[Blood of Tyrants]

“Since the population of Ferguson is 67 percent black, the greatest possible “over-representation” of blacks among those stopped by police or fined by courts is 50 percent.”

So half of all the stops were against black population of 67%? Doesn’t sound like blacks were disparately targeted to me.

[jazusamo]

Yep, sounds to me like they should be stopping more blacks. :)

[Tax-chick]

I think he’s saying that even if 100% of criminal-justice incidents involved blacks, that would be only 50% “overrepresentation.”

67% plus 33-1/2%

[Ragnar54]

If 100 out of 100 stopped by police were black, that would be 33 more than a proportional number of 67. 33/67= (roughly) .5, or 50%. It would be impossible to exceed a 50% over-representation.

One of the examples cited by Dr. Sowell in the article is the NBA, which is 78% black. Since blacks make up about 13% of the population, that is an over-representation of 65/13 or 500%. Dr. Sowell's point is of course that there are lots of cases of over-representation of races that are not due to racism.