Testable hypothesis

Life on the fringes of the frontier favored the well-armed man who did not hesitate to use his weapons.

There are Social Scientists who put forth the hypothesis that African-American culture is more violent than the general culture because they aped the honor-culture of the Scotch-Irish who settled in the upper-Piedmont regions of the south.

Furthermore, they speculate that the culture will become less violent as they come into contact with gentle, refined, Urban peoples in the more educated North. Economic issues would be resolved as they were assimilated into the booming Urban economies.

Even in the realm of the hypothetical, there are some problems with the hypothesis. For one thing, the Scotch-Irish were dirt-poor and did not have, could not afford, slaves. If by pure luck they landed on good agriculture land they were pushed off by richer neighbors of English extraction.

Since much of what they farmed was hilly, erosion was a major issue and the farms played-out rapidly. The Scotch-Irish pushed westward faster than other white people with the possible exception of the French in Canada.

It is difficult to make a cogent case that African-Americans had extensive contact with the Scotch-Irish while their "culture" was forming. It is also difficult to make a cogent case that the Scotch-Irish culture would be "aspirational" for African-Americans.

Data

This is a simple comparison between the "Death-by-Firearm" rate of rural African-Americans in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and the "Death-by-Firearm" rate for African-Americans in Chicago.

Why Chicago?

Great Universities. Enlightened, Progressive population. Politicians very ready to help the under-class. Strong economy. Aggressive gun control laws. Vivid, patchwork mosaic of ethnic diversity fostering the rapid assimilation via osmosis.

A priori predictions:

A key feature of "Science" is to test the hypothesis by predicting the results, informed by the hypothesis, before running the experiment.

Based on the hypothesis, one would expect the Death-by-Firearm rate to be highest in rural-whites in the Deep South. After all, that is where those nasty Scotch-Irish (aka, Rednecks, Hillbillies) are.

Then one would expect the rural, African-Americans in the Deep South Death-by-Firearm rate to be lower than that of the rural-whites because "derivative" suggests that the culture has other influences that dilute the Scotch-Irish inputs.

Finally, one would expect the Death-by-Firearm rate of urban, African-Americans to be lowest of all since generations of their culture has been ameliorated by enlightened, progressive, Northern whites.

Attempting to quantify the results, if rural whites in the Deep-South have a Death-by-Firearm rate of 100% then it would be reasonable to speculate that rural African-Americans might have a Death-by-Firearm rate of 50% and urban, Northern African-Americans might have a Death-by-Firearms rate of 10%.

Take just a second and make your own predictions based on the hypothesis and untainted by your experiences. Write them down in 1-2-3 Order and then guess what the ratios will be.

Death-by-Firearms (less Self Harm) per 100,000. Actual data for 2019 and 2020

Elegant theory but shredded when tested against actual data.