With crime rates in the news again, let me just quote my April 2013 Taki's article on the data for anybody looking for an authoritative source for use in on-line debates:
At present, the best source for Obama Administration data on homicides by race is a 2011 PDF by Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics: “Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008.” ... From page 2:
Based on available data from 1980 to 2008—
Blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders.…The offending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000).