It's racist to take crime caused by a sociological factor rather than a genetic factor and call it "black crime". You should be talking about "poor crime" or "under-educated crime" or "reoffender crime" if you believe sociological factors are the cause. Conflating them with skin colour, and thus implying skin colour is the cause, is pretty much the definition of racism.

We track crime by all kinds of measures. Race, gender, age, income, education... why is one metric less significant than another? If it is, why do we track it at all?

The fact that black people commit more crime isn't less significant, it's just that it's only half the story. If we said "people living in poverty are 5* more likely to commit crime" then the obvious solution is for everyone to work harder to raise people out of poverty. By saying "black people are 5* more likely to commit crime" it defers responsibility for the crime rate away from society as a whole and on to the black community alone - even though it's the fact they're far more likely to live in poverty that's the real cause, and that's something society as a whole should be working to fix.

The problem with that is that it infantilizes a whole people. Yes, it is unfortunate the conditions[0] that some blacks live in, but there has to be a point, a line that is not crossed and if it is the individual is held fully responsible. Why shouldn't all adults be held responsible for their actions? What good does it do to send an infantilizing message saying, "If you want to commit a heinous and horrific murder, don't worry we'll take the blame :)"?

Do you think "affluenza"[1] was a worthy defence and justified not holding the person in Texas who killed people while drunk driving accountable?

Also, how does your assertion that poverty among blacks is the main if not sole cause of their elevated murder rates square with the fact that the murder rates among impoverished whites is not comparable?

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[0]It is also unfortunate and misguided to place responsibility and thus responsibility to solve the problem solely on outside groups. What outside group or society should we blame for the relatively materially impoverished state of some Australian Aborigine, Papua New Guinean, Sub-Saharan African, and American Indian groups that was discovered upon their first contact with other groups? Some people just live in different ways, owing in part to the selection pressure of the environments they evolved in over many years, there's no reason to blame anyone for that.

[1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=texas+jury+affluenza

My original point was not about who is responsible for the issue, or who should be blamed. The point was that you can't look at White attitudes towards Black people, and critique White people for being fearful towards Black people, while totally ignoring the relative crime rates.

The fact that some of these difference in crime rates can be explained by factors such as poverty, doesn't change the fact that on encountering a Black person, a White person is in more danger than encountering a White person.