Posted on 03/04/2015 6:00:56 AM PST by shortstop
What if blacks just break the law more often?
The Justice Department yesterday released a report accusing the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, of broad-based discrimination against black people. The basis for the claim is the fact that, in recent years, blacks have been arrested in Ferguson at a rate about 40 percent higher than their proportion of the city’s population.
Blacks comprise 67 percent of the people who live in Ferguson, but 93 percent of the people arrested.
From that, the Justice Department concludes that the cops are racist.
That’s one interpretation.
But it is not the only explanation, and it’s not even the most likely explanation.
Unless all of America’s criminal justice system is racist. Because across America, black people are arrested and jailed at rates far higher than their percentage of the population.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending the Ferguson Police Department. I’m not saying anything about the Ferguson Police Department. I don’t care about the Ferguson Police Department.
I have long since tired of everything having to do with Ferguson, Missouri.
But if the new standard of racism in our society, according to the federal government, is disproportionality, then we’ve got a problem.
For example, in American prisons, black people comprise 39.4 percent of the inmates. By comparison, blacks account for 14.1 percent of the national population.
That means black people are incarcerated at a rate more than two and a half times their proportion of society.
That’s an over-representation rate of about 250 percent.
In contrast, blacks are over represented in Ferguson arrests at a rate of about 140 percent.
The disproportionality of criminal conduct is demonstrated anecdotally most nights on the evening news, as mug shots are shown, beat-down videos are played, and store surveillance footage is played back.
If there is a correlation between being arrested and going to prison – and there is – then the so-called racism of the Ferguson Police Department is statistically far less evident than the national average.
But that nicety doesn’t matter to a Justice Department that seems to have decided before it showed up that there were problems in Ferguson and it was going to ferret them out.
Sometimes the Justice Department does justice, and sometimes it does politics – and in Ferguson, it’s hard to tell which is which.
But I would offer, for the sake of discussion, this simple question: Is it possible that, in America, black people are more likely to commit crime than white people?
And that the police arrest them because they are criminals, and not because they are black?
Is it possible, in a society of diverse cultures and backgrounds, that those diversities of culture and background lead to diversities of conduct – including in relation to the law?
Could it be that blacks are arrested in Ferguson more often than whites not because the police are racist, but because blacks simply break the law more often?
The Justice Department’s own statistics support that likelihood. It is the federal government, after all, which says that a murderer is almost eight times more likely to be black than white – even though whites vastly outnumber blacks in the population.
If a police department, then, was to arrest more blacks than whites for murder, would that be racism – as the Department of Justice claims in Ferguson – or simply a reflection of who commits the crimes – as the Department of Justice also claims?
It is more than just bad logic to claim that disproportionate arrests are proof of racism – it is dishonesty.
Again, I don’t know or care about the specifics of Ferguson.
But I care deeply about the federal government’s premise – that there must be quotas of criminality, and if arrests fall outside social percentages, then the issue is a failure of policing, as opposed to a failure of conduct.
Further, I believe that if there is increased crime among African-Americans – and virtually all statistics show that there is – then as opposed to turning that toward the divisive issue of assumed racism, perhaps it would be better to use it to raise the issue of improved conduct and cultural reform.
Because you can either reduce black arrests by intimidating police out of arresting black people, or you can encourage more black people to obey the law.
I prefer the latter.
There are differences of opinion about why black people are disproportionately criminal. I believe it has to do with a failed culture and nonexistent families. But whatever the cause, the solution is not to demand the police change their behavior, it is to demand that law breakers change their behavior.
Even if they’re black.
Because they’re committing crimes?
Why do Dublin cops arrest so many Irish?
Oh come on , you know white boys commit just as any crimes as blacks.../NOT...: )
Choice one only moves the goalposts further - will inevitably lead to more law-breaking and more intimidation of what we used to call "law and order".
In order to argue that disparate impact indicates racism,
you’d have to try to make the argument that
90 yr old Asian women
commit crimes at the same rate as
19-25 yr old black men.
That’s like asking “Why do cops arrest so many criminals?”
why do white pay such a higher % of taxes?? racism i believe...
Because they don’t have a enough blacks?..................
Affirmative action?
It will lead to no-go zones where police simply don’t go into very high black majority neighborhoods and the citizens will be left to themselves.
er because they commit more crimes. Not that hard to understand is it.
It’s a little funny that black churches treat incarcerated members like they are in the military. He’s “serving” his time. Rather ironic considering that 80% of their victims are black.
There is an amazing disconnect.
One stat that is missing, that is always missing... Within the Black community in Ferguson, and nationally, how many Black kids are part of an intact nuclear family?
The out of wedlock birthrate among Blacks is closing in at 80% and what do Liberals do? Why they pay these people to wantonly and irresponsibly procreate even more. Oh sure, they throw condoms at them, and the advertising for Viagra is stepped up, but in the end Black society is merely reaping what they have sown and what Liberals have encouraged.
Yes,
One could also ask the same of Ferguson proper. “Why do so many blacks commit crimes?”
When you only look at the statistics from one field (arrests) and nothing else like, say “race of crime perpetrator,” you are just fooling yourself or intentionally trying to put lipstick on a pig.
This is an observation. Go to any black area in the country , go to any area run by blacks and there is a problem in the community.
Is that racist? Well if observing and stating a fact instead of having your head where the sun does not shine then no it does not.
The DOJ needs to go back to high-school and study the following algebraic concepts:
(1) Sets
(2) sub-sets
(3) population of sets and subsets
(4) over-lap of sets and subsets
A family member of mine had a store in a local mall
Although the population of the area was 90% white and the clients of the mall also 90% white, MOST of her theft and shoplifting was from blacks.
She was a flaming liberal but ended up frustrated saying to me that she felt like she had to follow them around the store every time one entered.
How do you argue that is racism? She spent half her life in court trying to prosecute bad checks, also from blacks. She had to eventually stop taking checks
I eventually had her install security mirrors, cameras and video (real and fake) in VERY VISIBLE locations all over, and that helped a lot- I told her you would rather PREVENT shoplifting rather than waste hours and days prosecuting after the fact.
Any body who is black here and is offended, I am sorry- tell me what I am supposed to think about this? It is factual- I am not making any of it up.
If I were erci holder....not only would I have resigned my posititon...by now I would also have made plans to disappear deep into the larger social fabric..with a new identity .
how can this man not be embarrassed by his truly bizarre behavior?
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