The number 13, used in combination with either 52 or 90, is a shorthand reference to White Racist propaganda targeting African Americans, portraying them as inherently violent and criminal.
In this numerical shorthand, 13 refers to the alleged percentage of the U.S. population that is African American. 52 refers to the alleged percentage of all murders committed in the United States that are attributed to African Americans. Some White Supremacist groups instead use 50 rather than 52.
A similar claim involving 90 alleges that the number represents the percentage of violent interracial crimes supposedly committed by African Americans. Some White Supremacists cite the 1994 National Crime Victimization Survey, produced by the U.S. Department of Justice, as evidence for this claim. However, this figure does not appear in the survey itself and is not considered accurate, making the claim a form of #fakenews. It should also be noted that the overwhelming majority of violent crimes are intraracial - that is, committed by a person against someone of the same racial group - rather than interracial.
White Supremacists commonly use references to 13 (the number alone), 13/50, 13/52, or 13/90 in response to social-media posts and news-comment sections concerning crimes in which the suspected perpetrator is African American. In some cases, White Supremacists use these numbers as an alleged police radio code, employing coded expressions such as “We have a 1390 in progress.”
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