Let this also in someway "speak to" those among us who think that Mr. Bennett's recent controversial remarks "speak truth to power". I ask that you also consider this from The Black Commentator:
While Black and Latino crime, as a share of all crime is hardy different than in 1964, the share of persons incarcerated who are persons of color has risen from one-third to two-thirds in that period, while the share who are white has been cut in half.
What, you ask, might account for this disparity in this the land of equal opportunity for one and all?
Tim Wise puts it this way:
Comparing crime data from the FBI (which includes only those crimes reported to law enforcement), with Justice Department data on criminal victimization (culled from victim reports, and which include crimes not reported to police), makes clear that black crime rates cannot explain the overrepresentation of African Americans in the justice system.
Although black crime rates are higher than those for whites (for reasons that studies indicate are due to socioeconomic conditions disproportionately faced by blacks, like crowded housing, extreme poverty, and community disintegration), there is still evidence that blacks are arrested more often, and whites less often, than would be expected based on rates of offending.
In 2001, for example, for all violent crimes, including simple assault, blacks committed twenty-eight percent of the total, according to the Justice Department. Yet, African Americans comprised thirty-four percent of all persons arrested for those crimes that year, meaning that blacks were arrested at a rate that was twenty percent above their rate of offending. Indeed, if blacks and whites had been arrested for these violent crimes at a
rate that was equal to their rate of committing them, tens of thousands fewer blacks, and tens of thousands more whites would have been arrested for violent crime in 2001.
Comparing racial arrest data with racial offending data for 2001 reveals that for every 100 violent crimes committed by blacks, roughly thirty were arrested, while for every 100 violent crimes committed by whites, about 26 were arrested, meaning that white offenders were about fifteen percent more likely to get away with their offenses than black offenders.
As I asked in Do let's talk! in response to Armando Has it Wrong: If we're to talk about "this demographic", let's do so sensibly. Do these kinds of reports give you pause about the truth of Bennett's statement? There I used this report as a foil, Human Rights Report (2000). Of interest here is this:
Our research shows that blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men.
Shocking as such national statistics are, they mask even worse racial disparities in individual states. In seven states, for example, blacks constitute between 80 and 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison. In at least fifteen states, black men are admitted to prison on drug charges at rates that are from 20 to 57 times greater than those of white men. These racial disparities in drug offenders admitted to prison skew the racial balance of state prison populations. In two states, one in every 13 black men is in prison. In seven states, blacks are incarcerated at more than 13 times the rate of whites.
Wise concludes:
While it's true that the left has often made a mess of the case for racism in the justice system - for example, by fuming that blacks are only twelve percent of the population, and yet represent roughly half of all persons incarcerated (a point that means nothing, since incarceration would logically mirror crime rates, not population demographics) - the fact remains that even with regard to actual offending rates, especially for drugs, blacks are over-arrested, over-prosecuted and over-incarcerated.
Update [2005-10-1 13:59:33 by libby]::
See with interest: A true story about Bill Bennett; Kevin Drum calls him THE VIRTUECRAT. Drum goes on to make a very interesting observation
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, two years ago I wrote that I thought there was a similar agenda behind NCLB: it was a stealth attempt to eventually label every public school in the country as "failing," thus ginning up support for vouchers and privatization. I've had a number of liberals tell me I'm wrong about that, but nobody has really explained why I'm wrong. Stuff like this just convinces me more than ever that I'm not.