds me a little of the Vietnam anti-war protesters who repeatedly came under violence from law enforcement.

That made me think about our history of violence and write the attached

I encourage and appreciate your comments.

Stay safe,

Frederick

_{Author of the short story collections, For the Sake of Soul and Crossroads Encounters and The Maroon: Fables and Revelations.}                                             

Violence in the USA

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Martin Luther King Jr. fought against racism, poverty, and militarism. Violence is a key factor in making these concepts viable. King realized this and used non-violent demonstrations to illustrate the violent nature of racism in the South.

Far more than in other developed nations, violence appears to be an accepted way of life for many in the USA.

The following is a summary of some of the kinds of violence that many in this country accept as normal.

At the conclusion of this summary, I have added a few questions about our attitudes towards violence. I welcome your response and any questions or observations that you may have on these issues.

Racism, History, and Purpose

Racism is a viral concept that was created in the late 1500s in Britain and Europe and has spread from generation to generation. It creates the toxic idea that humans are divided into races and that those races exist in hierarchies, with the White race being at the top of the hierarchy. 

Europeans and the British created this idea of racism, and religion and science supported this self-serving concept.

Racism allowed Whites to justify the slave trade, their exploitation of non-White peoples, and their imperialism.

Racism and Violence

Europe, Great Britain, and the United States are centers of privilege, wealth, and power founded on the violent exploitation and suppression of people of color.

Racism promotes many kinds of violence.

The Nazis used race to justify their extermination of Jews.

Japanese in World War II used the Yamato racial supremacy ideology as the basis for dominating and devastating other people and cultures.

The US used racism as the basis for interring the Japanese during WWII and suppressing Black and indigenous peoples for the entire history of this nation.

Following the 9/11 attacks on the US, the CIA implemented secret detention and torture and Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) programs. Victims of these programs were held captive abroad to avoid giving the prisoners the protections of US law.

The immigration laws were changed to bring additional pressure on Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians.

Hate crimes in the US against those assumed to be Arabs or Muslims soared.

Racism, Politics, and Culture

Our housing shortage today is based in a large part on our desire to create safe White communities that exclude people of color.

Our politics have been divided between the supporters of rights for Blacks and those who oppose these rights.

White violence has suppressed Black voters since the Civil War.

Trump's attack on immigrants is primarily a violent attack on immigrants of color.

Western World conservative politics treat immigrants as a threat to White culture.  Some of these conservatives believe that immigrants need to be forcibly ejected from and barred from entry into White countries.

 One way to view US, British, and European history is to see it as a search for safe White places in domestic spaces and military domination in foreign places.

Poverty Violence

Poverty in developed Western countries is a policy-created deprivation.  These countries could mandate full employment with living wages or income without depriving others of these rights.

Poverty is a form of economic coercion that denies people basic needs such as shelter, food, medical care, and education.

I believe that the denial of the basic necessities of life when they can be provided is a form of violence.

The weight of poverty often falls the hardest on mothers with young children, the disabled, those with criminal convictions, and people of color.

The poverty rate in the US is 10.6%, or 35.9 million people. The poverty rate for African Americans is 18.4%.

State violence is employed to disrupt workers' organizing efforts and to contain protests against the political-economic systems that create poverty.

The poor often live in communities with higher levels of violence, crime, adverse environmental impacts, and law enforcement, and political abuses (Jim Crow Laws, redlining, urban renewal, mass incarceration, restrictive real estate covenants, and zoning laws).

Militarism

Militarism is the use of the military to address economic, political, and social problems.

The United States is a militaristic government.  The US was created in the Revolutionary War with Great Britain and fought many wars with the indigenous people from 1776 to 1924.

Our Civil War was fought over Black slavery. The war took between 698,000 and 850,000 military and civilian lives.

The US invaded Canada twice and Mexico at least ten times, and initiated a land grab war with Mexico.

The US has deployed the military to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central, and South America at least 80 times.  

Our wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam both lasted 20 years.

The US has used the military internally to break strikes and to put down public protests.

There have been over 1,339,770 US military fatalities in our wars.

Violence is essential to this country’s existence and to its suppression of Black, indigenous, gay, and other peoples, and to defend exploitative and repressive economic and political systems.

Environmental Violence

Environmental violence is the poisoning of the earth, air, and water by humans. The automobile is a prime contributor to our self-destruction, as is farmers' use of pesticides and fertilizers.

Plastics pollute the waterways, the groundwater, and us.

Environmental degradation gives us hotter weather, fiercer storms, and more ferocious forest fires.

None of us is exempt from the consequences of environmental violence.

The United States has withdrawn from the Paris environmental accords, and the president claims that man-made climate change is a con job.

Domestic Violence

In the US, about 10 million people experience domestic violence annually.

Violence is also related to male dominance in some families, households, and relationships. This domestic violence is a pervasive pandemic that the state, local, and federal governments are well aware of.

Male-dominated domestic violence is supported by some religions, including many Baptist congregations.

The governments have never adequately funded and provided the resources necessary to seriously address the problems of domestic violence.

 

Criminal Violence

FBI data shows that in 2024, there were approximately 1,221,345 violent crime incidents, which represented a 4.5% decrease from 2023.

Blacks are 13% of the population and 25% of crime victims.

Whites are 59% of the population and 53% of crime victims.

The homicide clearance rate in the US is 58% compared to 90% in Germany.

In the USA, the homicide rate was 5.7 in 2023, per 100,000 and 2.0 per 100,000 in Germany.

Law Enforcement Lethal Violence.

In the period from 2015 to 2024, law enforcement officers in the US have killed over 10,000 people.

US law enforcement kills at a rate of 33.1 for every 10 million people. The Canadian rate is 18.1 per 10 million. The Netherlands has a rate of 7.8 per 10 million, and Germany has a rate of 1.3 per 10 million.  

Firearms Violence

The United States is by far the most violent developed Western nation in terms of death by and public ownership of firearms.

Gun deaths in 2023 were 4.42 per 100K in the US, 0.6 per 100k in the Netherlands, and 0.14 in Switzerland.

From 2014 to 2023, the US experienced over 400,000 firearm deaths.

There are over 400 million firearms in civilian hands in the US.

The US has 120.5 firearms per 100 people, and the next closest nation is Kurdistan with 70.0 per 100 people.

Automobile Violence

The US also tolerates a degree of highway carnage that is not evident in other developed nations. The US has a death rate of 14.2 per 100K population. While Europe has an automobile death rate of 6.7 per 100k, and Canada has an automobile death rate of 4.7 per 100K.

 In the period from 2014 to 2024, over 400,000 people have died in automobile crashes in the USA. Over two million people each year are injured in automobile collisions.

From 1899 to 2023, there have been 3,996,709 automobile crash deaths in this country.

Death Penalty

The United States is one of the few developed nations that has retained and utilizes the death penalty. Canada, Mexico, Australia, and all the European Union Nations have banned the death penalty. There have been 1,654 court-ordered executions in the United States since the nineteen seventies.

Since 1973, at least 202 death row inmates have been exonerated.

The data suggest we have and will continue to execute innocent people.

Incarceration Violence

The US has an incarceration rate of 540-614 per 100k persons compared to Germany’s 67 per 100K, Japan’s 36 per 100K, and England and Wales 146 per 100K.

Counting the number of people in prison and jail (1.2 million) and those on parole and probation, there are over 5 million people under the authority of the criminal justice system.

Inmate-on-inmate and guard-on-inmate violence is pervasive in many of these facilities. Twenty percent of inmates experience physical violence, and the homicide rate is 2.5 times higher than it is outside of prison.

It is estimated that about 30% of women prisoners have been raped in prison.

Sports Violence

The USA’s most popular sport is football, which has 1,500 to 2,500 injuries a season and leaves a significant number of players with brain damage.

In a Boston University study, 90% to 99% of NFL players' brains showed evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE, a degenerative brain disease with devastating cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physical consequences.

Entertainment Violence

Of the 10 top-grossing movies of the 2010's, eight were explicitly violent movies.

Adolescent, Squid Games, You, and Missing You were four of the top five most-watched shows on Netflix in 2025.  They all have high levels of violence.

International Vendors of Violence

The United States of America has been the leading arms dealer for much of the last 25 years.

The vast majority of the weapons used by the Mexican cartels are manufactured in the United States.

About 69% of the weapons used by Israel come from the United States

Questions

Why do so many of us accept so much violence as normal, unavoidable, or even necessary?

How does this violence impact our quality of life?

Do we see the world as a more dangerous place than our European counterparts, and if so, why?

Are our levels of violence a public health issue?

Are we doomed to creating ever-increasing levels of violence (Venezuela, Greenland, Syria, Portland, OR, Chicago, Il, Washington, DC, and Minnesota)?

Is the existence of the United States of America a threat to world peace?

Is it possible to achieve domestic tranquility with so many weapons in the hands of the public?

Have you been in an automobile collision or suffered any of these acts of violence?

If we have concerns about our levels of violence, what can we do to address them?