Like Johnson’s article mentions, the homicide database is biased. The victims information are not usually filled out completely, unless they’re police officers. We can tell where the interests of the Chicago Police Department lie with what they record. They record the full information about police officers, usually the full information about employed people, and then pretty often for European, but rarely for African Americans. People often use data without regard for who compiled the information, and more importantly, why they compiled it. People who don’t pay attention propagate fake information, or information twisted to the point of essentially being fake. There is no real easy way to overcome this kind of bias, only more research into the 1919 Race Riots can give rise to the unheard voices. This is because there are so many gaps in the data that the police department collected that its extremely difficult to fill in those gaps.
